My criticism of democracy is it doesn't actually do what it is intended to do, by reducing all people to the demos. It's a theological equality, not a real accounting for material disparancies. So what you get is a formless mass, and people on the left or right, trying to impute self-derived value judgments towards this mass. It's never been more apparent that people are saying democracy has failed, but then to say there's no better system and we must defend democracy rather than (I'm agnostic on whether there is actually an optimal system.) Well surely if there's no better system to defend for you, then it hasn't actually failed all that bad? And this is where class privileges seem to come into play.
none of that is controversial or new - as I said (and as I'm sure you know) it's the basic critique of democracy as old as democracy itself
one that has been iterated many times throughout history, more often from a reactionary standpoint tho also from one like yours
in the reactionary vein it's - again as you probably know - the exact argument of yr typical current post-Curtis Yarvin etc neoreactionary
their answer for an optimal system is some form of enlightened despotism, be it actual monarchy, technocratic oligarchy or whatever
which, even ignoring its prima facie absurdity, has a ton of problems, not least basically ignoring the entire history of despotism
I personally am also agnostic about an "optimal system" in the same way I am about God - if it exists, it's unknowable by finite beings i.e. us
and as a great as a "true communist" society sounds, I have the same inability to see how it comes about
as any kind of belief in its possibility seems to require ignoring most of the history of human civilization
and possibly also ignoring "human nature", tho idk if it's possible to disentangle some purer human nature from whatever civilization has made of it
as you say "the essentials of life are demarketised, housing, food, healthcare, clothing etc. Which will obviously never happen"
so we're left at the exact same place as it's ever been - democracy as the least bad realistic option