Fuck goddammnit I wrote a whole ass thing and my phone died so here's the next best re-write of what I wrote fuck goddamnit.
A benevolent dictatorship is going to be the absolute best form of government you could possibly ever have but. You are never going to have one. The people at the top want to be at the top, and the people who want to be at the top are always going to be bastards.
Yeah that's true, that's why no socialist believes in a "benevolent dictatorship". We believe in a "dictatorship of the proletariat", a society in where the "proletariat" dictates society. It does not mean rule by one man, or rule by a special executive, no project could have survived as such with as many socialists among it's ranks. For example, today we live in a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" where the bourgeois class can dictate society's whims, but we desire a "dictatorship of the proletariat" where the proletarian class dictates society.
Even historically, we saw a bit of consolidation of power, but it was no match for the way that democracy was extended to society during those periods of time as well. Almost universally, except for Czechia, every single socialist project went from a thoroughly anti-democratic backwater to a democratic society. Batista's Cuba, Tsarist Russia, Fascist Poland and Romania, Yugoslavia, China, the imperialized lands of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc. These are all lands that were able to make a great leap forward in terms of democratic progress.
For more information on how the imperfect soviet democracy functioned, I recommend the book Workers' Participation in the Soviet Union. As opposed to being a stalinist backwater, in reality the Soviet Union was an imperfect but quite functional democracy which was capable of many things the United States even now finds itself unable to do.
China's history of Democracy is far too complicated and full of ups and downs for me to share just one book, the entire Cultural Revolution can be seen as an example of democracy being extended too far and spilling out into violence on the streets. This necessitated a kind of regression of democracy, which now has gone forward and progressed again into Whole Process People's Democracy. China changes far too often for me as an outsider to give an accurate record of what it currently is like on a whole (as every province does it a little different as well), but one thing I can share is that the thoroughly American institution of Harvard has even conducted studies on democratic satisfaction in China and found that 95.5% of people in China view the state of things as satisfactory or even good! Far better than the numbers we get here at the end of the day in the states.
Democracy in Cuba is still roughly according to how it was in this video. Things have been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, and there's certainly issues that exist don't get me wrong, but it's still far more democratic than the United States by far.
I'm beginning to run out of steam and need to focus on other things in my day now so I may become less responsive lol
Fuck goddammnit I wrote a whole ass thing and my phone died so here's the next best re-write of what I wrote fuck goddamnit.
Yeah that's true, that's why no socialist believes in a "benevolent dictatorship". We believe in a "dictatorship of the proletariat", a society in where the "proletariat" dictates society. It does not mean rule by one man, or rule by a special executive, no project could have survived as such with as many socialists among it's ranks. For example, today we live in a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" where the bourgeois class can dictate society's whims, but we desire a "dictatorship of the proletariat" where the proletarian class dictates society.
Even historically, we saw a bit of consolidation of power, but it was no match for the way that democracy was extended to society during those periods of time as well. Almost universally, except for Czechia, every single socialist project went from a thoroughly anti-democratic backwater to a democratic society. Batista's Cuba, Tsarist Russia, Fascist Poland and Romania, Yugoslavia, China, the imperialized lands of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc. These are all lands that were able to make a great leap forward in terms of democratic progress.
For more information on how the imperfect soviet democracy functioned, I recommend the book Workers' Participation in the Soviet Union. As opposed to being a stalinist backwater, in reality the Soviet Union was an imperfect but quite functional democracy which was capable of many things the United States even now finds itself unable to do.
China's history of Democracy is far too complicated and full of ups and downs for me to share just one book, the entire Cultural Revolution can be seen as an example of democracy being extended too far and spilling out into violence on the streets. This necessitated a kind of regression of democracy, which now has gone forward and progressed again into Whole Process People's Democracy. China changes far too often for me as an outsider to give an accurate record of what it currently is like on a whole (as every province does it a little different as well), but one thing I can share is that the thoroughly American institution of Harvard has even conducted studies on democratic satisfaction in China and found that 95.5% of people in China view the state of things as satisfactory or even good! Far better than the numbers we get here at the end of the day in the states.
Democracy in Cuba is still roughly according to how it was in this video. Things have been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, and there's certainly issues that exist don't get me wrong, but it's still far more democratic than the United States by far.
I'm beginning to run out of steam and need to focus on other things in my day now so I may become less responsive lol