Setting aside Capitalism vs. Communism (or maybe I just think I am), this structure vs. that. Why is it that there aren’t really huge lists of alternatives? Where are the people who are imagining new government structures?
Like electing citizens to office at random, like we do with jury duty (forget the word for it). Or totally different arrangements of legislatures. Or even a pure democracy in a modern sense. That one is especially probably a terrible idea, and they’re not even that unique, but who is brainstorming this stuff? Is it mostly just sci-fi authors? Where is it talked about that isn’t already bending toward a team in the already-existing scheme of things? Even the most radical sorts are referencing back to books/ideas that are a century old. There are ultimately like four ideas and we just kind of gave up? That’s all of them?
Why have we seen so few different approaches tried? Or seemingly even imagined? I feel like even in fiction, it’ll be 2,000 years in the future and the whole thing is structured like a glorified city council ruling entire star systems. I feel like it’s difficult even for our minds to imagine anything truly inventive, in that sense. Is that baked into the concept? Is it because we’re just dumb monkeys that only understand “big strong monkey better?” HAS this stuff been written about extensively and I’m just unaware (probably, yes)?
Because political systems are not purely ideological. They are derived from a material (economic) basis and must satisfy existing relations to production or change them. In our case the two primary relations to production are those who own the means of production and those who produce. Under the economic base of capitalist production there are multitudes of political superstructures but you will be most familiar with the liberal democracy. This form of political structure provides some extra freedoms and luxury to its domestic working class but is only able to do so while maintaining the infinitely expanding profits demanded by capitalist production by exploiting a foreign working class for cheap labor. When the cyclical crises of capitalism eventually places an insurmountable strain on the liberal democratic political superstructure which can no longer hide or balance the class contradictions at its base you get one of two things. Communism or fascism. In the case of fascism it is essentially the owning class going all in, exploiting a foreign working class stops being enough so their imperialism turns inward on their own working class. Since they cannot increase oppression on every worker without inciting revolution they pit one section of the working class against another often along ethnic lines but who is pit against who is arbitrary. An out-group is intentionally created and alienated so that the owning class can maintain economic power. In the case of communism/socialism it is basically the workers taking full control of the economy and political superstructure because the capitalist class failed to maintain it. There is also anarchism but I am not well read enough to speak on it too much.
In short, western liberal democracies have essentially only two classes and the economic contradictions that the state exists to mitigate originate from a conflict of interest between these classes. If we are to be frank there is only the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariet, and classless society.
I hope this isn’t too much of a ramble lol, my partner was watching tiktok so I was a tad distracted.
No, this was a really great, thoughtful answer, thank you.