Democracy is a system where the government implements the will of the majority and it is held accountable by the majority.
Western countries implement parliamentary democracy, and we now have ample evidence that this model of democracy does not work in practice. Western governments primarily represent the interests of the elites at the expense of the public as this study of US policy illustrates. US may be an extreme case, but similar situation is observed in most western nations.
Western chauvinists do not get to define whether other countries are democratic or not because western model itself is a failure.
People actually living in those countries get to define what their system is. Vast majority of Chinese citizens approve of their government, and think that it is in fact democratic.
The trends across majority of countries across the western world are pretty similar. People are largely discontent with their governments with active rioting in many countries. Quality of life has been decreasing, work hours getting longer, and wealth gap becoming astronomical. These are not governments that are working in the interest of the public.
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Representative democracy is precisely what perpetuates capitalism. Lenin provides a great analysis of this relationship in The State and Revolution.
Meanwhile, this is clearly not the case in China. Quality of life in China continues to steadily improve with every decade. Poverty has been effectively eliminated. In fact, China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
China also massively invests in public infrastructure, they built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 90% of families own their home with 80% of these homes being owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Wage adjusted for the prices you pay has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country, and people enjoy a high level of social mobility. China also chose to prioritize public health over business interests when handling the pandemic, something that didn’t happen in any major capitalist state.
Chinese government has recently passed massive regulation on big business and released a a five-year blueprint calling for greater regulation of vast parts of the economy. The government has also openly stated that the era of capital expansion is over and the interests of the majority outweigh the interests of shareholders.
Also worth noting that Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Netherlands accounts for a tiny portion of the overall western population. So, even if we accept those results at face value, many bigger capitalist countries like France, UK, Canada, and US are having very turbulent times. You don’t have country wide protests happening when people are happy.
deleted by creator
Capitalism is obviously compatible with different political systems. However, my original point was that parliamentary democracy is very good at keeping capitalism alive in western countries, not that it’s the only system compatible with capitalism.
As I’ve already pointed out, the happiness index clearly seems to be at odds with reality because happy people don’t organize country wide protests. Here’s a discussion of why such metrics can be very misleading:
It’s much better to look at metrics around material conditions in the county that have tangible impact on the quality of life for the people living in the country.
And I completely disagree with you that political systems shouldn’t be compared. Instead of looking at it as a nationalistic competition, try to instead view it as a a way to learn from others. If one country manages to continue improving life for their citizens and another doesn’t, then perhaps the one that doesn’t should reexamine what it’s doing.