Democracy And Socialism
Democracy means the rule of the people. Hence the rule of the people is not established until they get equal political, social and economic rights.
In the west, what is publicized as democracy is not more than a limited social and political democracy with different phases from country to country. In these countries more money can buy more “democracy”.
Anyone who can pay for the expensive election’s propaganda costs, can candidate herself or himself for different levels of the governing bodies. Once they have succeeded, they will enjoy the benefits of these “democracies”.
The same conditions are true for the pro-capital parties and organizations. Those which receive more money from corporations and rich people, are able to advertise vastly, play tricks and become victorious. It is obvious that these organizations have to serve for the benefits of those companies and not the people.
In another example, those who can afford to spend more money, can hire better lawyers, bring justice to their side and enjoy the social aspects of these “democracies”.
Better services of healthcare, education, and housing … are available only with more money. These differences which are rapidly and constantly widening during imperialism’s era are more apparent in the United States of America, the paradise of capitalists.
The pride of these “democracies” is the right to vote, which not only is continuously rigged, but due to the increasing indifference of people and the inaccessibility to many of them, does not reflect the will of the majority.
In other hand, what was in place in the ex-Socialist camp represented a relatively established social and economic democracy. It is now evident that in the absence of political democracy in those countries – whatever was the cause – opportunism and corruption flourished and eventually led to the dismantlement of those systems.
The lessons we learned from those experiences are that: socialism is not achievable anywhere in the absence of political democracy. And democracy is not established without implementation of full political, social and economic democracies.
As this equation shows:
Political + Social + Economic democracies <=> socialism.