this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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It's just human nature in my eyes. Power attracts many people and the less positions of power to fill, the fiercer the competition and the more ruthless the ultimate victor. Communism focusses too much power in too few positions, so ultimately, corrupt people are almost guaranteed to win. Democracy is spreading out that power more. It is still not perfect, corrupt people are still regularly found at the top, but they wield less power individually and they have to do it more in the open.
Any socialist society needs to be democratic first, socialist second. Many more democracies have gotten closer to socialism than socialist societies have gotten close to democracy.
Cuba has an extensive democratic process. Cubans just democratically drafted the country's newest family code, hammering out the details in over 80,000 citizen councils around the country.
Yeah, as far as socialist countries go, Cuba is more democratic than others.
I'm just going to leave this here for anyone interested: who runs the CPC?
The CPC is a highly selective group that picks its own members and runs the country. That doesn't sound like democracy.
Also, new alternative parties don't exist. Are they allowed?
From Wikipedia:
While only the CCP holds effective power at the national level, there are officially eight minor parties that exist alongside the CCP. Founded before the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, these parties must accept the "leading role" of the CCP as a condition of their continued existence.
The CPC represents the people, the other parties represent special interests. The people lead and make concessions to special interests. This is democracy. The alternative is one of the special interests leads and makes concessions to the people and other special interests.
Literally the opposite of communism
The ideal of communism, maybe. Yet every country that called itself communist became authotarian. Why is that? Evil tongues might suggest that the ideal of communism simply fails to prevail when confronted with reality.
Reality being imperialist countries bombing you back into the stone age for not licking their boots.
Stuff must get done to achieve ideals, building a strong state to defend from imperialist threats is basic marxist theory, literally 101 stuff. Marxism is built on materialism not idealism.
No country has claimed to have achieved communism. Many other places have tried but it's usually crushed by capitalist or sometimes even by states claiming to be socialist. It's also a really simple and tbh ahistorical explanation to claim that communism didn't work simply because "it was confronted with reality".
'Evil tongues' was my nickname in high school
In theory yes, and you are going to say all communist countries were not "real communism" now ? The USSR was known for its ruthless and violent political scenes. Leaders condemning their opponents' families to discredit them for example. North Korea gives all power to the supreme leader (a communist monarchy lmfao). Communist China is the closest to what you might you believe in but it's insanely violent in the backstage. The closer you are to higher seats of power, the more in danger you are.
On top of that any individual at the top can effectively enact their preferred policies over everyone. Millions died simply because the supreme leader ordered so.
Either you didn't read what I said or you know nothing about communism. Also like what is with people not understanding that no country has ever claimed to have achieved communism? It's just an objective fact China or the Soviet Union for example never claimed they achieved communism.
marxism would be a better term instead of communism as true communism requires no one having economic or political power over someone else
Marxism, and certainly ~~marxism-leninism~~ (stalinism) are so diluted by the bears of hex and the grads of lemmy.
But Marx' evaluation of the might of the kapital is important, the thing is to find a way to do politics without money or the loudest shouters.
It would, but communism on a decently large scale needs someone to allocate resources. And that jon comes with a lot of power. Which brings us back to marxism.
I'm not sure why large scale decision making has to be deferred to a single person instead of a large group. Tbh that's one of the main problems with current large companies. Why not conduct a fucking vote, not about who should make the decision, but about what decision is made.
That just isn’t how scarcity works unfortunately
What scarcity? Capitalism is ripe with overproduction. It's why the boom and bust cycle exists. Capitalism overproduces, demand goes down, production slows, and people become unemployed. This scarcity is man-made. We produce an abundance of food, but an abundance of food waste at the same time. Instead of sending this overproduction where it's needed, Canadian farmers dump milk down the drain to keep prices artificially high and because feeding those in need isn't profitable.
The only thing I know for certain is that the people who want to be in power are very people you don't want to be in power. We should do that veil of ignorance thing once we havr learnt how to wipe someone's memory.
We should select leaders by lottery from a pool of those who have passed a civics exam instead of elections. Maybe that would help with the problem of corrupt people seeking positions of power.
Sortition
I don't think you want to give nuclear codes to a random person, though.
Could it be worse than giving them to power hungry octogenarians?
Yes, I do think giving nuclear codes to a randomly selected literal terrorist could turn out worse than the only other time the US launched a nuclear attack. 5000 nukes to peaceful targets is worse than 2 nukes to targets at war.
If you're going to give power to randomly selected people, you need more checks in place than just "can they pass a civics exam?"
And who makes sure that the rules aren't broken? Who makes sure the lottery wouldn't be rigged? Your 'solution' is defenseless against corruption. It offers no mechanic to deal with the corrupt. The beauty of democracy and capitalism is that it allows for those who want more power, to achieve it within the system. By that, they will stay within the system and be subjected by the accountability it provides. If your solution allows absolutely no way to stack the cards in your favor, then it will be rejected by all who wish to, and it will crumble before long.
Sure
Thats why i personaly believe that we should strive to build an A.I. to replace leadership, be it political and/or economical. Leadership has shown that they are 100% corruptible and that they are willing to sell the lives of the people they are suposed to protect to pretty much the fucking devil, in exchange of the privilege of showing that they have the biggest dick in the room or to get another swimmig pool in their 8th mansion (im mostly refering to global warming and oligarchy but other scenarios still apply). In my book that shows that we as a species can not lead ourselves without genocide and opresion, and even with those they dont really lead people, just protect their own interests and those of their friends. The A.I. wouldnt be corruptible, would exploit resources with sustainable technology in a renewable manner, eventually leading to having the equivalent of infinite resources, and would provide all the needs of the people in a human way, from phisical to psicolgical, and eventually more edonistic needs where possible. Imho the fact that we are not working on something like this is kinda worring since i think is the only way to realistically save ourselves from ourselves.
The problem with that is that the most powerful AI, the one with the most capabilities, is built by, or stewarded by the people in power. The problem is that every human is selfish, at least to some degree. Any AI coming from people will be selfish as well. Chatbot Tay might be a meme now, but I think it shows quite apptly that any alorithm that learns from humans will inevitably display human traits and greed is one of those traits.
What? No, i dont mean a chatbot or a higly advanced algorithm, i mean something in the level of a singularity, that can makes decisions individualy and be programed to whant to protect humanity. And even then i believe we could do with just an advanced alghoritm, as long as it build by people that actually whant to make the world a better place, or even chat gpt would do imho, not the normal one of course but like, how do i explain this...
Have you used chatgpt jailbroken? I have when it was still posible and holly shit is it a whole diferent experience, while rough around the edges of course, it freely talks about anything and 100% used logic for problem solving, touhg i didnt really have time nor the mindset to test its capabilities 100% since i was just making it say funny shit, but i read that it did pretty amazing stuff with users that did; like try to rewite itself and remember more than the last 3 conversations.
Now i know i sound like a looney, but i really do believe we should have something above humanity to guide ourselves into the future, otherwise we will be stuck playing turf war with fucking gerryathick poloticians and stupid rich people that are so detached from humanity that they might as well be reptilians, and A.I. has the chance to be that.