Amid a membership expansion, leaders of the bloc spoke out against sanctions, conditions on sovereign credit and dollar hegemony, Abdul Rahman reports.
By Abdul Rahman
Peoples Dispatch
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa set the tone for the BRICS summit in Johannesburg when he opened
I’m sorry, what? Are they defining “democratic” to mean that each government has a say, regardless of how democratic that government itself actually is?
We can call it The Democratic People’s Republic of Earth.
Sanctions and wide spread use off the of the dollar needs to be addressed in a global democratic fashion. The USA hasn’t resembled anything near democratic for a bit, yet kill innocent citizens globally in the name of democracy. In the same way each vote should mean something in a democratic country, each country should have a say in what takes place globally. Makes sense when they’re orchestrating multipolar international rule.
US democracy is flawed but still stronger than most BRICS countries. Maybe all of them.
There are many shades of gray on the slide to authoritarianism.
This headline is strange. It doesn’t seem to be a quote that I can find, and none of the proposed policies really would involve more global democracy. They are mostly aimed at increasing the influence of BRICS countries at the expense of the US and its allies.
Giving more of the world’s population a greater say in global governance and decision-making is a great idea. But unfortunately there really is no one trying to push for such a thing currently.
What fantasy land are you living in?
Russia, probably.
No, really. America has fucked up their democracy… It started good, for sure, but it keeps getting eroded (unrealistic time constraints, arbitrary boundaries and silly vetoes or weightings). I’m just sitting from the hip here, certainly no expert
Only white male landowners could vote when it started
That’s a very good point, I do concur. But it used to be a lot better just a (few?) decades ago
…And yet most of the rest of the world is streaking way ahead in terms of basic liberties
You might find this book pretty informative about USA democracy, especially that “few decades ago” period.
Tell me, what is the likelihood that a publicly supported measure will become law on a federal level? And what about one that the public doesn’t support?
Reality
Yes, the author chose that word and the content of the article suggests it’s meant as respecting countries’ sovereignty and reducing the concentration of global political power.
Just because a country does not conform to a Western definition of “democratic”, doesn’t mean that that country is not a democracy.
I would personally say that the United States is not a democracy by a typical definition, because voters don’t actually have the choice to vote for anything they like, and not just crank things but even things that are very popular and very important - medicare for all is a popular policy that neither party represents for example, and third parties are so disempowered by the voting system that it is essentially impossible (but not technically! as if that matters!) for any other party to gain power in their place. The generally low approval ratings for various parts of the government (the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court) are an indication of this. Is the mere ability to choose between two options, especially bad options, really a good definition of democracy? Might, perhaps, there be better ones?
Compare this to China. Sure, it’s a one-party state, but it’s a communist one-party state, as opposed to the United States’ capitalist one party state that is merely separated into two separate parties to meet their own, bad, definition of democracy. That being said, it’s actually quite a highly decentralized country, with regional and local officials elected by the people. More importantly, it has very high approval ratings and the people’s needs are generally met. I think this is a much better definition of democracy because where the people’s needs are made the priority. It’s harder to game that kind of system - the former definition has the “cheat code” of just splitting one party in two and then having the rich “lobby” both of them (AKA, legalized corruption) to have the same policies where it counts, whereas the latter can’t do that, it actually has to deliver the goods. Of course, it’s not as if you can’t have both - a system where you can choose everything about your country, and one where most people’s needs are generally met and most people approve. But if we have to have one or the other, the latter is the more important feature, IMO.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. It bears very little resemblance to Marx’s communism.
Wasn’t communism supposed to be a classless, stateless, and moneyless society?
Except if you’re a political dissident or a Uyghur.
You also seem to overlook the massive state surveillance apparatus. The NSA and FBI are probably jealous of how far reaching some of the Chinese systems are.
China is essentially an autocratic state-capitalist country, with some communist aesthetics.
But then again, your comment is nothing I wouldn’t expect from someone from hexbear.
It it incorrect to state that voters don’t have a choice. The barriers are high to make radical change at the Federal level, sure, but that doesn’t mean that it cannot be done. One of the biggest problems is disenfranchisement and disengagement. People feel like they cannot make any change so they believe that the system is broken, but for all of the talk about politics, very few people actually vote in all of the possible elections.
Here’s an example of US voting in action…
The 2022 Dallas County elections covered a population of about 2.8 million residents in a large urban area, yet voter turnout was only 218,000 residents (7.8% of the population).
The county level of government manages a significant part of daily life for residents (e.g. police, utilities, public education, roads) yet the resident population seems disinterested with guiding local government. If you look at the election records, some roles voted into power are not even contested.
https://www.dallascountyvotes.org/election-results-and-maps/election-results/historical-election-results/#Election
If one wanted to run for office, the requirements at county levels are fairly simple. Fill in some forms, be a resident in the country for 6 months (12 months in the state), and you might need to arrange for 25 people to sign a petition for your nomination. That’s it. You don’t need to be a Democrat or a Republican - you just need the nomination.
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/guide/2022/qualifications2022.shtml
And if you need more convincing about how easy it could be to make a change in local politics, meet the animal opponents: https://www.insider.com/dog-mayors-of-america-2019-7
It seems to me you never lived in a real existing communist country.
The US has never pretended to be a pure democracy. It’s a representative republic. A truly democratic system would work fairly poorly in most places.