Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. I can probably write anything here and nobody will notice. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
Matrix homeserver at genzedong.org. See this thread for information about our Matrix space. Discord here.
Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory, try z-lib, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.
State election day today in The Netherlands. Deputies of the state will in turn elect officials to the First Chamber (not to be confused with Second Chamber aka Parliament) who approve laws made by Parliament.
Can’t vote myself as I live in Belgium and there isn’t a marxist party anyway. At least the voting help suggested that I vote for one of the left leaning parties, so it’s nice to confirm I’m actually left wing.
You know, in retrospect it seems quite incredible that we are somehow conditioned to think parliamentary systems such as what you describe are “democracy”.
You supposedly elect some people, who in turn supposedly elect some other people, who approve (or don’t) laws made by a whole third other group of people. And if any of those groups just so happen to be, oh I dunno, fascists who want to put you in camps - well tough, should’ve voooted harder!
Mind boggling.
Dutch democracy is so supreme that the current government (which is the same as the previous four governments) hasn’t completed a single term in 10+ years. Each government had to resign because of scandals, and everytime the same people got back in power.
And now the country is facing several gigantic crises.
And then they turn around and call the likes of Cuba “authoritarian” and “inefficient”
Ironically that might be a blessing as with the government changing so rapidly with disastrous scandals so often; the people might actually feel empowered to push for leftist change.
As opposed to the US where the country just flip flops from Blue to Red every 4-8 years while managing to convince everyone that the other side is the solution.