Many countries include ‘Democratic’ or ‘People’s’ in their names, even though they are not democratic and do not serve their people. Examples: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Lao People’s Democratic Republic People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria Democratic Republic of the Congo And German Democratic Republic (East Side) in 1949–1990. None of these states are democratic, power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small ruling elite. Who are they fooling with these names?
Most of the time they don’t, but In certain cases they can. Yeah obviously North Korea is worse for workers then south korea. But if you look at the current governments of the two superpowers it becomes more contested.
If you look at the government of Xi jinping and the government of Trump, who would you say represents the interests of their people more? Who has higher approval rating in their country, hell who has a higher approval rating globally? Who is enacting more policies that help the people?
Faith in the governments of liberal democracies is near a historic low, people now more then any time since the 30s don’t think the government they voted for represents them. It’s to the point where even the government of Cuba has a higher approval rating then the US government. You could chalk that up to propaganda, but you could probably chalk up the remaining 30% approval of Trump to Fox News propaganda as well.
This isn’t to say I’m in favor of getting rid of procedural democracy, it more often represents the will of the people more then one party states. Just saying it doesn’t always and it’s getting worse at it.
Totally agree that the current US government is shit and getting worse and ultimately it is due to weaknesses in the way the procedural democracy was setup.
To me that fact can be viewed as a fixable design flaw. A Marxist-Leninist system (as far as I understand it) at its root doesn’t seem like a better way to prevent corruption or power grabbing since there’s no built in checks at all. You’re simply relying on the good intentions of the ruling party which, as we’ve seen from all governments, change over time and can be influenced in many ways.