Democracy: Boon or bane?

[Faceman]

Originally posted by shamrock_uk: Vajpayee and his government did do more to end corruption and to modernise the country than the entire Ghandi dynasty before him. I

check out www.tehelka.com (an independent Indian online newspaper) and look for "Operation West End". Nice work cleaning up that corruption

I'll elaborate:
Reporters from www.tehelka.com posed as lobbyists of a fictious British company for military supplies (West End) and met and bribed low and high-ranking officers to promote their (fictious) product. They got as far as Mr. Bangaru Laxman (President of the BJP at that time) whom they filmed acceptin their money and promising to get them in touch with the secretary of defense.
Result: Laxman was forced to resign eventually, but BJP started a smear campaign against Tehelka, froze the assets of the companies owning and funding Tehelka and refused to deal with this scandal in a civilised way.

I for one am extremely happy to see them out of power and I know that many Indians (including my father ) are too.

[Azred]

zidane_fan's opinions do portray a lot of governmental disillusionment, but the problems attributed to democracy are definitely older than than democacy itself.

By its very nature, representative democracy is slow. S...L...O...W.... However, it fails only when a majority of citizens give up and turn their backs on the system. 17 May marks the 50th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education, which desegregated public schools, at least according to Federal law. It might have taken years to actually enforce, but that battle--and the greater battle of Civil Rights--was won in the Legislature and defended by the Judiciary. Too many people want results too quickly; democracy is a system requiring patience.

Many Germans in the post-WWI Weimar Republic thought they needed a strong dictator to help set their country back onto a course of greatness, too. Enough said.

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Azred: Many Germans in the post-WWI Weimar Republic thought they needed a strong dictator to help set their country back onto a course of greatness, too. Enough said.

And the dictatorship served quite alot of them well I might add...

[The Hierophant]

I'd say that there arn't any real democracies in the world anyway. There are many different 'constituent oligarchies' in which a citizen body elects its own ruling elite, but the idea of a government 'of the people, for the people' is more of an unattainable ideal to work toward, rather than an achievable reality.

[Barry the Sprout]

Originally posted by The Hierophant: I'd say that there arn't any real democracies in the world anyway. There are many different 'constituent oligarchies' in which a citizen body elects its own ruling elite, but the idea of a government 'of the people, for the people' is more of an unattainable ideal to work toward, rather than an achievable reality.

Government by the ruling class for the ruling class. Although maybe I'm putting a slightly different spin on this than you intended...

Democracy would be great if we had it, but thats only going to happen when we get rid of capitalism. The Indian guy is quite right that democracy is rife with corruption under capitalism. Thats my view anyway.

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Barry the Sprout: Government by the ruling class for the ruling class.

Yeah, pretty much. But has always been this way, and probably always WILL be this way...in my opinion.... Because people subconsciously create their own hierarchies, their own political systems of authority. We can't help it, it's how we manage our social relationships. We need a system of power and dominance.Any organism that lives in a group setting must eventually create a stable system of authority or risk dissolution of the pack. There can be no equal rights, because all people are NOT created equal. That's the point of sexual reproduction and gene recombination: to ensure that everyone is different. However, I think it is usually best to let people find their place in their society's hierarchy for themselves, through life experience and trial-and-error, rather than by imposing a caste or a branded class limitation on them.

Democracy would be great if we had it, but thats only going to happen when we get rid of capitalism. The Indian guy is quite right that democracy is rife with corruption under capitalism. Thats my view anyway.

True, but capitalism is just a system of ownership. It's a whole bunch of numbers and property deeds passed hand-to-hand as a means of resource distribution. 'Greed' and 'corruption' are fundamental factors in its operation, but greed and corruption are fundamental factors in ANY system of property ownership. As long as people hold the idea that they can own things and 'hold' property, then greed and corruption will be omnipresent motivating factors in how people behave.

In order to get rid of greed and corruption, you need to get rid of human social relationships. And in order to get rid of human social relationships you need to get rid of humans themselves, because our species is WAY too far down the 'group mentality' evolutionary path to ever be able to survive on an 'individualist' basis. It looks like we're all married to our greed, whether we can cope with the idea or not.

[ 05-17-2004, 05:28 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

[Timber Loftis]

Good luck in your continued efforts to get rid of capitalism, Barry. Let me know when you get there.

[Barry the Sprout]

Originally posted by The Hierophant: True, but capitalism is just a system of ownership. It's a whole bunch of numbers and property deeds passed hand-to-hand as a means of resource distribution. 'Greed' and 'corruption' are fundamental factors in its operation, but greed and corruption are fundamental factors in ANY system of property ownership. As long as people hold the idea that they can own things and 'hold' property, then greed and corruption will be omnipresent motivating factors in how people behave. In order to get rid of greed and corruption, you need to get rid of human social relationships. And in order to get rid of human social relationships you need to get rid of humans themselves, because our species is WAY too far down the 'group mentality' evolutionary path to ever be able to survive on an 'individualist' basis. It looks like we're all married to our greed, whether we can cope with the idea or not.

That system of production governs the system of relations you talk about - its because of the very character of the productive system and the relation of people to property that we're related in such a way to each other. Greed is therefore not natural but comes along with the capitalism. Its the natural response of people to an hostile environment.

Obviously I could go into more detail, but basically what I mean is that we can get out of the greed trap by transcending private property, not by regressing back to a pre-social stage.

[Timber Loftis]

Greed exists in nature without capitalism and greed existed in the hearts of men before capitalism. As I've intiamted before, I think it is the very naive belief that greed is unnatural and would not exist sans capitalism that is the downfall of communism in the end. My 2 cents.

[ 05-17-2004, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Barry the Sprout]

well, in practice the downfall of communism so far has been counter-revolutions in the form of nationalism. If The Spartakists had succeeded in 1919 then I doubt Stalin would have come to power as the Soviet Union would not have been forced into an introspective political stance in general.

But we can go round and round on this till the cows come home Timber. I know you don't agree with me and you know I don't agree with you. I'd start a topic to hammer this out so we didn't completely sidetrack this one but I'd be horribly outnumbered and I'm trying to revise for my finals at present. Maybe in a month or so...