/siberia/ - Off-topic

>>529689
what do you mean how hard is it? how hard is it to convince 100 million people to vote for someone that the TV doesn't tell them to vote for? pretty hard

>>529689
I'm voting for the candidate who doesn't want to put minorities into gas chambers.

>>529692
A strong case for how unsalvageable stupid the general population is. What solution is there if we already live in the real life version of Idiocracy?

>>529689
the electoral college don't allow (at the national an state levels) voters to vote for other than the two parties. howeva on localer levels, such as city councils an mayors an what not, the politics vary and are largely outside traditional democrat vs republican parties.
>>529693
i take it u won't b votin this november? kek, seriosuly tho, whether at the border or in gaza, both options aint lookin too good.

>>529692 fpbp

>>529689
>how hard is it to not vote for these ghouls?
surprisingly, you should take a look at ballot access rules some time. they're set up to make it comically difficult for people to run nationally, even people like Ross Perot who had a pretty big support base had a tough time getting acces.
>so just don't vote
many people don't, US turnout is consistently shit lol. in 2020 when there was literally nothing better to do it was still only 66%. in 1996, when post-cold-war neoliberalism peaked, it was 51%. nearly half of eligible voters stayed home!

There are legal barriers for third parties and there's a culture of party loyalty in the US, you're either a democrat or a republican, there's no positions, just the party you're loyal to.

>I know VOOT is a meme but how hard is it to not vote for these ghouls? Are you fucking kidding me?
And vote for whom instead? You're facing a systemic issue in head on and not seeing that the individal has fuck all say in what options it gives. Like why is that so hard to comprehend. It's a fake replublic pretending to be a fake democracy.

>>529689
>I know VOOT is a meme but
xd

>>529760
>It's a fake replublic pretending to be a fake democracy.
it's a real republic and a real democracy, lib

>>529762
Every bourgeoisie democarcy is fake democracy. Cope and seethe.

>>529762
There's no such thing under capitalism

>>529764
>>529766
>real democracy hasn't been tried
read marx sometime

>>529764
>Cope and seethe.
My man, you're the one crying that bourgeois democracy doesn't hold up to the ideal in your head. As a communist, even, which makes it doubly retarded.

>>529767
That was literally copy pasted from lenin and marx lol

>>529764
>>529766
"democracy" is an explicitly anti-communist idea. "The Will of the People" means nothing, as there is no single, unified "people." There are distinct social classes that have zero interests in common.
Read.

>>529769
Is that why marxists of old constantly criticized people like Proudhon and many other leftists for upholding the bourgeois values of the French revolution like freedom, equality, etc?

The fact that virtually all flavors of leftism - Stalinism, Trotskyism, demsocs etc - look upon democracy as this pure and sacred thing that can never do anything bad is extremely indicative of their basic positions being fundamentally identical to liberalism in all respects. Whenever the state is openly repressive for any reason whatsoever, all of them begin screeching about 'fascism' in order to defend bourgeois constitutionalism and rights without the slightest awareness of the fact that they've imbibed entirely liberal notions wholesale.

Maoists in particular are notable because the definition of fascism they employ the most is literally 'negation of democratic rights', or in other words any kind of open repression. On this flimsy retarded basis they classify the vast majority of states in the world as 'fascist'. Needless to say the Maoist definition, designed to exonerate democratism fully, runs completely counter to the scientific analysis of democracy made by the Bolsheviks. The March 1919 resolution of the CI, drafted by Lenin, takes entirely the opposite view altogether. They pretend as if their democracy is different or even the "truly" democratic one.

It's not about what you want it to be, democracy by definition implies the rule of capital. 'The public' does not refer solely to proletarians by any stretch of the imagination and the dictatorship of the proletariat does not run on the principle of 'public' participation.

The Principles of Communism
Frederick Engels 1847

"— 18 —
What will be the course of this revolution?
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:"

State and revolution, Lenin
"In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.

The correctness of this statement is perhaps most clearly confirmed by Germany, because constitutional legality steadily endured there for a remarkably long time–nearly half a century (1871-1914)–and during this period the Social-Democrats were able to achieve far more than in other countries in the way of "utilizing legality", and organized a larger proportion of the workers into a political party than anywhere else in the world.

What is this largest proportion of politically conscious and active wage slaves that has so far been recorded in capitalist society? One million members of the Social-Democratic Party - out of 15,000,000 wage-workers! Three million organized in trade unions–out of 15,000,000!

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich–that is the democracy of capitalist society

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember, that "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist".

Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people–this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state… ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.


Also, The USSR was a democracy, again, cope and seethe

>>529773
Indeed Lenin does explicitly talk about proletarian democracy - but of course they misunderstand what he means. Leftoids think it's some sort of special version of the democratic procedure that automatically produces a 'proletarian' outcome.

Reminds me of MLs who think Lenin scoffing at "bourgeois 'patriotism'" means that 'dialectically speaking' we can have a proletarian patriotism.

>>529774
>>529773
under capitalism there can only be one type of democracy, i dont think you guys understand the things you quotemine and copypaste

>>529776
>it's a real republic and a real democracy, lib
>>529776
>under capitalism there can only be one type of democracy
This is the same picture

>>529777
funny twitter quip faggot, theres no contradiction whatsoever

under capitalism there can only be one type of democracy, ergo, it's a real republic and a real democracy. sorry if that made your brain hurt

>>529778
You are just baiting

>>529783
>implying theres an "ideal" version of democracy
>calling me stupid
lol theres only bourgeois democracy. a "proletarian" democracy can only exist after class division isnt a thing anymore. youre an idealist and a moralist

>>529780
ok imbecile

>>529784
>lol theres only bourgeois democracy
Wrong

>>529689
>how hard is it to not vote for these ghouls?
most americans don't vote though. Most americans are already in a place where they don't give a shit or are disgusted/alienated out of voting. The ones who still vote are just convinced of "lesser evil" trolley problem memes. The problem isn't getting people to stop voting. The problem is getting people to START KILLING.

>>529774
I can't fucking post screenshots so I have to format this myself. Thanks mods.

Engels outlining the historical context behind the formula of 'winning the battle of democracy' in the specific German situation of the late 1840s, 1884:
>Terrified not by what the German proletariat was, but by what it threatened to become and what the French proletariat already was, the bourgeoisie saw its sole salvation in some compromise, even the most cowardly, with the monarchy and nobility; as the proletariat was still unaware of its own historical role, the bulk of it had, at the start, to take on the role of the forward-pressing, extreme left wing of the bourgeoisie. The German workers had above all to win those rights which were indispensable to their independent organisation as a class party: freedom of the press, association and assembly — rights which the bourgeoisie, in the interest of its own rule ought to have fought for, but which it itself in its fear now began to dispute when it came to the workers. The few hundred separate League members vanished in the enormous mass that had been suddenly hurled into the movement. Thus, the German proletariat at first appeared on the political stage as the extreme democratic party.
>In this way, when we founded a major newspaper in Germany, our banner was determined as a matter of course. It could only be that of democracy, but that of a democracy which everywhere emphasised in every point the specific proletarian character which it could not yet inscribe once for all on its banner. If we did not want to do that, if we did not want to take up the movement, adhere to its already existing, most advanced, actually proletarian side and to advance it further, then there was nothing left for us to do but to preach communism in a little provincial sheet and to found a tiny sect instead of a great party of action. But we had already been spoilt for the role of preachers in the wilderness; we had studied the utopians too well for that, nor was it for that we had drafted our programme.
https://marxengels.public-archive.net/en/ME1724en.html

>>529785
good luck having a "real" (lol lib) democracy under capitalism then

>>529788
And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord.

There is no such thing as "democracy" in capitalism. Therefore, your statement that the US is a real economy is false.

and, at the end of the day, the soviet union was a democracy in the common sense of the word. They had regular elections, elected representatives. Elections of deputies were universal : all citizens of the U.S.S.R. who have reached the age of eighteen, irrespective of race or nationality, religion, educational and residential qualifications, social origin, property status or past activities, had the right to vote in the election of deputies and to be elected. Elections of deputies are equal : each citizen has one vote; all citizens participate in elections on an equal footing. People's Courts are elected by the citizens of the district on the basis of universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot for a term of three years, etc

>>529791
I can tell they had the same type of democracy as the west given how the elected leaders just dissolved their country against the will of the people.

>>529793
>I can tell they had the same type of democracy as the west given how the elected leaders just dissolved their country against the will of the people.

So you are in favor of direct democracy, the direct dominance of the proletariat?

>>529689
Vote Stein Mother Fuckers
Vote Stein No Matter What

>>529794
I guess, anarchists have a point with revocable mandates even though it can lead to inefficiencies, I also find the organic centralism concept of Bordiga intriguing although I'm not sure safeguards or checks and balances could work very well. The problem with how to organize the dictatorship of the proletariat is that it's mostly uncharted territory, it really needs to be tested and experimented on a large scale to see what works. It's sad that the USSR stopped social and political experiments to settle on imitating bourgeois democracy if you want my opinion.

>>529797
that is fair