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For the libs - read 'On Authority' by Engels. Its very short.
(www.marxists.org)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I read it as the authority of the state does not dissolve when reformed into a socialist collective, which I don't disagree with.
My disagreement is the assertion that said authority cannot be run without external oversight by the collective, which is an assertion that Engel makes.
What am I missing?
I already answered this more or less in my post referencing Lenin's "withering away" of the state and the widening of democracy.
The social revolution has a theoretical endpoint. All contridictions are resolved thus creating a classless and therefore stateless, and by extension moneyless society.
The "state" refers to armed men that enforce class relations. State is not the same as government or administration. The state under socialism (according to MLs), "the state, but not the state" is changed in character and used to defend the social revolution from the machinations of the class enemy. As the social revolution progresses you haveca whithering away of the state, since it is only necessary for defense from capitalists and their counter revolutionary allies. It is no longer needed to enforce class relations because there is only one class.
Lenin's additions came after Engels and Marx, but here Engels is laying out the basic points of the same concept
You have five posts I can see, none of which reference this.
And I'm talking to the middle ground because, as others discussed here, the end state is something more of an idea than something to be expected to be achieved in our lifetime. So, I have to ask what is the fairest system that we can achieve in our time while making it easier for the next revolution to change.
Okay, then I'm saying
You were asking questions about communist theory. I've been answering your questions in terms of communist theory.
Can you clarify what your real question is then because it has nothing to do with communism. I'm not sure what you really want to know
I see communist theory being fine in laying out critiques of capitalism and suggesting the beginnings of a system to replace the economic order, but it really glosses over the political side to a country.
As I've quoted Engels, there seems to be an assumption that the politics of a communist society can be entrusted to a set of politicians and bureaucrats that will manage the state without much oversight from the people, and I disagree with that assumption. There still needs to be a body politic managing the state, and that body politic needs to be as large as possible to keep politics from becoming dominated by a new elite. This includes creating a system that allows a transfer of power between political parties.
Communist theory knows the end game of government, but it gets really sketchy in the medium term.
You've quoted Engels, that doesn't mean you understand what he's saying. You are making the assumption that we just entrust politics to other people.
Are you aware of how the soviets functioned in the USSR, or on the basics of whole process people's democracy in the PRC? These arent systems where assumptions are just being presumed by people. There is a broadened democracy under socialism, as i mentioned at least a few times in my responses.
Ultimately your critique of Marxism here comes from you not knowing what has been proposed for "the medium term" in theory, or what has been done in AES in practice which has gone on to influence new theory.
Its a 200 year long intellectual tradition, informed by AES projects and updated. Just because you don't know, doesn't mean it hasn't already been considered
Both the Soviet Union and PRC functioned/are functioning in a state of single party domination. If votes were held, they were only held to approve a single candidate rather than choose between two candidates. That isn't a choice, but asking for acceptance. Democracies generally offer a choice and a transfer of power.
And I'm technically not critiquing Marx. This is a very narrow critique about Engels's assumption that a post economic equality government can treat politics as inconsequential. This isn't a critique of Communist governments as implemented.
You're misrepresenting how democracy functions in the PRC and USSR, you're likening their political candidates to what you'd find within a liberal democracy.
I'll talk on Cuba, since it's the socialist democracy I'm most familiar with, but I know its system of representation is fairly similar to how it operates in the PRC and how it worked in the USSR too. People in Cuba do select multiple candidates for their elections, the difference is their politicians don't represent different interests. Rather, the politician is bound by things like public referendum and decisions made by local party members, unions, and regional constituents. Cuban politicians are forbidden by law from proposing policy or advancing a platform. They're forbidden from even doing political campaigns. The most they're allowed to do is post a picture of themselves and their resume. I'm pretty sure the way it works in the PRC is regional chairpeople are nominated and elected in the same way, through selection, referendums, and voting. The only thing they do is bring representation to regional or national assemblies, they aren't independent actors on their own, detached from the communities that elected them.
You're right to say these places have single party domination, but that's because the working class have a single united interest to overthrow capitalism. Why would there need to be two working class parties that compete against one another? Why would there not instead be a single unitary body where issues among the working class can be resolved? Do hospital workers have interests that contradict agricultural workers? No. Do different sectors of capitalist have interests that compete against one another? Absolutely yes, especially between the financial and industrial sectors. This is part of the reason why capitalist nations employ multiple parties, because there are different sectors of competing capitalist factions. Marx talked about this exactly in his essays about the Paris Commune, and any time the petite bourgeoisie are mentioned.
Democracies generally offer a choice? You're saying democracies should allow socialists to take power, or capitalists to take power? Should a socialist country simply have an oppositional liberal/capitalist party just to be fair? Why? Should the USA have a party offering to bring back slavery and return the country to England?
There is exactly one instance, maybe two, of a socialist party getting elected into power and then maintaining it: Czechoslovakia in 1946 and Romania in 1944. Both instances had to have a subsequent coup where the remaining elements of liberal, capitalist, and/or fascist governance had to be purged and both instances required assistance from the USSR. More recent democratic socialist endeavors have shown it's not a terribly viable strategy when under threat of imperialism. Look at Venezuela over the past 20 years and the hell they've had trying to maintain their own national sovereignty. Look at the more recent coup attempt in Bolivia. Look at how the USA killed Salvador Allende in Chile and installed Pinochet.
Just because you don't know how denocracy functions in AES countries, doesn't mean democracy is not existing. Anymore than just because you think think liberal democracy works, it in fact does not.
Socialist nations are more democratic than liberal democracies. If you informed yourself of that instead of assuming that they are not democracies we could have a real conversation, instead of you making a bunch of uniformed statements based on western propoganda as if i haven't heard them before
I know you think they aren't democracies because i used to believe that. That's what we're told to believe in the West, its our recieved ideology. Nothing that you're saying is new, or novel, or something that hasn't yet been considered by amyone in the last 200 years
Why do I have to inform myself again if I informed myself to get to this conclusion? If I was wrong, wouldn't I get to the same conclusion without help?
I discussed ways in which the Soviet Union and PRC get some democratic buy-in. How am I wrong?
no more half measures walter
That's just not how elections work in the PRC or USSR. You know the PRC has multiple parties? And the USSR had "non-partisan" or not party member candidates? People got replaced all the time, they got voted out if they didn't meet the interests of their constituents. A Soviet is literally a workers council