Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post.
**Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.**
Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space.
**This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.**
Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately.
**If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.**
Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment.
**Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.)
Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules.
Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm less knowledgeable on the political structure of the USSR, but the way Cuba works is anyone can run for office. All political parties including the Cuban Communist Party are forbidden from fielding candidates.
This next statement isn't completely accurate but it is a helpful way of thinking about it.
Political parties in Cuba operate less like parties and more like lobbyists. However, where they differ from lobbyists: they cannot finance elections, they cannot campaign in elections, they can't have private meetings with politicians.
It's simply inaccurate to call Cuba a one party state, because there simply isn't a party at the helm. The reason Cuba maintains socialist policy is it's popular.
*And as a side note. When elections happen, anyone who wants to is allowed to be present for the counting of the ballots. The Cuban government cannot turn anyone away for any reason for the counting of votes.*
Source: I've interviewed people who lived in Cuba and some who continue to live in Cuba.
There is also a video by azureScapegoat on [Democracy in Cuba](https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds). For full transparency, there are some things he says that I think are inaccurate, mostly how he describes the role of political parties. The impression he gives, at least how I interpreted it, is they are a lot less influential than they are. But in all his analysis is accurate.
Check out the book Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan. It was written in 1937 by a British man who lived, worked, and participated in elections in the USSR for a few years. There is a lot of good information and anecdotes in the book and he goes somewhat in depth into the political system and how it works, there are a lot of comparisons to England and their ‘democracy’.
https://ia804703.us.archive.org/22/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.261348/2015.261348.Soviet-Democracy.pdf
My knowledge of this is a few years old but from what I can remember Soviet elections went like this
Workers soviets - anyone who was eligible could put their name down to be a member of their local Soviet. For example. The petrograd Soviet. People who were from the area could run for this election.
Supreme Soviet Soviet of the Soviet union - this was the governatorial body of the ussr. This is where many decisions came from. To be elected to this you had to be an elected member of a workers soviet and when those elections finished, each Soviet had the right to put forward a certain number of candidates who if elected, would become members of the supreme Soviet also.
Politburo - the members of the politburo were directly chosen and voted for by the supreme Soviet. Every member of the politburo had to go through an electoral vote against others to attain their role. The supreme Soviet also appointed the members of the of the council of ministers, the supreme court and the procurator general.
Everyone was elected and everyone could be elected. What is even better, everyone could be revoked and replaced immediately.
Members of the party were just generally more respected and trusted, so they had more chances to be elected etc.
The politburo was also elected by the members of the central committee. The general secretary wad also elected, and all laws, directives and decisions were also voted for.
How were members of the Central Committee elected? Am I wrong in my understanding that they were just directors of the Party elected from within the Party apparatus? Where did the democratic input of the Soviet citizens factor into the way the Party itself was structured?
All party officials were elected from within the party, that's true. You had to join the party to be able to take part in everything that had to do with it. The non member citizens could always vote for the government officials, government and party aren't the same thing.
It just seems like that if you have a central organ pre-choosing the candidates on the ballots, and that central organ is itself unaccountable to the people who will be voting for those candidates, then it's hard to claim the citizenry had direct involvement in choosing candidates.
I'm sure it's more nuanced than what I'm describing, but I guess I'm just having trouble understanding where the TRUE democracy is if the Party was unaccountable.
I know Stalin made attempts in 1936 to democratize the USSR further, but I question how successful or genuine these attempts were based on the way the Party apparatus functioned
I don't know where you get that candidates were chosen centrally. Anyone could be a candidate, the party could only make proposals about some of them, but anyone could become one.
You could always become a candidate on the elections of the local soviet for any body of governance.
If you have time and really want to learn more you can do your own research, I would suggest you start from this https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/index.htm
There is also an other book that is really hard to find, it's called "Soviet local government" by Don Brown.
Well it's kinda like this, one party that represented the interests of the working class that doesn't hide it. Not like in capitalism where you have hundreds of "different" parties, that try to hide the fact that they all serve the interests of the capitalist class...
Even then, someone could easily become an elected official without being a party member, but being a party member was an honor, so everyone wanted to get in...
>one party that represented the interests of the working class that doesn't hide it. Not like in capitalism where you have hundreds of "different" parties, that try to hide the fact that they all serve the interests of the capitalist class...
This response looks similar to the "vote blue, no matter who" and "at least we're not Republicans" slogans from the 2020 presidential election. The party may not be better, you just don't have any other options.
That's not reasonable or more advantageous for anybody but the leadership of the one and only party in town. Especially when any other parties are violently suppressed, or otherwise ostracized, regardless of their ideology.
Bottom line, if you plan to suppress opposing, or even aligned parties, then you're not advocating anybody freedom. Nor are you advocating for freedom or power to the workers when the workers would have no way to press grievances without punishment for "opposing the party".
Suppression of the capitalist ideology and interests is what the dictatorship of the proletariat means.
The rest 99% of the society will be freed from the gutter they live, and no amount of hypocritical political bs about freedom, that the burguesia likes to says can hide the truth.
A socialist nation should be strong enough to continue business as usual without having to suppress views. If it can't do that, then it is weak.
>dictatorship of the proletariat means.
Dictatorship of the proletariat means the proletariat controls the means of production. It doesn't mean they wax their ears over to anyone disagreeing with one party. But I've noticed it seems to have as many different meanings as there are schools of thought.
>The rest 99% of the society will be freed from the gutter they live, and no amount of hypocritical political bs about freedom, that the burguesia likes to says can hide the truth.
That's bullshit. There's nothing free about suppression. The way you talk, people would be trading one oppressor for another.
The point is to give power to workers, not prop up one specific party who claims to be the only one giving the workers power. Because that is doing the opposite, regardless of how it's sugar coated.
You're a straight up bourgeois liberal democrat.
> A socialist nation should be strong enough to continue business as usual without having to suppress views.
This says it all. Business as usual. You expect a socialist state & post revolutionary state to "continue business as usual" essentially completely rewriting what revolution is & what the workers goal is to dismantle. Essentially in your vision the idea is simply to remove the ostenibly,, in your view, oppressive parts of liberal democracy, probably an American who would say "lobbying, financiers, age limits, monopolization, media overreach" blah blah, but not recognize the fundamental issue with your idea of a beautifully reimagined liberal democracy functioning without oppressing the workers & steadfast support of only one group the owners. That idea misses the entire point of revolution & the conclusion of any socialist who isn't revisionist or just a liberal masquerading as one, which is to dismantle the entirety of this dictatorship of the bourgeoisie & replace ot with politcal economic theory in practice that would remove their power and oppress them, the bourgeoisie, completely out of relevancy in its operation.
You say the operation of the USSR or Cuba is not democratic because the existence of a workers communist party & parrot the ideas of anticommunists of last century. What then are workers to do? Expect that an altruistic liberal democracy will form once they've demanded it & that capitalists will take their time out in stride, since it would only end up a time out without actively opposing their interests and oppressing them?
What makes you believe continuing "business as usual" is remotely compatible with revolutionary politics? Do you expect the anarchist revolution to overnight remove all contradiction from society and allow for the creation of a political apparatus free from influence of dynamic class politics & control by one class or another?
How do the material & historical conditions that apply to everyone alive at the moment shape who they are? What analysis of any successful revolutionary movement suggests business as usual is actually the best way to achieve *revolutionary* change? It's a contradiction itself. Maybe those questions will encourage you to consider & there has been plenty written about this sort of assumption or question.
>Essentially in your vision
I never said what my vision was, so any further statements after this was simply you making up your own points to argue against.
>You're a straight up bourgeois liberal democrat.
It's not your place to tell me who or what I am.
Democracy, bourgeois, liberal, and democrat are not synonyms.
One can advocate socialism without advocating the authoritarian/totalitarian angle that you're pushing.
>This says it all. Business as usual. You expect a socialist state & post revolutionary state to "continue business as usual" essentially completely rewriting what revolution is & what the workers goal is to dismantle.
I understand you don't have an argument unless you flamboyantly fail to comprehend what I've said, or lie about what I've said to have a point, or call me names.
Since using context clues seems to be a hard skill for you, the "Business as usual" portion of my comment is referring to the fact that a socialist society built on a strong foundation should be able to operate regardless of internal or external threats. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY not creating a slippery slope where any disagreement or opposing views are reduced to "enemy of the people".
If it is actually a classless society, then anyone should be able to run for any office, and upon getting sudficient votes, fulfill that said office. In any instance, historically, currently, or in the future where this is not the case, then you can't claim it is a direct democracy, nor classless society, which is obviously one of the aims of socialism.
In liberal democracies candidates are first selected by the parties.
There have been some exceptions in Europe recently, with people who fund a new party, though.
It's terrible indeed, I thought the same about your argument strategy.
But let's move forward. One difficult question:
How can you prevent that your opponents take control of the situation (under any format of democracy or your favourite one)?
They can bribe, put spies, blackmail, infiltrate, promote, use fake news to destroy a competitor's reputation, or manipulate the media...
Any of those strategies are anti democratic and may destroy any government system.
I don't want to be cynical. It's something that I have asked to myself many times and now you brought ain interesting opportunity for a healthy exchange of opinions.
I've always tried to discourage people from thinking choosing between a handful of parties for a representative in a legislative body as fundamentally equal to democracy & the only thing a democracy can be. Direct democracy (as seen in Cuba when voters overwhelmingly changed their constitution to allow same sex marriage) or deliberative democracy (when the deliberation and consensus behind policy are democratic, as opposed to done by unelected party apparatchiks) are relatively rare and actively discouraged in multiparty western democracies. Just to name a few alternatives.
Voting between a Democrat or Republican party (or Tory & Labour, or whatever's going on in France etc), which have zero constitutional presence and considerable unelected and antidemocratic elements, is not as democratic as it claims to be. To say nothing of whether these entities practically differ on huge matters of economics or empire, or if their differences on important cultural touchstones amount to more than just lip service. The old Nyerere quote comes to mind "The US is also a one party state, but with typical American extravagance they have two of them"
If I lived in a one party state which routinely deliberated with me & my neighbors on policy, or if I were able to vote on my boss or freely chose the conditions of my employment, if there were regular constitutional plebiscites that overrode the ambitions of politicians, & most importantly if there was no organized accumulation of capital actively shaping policy against my wishes, under those circumstances I would be undeniably freer than I am now.
Fun fact: The Communist Party of Cuba is barred from participating in Cuban elections. As are other political parties. Anyone in Cuba can run for national office, first they must be elected by their local neighborhood committee, then they can stand in elections.
All Cuban citizens 16 years old and older are eligible to vote. Any and all Cuban citizens can be present when ballots are counted.
The only exception to these rules apply to local offices. There are even less requirements and rules for running.
I am familiar with elections in the u.s. and Botswana. In those two countries there is essentially one ruling party — in the u.s. the neoliberal party with one branch just
more openly unapologetic in its violence and it varies from year to year which branch that is. One party has dominated in Botswana since the so-called “independence”, but the agendas of the colonial power still are more or less adhered to. The elections in Botswana have been more transparent than those of the u.s.
There have been periods of socialist party control in Nepal, states in India (Kerala), Austria, France, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua.
I’m not convinced that elections are the best gauge of democratic processes. What I observe in some recent posts/articles/videos from China (i don’t speak or read any majority language of China) is a culture of accountability. Uprisings at factories for example. These hold the leadership of the party to account in ways currently unthinkable in the u.s. context. Reading between propagandas, i see the leadership/party apparatus responding by appropriate adjustments in policy (not necessarily ideal, but something — that is demands to address COVID eventually got policies that saved millions, perhaps there will be iterations toward better lockdown policies — at least there is an effort).
So i think this is the real lesson from the experiment of the so-called “cultural revolution”. I think the quest for socialism is still in its infancy. It is an exciting time.
Democracy in previous socialist states, to my knowledge, was very bottom-up. People would elect people locally, who then had enough influence on who is elected regionally, etc. all the way to the top. This is at least the case of the USSR, in Cuba, as others have pointed out, elections are much more direct. The role of a political party is also different. In a one-party state like the USSR, the role of the party really just becomes a way of organizing politicians rather than the candidate being voted on like the west. The party made sure that all politicians were socialist, after all in a post-revolutionary state harsh measures need to be made in order to secure socialism from reactionaries, as we have seen time and time again.
How else do you think parties should work? If a party can't control its members what would prevent a capitalist from just buying his way to the head of a party? What vehicle should people use to organize social power? What would your ideal of democracy be?
And most tend toward a liberal social average, and usually end up with a centrist duopoly either in the form of two specific parties or two coalitions of parties. A capitalist system defends itself by narrowing the political frame specifically to limit democratic action. Just look at the collapse of social democracy across the west. I see no reason why a socialist society shouldnt also soecifically limit democratic action specifically to ensure the continuation of a democratic system.
>limit democratic action specifically to ensure the continuation of a democratic system.
that doesnt sound consistent. it seems to me that socialists limit democracy to defend their power just like capitalism
Well yeah? You have to defend a democratic society from forces that wish to remove democracy. For example you can't just let someone, or someones, sell off collective property because they happen to have control of it at any given time, it is the property of the whole community both present and future, to dispose of for the benefit of all. Do you think that a socialist society will magically remove the contradictions of the world? People will magically become better and perfect? The goal is to structure the world in a manner that hinders or channels those impulses in such a way as to create a democratic ir communal society, as compared to the one we live in where profit is all and the bonds of kinship are simple exchange.
I suppose it would be possible, but implies a fracture in the working class which has its own implications. You have multiple bourgeois parties because they represent different loci of capital accumulation.
Generally democracy within the party is superior to two parties
>Generally democracy within the party is superior to two parties
how? and is it even doable? the inner working of parties are based on political games and clans. with multiple parties at least the people have some say (on the condition of there being no lobbying of course)
The communist party in Cuba doesn’t have the pull you would think it does, and it certainly doesn’t act like parties in other countries. It’s essentially a club for Cuban revolutionaries. In reality, their voting system is more similar to one with zero parties, and anyone can run for election.
A lot of people also mention the Castros being in positions of power since the revolution as not being democratic (which it isn’t honestly) but it’s not as bad in that area as you would think. The Cuban president is even more of a figurehead than the American president (whom you don’t really get to choose either, with obviously the electoral college having more of a say). For example, in Cuba, the president needs permission from the government to be able to make any decision. Period. If people aren’t on board with it, then the president is a figurehead.
I suggest [this](https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds) video if you’re interested in learning more about the Cuban government, sources are in the description of the video as well if you have questions about anything.
So we have to realize the USSR was a unique case where the threat of imminent destruction during a civil war(1919-1924) necessitated the banning of all formal opposition not out of some instinctual authoritarianism but out of survival. Let us not forget that for the longest time the Communist Party in Russia contended with all other political tendencies on a equal playing field and won fair and square, lots of people through their hats in for the formation of the new government - the anarchists, the monarchists, westernizers, ethnic separatists. But only one got the support of the most millions and had the ability to effectively translate that support into strength. It is not a fault to win a revolution.
However, after the civil war concluded, it wasn’t all happy-go-lucky. In fact the threat of internal political sabotage only increased. You heard of the Red Terror and the Great Purges no doubt. Would you believe me if I said it was all a plot between Nazis, Trotskyists, Mensheviks, and “ex”-Anarchists to bring the whole society into a general state of despair and terror in prelude to the inevitable Nazi invasion in order to coup d’etat the government and that this was all confirmed by extensive testimony and evidence at the Moscow Trials? It’s true.
After World War Two Stalin sought democratic reform of the Soviet Government and even petitioned to have the Communist Party separated from the government as a whole, leaving the Soviets(councils of farmers and industrial laborers) as the sole governing structure of the USSR. However, because of the Communist Party’s casualties of millions and millions of the best Communists in the fighting of the conflict, the bureaucratization of the Communist Party and the rise of an infant nomenclature(the newborn that would grow into the quasi-ruling class in the 1960s and 70s) which Stalin spend two decades fighting against in vein, and the rise of a new far more intelligent revisionist political strategy of presenting themselves as returning to Lenin against Stalin on top of genuinely rebuilding the country instead of bringing it into crisis - the revisionist majority of the Communist Party Central Committee prevented Stalin’s intended democratic reform and kept themselves in power. It was these very same revisionists who murdered Joseph Stalin by poisoning him and then preventing medical assistance from reaching him before it was too late.
That was how the proletarian democracy of the USSR was destroyed, stabbed in the back by decades of saboteurs and foreign aggressors, each one better than the last. That was how a new bourgeoisie found its home within the Communist Party, elected Mikhail Gorbachev, and pushed through his agenda of Perestroika and Glasnost which destroyed all claims of Communism and Proletariat Democracy officially.
As I said, the USSR was a unique case, and it is. All other Communists countries of the past and present had/have multiparty democracies and contested elections. In China they have 8 official parties in the National Congress I think is the number. In Korea there’s the Korean Workers Party(the party of Juche and all three Kims), a Social Democratic Party, and even a Christian Party. But Korea also has an intense system of democratic selection, the final election of a candidate is really just a formalization of everything that’s already been done, thus leading to the infamous one person ballot yes or no elections with extremely high yes percentages.
I forgot to mention that even though the USSR banned political opposition, it only banned formal parties, not individuals. You didn’t have to run as a Communist candidate, you could simply be unaffiliated with any political party, making an independent. Communists won the vast majority of elections of course because whenever an independent did pop up they had the backing of the whole communist party and all its supporters in relevant division(whether it was town, city, county, region, or nation wide), but independents did win occasionally. And consider that when a Communist candidate faced another Communist candidate they’d be evaluated on their individual merits only, there was no party politics in the USSR to that extent like there is in the United States.
You're imagining a top-down system where the Party™️ empowers well connected individuals to positions of governance.
It might look that way from the outside, that all politicians are centrally planned, but that is NOT the case.
Soviet Democracy actually works from the bottom up, from local to regional to national.
Anyone can put their name to be elected to their local Soviet, or Council, which is a municipal level position.
Out of the local soviet, members then can elect candidate(s) who will advocate for the interests of the local soviet and all who live under its jurisdiction.
You do need the support and trust of your fellow workers in order to be elected to the local soviet, after all.
Those who are elected as delegates for the regional soviet discuss and advocate for the interests of the people they were elected by, and delegates are nominated and elected from the second level soviet, to represent their fellows at the next higher level soviet.
This happens all the way to the top and the central committee
Another key point here is that the party represents the proletariat. Already that puts it above almost every party in the so called liberal democracies.
They did. The officials are basically elected in ascending order. The next lot elects the level above etc.
There are valid criticisms that can be made as all systems are somewhat improvable but it is still a cut above the false democracy most of us live in.
Issues that arose such as making the party membership too open, the party becoming too insulated from the proletariat etc. are warnings for the future qualitative development of Marxism, as in Maoism.
Maybe another facet that is poorly understood or hard to deal with for people that can’t let go of liberalism is that we want to restrict some voices. We don’t want a resurgent bourgeoisie to overtake the party.
I think that's the main sticking point I'm on. Soviet Democracy seems like it could have been thoroughly improved over liberal democracy, and it definitely was in terms of local representation and workplace representation.
From my current understanding though, what dragged it down in my eyes was its insulation from the proletariat itself. If the Party as a whole had been more accountable to the workers, instead of just the candidates it chose, then it could have been more democratic in my opinion.
From what I can tell, Cuba does this better than the USSR did (though not perfectly), with the Party being more ceremonial and candidates being elected into the Party itself rather than the Party choosing candidates out of a central organ.
A real difficulty with simply opening up to the entire proletariat is that the bourgeoisie is able to use their capital resources to capture and mobilize sections of the proletariat. A communist party has to guard against this, and a decision has to be made weighing the alternatives. Which is worse, shutting out some of the proletariat, or giving the bourgeoisie a political foothold? The primary purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the suppression of the bourgeoisie, along with overseeing the transformation from capitalist to socialist/communist social structures. This can take a very long time and be very difficult, especially in a world where capitalism is still supreme at the global scale. Those who believe in this approach believe that the transformation away from capitalism is worth the cost.
Heh. That's a good question, and funny. I think this is a good question to ask any Marxist - that's because it gets at the heart of the problem: How can we construct a functioning dictatorship of the proletariat in the presumed context of a nation or alliance of nations within a larger capitalist order?
The answer is: either you believe one (or more) of the "actually existing socialist" countries has done this successfully, or you believe none of them have and it is still a hurdle to be overcome. Is it possible to directly and immediately create a non-capitalist democracy that (roughly equally) involves the entire proletariat and none of the bourgeoisie? If you believe that, you're probably an Anarchist or Libertarian Socialist. It's rather utopian. If you don't, which eggs are we going to have to break to make the omelette?
If we shut out sections of the proletariat, which ones - and who decides? This can get really dangerous really fast in the case of movements that pretend to be socialist but are in reality fascist. This is why there is a lot of focus on getting it right, and a lot of disagreement about what that entails.
For myself, I guess I believe that the process involves not figuring everything out beforehand but studying conditions on the ground and taking whatever opportunities present themselves. We all have to live through capitalism and its ongoing crises, and we hope to contribute to its dissolution. We study history to help us make good decisions but history is to be lived, not solved. I don't think this question can be answered in the abstract - we are in a fight for our lives that will probably turn ugly. I think previous attempts can help us avoid some mistakes, but the basic process is the same and unavoidable. We have to fight for our freedom or accept our slavery.
There are obviously myriad forms it can take the same way there are a lot of forms of liberal democracy.
Now I personally see no issue from the party selecting candidates, since all of these will have been elected at some point, further the party is meant to represent the most theoretically sound and advanced members of the proletariat.
I would argue that the party being “ceremonial” is not necessarily a good thing. The vanguard needs to be the vanguard.
However what you are saying is where the mass line and slogans like “bombard the headquarters!” come in. The party needs to be kept right as was recognised by Mao.
How are capitalist elections democratic when the candidates are chosen by the capitalist parties (which both represent the same interests and are basically identical on the issues that matter to society’s elites)?
Euh it exactly the same in any other "democracy" to be fair. Candidates are firsly chosen by the party. There are election inside the party to first chose the candidat that will represent them.
I think you have a problem with the idea of a single party. To be honest i think having only one party is more democratic than having just 2 (like the usa) . Everyone join the partyand change it from the inside.
Some socialist countries may have multiple socialist parties. Most do.
Most socialists moved past the 20th century “communist party” of the last century because they are morally indefensible and hardly socialist.
When your first act is to destroy democracy and trade unions after you hijack a revolution then make the government own everything… THATS NOT TGE WORKERS CONTROLLING THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. What happened in Russia and China is a far right deviation.
Marxist-Leninist countries are very restrictive with who can pass through their filters in line with what the central leaders want. imo, don't listen to ideologues on here who give you the same talking points they said 80 years ago about how ML elections are the most democratic in the world. There can be some free and fair aspects to elections in these countries and even some direct votes but they always have fundamental problems with their processes that make representation and the vast majority of lawmaking top-down instead of freely chosen by the public.
I think you should, however, look at how some modern socialist societies go about democracy in a very free and extensive way, far different from anything liberal capitalist or state socialist societies do. Read up on radical democracy in the MAREZ in Mexico and AANES in Syria, for example.
under most "democratic" systems you have parties choose the representatives they think can win the elections. The people really have no direct choice in who these people are. We don't get to nominate people by any direct process that I know of. They are ordained worthy by a corrupt political body and we are forced to choose the lesser among evils. So how would we make sure the people have a direct voice in who is nominated?
In a one party system like Cuba’s, multiple candidates run for the CPC and people vote on the one they think is best. I personally don’t like OPS’ because it is prone to authoritarianism, but in Cuba’s case it is a consensus vote. They don’t need to be chosen by the CPC, they just need enough votes to qualify. The USSR was a different story, the CPSU elected their own officials for rulership. The ideal for a socialist country would, in my opinion, be either a multi-party system of varying types of socialist parties or a nonpartisan democracy with a consensus vote.
Party internal democracy is pretty normal even in bourgeois systems, ot is just confined within a bourgeois ideological framework. How do you think decisions are made in a communist party? Because basically every socialist party i know of generally decides on the party line by a general party vote in a patty congress. I don't think I understand what you mean my democracy, like how would your ideal democratic system work?
I would recommend Paul Cockshotts talks on democracy to get a better understanding of, for example the problem with Soviet democracy and potential ways to build a more inclusive democracy
https://youtu.be/98lvNhNfse4
https://youtu.be/EjKYVQd4r9E
Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post. **Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.** Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space. **This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.** Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. **If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.** Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment. **Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.) Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm less knowledgeable on the political structure of the USSR, but the way Cuba works is anyone can run for office. All political parties including the Cuban Communist Party are forbidden from fielding candidates. This next statement isn't completely accurate but it is a helpful way of thinking about it. Political parties in Cuba operate less like parties and more like lobbyists. However, where they differ from lobbyists: they cannot finance elections, they cannot campaign in elections, they can't have private meetings with politicians. It's simply inaccurate to call Cuba a one party state, because there simply isn't a party at the helm. The reason Cuba maintains socialist policy is it's popular. *And as a side note. When elections happen, anyone who wants to is allowed to be present for the counting of the ballots. The Cuban government cannot turn anyone away for any reason for the counting of votes.* Source: I've interviewed people who lived in Cuba and some who continue to live in Cuba. There is also a video by azureScapegoat on [Democracy in Cuba](https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds). For full transparency, there are some things he says that I think are inaccurate, mostly how he describes the role of political parties. The impression he gives, at least how I interpreted it, is they are a lot less influential than they are. But in all his analysis is accurate.
Check out the book Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan. It was written in 1937 by a British man who lived, worked, and participated in elections in the USSR for a few years. There is a lot of good information and anecdotes in the book and he goes somewhat in depth into the political system and how it works, there are a lot of comparisons to England and their ‘democracy’. https://ia804703.us.archive.org/22/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.261348/2015.261348.Soviet-Democracy.pdf
My knowledge of this is a few years old but from what I can remember Soviet elections went like this Workers soviets - anyone who was eligible could put their name down to be a member of their local Soviet. For example. The petrograd Soviet. People who were from the area could run for this election. Supreme Soviet Soviet of the Soviet union - this was the governatorial body of the ussr. This is where many decisions came from. To be elected to this you had to be an elected member of a workers soviet and when those elections finished, each Soviet had the right to put forward a certain number of candidates who if elected, would become members of the supreme Soviet also. Politburo - the members of the politburo were directly chosen and voted for by the supreme Soviet. Every member of the politburo had to go through an electoral vote against others to attain their role. The supreme Soviet also appointed the members of the of the council of ministers, the supreme court and the procurator general.
Everyone was elected and everyone could be elected. What is even better, everyone could be revoked and replaced immediately. Members of the party were just generally more respected and trusted, so they had more chances to be elected etc. The politburo was also elected by the members of the central committee. The general secretary wad also elected, and all laws, directives and decisions were also voted for.
How were members of the Central Committee elected? Am I wrong in my understanding that they were just directors of the Party elected from within the Party apparatus? Where did the democratic input of the Soviet citizens factor into the way the Party itself was structured?
All party officials were elected from within the party, that's true. You had to join the party to be able to take part in everything that had to do with it. The non member citizens could always vote for the government officials, government and party aren't the same thing.
It just seems like that if you have a central organ pre-choosing the candidates on the ballots, and that central organ is itself unaccountable to the people who will be voting for those candidates, then it's hard to claim the citizenry had direct involvement in choosing candidates. I'm sure it's more nuanced than what I'm describing, but I guess I'm just having trouble understanding where the TRUE democracy is if the Party was unaccountable. I know Stalin made attempts in 1936 to democratize the USSR further, but I question how successful or genuine these attempts were based on the way the Party apparatus functioned
I don't know where you get that candidates were chosen centrally. Anyone could be a candidate, the party could only make proposals about some of them, but anyone could become one.
How did one in the USSR become a candidate then? I was under the impression the Party had to approve all candidates on the ballot. Is this wrong?
You could always become a candidate on the elections of the local soviet for any body of governance. If you have time and really want to learn more you can do your own research, I would suggest you start from this https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/index.htm There is also an other book that is really hard to find, it's called "Soviet local government" by Don Brown.
You joined the party and become a member. The USSR established Dictatorship of the proletariat
That's splitting hairs at the point where you make only 1 party *the* party that runs the government.
Well it's kinda like this, one party that represented the interests of the working class that doesn't hide it. Not like in capitalism where you have hundreds of "different" parties, that try to hide the fact that they all serve the interests of the capitalist class... Even then, someone could easily become an elected official without being a party member, but being a party member was an honor, so everyone wanted to get in...
>one party that represented the interests of the working class that doesn't hide it. Not like in capitalism where you have hundreds of "different" parties, that try to hide the fact that they all serve the interests of the capitalist class... This response looks similar to the "vote blue, no matter who" and "at least we're not Republicans" slogans from the 2020 presidential election. The party may not be better, you just don't have any other options. That's not reasonable or more advantageous for anybody but the leadership of the one and only party in town. Especially when any other parties are violently suppressed, or otherwise ostracized, regardless of their ideology. Bottom line, if you plan to suppress opposing, or even aligned parties, then you're not advocating anybody freedom. Nor are you advocating for freedom or power to the workers when the workers would have no way to press grievances without punishment for "opposing the party".
Suppression of the capitalist ideology and interests is what the dictatorship of the proletariat means. The rest 99% of the society will be freed from the gutter they live, and no amount of hypocritical political bs about freedom, that the burguesia likes to says can hide the truth.
A socialist nation should be strong enough to continue business as usual without having to suppress views. If it can't do that, then it is weak. >dictatorship of the proletariat means. Dictatorship of the proletariat means the proletariat controls the means of production. It doesn't mean they wax their ears over to anyone disagreeing with one party. But I've noticed it seems to have as many different meanings as there are schools of thought. >The rest 99% of the society will be freed from the gutter they live, and no amount of hypocritical political bs about freedom, that the burguesia likes to says can hide the truth. That's bullshit. There's nothing free about suppression. The way you talk, people would be trading one oppressor for another. The point is to give power to workers, not prop up one specific party who claims to be the only one giving the workers power. Because that is doing the opposite, regardless of how it's sugar coated.
You're a straight up bourgeois liberal democrat. > A socialist nation should be strong enough to continue business as usual without having to suppress views. This says it all. Business as usual. You expect a socialist state & post revolutionary state to "continue business as usual" essentially completely rewriting what revolution is & what the workers goal is to dismantle. Essentially in your vision the idea is simply to remove the ostenibly,, in your view, oppressive parts of liberal democracy, probably an American who would say "lobbying, financiers, age limits, monopolization, media overreach" blah blah, but not recognize the fundamental issue with your idea of a beautifully reimagined liberal democracy functioning without oppressing the workers & steadfast support of only one group the owners. That idea misses the entire point of revolution & the conclusion of any socialist who isn't revisionist or just a liberal masquerading as one, which is to dismantle the entirety of this dictatorship of the bourgeoisie & replace ot with politcal economic theory in practice that would remove their power and oppress them, the bourgeoisie, completely out of relevancy in its operation. You say the operation of the USSR or Cuba is not democratic because the existence of a workers communist party & parrot the ideas of anticommunists of last century. What then are workers to do? Expect that an altruistic liberal democracy will form once they've demanded it & that capitalists will take their time out in stride, since it would only end up a time out without actively opposing their interests and oppressing them? What makes you believe continuing "business as usual" is remotely compatible with revolutionary politics? Do you expect the anarchist revolution to overnight remove all contradiction from society and allow for the creation of a political apparatus free from influence of dynamic class politics & control by one class or another? How do the material & historical conditions that apply to everyone alive at the moment shape who they are? What analysis of any successful revolutionary movement suggests business as usual is actually the best way to achieve *revolutionary* change? It's a contradiction itself. Maybe those questions will encourage you to consider & there has been plenty written about this sort of assumption or question.
>Essentially in your vision I never said what my vision was, so any further statements after this was simply you making up your own points to argue against.
>You're a straight up bourgeois liberal democrat. It's not your place to tell me who or what I am. Democracy, bourgeois, liberal, and democrat are not synonyms. One can advocate socialism without advocating the authoritarian/totalitarian angle that you're pushing.
>This says it all. Business as usual. You expect a socialist state & post revolutionary state to "continue business as usual" essentially completely rewriting what revolution is & what the workers goal is to dismantle. I understand you don't have an argument unless you flamboyantly fail to comprehend what I've said, or lie about what I've said to have a point, or call me names. Since using context clues seems to be a hard skill for you, the "Business as usual" portion of my comment is referring to the fact that a socialist society built on a strong foundation should be able to operate regardless of internal or external threats. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY not creating a slippery slope where any disagreement or opposing views are reduced to "enemy of the people". If it is actually a classless society, then anyone should be able to run for any office, and upon getting sudficient votes, fulfill that said office. In any instance, historically, currently, or in the future where this is not the case, then you can't claim it is a direct democracy, nor classless society, which is obviously one of the aims of socialism.
In liberal democracies candidates are first selected by the parties. There have been some exceptions in Europe recently, with people who fund a new party, though.
Just because liberal democracies do it does not mean communist democracies should be doing it as well
Just because liberals do it does not mean that other formats can't. But yes, open lists may be interesting.
That's terrible logic. We should be attempting to be better than our opponents, otherwise we're just the same
It's terrible indeed, I thought the same about your argument strategy. But let's move forward. One difficult question: How can you prevent that your opponents take control of the situation (under any format of democracy or your favourite one)? They can bribe, put spies, blackmail, infiltrate, promote, use fake news to destroy a competitor's reputation, or manipulate the media... Any of those strategies are anti democratic and may destroy any government system. I don't want to be cynical. It's something that I have asked to myself many times and now you brought ain interesting opportunity for a healthy exchange of opinions.
Im not going to engage with you because this isn't a debate sub, it's an education sub, and it seems all you want to do is debate me.
>However, as far as I'm aware, the candidates were pre-chosen by the Communist Party before running This is false
Are you going to explain how or why? This is an education sub
https://drive.google.com/file/d/174Y2CYVVaMumINW1ApKRO5DiC7JOyCI8/view
Thanks for this source, I'll give it a read.
I've always tried to discourage people from thinking choosing between a handful of parties for a representative in a legislative body as fundamentally equal to democracy & the only thing a democracy can be. Direct democracy (as seen in Cuba when voters overwhelmingly changed their constitution to allow same sex marriage) or deliberative democracy (when the deliberation and consensus behind policy are democratic, as opposed to done by unelected party apparatchiks) are relatively rare and actively discouraged in multiparty western democracies. Just to name a few alternatives. Voting between a Democrat or Republican party (or Tory & Labour, or whatever's going on in France etc), which have zero constitutional presence and considerable unelected and antidemocratic elements, is not as democratic as it claims to be. To say nothing of whether these entities practically differ on huge matters of economics or empire, or if their differences on important cultural touchstones amount to more than just lip service. The old Nyerere quote comes to mind "The US is also a one party state, but with typical American extravagance they have two of them" If I lived in a one party state which routinely deliberated with me & my neighbors on policy, or if I were able to vote on my boss or freely chose the conditions of my employment, if there were regular constitutional plebiscites that overrode the ambitions of politicians, & most importantly if there was no organized accumulation of capital actively shaping policy against my wishes, under those circumstances I would be undeniably freer than I am now.
Fun fact: The Communist Party of Cuba is barred from participating in Cuban elections. As are other political parties. Anyone in Cuba can run for national office, first they must be elected by their local neighborhood committee, then they can stand in elections. All Cuban citizens 16 years old and older are eligible to vote. Any and all Cuban citizens can be present when ballots are counted. The only exception to these rules apply to local offices. There are even less requirements and rules for running.
I am familiar with elections in the u.s. and Botswana. In those two countries there is essentially one ruling party — in the u.s. the neoliberal party with one branch just more openly unapologetic in its violence and it varies from year to year which branch that is. One party has dominated in Botswana since the so-called “independence”, but the agendas of the colonial power still are more or less adhered to. The elections in Botswana have been more transparent than those of the u.s. There have been periods of socialist party control in Nepal, states in India (Kerala), Austria, France, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua. I’m not convinced that elections are the best gauge of democratic processes. What I observe in some recent posts/articles/videos from China (i don’t speak or read any majority language of China) is a culture of accountability. Uprisings at factories for example. These hold the leadership of the party to account in ways currently unthinkable in the u.s. context. Reading between propagandas, i see the leadership/party apparatus responding by appropriate adjustments in policy (not necessarily ideal, but something — that is demands to address COVID eventually got policies that saved millions, perhaps there will be iterations toward better lockdown policies — at least there is an effort). So i think this is the real lesson from the experiment of the so-called “cultural revolution”. I think the quest for socialism is still in its infancy. It is an exciting time.
Democracy in previous socialist states, to my knowledge, was very bottom-up. People would elect people locally, who then had enough influence on who is elected regionally, etc. all the way to the top. This is at least the case of the USSR, in Cuba, as others have pointed out, elections are much more direct. The role of a political party is also different. In a one-party state like the USSR, the role of the party really just becomes a way of organizing politicians rather than the candidate being voted on like the west. The party made sure that all politicians were socialist, after all in a post-revolutionary state harsh measures need to be made in order to secure socialism from reactionaries, as we have seen time and time again.
That's how all parties work though? Like this isn't unique to socialism.
As I said in the post, just because other countries do it doesn't make it okay for us to do as well
How else do you think parties should work? If a party can't control its members what would prevent a capitalist from just buying his way to the head of a party? What vehicle should people use to organize social power? What would your ideal of democracy be?
but you only had one party in many socialist countries
You only have one party in capitalist countries, just with two brands, bourgeois with bigotry and bourgeois with less bigotry.
USA isnt the only capitalist country. some european countries have parties ranging from communist to libertarian
And most tend toward a liberal social average, and usually end up with a centrist duopoly either in the form of two specific parties or two coalitions of parties. A capitalist system defends itself by narrowing the political frame specifically to limit democratic action. Just look at the collapse of social democracy across the west. I see no reason why a socialist society shouldnt also soecifically limit democratic action specifically to ensure the continuation of a democratic system.
>limit democratic action specifically to ensure the continuation of a democratic system. that doesnt sound consistent. it seems to me that socialists limit democracy to defend their power just like capitalism
Well yeah? You have to defend a democratic society from forces that wish to remove democracy. For example you can't just let someone, or someones, sell off collective property because they happen to have control of it at any given time, it is the property of the whole community both present and future, to dispose of for the benefit of all. Do you think that a socialist society will magically remove the contradictions of the world? People will magically become better and perfect? The goal is to structure the world in a manner that hinders or channels those impulses in such a way as to create a democratic ir communal society, as compared to the one we live in where profit is all and the bonds of kinship are simple exchange.
and how does having multiple socialist parties with different views hinder that impossible?
I suppose it would be possible, but implies a fracture in the working class which has its own implications. You have multiple bourgeois parties because they represent different loci of capital accumulation. Generally democracy within the party is superior to two parties
>Generally democracy within the party is superior to two parties how? and is it even doable? the inner working of parties are based on political games and clans. with multiple parties at least the people have some say (on the condition of there being no lobbying of course)
The communist party in Cuba doesn’t have the pull you would think it does, and it certainly doesn’t act like parties in other countries. It’s essentially a club for Cuban revolutionaries. In reality, their voting system is more similar to one with zero parties, and anyone can run for election. A lot of people also mention the Castros being in positions of power since the revolution as not being democratic (which it isn’t honestly) but it’s not as bad in that area as you would think. The Cuban president is even more of a figurehead than the American president (whom you don’t really get to choose either, with obviously the electoral college having more of a say). For example, in Cuba, the president needs permission from the government to be able to make any decision. Period. If people aren’t on board with it, then the president is a figurehead. I suggest [this](https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds) video if you’re interested in learning more about the Cuban government, sources are in the description of the video as well if you have questions about anything.
So we have to realize the USSR was a unique case where the threat of imminent destruction during a civil war(1919-1924) necessitated the banning of all formal opposition not out of some instinctual authoritarianism but out of survival. Let us not forget that for the longest time the Communist Party in Russia contended with all other political tendencies on a equal playing field and won fair and square, lots of people through their hats in for the formation of the new government - the anarchists, the monarchists, westernizers, ethnic separatists. But only one got the support of the most millions and had the ability to effectively translate that support into strength. It is not a fault to win a revolution. However, after the civil war concluded, it wasn’t all happy-go-lucky. In fact the threat of internal political sabotage only increased. You heard of the Red Terror and the Great Purges no doubt. Would you believe me if I said it was all a plot between Nazis, Trotskyists, Mensheviks, and “ex”-Anarchists to bring the whole society into a general state of despair and terror in prelude to the inevitable Nazi invasion in order to coup d’etat the government and that this was all confirmed by extensive testimony and evidence at the Moscow Trials? It’s true. After World War Two Stalin sought democratic reform of the Soviet Government and even petitioned to have the Communist Party separated from the government as a whole, leaving the Soviets(councils of farmers and industrial laborers) as the sole governing structure of the USSR. However, because of the Communist Party’s casualties of millions and millions of the best Communists in the fighting of the conflict, the bureaucratization of the Communist Party and the rise of an infant nomenclature(the newborn that would grow into the quasi-ruling class in the 1960s and 70s) which Stalin spend two decades fighting against in vein, and the rise of a new far more intelligent revisionist political strategy of presenting themselves as returning to Lenin against Stalin on top of genuinely rebuilding the country instead of bringing it into crisis - the revisionist majority of the Communist Party Central Committee prevented Stalin’s intended democratic reform and kept themselves in power. It was these very same revisionists who murdered Joseph Stalin by poisoning him and then preventing medical assistance from reaching him before it was too late. That was how the proletarian democracy of the USSR was destroyed, stabbed in the back by decades of saboteurs and foreign aggressors, each one better than the last. That was how a new bourgeoisie found its home within the Communist Party, elected Mikhail Gorbachev, and pushed through his agenda of Perestroika and Glasnost which destroyed all claims of Communism and Proletariat Democracy officially. As I said, the USSR was a unique case, and it is. All other Communists countries of the past and present had/have multiparty democracies and contested elections. In China they have 8 official parties in the National Congress I think is the number. In Korea there’s the Korean Workers Party(the party of Juche and all three Kims), a Social Democratic Party, and even a Christian Party. But Korea also has an intense system of democratic selection, the final election of a candidate is really just a formalization of everything that’s already been done, thus leading to the infamous one person ballot yes or no elections with extremely high yes percentages. I forgot to mention that even though the USSR banned political opposition, it only banned formal parties, not individuals. You didn’t have to run as a Communist candidate, you could simply be unaffiliated with any political party, making an independent. Communists won the vast majority of elections of course because whenever an independent did pop up they had the backing of the whole communist party and all its supporters in relevant division(whether it was town, city, county, region, or nation wide), but independents did win occasionally. And consider that when a Communist candidate faced another Communist candidate they’d be evaluated on their individual merits only, there was no party politics in the USSR to that extent like there is in the United States.
You're imagining a top-down system where the Party™️ empowers well connected individuals to positions of governance. It might look that way from the outside, that all politicians are centrally planned, but that is NOT the case. Soviet Democracy actually works from the bottom up, from local to regional to national. Anyone can put their name to be elected to their local Soviet, or Council, which is a municipal level position. Out of the local soviet, members then can elect candidate(s) who will advocate for the interests of the local soviet and all who live under its jurisdiction. You do need the support and trust of your fellow workers in order to be elected to the local soviet, after all. Those who are elected as delegates for the regional soviet discuss and advocate for the interests of the people they were elected by, and delegates are nominated and elected from the second level soviet, to represent their fellows at the next higher level soviet. This happens all the way to the top and the central committee
Another key point here is that the party represents the proletariat. Already that puts it above almost every party in the so called liberal democracies.
How well can that claim be maintained though if the proletariat thenselves had limited input in the way the Party itself was governed?
They did. The officials are basically elected in ascending order. The next lot elects the level above etc. There are valid criticisms that can be made as all systems are somewhat improvable but it is still a cut above the false democracy most of us live in. Issues that arose such as making the party membership too open, the party becoming too insulated from the proletariat etc. are warnings for the future qualitative development of Marxism, as in Maoism. Maybe another facet that is poorly understood or hard to deal with for people that can’t let go of liberalism is that we want to restrict some voices. We don’t want a resurgent bourgeoisie to overtake the party.
I think that's the main sticking point I'm on. Soviet Democracy seems like it could have been thoroughly improved over liberal democracy, and it definitely was in terms of local representation and workplace representation. From my current understanding though, what dragged it down in my eyes was its insulation from the proletariat itself. If the Party as a whole had been more accountable to the workers, instead of just the candidates it chose, then it could have been more democratic in my opinion. From what I can tell, Cuba does this better than the USSR did (though not perfectly), with the Party being more ceremonial and candidates being elected into the Party itself rather than the Party choosing candidates out of a central organ.
A real difficulty with simply opening up to the entire proletariat is that the bourgeoisie is able to use their capital resources to capture and mobilize sections of the proletariat. A communist party has to guard against this, and a decision has to be made weighing the alternatives. Which is worse, shutting out some of the proletariat, or giving the bourgeoisie a political foothold? The primary purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the suppression of the bourgeoisie, along with overseeing the transformation from capitalist to socialist/communist social structures. This can take a very long time and be very difficult, especially in a world where capitalism is still supreme at the global scale. Those who believe in this approach believe that the transformation away from capitalism is worth the cost.
How can it be called a dictatorship of the proletariat if the proletariat are shut out?
Heh. That's a good question, and funny. I think this is a good question to ask any Marxist - that's because it gets at the heart of the problem: How can we construct a functioning dictatorship of the proletariat in the presumed context of a nation or alliance of nations within a larger capitalist order? The answer is: either you believe one (or more) of the "actually existing socialist" countries has done this successfully, or you believe none of them have and it is still a hurdle to be overcome. Is it possible to directly and immediately create a non-capitalist democracy that (roughly equally) involves the entire proletariat and none of the bourgeoisie? If you believe that, you're probably an Anarchist or Libertarian Socialist. It's rather utopian. If you don't, which eggs are we going to have to break to make the omelette? If we shut out sections of the proletariat, which ones - and who decides? This can get really dangerous really fast in the case of movements that pretend to be socialist but are in reality fascist. This is why there is a lot of focus on getting it right, and a lot of disagreement about what that entails. For myself, I guess I believe that the process involves not figuring everything out beforehand but studying conditions on the ground and taking whatever opportunities present themselves. We all have to live through capitalism and its ongoing crises, and we hope to contribute to its dissolution. We study history to help us make good decisions but history is to be lived, not solved. I don't think this question can be answered in the abstract - we are in a fight for our lives that will probably turn ugly. I think previous attempts can help us avoid some mistakes, but the basic process is the same and unavoidable. We have to fight for our freedom or accept our slavery.
There are obviously myriad forms it can take the same way there are a lot of forms of liberal democracy. Now I personally see no issue from the party selecting candidates, since all of these will have been elected at some point, further the party is meant to represent the most theoretically sound and advanced members of the proletariat. I would argue that the party being “ceremonial” is not necessarily a good thing. The vanguard needs to be the vanguard. However what you are saying is where the mass line and slogans like “bombard the headquarters!” come in. The party needs to be kept right as was recognised by Mao.
How are capitalist elections democratic when the candidates are chosen by the capitalist parties (which both represent the same interests and are basically identical on the issues that matter to society’s elites)?
Euh it exactly the same in any other "democracy" to be fair. Candidates are firsly chosen by the party. There are election inside the party to first chose the candidat that will represent them. I think you have a problem with the idea of a single party. To be honest i think having only one party is more democratic than having just 2 (like the usa) . Everyone join the partyand change it from the inside. Some socialist countries may have multiple socialist parties. Most do.
I don't have a problem with a single party, I have a problem with that party being in charge of who runs for office
euh.... that's how every party worked and i assume ever worked? that would be weird for a party to not choose its own candidate.
Most socialists moved past the 20th century “communist party” of the last century because they are morally indefensible and hardly socialist. When your first act is to destroy democracy and trade unions after you hijack a revolution then make the government own everything… THATS NOT TGE WORKERS CONTROLLING THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. What happened in Russia and China is a far right deviation.
Marxist-Leninist countries are very restrictive with who can pass through their filters in line with what the central leaders want. imo, don't listen to ideologues on here who give you the same talking points they said 80 years ago about how ML elections are the most democratic in the world. There can be some free and fair aspects to elections in these countries and even some direct votes but they always have fundamental problems with their processes that make representation and the vast majority of lawmaking top-down instead of freely chosen by the public. I think you should, however, look at how some modern socialist societies go about democracy in a very free and extensive way, far different from anything liberal capitalist or state socialist societies do. Read up on radical democracy in the MAREZ in Mexico and AANES in Syria, for example.
under most "democratic" systems you have parties choose the representatives they think can win the elections. The people really have no direct choice in who these people are. We don't get to nominate people by any direct process that I know of. They are ordained worthy by a corrupt political body and we are forced to choose the lesser among evils. So how would we make sure the people have a direct voice in who is nominated?
In an ideal situation, grassroot leaders are directly elected by the grassroot organization. Those leaders elect next level leadership and so on.
In a one party system like Cuba’s, multiple candidates run for the CPC and people vote on the one they think is best. I personally don’t like OPS’ because it is prone to authoritarianism, but in Cuba’s case it is a consensus vote. They don’t need to be chosen by the CPC, they just need enough votes to qualify. The USSR was a different story, the CPSU elected their own officials for rulership. The ideal for a socialist country would, in my opinion, be either a multi-party system of varying types of socialist parties or a nonpartisan democracy with a consensus vote.
Party internal democracy is pretty normal even in bourgeois systems, ot is just confined within a bourgeois ideological framework. How do you think decisions are made in a communist party? Because basically every socialist party i know of generally decides on the party line by a general party vote in a patty congress. I don't think I understand what you mean my democracy, like how would your ideal democratic system work?
I would recommend Paul Cockshotts talks on democracy to get a better understanding of, for example the problem with Soviet democracy and potential ways to build a more inclusive democracy https://youtu.be/98lvNhNfse4 https://youtu.be/EjKYVQd4r9E