Fair economic policies can be delivered by any form of government, democratic, authoritarian or even totalitarian. Representative democracy in a class-based society will always serve the interests of the ruling class just like most authoritarian and totalitarian regimes do.
Representative democracy in a class-based society is at best, formal democracy with democratic institutions, “free” elections and a few other rights that will be taken away when the citizenry would need them most such as in the case of “inadmissible” protests and demonstrations.
Why does the so-called liberal democratic regimes fail to deliver a fair economic system? Why can’t we get economic democracy and social justice through the voting booth? Why are we fed with lies again and again and every election cycle the situation goes from bad to worse and our proud democratic regimes never fulfill their promises, they never bother to respect the electoral programs upon which the electorate gave them a vote of confidence.
How come liberal democracies deliver austerity for the many while making the wealthy, wealthier when that was supposed to be a feature of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes? Is often said that democracy is the best of all possible systems. If that is true why reality does not confirm it? Why did we lose confidence in politics and consider most politicians corrupt people without integrity?
It is because representative democracy in a class-based society is always hijacked by the special interests codified into law. Representative democracy in a class-based society is a simulation of democracy, those who control the wealth hold the power to control the main structural institutions and keep the citizenry at bay, for all intents and purposes, this is not democracy it is open for debate what kind of label identifies it more accurately but democracy is out of question.
Multiparty or single-party, free or fake elections, it doesn’t really matter who wins, because they are selected before being elected and the much needed radical change won’t happen in the present circumstances, the winning class insulated itself from external threats and most people are kept distracted by a culture of make believe and infantilization consuming time and vital energies that should be used to acquire knowledge and build up comprehensive understanding of how the weapons of mass deception colonize our minds and normalize political apathy.
Most of us nurture the naive hope that the political class don’t want to destroy the fabric of society, and the advantage of living in a democracy if nothing else calls politicians to reason, the desire to be re-elected obliges them to make some concessions.
The majority of people support moderates, the virtue is at the centre, the centre is synonymous of balance, which makes sense, the role of centrists is to make reasonable, responsible, credible and sustainable political decisions.
We are domesticated creatures, that’s what education is all about (compliance and conformity) to become reasonable citizens supportive of moderate policies, and in spite of more than enough reasons to disbelief the mainstream worldviews, we keep believing and even worse, trusting the authoritative voices and distrust the dissent ones, always looking for incongruities and alibis to discard and discredit the dissenting voices.
In a class-based society, class consciousness has always to be on the table if we want to have a realistic understanding of how the machinations of class warfare are used to keep the middle, lower social classes under control, which means propagandized, managed, conditioned, deceived and delusional.
The parties that make up the rest of the political spectrum, left and right, whatever that means these days, have a decorative function, parliaments look less boring. But there comes the time when part of the citizenry fed up of being duped by the centrists start to be attracted to the extremes.
The extreme right is better accepted for a simple reason, it promises to restore normality and re-establish social order, prioritizing national interests and traditional values. The so called radical left proposes more revolutionary programs and systemic change, instead of offering security they spread a climate of uncertainty, rejected by most citizens who just want to recover the petty bourgeois way of life they were used to.
I believe that complex societies need to rely on some form of authority to maintain order and ensure justice.
Democracy without economic justice and environmental conscious protection is not democracy. Calling democracy to a system completely hijacked by special interests and public-private partnerships which means the state has to bear the losses and the private pockets get stuffed with the profits.
True democracy does not work in societies organized
in a vertical hierarchy format. The reason why we do not have functional
democracies is precisely because we believe that above democracy is
property, most citizens accept and rationalize social injustices as a necessary
evil, an inevitability , there are no perfect systems so why bother to change,
when there is always the possibility to change for worse!
Instead of believing in political, religious or whatever type of saviors and/or hand over the future of humanity to transhumanist technocrats of a dystopian technofascist regime, we should fight for more political agency, political apathy brought us to the where we are now.
We tolerate austerity measures, continuous degradation of the standard of living, job precariousness, permanent instability, uncertainty and helplessness as if there is no alternative (TINA).
I’m afraid we will soon reach the point of no return, but for the moment I believe there is still room to build organized effective opposition for real systemic change focused in class consciousness because I truly believe that all problems derive from the root problem which is class-based society.
I feel a deep sadness with the state of submission
we have reached. We can express our indignation on social networks, dogs bark
but the caravan passes. We are scattered all over the place when what we really
need is class consciousness to unify people of whatever walks of life suffer
similar socioeconomic troubles.
We never had an education for democracy, we are never taught about how the backstage of the world of financial and monetary policy works. We live in a democracy, but we don't even deserve to learn how to live in a democracy.
We call democracy to a system that is captured by psychopaths and sociopaths, illusionist megalomaniacs capable of seducing society to join conquest, violence and murder to honour plunder. Creating enemies, murdering people, destroying livelihoods, and ecosystems for control and wealth accumulation that will be wasted in megalomaniac projects and hedonistic vanity.
This is what civilization is about, ‘not the
fictional idea of what civilization is’ civilization is imperialist
expansionism, plundering of resources, enslavement of people, environmental
destruction, all complex societies end up being hijacked and dominated by the
wrong people and this is what will always happen for as long as there are no
sociocultural alerts against all forms of dehumanization and demonization
design to divide people into groups and classes, adopting prejudices as facts
in order to serve special interests and accept inequality as the norm.
Nothing is irreversible (except death, at least for now) but it is very difficult not only to organize people but also to formulate a consensual project for a classless society, participatory democracy, economic justice and environmental protection, green capitalism is more of the same, top down control.
Many of us have to accept Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber https://davidgraeber.org/books/bullshit-jobs/ for mere survival reasons.
My personal experience allowed me to experience different work environments, in several sectors of the economy. For family reasons I started working at the age of sixteen in a tannery.
Since then, I learned that a profit-oriented economy will always prioritize profit, environmental pollution, resource overexploitation, goods and services that serve to stimulate consumption instead of serving to satisfy people's needs with quality, comfort and durability are the norm not the exception.
The consumer society is unsustainable (period). Green capitalism wants to convince us that the financialization of ecosystem services is the way to save the planet but the truth is, they want to “save” the oligopolies and monopolies that benefit the rentier class.
Superfluous consumption of unnecessary goods and services for anxiety alleviation won’t work, but will overtime make us feel increasingly frustrated and distressed and more predisposed to addictive behaviors.
The need to consume superfluous goods is understandable but should never become the default mode. When I enter a supermarket and see thousands of items on display, the vast majority of those products are completely unnecessary, but it doesn’t matter, for as long as they are there consumers will buy them. The ecological footprint, the amount of waste we produce in a for-profit economic system to “enjoy” meaningless lives is mind-blowing.
In a class-based profit-oriented political economy
system, everything becomes commodifiable, first we lose self-respect and along
with it we become useful tools to be exploited in the market place, communist
rhetoric some would say, prove me wrong I would reply!
When we assign a monetary/financial value/tag to “something” we deprive it of the intrinsic dignity and fundamental value in a clear distortion and suppression of elementary respect for nature and life with the loss of sacredness. Profit becomes the supreme "moral value” and blind faith in technoscientism as the theology for the technofascist transhumanist era.
