The act of revolution is itself an authoritarian act. A bunch of people with guns force everyone else to listen to what they have to say. It was authoritarian when the American founding fathers did it, it was authoritarian when the French did it, it was authoritarian when the Russians did it.
What happens afterward is what counts. Every socialist society that has or currently exists has a democratic process, but capitalist countries point to the methods that various socialists have used to prevent capitalist takeover of their systems and say that those methods invalidate the whole process. Socialists, in turn, point to all of the rampant corruption that is taken for granted in capitalist elections and say that those make the process into a sham.
So the question is, do you believe that bourgeois control of mass media, political action groups, and the direct sponsorship of candidates by the wealthy invalidates capitalist elections? If so, to what extent do you think society should go to prevent those things from interfering in the democratic process? Whatever answer you come to, in order to implement it you will first need to get a bunch of people with guns together to dictate what the new democracy is going to look like.
If you disagree with any of the things I said, then please do so. I would love to have my perspective broadened by more well thought out points of view. But all I get from most liberals and anticommunists is the same reheated arguments I’ve seen debunked over and over and over.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your main point.
Though the arguments you make will not work on anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.
You kinda cope in there by saying that the governments that called themselves socialist in the past were democratic, which is kind of not true for a lot of them. There’s degrees to it but for the most part they weren’t.
I think it’s smarter for us to distance ourselves from those governments as they ultimately didn’t really represent our views, not mine at least.
The other problem is the Engels On Authority ass first paragraph, equating use of violence with authoritarianism.
When you do thay you kinda just come off as an authoritarian if people aren’t already familiar with your definitions (similar to using the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat.)
The argument is also just silly and I wish I could go back in time and stop it from entering the material world but I am too lazy to write about it. A lot of libertarian communists have written about it over the past century so you can probably fish something up if you look.
You kinda cope in there by saying that the governments that called themselves socialist in the past were democratic, which is kind of not true for a lot of them. There’s degrees to it but for the most part they weren’t.
I would love some examples here. The Soviets conducted elections. The Chinese conduct elections. The Koreans conduct elections. The Cubans conduct elections. The Vietnamese conduct elections. My argument is not that any of their practices of democracy are without criticism, but that they are fundamentally more legitimate than any capitalist practice of democracy thanks to the elimination of bourgeois election influence ie PACs, donations, mass media campaigns, etc.
I think it’s smarter for us to distance ourselves from those governments as they ultimately didn’t really represent our views, not mine at least.
And I pointedly disagree with this. When you say “I am a socialist but every other socialist government was bad” you are severely undercutting your own argument right out of the gate. You should instead say, “I am a socialist because socialists have achieved great things” and fight back against the received propaganda about our movement that afflicts most of western society.
I would love some examples here. The Soviets conducted elections. The Chinese conduct elections. The Koreans conduct elections. The Cubans conduct elections. The Vietnamese conduct elections.
Comrades in this election you may democratically vote for the one candidate from our party, as the opponent tragically fell out of a window.
And I pointedly disagree with this. When you say “I am a socialist but every other socialist government was bad” you are severely undercutting your own argument right out of the gate.
When you associate yourself with authoritarian hellholes you become an unhinged weirdo to 90% of the population.
It’s not the 1960s anymore, we know what these countries are/were like and if you really want to simp for them then don’t be surprised people think you hate democracy.
No you don’t! That’s my point! You believe a century of propaganda, and the only way that will change is if it is pushed back against at every opportunity!
Every system has to be enforced at some level. Even if it’s just the mobs. Having an unenforced system that doesn’t fall to bad faith actors will take a complete change of human psychology.
I’m not sure that holds without the CIA coming in to facilitate that in a relatively new democracy. If a large country with good institutions voted that way it would be a lot harder to pull off a military coup.
That depends on if you believe in Stalin’s ideas of a vanguard or Trotskys ideas of a vanguard. According to Trotsky the vanguard of the workers should be democratically elected.
Every socialist society that has or currently exists practices democratic elections. If you live in a capitalist country, however, you have been taught from childhood that those democratic practices are illegitimate.
Of course, I was taught that Liberal capitalist ran democracy is somehow the only legitimate form of democracy. The question is how should democracy be implemented in a way that ensures the workers have power.
I mean, personally I think the Chinese nailed it. How else do you have government satisfaction rates - as measured by outside observers - that are 90% and above?
The study I’m referencing was an anonymous study conducted by Harvard between 2003 and 2016. It would strain credulity to suggest that the study’s participants all anonymously said that they love their government out of fear - firstly because they rated their government a lot lower in 2003 than they did in 2016, secondly because Harvard isn’t exactly in the pocket of the Communist Party of China.
I’m not suggesting study bias, but I am suggesting that Chinese citizens’ social media and internet use is now so closely monitored by the CPP that it has a chilling effect on free speech, and this may have influenced the results even if they were told the study was anonymous.
Secondly, since Xi took power, according to that same report, he has “effectively sidelined functional and professional institutions of party and state”, in addition to removing term limits. These are all classic authoritarian strongman moves. The study goes on to point out that having an effective authoritarian as leader - one who has helped improve the lives of many Chinese citizens - is of course going to be popular. The old saying goes that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, and that may be true in some regards, right up until the point it isn’t benevolent anymore. Which is more or less inevitable imo.
While I cite that source for its wide ranging polls of Chinese citizen opinion, I think that a lot of the analysis is bunk because they start from the assumption that Xi is a dictator and base all of their conclusions off of that without first proving it. If you ask the Chinese people whether or not their system is democratic, the overwhelming majority say that it is.
When asked whether they believe their country is democratic, those in China topped the list, with some 83% saying the communist-led People’s Republic was a democracy. A resounding 91% said that democracy is important to them.
Now, this isn’t a great poll to base an entire political viewpoint on, because it’s actually pretty hard to define what a democracy is and what it needs to do to be considered a democracy. I think that the gold standard would be some kind of long term survey to see if government policy consistently reflects the opinions and desires of the electorate, like was done in this study of the US Government (I’m not aware of an equivalent to this study being performed in China).
What the hell are you talking about? China is using “communism” to mask the fact that they’re a state capitalist dictatorship. Nothing about China is socialist and in many ways corporations in China face even less regulations and restrictions then the west. I would also like to see the source of that statistic because outside observers have been banned from making any statistics about the Chinese government and economy.
We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction.
This puts the 2016 central government satisfaction at 93.1%, Provincial at 81.7%, County at 73.9%, and Township at 70.2%. 75.1% of respondents also replied that they were “satisfied with eventual outcome” after an interaction with a local official.
Now granted this is all pre-COVID, pre-Xi Jinping’s third term, Pre-Hong Kong protests - but also pre-elimination of absolute poverty, pre-green energy revolution, and pre-massive rise in worker wages.
Theoretically, amendments could be passed to alter the Constitution into anything, if they have support from enough states. Then again, if (theoretically) enough people support a radical change that is prevented because of the outsized influence of some states, how is that democratic?
No, if enough people vote for socialist candidates and they pass a law that says all property now belongs to the state, then it’d be enforced just like any other current law.
The transition could be gradual. If we started nationalizing companies that get too big, and do that for a few generations then the state would own 99% of the economy.
If we keep raising property tax, you’d effectively get to the point where people are leasing the land rather than owning it.
Unless China does something very funny to their billionaire class and starts pushing the perpetual revolution, I think it’s fairly safe to assume traditional Marxist thought is no longer the most dominant socialist school, and when the resource wars start in earnest there will be some genuine shifts in what kind of government a socialist revolution seeks to enact.
Communism brain rot is trendy nowadays. It’s the last refuge for the tortured mind of the permanently online doomers. It’s almost non existent in real life thankfully
that usually ends in disaster. never mind the fact that authoritarian governments like the power and wouldn’t want to give it back, which defeats the entire point of socialism…
but even if you have a completely benign dictator (usually just a fantasy but for the sake of argument let’s say we had one) people, especially in democracies, don’t like the idea of a coup, unless it’s them doing it but then it’s a revolution. but that could also lead to reactionary sentiment.
we’ve seen this happen in Iran. democracy gets fucked with by a US coup, people react with a revolution but unfortunately reactionary forces use the anger to their advantage and devolve into a different kind of authoritarian regime anyway.
Socialism with democracy, but for that to happen the people need to install an temporary authoritarian government to make the transition no?
The act of revolution is itself an authoritarian act. A bunch of people with guns force everyone else to listen to what they have to say. It was authoritarian when the American founding fathers did it, it was authoritarian when the French did it, it was authoritarian when the Russians did it.
What happens afterward is what counts. Every socialist society that has or currently exists has a democratic process, but capitalist countries point to the methods that various socialists have used to prevent capitalist takeover of their systems and say that those methods invalidate the whole process. Socialists, in turn, point to all of the rampant corruption that is taken for granted in capitalist elections and say that those make the process into a sham.
So the question is, do you believe that bourgeois control of mass media, political action groups, and the direct sponsorship of candidates by the wealthy invalidates capitalist elections? If so, to what extent do you think society should go to prevent those things from interfering in the democratic process? Whatever answer you come to, in order to implement it you will first need to get a bunch of people with guns together to dictate what the new democracy is going to look like.
MLs when they get to play wet biscuit with a copy of On Authority
If you disagree with any of the things I said, then please do so. I would love to have my perspective broadened by more well thought out points of view. But all I get from most liberals and anticommunists is the same reheated arguments I’ve seen debunked over and over and over.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your main point.
Though the arguments you make will not work on anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.
You kinda cope in there by saying that the governments that called themselves socialist in the past were democratic, which is kind of not true for a lot of them. There’s degrees to it but for the most part they weren’t.
I think it’s smarter for us to distance ourselves from those governments as they ultimately didn’t really represent our views, not mine at least.
The other problem is the Engels On Authority ass first paragraph, equating use of violence with authoritarianism.
When you do thay you kinda just come off as an authoritarian if people aren’t already familiar with your definitions (similar to using the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat.)
The argument is also just silly and I wish I could go back in time and stop it from entering the material world but I am too lazy to write about it. A lot of libertarian communists have written about it over the past century so you can probably fish something up if you look.
I would love some examples here. The Soviets conducted elections. The Chinese conduct elections. The Koreans conduct elections. The Cubans conduct elections. The Vietnamese conduct elections. My argument is not that any of their practices of democracy are without criticism, but that they are fundamentally more legitimate than any capitalist practice of democracy thanks to the elimination of bourgeois election influence ie PACs, donations, mass media campaigns, etc.
And I pointedly disagree with this. When you say “I am a socialist but every other socialist government was bad” you are severely undercutting your own argument right out of the gate. You should instead say, “I am a socialist because socialists have achieved great things” and fight back against the received propaganda about our movement that afflicts most of western society.
Comrades in this election you may democratically vote for the one candidate from our party, as the opponent tragically fell out of a window.
When you associate yourself with authoritarian hellholes you become an unhinged weirdo to 90% of the population.
It’s not the 1960s anymore, we know what these countries are/were like and if you really want to simp for them then don’t be surprised people think you hate democracy.
No you don’t! That’s my point! You believe a century of propaganda, and the only way that will change is if it is pushed back against at every opportunity!
Nah, we do. Some of us actually grew up in them. But I’m sure you know best.
“I am immune to propaganda but you’re not”
you talk about bourgeois influence/propaganda, why you don’t care abut goverment propaganda?
Propaganda from the bourgeois: Taxing us is bad, actually.
Propaganda from socialist governments: We should all work together to build a better future!
These things are not the same.
What if I told you we could vote ourselves into socialism?
Voting implies that someone will enforce the results of your vote. That means police and/or military, and that sounds awfully authoritarian to me.
Every system has to be enforced at some level. Even if it’s just the mobs. Having an unenforced system that doesn’t fall to bad faith actors will take a complete change of human psychology.
What if I told you every time that happens the bourgeoisie takes control of the military and starts a civil war to maintain their power?
I’m not sure that holds without the CIA coming in to facilitate that in a relatively new democracy. If a large country with good institutions voted that way it would be a lot harder to pull off a military coup.
That depends on if you believe in Stalin’s ideas of a vanguard or Trotskys ideas of a vanguard. According to Trotsky the vanguard of the workers should be democratically elected.
Or, hear me out, you can be a non-Marxist socialist, because socialism does not only mean Marxism.
I’m aware, however I assume the person was specifically referring to Stalinism.
Then the assumptions they forwarded as absolutes need to be addressed instead of accepted.
Every socialist society that has or currently exists practices democratic elections. If you live in a capitalist country, however, you have been taught from childhood that those democratic practices are illegitimate.
Of course, I was taught that Liberal capitalist ran democracy is somehow the only legitimate form of democracy. The question is how should democracy be implemented in a way that ensures the workers have power.
I mean, personally I think the Chinese nailed it. How else do you have government satisfaction rates - as measured by outside observers - that are 90% and above?
It couldn’t possibly be that people are too scared to criticize the CCP, right? … right?
The study I’m referencing was an anonymous study conducted by Harvard between 2003 and 2016. It would strain credulity to suggest that the study’s participants all anonymously said that they love their government out of fear - firstly because they rated their government a lot lower in 2003 than they did in 2016, secondly because Harvard isn’t exactly in the pocket of the Communist Party of China.
I’m not suggesting study bias, but I am suggesting that Chinese citizens’ social media and internet use is now so closely monitored by the CPP that it has a chilling effect on free speech, and this may have influenced the results even if they were told the study was anonymous.
Secondly, since Xi took power, according to that same report, he has “effectively sidelined functional and professional institutions of party and state”, in addition to removing term limits. These are all classic authoritarian strongman moves. The study goes on to point out that having an effective authoritarian as leader - one who has helped improve the lives of many Chinese citizens - is of course going to be popular. The old saying goes that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, and that may be true in some regards, right up until the point it isn’t benevolent anymore. Which is more or less inevitable imo.
While I cite that source for its wide ranging polls of Chinese citizen opinion, I think that a lot of the analysis is bunk because they start from the assumption that Xi is a dictator and base all of their conclusions off of that without first proving it. If you ask the Chinese people whether or not their system is democratic, the overwhelming majority say that it is.
Now, this isn’t a great poll to base an entire political viewpoint on, because it’s actually pretty hard to define what a democracy is and what it needs to do to be considered a democracy. I think that the gold standard would be some kind of long term survey to see if government policy consistently reflects the opinions and desires of the electorate, like was done in this study of the US Government (I’m not aware of an equivalent to this study being performed in China).
What the hell are you talking about? China is using “communism” to mask the fact that they’re a state capitalist dictatorship. Nothing about China is socialist and in many ways corporations in China face even less regulations and restrictions then the west. I would also like to see the source of that statistic because outside observers have been banned from making any statistics about the Chinese government and economy.
Here’s the Harvard study I’m referencing.
This puts the 2016 central government satisfaction at 93.1%, Provincial at 81.7%, County at 73.9%, and Township at 70.2%. 75.1% of respondents also replied that they were “satisfied with eventual outcome” after an interaction with a local official.
Now granted this is all pre-COVID, pre-Xi Jinping’s third term, Pre-Hong Kong protests - but also pre-elimination of absolute poverty, pre-green energy revolution, and pre-massive rise in worker wages.
Authoritarian governments never allow themselves to be temporary. Generally speaking, they usually have to be forcibly removed.
You’ve seen them on the telly, those authoritarian governments that resign peacefully when their work is done.
Theoretically, amendments could be passed to alter the Constitution into anything, if they have support from enough states. Then again, if (theoretically) enough people support a radical change that is prevented because of the outsized influence of some states, how is that democratic?
Understood, thanks!
No, if enough people vote for socialist candidates and they pass a law that says all property now belongs to the state, then it’d be enforced just like any other current law.
The transition could be gradual. If we started nationalizing companies that get too big, and do that for a few generations then the state would own 99% of the economy.
If we keep raising property tax, you’d effectively get to the point where people are leasing the land rather than owning it.
It’s not strictly necessary, but it sure does seem to keep happening.
Unless China does something very funny to their billionaire class and starts pushing the perpetual revolution, I think it’s fairly safe to assume traditional Marxist thought is no longer the most dominant socialist school, and when the resource wars start in earnest there will be some genuine shifts in what kind of government a socialist revolution seeks to enact.
That or the fascists just win this time.
Communism brain rot is trendy nowadays. It’s the last refuge for the tortured mind of the permanently online doomers. It’s almost non existent in real life thankfully
that usually ends in disaster. never mind the fact that authoritarian governments like the power and wouldn’t want to give it back, which defeats the entire point of socialism…
but even if you have a completely benign dictator (usually just a fantasy but for the sake of argument let’s say we had one) people, especially in democracies, don’t like the idea of a coup, unless it’s them doing it but then it’s a revolution. but that could also lead to reactionary sentiment.
we’ve seen this happen in Iran. democracy gets fucked with by a US coup, people react with a revolution but unfortunately reactionary forces use the anger to their advantage and devolve into a different kind of authoritarian regime anyway.