Via Rankandfile.ca: Democracy under capitalism doesn’t enter the workplace. The vast majority work under orders from others, with little if any meaningful input on how the business should be run and what it should do. Workers have no say on hiring, firing, discipline, how work is conducted, etc.
Workplaces are dictatorships. Unions and union-backed political parties (labour, socialist, communist parties) are the response to this system: unions have served largely as self-defence organizations, and union-backed political parties have largely served the function of forcing open varying degrees of democratic space within the state to enact reforms across society to alleviate suffering, poverty, and impede the normal ruthless and brutal operations of capitalism (sweatshops, pollution, subordination of women to reproduce and expand the labour force, unemployment to keep employed workers scared, racism to divide and conquer workers, imperialist adventures to open up new markets and resources, etc).
What democracy we have under capitalism has been largely achieved through concessions granted to movements whose backbone is more often than not a workers movement. This is why Marxists harp on about the working class as the social force capable of overthrowing capitalism and establishing a society under workers control (ie: the sweeping democratization of society): it is not a moral argument about who is oppressed and exploited the most (usually racialized, gendered subsections of the working class), but an assessment of the social force situated within capitalism that has the capacity to overthrow the system and run it democratically.
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