It’s actually interesting to see all the comments here and how foreign the idea of democracy in the work place is. The existing workplace structure is so engrained into our being that the idea of workplace hierarchy and democracy in the same context is being seen as confusing and unrelated.
That’s not why people are confused.This is using a dumb definition of democracy in the workplace to say democracy overall is bad. There’s plenty to say about democracy, but this is just disingenuous. Especially on lemmy where there’s a lot of support for various definition of communism. So people are adding that baggage to this post.
Imagine making a comic against “solar power” because solar flares break our satellites and are a pretty serious threat to our way of life. Sure? But it’s just a shortsighted argument and a bad comparison.
In a country with proper social structures, you do get to choose your manager/boss, it’s just not a “democratic process” per se. Also democracies/autocracies/oligarchies/monarchies don’t mean capitalism/authoritarianism/communism/socialism. There’s a difference.
At most places, most people can simply switch jobs without changing their residence. So yeah, they are choosing their boss individually, which is far more power than democracy.
This is especially weird in late stage capitalism where our workplaces have more say in our liberal democracy than people do anyways
Wat? This is a bait and switch. The cat starts talking about work, not democracy and concludes that democracy isn’t great.
It’s a pro union comic that implies we should have democracy in the workplace, not just politics, else we’re not really living a democracy in our day to day lives. I think it kind of fails to make its point if the only two comments are about it not really making sense. Maybe it should mention that unions give you that? I dunno, never had a union I could join so I don’t know much about them.
Your work, the thing that at least under capitalism is the only source of income for the vast majority of us, is the most impactful thing to your direct day-to-day life after the wider government. Most of us spend a third of our week, if not more, at work. Despite this, it is where we generally exert the least of our political power!
Let’s not even discuss how lobbying allows these unelected despots that we call “bosses” and “businessmen” exert almost total political control over the people we vote for! There’s a reason we’re allowed to vote for representatives in a government, but this very government will almost always do all it can to frustrate the movements that draw political power within our economic sphere.
This comic isn’t “anti democracy”. It is pro democracy. It simply attacks the common misrepresentation of representative government as “democracy” when it is wholly controlled by a force that we cannot exert power over democratically.
So… Wait what? The comic starts by saying one system is great, then criticises a different system, then concludes that the first system mentioned is flawled? Was this written by ai?
It’s a criticism of how work is a dictatorship, despite living in a liberal democracy.
So, are you trying to say we don’t have enough democracy, or that we should have something else? What without that something be?
This is a rehash of a classic joke about capitalism vs communism. The American worker feels free because they can criticize their government. The Soviet worker feels free because they can criticize their boss. The joke was funnier during the cold war.
The problem with the joke is that it reinforces the lie that the two are mutually exclusive. Both nations were run by oligarchs selling the idea that their system, which keeps them in power, is in the best interest of the people. But you can have socialist worker protections AND democratic values. Individual rights and economic regulation are synergistically beneficial. It’s just much harder to abuse that system to take and keep power.
Completely agree.
The comic is asserting that even though we live in a political democracy, almost nothing is democratic. It’s also saying that true democracy would be workers having control over their workplace and the economy. It’s saying that we spend 2080 hours or more at work per year, nearly a quarter of the entire year, in a dictatorship.
Verily it doth lack abominably
The comments here really prove how totally acidic the American definition of “democracy” is. The point of the comic is to show you that your government is inherently not democratic! If so it would extend into your places of work! But because the American definition is so dogmatic and concrete in opposing workplace democracy, the very notion that capitalist representative government is undemocratic suggests to these commenters that democracy is being attacked; when it is in fact being supported against insurmountable odds!
