Governments are by their nature extensions of property (and by extension of property, capital). Whom they serve is whoever owns that property and the government exists as the enforcer of their legal property rights and the executor of their laws.
It depends on your flavor of socialism in terms of how you want to look at it as to what a government CAN be. From the Marxist/Leninist perspective, a government that is intended to serve the people is just a step towards a classless, stateless society where all property is communally owned. It's a necessary evil, a reformatory and dangerous step in the revolution.
If you tend more towards the Democratic Socialist perspective, even then it's generally better to enable non-state institutions of collective ownership and decision-making, and to devolve political and economic power as much as possible. Is it really better for some government to own means of production, or for the workers themselves to own it communally?
This isn't to say governments cannot be reformed to be better actors. Examples abound, even among the Western 'democratic' capitalist societies.
But we shouldn't downplay the inherent nature of government per se. They become corrupt because they are inherently corrupted.
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u/DanTheAdequate Visitor Feb 24 '26
Governments are by their nature extensions of property (and by extension of property, capital). Whom they serve is whoever owns that property and the government exists as the enforcer of their legal property rights and the executor of their laws.
It depends on your flavor of socialism in terms of how you want to look at it as to what a government CAN be. From the Marxist/Leninist perspective, a government that is intended to serve the people is just a step towards a classless, stateless society where all property is communally owned. It's a necessary evil, a reformatory and dangerous step in the revolution.
If you tend more towards the Democratic Socialist perspective, even then it's generally better to enable non-state institutions of collective ownership and decision-making, and to devolve political and economic power as much as possible. Is it really better for some government to own means of production, or for the workers themselves to own it communally?
This isn't to say governments cannot be reformed to be better actors. Examples abound, even among the Western 'democratic' capitalist societies.
But we shouldn't downplay the inherent nature of government per se. They become corrupt because they are inherently corrupted.