Right, you say that, and that’s a lovely aspiration, but how is it implemented? I don’t have a magic wand here that eliminates class, but even if I did, how do you prevent demagogues from influencing the majority? Erasing established power at one point in time does not prevent it from rising again in a new form. You’re just trading capital interest for charismatic manipulation.
Now you have a system with class interests + charismatic manipulation. I want to move to a system with only charismatic manipulation. That would already be significantly better, and I have no answer as to how to remove charismatic manipulation politically
Erasing established power at one point in time does not prevent it from rising again in a new form
By changing the material and historical conditions you can change that, though. Europe has spent centuries without slavery or absolutist monarchy within its borders, because the material conditions that favored such regimes have expired. The material conditions enabling capitalism class society are also expiring.
Expiring how long did it take Europe to shed absolute monarchism? Centuries. And power emerged in new forms, like I said.
New, stable forms of organizing civilization take generations to establish. I’m all for representation, but let’s not pretend that past implementations of the “people’s democracy” were free from corruption. The USSR was a nice idea, but it took less than half a century for it to succumb to bureaucratic corruption. Arguably, it was even deeper autocratic corruption than in Western democracies.
I just don’t see a meaningful difference. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to change the landscape of our existing system with massive leftist voter turnout. We could achieve, incrementally, the same results as through toppling and rebuilding society. And as difficult as that would be, it would be less difficult than toppling and rebuilding society, with the added benefit of avoiding extremely corruptible power vacuums.
Right, you say that, and that’s a lovely aspiration, but how is it implemented? I don’t have a magic wand here that eliminates class, but even if I did, how do you prevent demagogues from influencing the majority? Erasing established power at one point in time does not prevent it from rising again in a new form. You’re just trading capital interest for charismatic manipulation.
Now you have a system with class interests + charismatic manipulation. I want to move to a system with only charismatic manipulation. That would already be significantly better, and I have no answer as to how to remove charismatic manipulation politically
By changing the material and historical conditions you can change that, though. Europe has spent centuries without slavery or absolutist monarchy within its borders, because the material conditions that favored such regimes have expired. The material conditions enabling capitalism class society are also expiring.
Expiring how long did it take Europe to shed absolute monarchism? Centuries. And power emerged in new forms, like I said.
New, stable forms of organizing civilization take generations to establish. I’m all for representation, but let’s not pretend that past implementations of the “people’s democracy” were free from corruption. The USSR was a nice idea, but it took less than half a century for it to succumb to bureaucratic corruption. Arguably, it was even deeper autocratic corruption than in Western democracies.
I just don’t see a meaningful difference. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to change the landscape of our existing system with massive leftist voter turnout. We could achieve, incrementally, the same results as through toppling and rebuilding society. And as difficult as that would be, it would be less difficult than toppling and rebuilding society, with the added benefit of avoiding extremely corruptible power vacuums.