One2many

“he was and still is a beloved and popular figure whose tenure saw the end of famine in China”

• a famine he mismanaged and lead to the deaths of millions.

any functioning democracy would have removed that man.

the Communist Party’s substantial practices of criticism and self-criticism; and rigorous rule-of-law procedures. In terms of mass line supervision and the pervasive role of consultative democracy, Zhou Enlai had already pointed out in 1957 that the exercise of state power has the not insignificant risk of becoming divorced from the masses and becoming “dizzy with success.” The best solution: supervision by the masses: “without the people, what can the Communist Party do? … If you do right, the people will support you. If you do wrong, the people will not support you” (Zhou 1957, 348–349). Or as Xi Jinping puts it in the speech under consideration, the inescapable need is for the people to “supervise power [监督权利 jiandu quanli]” and that power should function “in the sunshine [在阳光下 zai yangguang xia]” or transparently (Xi 2022b, 3)

the only thing even close to stating a power over the government inherent in the people is the above. it simply states a mandate that the people should observe the government and the government should be transparent. everything else mentions how they put up quotes and aspire to work towards bettering the rule of law at every level and party members should stricktly adhere to the rule of law and goes on to define what their concept of rule of law is.

it in no way describes their process for approving political candidates or whether a candidate needs to be a communist party member or been approved by the communist party. in fact, this seems to do the opposite and suggest that party loyalty is paramount to political success.

his mismanagement killed millions.

if the communist party apparatus gave the people the ability to do so, and had not conformed the entire culture around party loyalty by removing dissenting political views, he would have been removed.

one of the of my posts you responded to is 5388 characters, plus I posted clips from the book.

and dont be mistake me, I am going to read that book.

I dont care if Mao didn’t cause the famine, he fumbled it hard and would have been removed by his people if they had the power to do so. millions died.

then it should be easy for you to post the context you’re referring to

you speed read a 407 page book in 25 minutes? impressive

“What you are worried about is real too in a way, but it’s not a class. In a socialist state,”

• oh no, im not against socialism, im against non-representative governments. and this isn’t hypothetical, we see it all over the world including the US right now with voter suppression and super PACs. I just argue that the single-party rule that many communists espouse is not a great solution to the ills of capitalism, which themselves are very real. I’m all for the state owning the means of production at what ever breadth is required to provide dignity, safety, and health to the people, but the people must wield ultimate power to turn the government without having to resort to violence.

“Managers in a McDonalds do not actually have the ability to sell or make total calls over what to do with it, the owners do. Administrators are similar, they are joint owners with the entire working class.”

• why did no one recall stalin during his great purge, or Mao during the great famine?

you said you read it, you should be able to find the proof you say is in there easy. if you read it you likely already know what chapter it’s in.

“The only thing missing is the element of randomness, which only makes the people making decisions less accountable and leaves the possibility of someone who’s views don’t represent what the people want getting into power.”

• hence the vote-of-not-confidence I suggested and the randomness is intended to keep one group from being over represented in government than it’s demographic make-up in the populace. but yeah that sounds great. I’m not against socialism, I’m against unrepresentative forms of government and obviously a socialist nation can find ways to be more representative and ensure the power ultimately derives from the people. very cool, and thanks for sharing that!

it’s all right there in black and white.

show me a definitive source that shows soviet, Chinese, and DPRK elections did/do not need approval from their respective communist parties.

“Capitalists do not merely “hold the levers of production,” they outright own it. My entire point is that control and ownership are different.”

• what is the difference? the qualifier of owning something is the sole right to manipulate that thing in anyway definition of own: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/own

“Socialist democracy does not remove the ability for people to hold administrators accountable. You invented this.”

• how to workers peacefully remove administrators they don’t like at any level of the communist party strata without explicit approval from the communist party?

Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:

Page# 178 - Soviet Union “The subsequent articles in this chapter spell out what each of these terms meant in practice, including the process of nominating candidates, who would come from “public organisations and societies of the working people: Communist Party organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organisations and cultural societies” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 141, 1936b, stat’ia 141).”

Page# 181 - Soviet Union “The drive for electoral democracy did not long live up to its lofty aims, with the most embarrassing retreat being from multi-candidate contested elections to single-candidate elections. At the same time, there was an even greater effort to ensure democratic accountability through elections internal to the Party.”

page# 208 - DPRK “there are also distinct emphases in light of the DPRK’s concrete conditions. In terms of electoral democracy: while there is only one decision-making body, the Supreme People’s Assembly (along with regional people’s assemblies), there is also the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. This is not a governing body per se, but it plays a crucial role in the electoral process. Made up of all political parties, mass organisations, and religious groups, it proposes multiple candidates, debates their suitability, and approves one candidate for elections.”

Page# 379 - China “Election to the position of Party branch secretary takes place at a plenary or general members meeting, although the election also needs to be approved by the regional Party committee”

then capitalists holding the levers of production doesn’t necessarily make capitalists a class. you’re deluding your own definitions.

“Administrators share the same class interest with other workers: collectivization of the means of production and distribution.”

• removing the ability for the people to hold the administrators accountable is divorcing the workers from ownership over the means of production.

“You have invented the idea of unilateral control, and have invented the idea that the working classes as a whole do not participate in mass democratization of society in unitary socialist democracies.”

• you have no adequately demonstrated how the vector of power points from the workers down to the administrators in unitary socialist democracies.

“As for your bit on political parties, you’re continuing to argue against a caricature you invented in your head. Nobody has stated that elections must be controlled or exclusively of party membership. You have to argue against a strawman, because your point collapses when confronted with reality.”

• then please enlighten me how communist elections should work, because in China and the Soviet union candidates must be approved by the communist party.

“Please be serious.” you do not need to deride me just because we disagree. it shows a lack of maturity.

it completely creates a ruling class. the administrators hold the levers of government, irrefutably. and party administrators approved their candidates for elections. thus the ruling class chooses their members. that is a ruling class, even worse it is a ruling class with unilaterally controls over who in the nation can wield the levers of government.

your idealist analysis of power divorces itself from the will the people.

I argue that class is inevitable under any form of administrative government. the goal is to tie ultimate power to the will of the people.

“advanced enough to accommodate social planning, and administration needs to be advanced enough to facilitate it.” -what qualifies as advanced enough? that is amorphous. “You keep separating the party from the people by erasing their shared relations to ownership of the means of production. The party is of, by, and for the working class, and is accountable to the rest of the working class.” -no the party is separating the party from the people by removing any means of peaceful transition of power except through mandatory, open poll, party controlled elections of exclusively party members and through strict control of party membership.

you make the same mistake again, creating a single party where the party leaders get to decide who is in the party simply creates a new ruling class. they control all the means of production, and if the party leaders are not beholden to the workers, that is totalitarianism. this same issue exists largely in the united states but we have two parties instead of one, and the wealthy largely control who is in power, this is equally as bad as a single party.

I dont care to what level the state controls private property, I only care that if the state begins to abuse that power, the workers can intervene and stop them.

I simply argue that a single party with unilateral control creates a totalitarian dictatorial state. and totalitarian states lead to accelerated suffering.

I also argue this is true for two party systems. and proposes a system based on demographic representation with a safe guard to remove bad actors from political power. under my proposal, the state could choose to take control over the means of production if enough people chose. I welcome new forms of political ideas, not single minded adherence to party dogma.

and ‘waxing poetic’ would require me to be much less specific than I have been.

you are waxing poetic with these strange, shifting and amorphous ideas of “class”, and “transitional periods” while providing no concrete roadmap for how unilateral single party control of a state elevates the workers to control over the means of production.

in reality it simply shifts control over the means of production to cronyism. single-party rule creates a party-class and a working class, and the party-class is in no way beholden to the working class.