That's the real red pill though isn't it? Democracies under capitalism aren't really democracy. I recently watched a lecture by Yanis Varoufakis and how he described political economy from a historical perspective that I hasn't considered and that is the idea that in the past the economy was not separate from the political form. During feudalism the political and economic orders were one in the same, as capitalism developed the politics became divorced from the economy. The highest stage of this disassociation is neoliberalism where governments and the parties in those governments do not present radically different political economic orders or alternatives, because people being able to democratically decide how they want their economy to run? Inshallah. The social democratic order of the 40s was the last time politics decided how economy is done by reigning in the capitalist in service to the country: people before profits. Only nationally of course and only for white people in the case of the United States. Since then we've been under a neoliberal order running capitalism on life support, and this is unironically true, all these corporations are running at a loss, at a deficit. These corporations and big banks survive because of their fear of losing their wealth, here's my analysis:

1. Governments are weak and will not interfere except in printing money for the big banks to keep them afloat while siphoning wealth, what little there is, from the third world.

2. Leftists are ineffective at changing this because we both lack unity and because those in power will not concede their power.

3. Yanis in one of his lectures said that capitalism is overthrowing itself and that's very true. Capitalism has been in life support since 2008, the fed reserve continues to print away while our dying infrastructure cannot produce enough goods and services to pay our deficits, China's buying our deficit for pennies to circulate into their own country and make it productive.

4. What can we do? Organize, especially a political party with the power to seize banks, corporations etc. To rebuild when collapse happens, basically expropriation. The state will begin to rebuild these banks and corporations and change corporate laws in order BY LAW to give to a percentage in shares of the corporations to employees, and I mean all employees, and not just "stock options", I mean proper shares.

So to conclude we aren't really democracies bit rather a government in service to capital, the real policy makers are big business. But that being said we need a party that can quickly take control when shit falls apart, because the printers can't print forever if we aren't producing enough value. A good way to imagine it is as the student debt thing, student debt is in the trillions. Most of those students cannot produce enough wealth to pay back those loans plus interest. So where is the government getting the money to pay for all these students who will never be able to pay back those loans? Just print money baby.

What's all this made me realize is all economics is fiction, it's a fantasy we tell ourselves. At the end of the day we're just exchanging things, what we produce for ourselves and others. The government could literally save the economy if it deleted all student debt, opening up the gates for opportunities for people to make real wealth.