Admirers of the Russian leader may soon lead the world’s three largest democracies - eviltoast
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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    9 months ago

    We can take this further and say that any meaningful democracy is fundamentally at odds with capitalism. True democracy is only possible when the means of production are publicly owned. Only then can resources and labour be directed in a way that benefits majority of the people. Western democracies are in effect dictatorships of the capital owning class, or as Lenin famously put it:

    In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable 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.

    • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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      9 months ago

      Exactly, you hit the nail on the head.

      Though I will say that capitalism isn’t necessarily at odds with democracy. It’s at odds with proletarian democracy. Oligopolies, Ancient Greek democracy, military-commissariats etc, are all still valid forms democracy, but they are transparent with who they allow to hold power and consider citizens. The slave owners. Capitalism is hardly at odds with a lot of these types of democracy.

      However, most modern democracies pretend very well that they are for the people, but capitalism is diametrically opposed to that as you, and Lenin said.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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        9 months ago

        Right, from Marxist perspective we have to consider class. Democracy is reserved for the class that holds power in society, and under capitalism it’s the capital owning class.

        • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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          9 months ago

          Of course.

          Anyway, back to the main topic, the article is bizarre, but also a bit of a bad omen. If someone told me that my biggest supporters were Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, then I would really doubt what I’m doing. None of these are good people or from good places, so being in Putin’s corner does more harm then good.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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            9 months ago

            If these were the people exclusively supporting Russia then I’d agree, but the reality is that Russia is supported by all of the Global South including China, Vietnam, and Cuba. What the article is freaking out about is that anti Russian narrative is collapsing in countries traditionally friendly to the west, as well as in US itself.

            • Russia is in a really bizzar spot at the moment, while not being a comrade, they are in a position adversarial to the global north, and are very active in the decline of the west and global north.

              • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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                9 months ago

                For sure, Russia is at the centre of the global contradiction between the west and the Global South, but we always have to remember that support for Russia should be strictly critical.