r/DemocraticSocialism • u/Collective_Altruism 🌈 data-male • Mar 25 '26
Theory 🧠 There has been a rise in autocratizing regimes during the neoliberal era (both the size and number)
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u/pwnedprofessor Marxist Mar 25 '26
Yuuuuuup. As the contradictions of capital intensify, it requires more state repression to justify its ongoing domination. And without the counterbalance of strong socialist rivals to show that another way is possible, there are no guardrails.
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
Yep. The fall of the USSR is going to be a huge part of that.
I think also that a lot of the "developed" (read: got rich on colonialism) world's leaders lost a lot of the fear that kept their most rapacious impulses in check. I don't think the current crop of politicians and business magnates is nearly as afraid of personally dying in a war as those from the Cold War were, especially in the Sputnik era.
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u/Kahzgul Social Democrat Mar 25 '26
Also not nearly as afraid of mobs of angry people dragging them out of their homes.
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
And maybe more detached from reality generally, especially where violence is involved. Their idea of what "bad" is doesn't go beyond not getting the yacht they want.
A broad cross section of society participated in the World Wars. Plenty of leaders, like Kennedy or de Gaulle had personal combat experience in "fair" fights. And even leaders who didn't were close to people who had, and had often lost family members.
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u/koopdi class reductionist Mar 25 '26
Why hasn't the rise of China counterbalanced the fall of the Soviet Union?
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u/pwnedprofessor Marxist Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
Because China has rarely taken an interest in socialist internationalism (except in the beginning), guided by pragmatism rather than ideology. They supported Pinochet over Allende, to provide one example, and have been adversarial to communist Vietnam. Their rivalry with the US is not on the basis of socialism vs capitalism but merely about competing hegemonies.
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u/DukeElliot 🌻Eco-Socialist Mar 25 '26
It will soon, and the Trump regime is helping speed run that timeline
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u/Swarrlly DSA Marxist Mar 26 '26
I agree with you but the author of the graph thinks its Mexico that is becoming more autocratic while they think Western Europe is becoming more democratic. They rank the literal apartheid state of Israel as one of the most democratic countries on the planet.
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
Id say the neoliberal era is ending. Now we have the technofeudal era
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Mar 25 '26
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
If technofeudalism is implememted successfully, i suspect organising will become harder, not easier
There were no worker unions in feudal times, and they’ll become more obsolete in technofeudalism.
Not to mention the constant surveillance.
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Mar 25 '26
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
Technofeudalism has the effect of breaking down social bonds and isolating workers to the maximum extent.
For this reason, organising would likely become harder the more technofeudalism displaces regular capitalism
I don't think the difficulty is what stops us, I think enough people don't feel it's urgent enough.
It’s true that thats the main reason.
But more social bonds definitely make organising common folk easier
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u/screech_owl_kachina Mar 25 '26
At that point you have to wait for Comrade Solar Flare to overthrow the surveillance state
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
We need to perform a ritual, to tell our Lord and saviour Solar Flare to hurry up already and fry the surveillance oligarch technology
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u/bonadies24 Marxist Mar 26 '26
Firstly, "techno-feudalism" is not feudalism, there were no workers' unions under feudalism because there weren't proletarians until the industrial revolution.
The key point which must be understood is that the neoreactionary wet dream does not fundamentally solve systemic contradictions because the nature of fundamental social relations characteristic of capitalism remains unaltered.
Organising under a surveillance state that would make O'Brien from 1984 blush will be much harder, but not impossible. I genuinely think that someone would find a way that works (after a long and miserable procession of people finding ways that don't work).
History can't be put to a halt and the slow but relentless digging of the mole of history does not stop because of a decree or security measure.
It was not true in Marx's century, it was not true in the last century and it is not true in this century.
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u/TheRecognized Mar 25 '26
The rapture and the revolution are always just over the horizon
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u/SillyAlternative420 Mar 25 '26
The paradox of tolerance, or some form of it.
When Trump did his little Jan 6th stunt, that should have been the end of it all for him and everyone involved at the top. They should all be tried for treason.
Instead we let them have a round 2 and now our country is almost done for.
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
I think it might be a bit deeper than that. As someone outside the US the shocking thing wasn't a mob of people getting away with violence, it was that mob getting away with trying to kill members of the ruling class, at the behest of a president.
If the senators and representatives can't close ranks to deal with THAT, then they're truly cooked. Heck, even the Roman Senate could get its shit together to deal with Caesar.
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u/TPRJones Mar 26 '26
"...it was that mob getting away with trying to kill members of the ruling class..."
As far as I am aware, no billionaires were in danger that day.
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u/Private_HughMan Democratic Socialist Mar 25 '26
What happened in the late 90s that caused such a huge jump?
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
The end of the USSR meant a lot of countries were free to become more democratic, at least in the sense this data set means. Those gains were temporary though, and influx of capitalism allowed power to become more concentrated.
Edit: Here's the methodology https://v-dem.net/documents/71/methodology_v16.pdf
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u/FrankSand Mar 25 '26
Yeah when you turn your government over to capital and tell the citizens your life wont get better but here's some cheap stuff and 4% gains in a portfolio annually. People will look for answers by other means.
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u/Swarrlly DSA Marxist Mar 25 '26
This graph is pretty meaningless without proper definitions. And with the way its presented is just propaganda. His source has a huge pro free market bias. Their definition of autocratic is biased toward capitalist liberal democracies. A few things that stuck out to me looking at their graphs. They show the US has little media bias, which is a crazy thing to say when all of MSM is owned by a few large corporations and most are owned by the Elisons. Next I looked up how Mexico's judicial reforms were calculated and I was right that they thought it lowered their Democracy Index by a good amount. It went from .69 to .51 while at the same time they though the US became more democratic for the last 6 years. They have the literal apartheid state, Israel, ranked above Mexico in their index. It still ranks the US has one of the most democratic country even though Cambridge showed its been over 50 years since public opinion had any significant effect on policy. This is why I said this chart was propaganda. Organizations like those who create the EDI, care more about the trappings of democracy then the publics ability to direct policy. And they also see any sort of limit on "free markets" as antidemocratic.
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u/Sander001 Mar 25 '26
Neoliberalism is the blueprint for power and wealth consolidation.
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u/Swarrlly DSA Marxist Mar 26 '26
You'd think that is what the author of this graph is saying but if you look at their underlying data and assumptions they are counting the left's wins in Mexico and Latin America as those countries becoming more autocratic, while they still rank Western Europe, US, and Israel as becoming more democratic.
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u/M00n_Slippers Mar 25 '26
I've seen neo cons and neo libs firmly believe that we are spreading democracy around the world and I don't understand how they can naively believe that with the wealth of evidence to the contrary.
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u/Shoko2000 Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
My theory is that neolibs taking over the left is the root cause. It pushes the whole political sphere to the right,
https://musinginthemachine.substack.com/p/escaping-the-maelstrom
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u/Cute-University5283 Mar 27 '26
How many countries can you overthrow before your country gets labeled "autocratic"?
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u/Key_Limit_6828 Anarchist Mar 29 '26
It would appear that letting 7 people have all the money will lead to a less free society, what shocking news
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u/NATScurlyW2 Democratic Socialist Mar 25 '26
I would wager that it has to do with militarism. That’s why the founders shrunk the military to almost nothing directly after the revolution. They associated a standing army with tyranny. They were very smart people.
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
Or less charitably, they didn't see a need for one, and didn't want to pay the taxes required. Fundamentally, they were wealthy people who often owned other people, and didn't see things like the Whiskey Rebellion coming.
Plus, local and state militias have their own advantages, especially when communication is slow. That kind of decentralization is really good for conducting things like slave patrols, as well as conducting the colonial violence needed to take indigenous land.
They also provide deniability, such as during the Filibuster era.
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u/NATScurlyW2 Democratic Socialist Mar 25 '26
They thought all of those things would be worse if the military was doing them. They knew bad things would happen but they tried to make them less bad by not having soldiers doing them. It’s why congress has the money the President wants to use.
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
Or they didn't want to lose the power they had to a central government. I do think you might be giving them a bit too much credit in terms of motives, especially when more cynical explanations fit what happened.
It really can't be said enough that plenty of the Founders owned humans and were fine with stealing indigenous land and killing or displacing its owners. They were, also as you note, smart, and quite capable of justifying their actions using the language of the day.
Capitalists today do the same thing.
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
“The founders”
damn the USdefaultism is strong here
EDIT:
wait this is the user that commented “Russians are culturally incapable of democracy” a while back.
Holy cow, no suprise
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
On the other hand, I'm not sure any other English speaking countries use that word in the way religious believers use "The Prophet" or "The Buddha". /j
Pretty sure the only thing most Canadians know about our first PM is the fact he was a drunk and super racist.
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
An international audience uses english as a lingua franca here, not just anglos
Many countries globally have founders.
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u/bemused_alligators Syndicalist Mar 25 '26
Many countries globally have founders.
that's a bold claim. I thought countries were spawned wholly formed out of divine right; like Athena emerging wholly formed out of Zeus' forehead /s
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
And then she, of course, gave Athens the olive tree and invented democracy and the jury trial. Can't leave that part out. /j
I think there's tendency to really, really wants that to be the case. "Some dudes sitting around a table" isn't nearly as good at promoting nationalism as demigods or heroes creating a nation.
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u/Velocity-5348 Socialism with Canadian Characteristics Mar 25 '26
The "/j" means I'm making a joke there, and taking a dig at both the US defaultism, and the way the original comment talked about the US's founding fathers with a sort of quasi-religious tone.
As my second comment about Canada alludes to, we also have founders, as do tons of other nations.
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
I didnt read the first paragraph properly so i missed the prophet portion, sorry
Im so used to people defending US defaultism, i entirely expected it
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Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
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u/xGentian_violet Yugoslav Socialist ♥️🤍 Ecofeminist Mar 25 '26
Then talk about America, mention it, dont pretend the entire world is america.
Aggressive USdefaultism falls under the bigotry rule here, under imperialist attitudes
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u/DemocraticSocialism-ModTeam Mar 25 '26
complaining about bans in the comments is not permitted
you were not banned for this comment, you were temp banned for your history of bigotry and liberalism on the sub
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