Direct democracy and populism

[Roberto]

In Croatia there is a call for referendum about making gay marriage unconstitutional.

A small fringe clero-fascist organisation exploded in popularity due to online mouth-to-mouth advertisement, mostly on forums, facebook and youtube. As time goes more and more people are flocking to their banner... confronted with surging popularity, even the biggest opposition party in Croatia decided to give an indirect support as a sell-out to the far-right voters.

The law concerning call for referendum demands petition with over 10% of vote-eligible population in 2 weeks time which is one of harshest limits in the european-western world.

In about half time, they passed the 10% mark and are aiming for 25% until the end of time limit.

What do you people have to say about right-wingers not being able to get anyone to listen to them IRL? What do you think about direct democracy?
Frankly I think that stupidity of the average voter is the main problem of direct democracy.

[tuwix]

Direct democracy is the only way to achieve the DotP. Otherwise always there emerge a new upper class of bureaucrats who take place of former bourgeoisie. All countries of so-called East-Block experienced that.

[Brutus]

Direct democracy is the only way to achieve the DotP. Otherwise always there emerge a new upper class of bureaucrats who take place of former bourgeoisie. All countries of so-called East-Block experienced that.

You can't pin the degeneration of the Russian revolution on the absence of direct democracy

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Communists are for the direct democracy of the proletariat - not of the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie and the declassed elements that make up most of the Right in the Quasi State of Croatia.

And even that should not be made into a fetish. In the last instance, we are for the revolution. Anything that stands in the way needs to go.

And let's be honest, the biggest opposition party is far-right. They aren't simply courting the fascists, they are fascists.

[Roberto]

Communists are for the direct democracy of the proletariat - not of the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie and the declassed elements that make up most of the Right in the Quasi State of Croatia.

And even that should not be made into a fetish. In the last instance, we are for the revolution. Anything that stands in the way needs to go.

And let's be honest, the biggest opposition party is far-right. They aren't simply courting the fascists, they are fascists.

Floskule. In a classless society there will be no capitalist class and with priority of equality everyone will vote and the majority which is dumb, uncreative and passive sheeple will just undermine the system.

HDZ is not far-right, it is in fact simply a corrupt paternalistic fartling derived from old communist party cadre which has adopted some mildly nationalistic rethoric (and nothing else). It never decreased the size of the state it only increased it, same with taxes, government intervention, and everything else. If you want a true right wing party (and still modernate) you can look at the biggest Swiss party, if you want a definition of far-right look at Jobbik or Golden Dawn and their party platforms, actions and cadres.

You are overexagerating and I am having none of it.

Uostalom sve rvatine rasisti i ostalo, pogotovo u splitu i po selima su stoka vlaška najnižeg roda, generalno šta su siromašniji i niže kulturni i obrazovani to su veće rvatine i sve ostalo. Svi, redom svi viši sloj, neki mali poduzetnici isl. a to znam osobno jer mi je više prijatelja ima svoj biznis ili rade na solidnoj poziciji su ugl liberalni, niti livo niti desno.

[Brutus]

Some of the left, especially anarchists, have a tendency to fetishise democracy.

Trotsky
There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

For the benefit of those who don't speak our argot, an approximate translation of the last paragraph would be:

"Besides, all the Croats [actually, a derogatory corruption of the phrase 'great Croat', meant to evoke the speech of certain areas that are stereotypically nationalist], racists and so on, especially in Split and the villages, are Vlach [peasant] scum of the lowest sort, in general, the poorer they are, the less cultured and educated, the greater Croats, etc., they are. All, all of the higher strata, some of the small businessmen etc., and I know this from personal experience since several of my friends have their own business or work in high positions, are in general liberal, neither right or left."

And it just happens to be unadulterated nonsense. Croatia has preciously few class-conscious proletarians - the thorough destruction of the industrial base under the Nazi Tuđman regime ensured that - but our self-important "higher" strata are hardly better than the most reactionary peasant layers. Roberto claims to be concerned about LGBT issues - perhaps they should remember recent proclamations against the gay pride parade, signed by scores of our quasi-intellectuals. Or the Nazi party in the city council, the Croat Pure Party of Rights (the party of pure nonsense), supported by the kulaks and by the urban petite bourgeoisie.

And communism includes a cultural revolution. Even at present, the ridiculous right-"libertarian" notion of "the sheeple" (and these people want to be taken seriously!) is not true; it will be even less true in the communist society.

HDZ is a fascist party - it is a bourgeois Bonapartist movement that aims to mobilise the petite bourgeoisie, the declassed elements and the most reactionary layers of the proletariat against the labour movement. In the nineties, they started a civil war and carried out extensive ethnic cleansing both on the territory of their quasi-state of Croatia and in Bosnia.

[Durruti's friend]

Semendyaev, I don't think you can really call HDZ fascist. They are right wing, yes, and they do use nationalist rhetoric, but their economic plans aren't fascist, they are more like liberal (in the market liberal sense) capitalist.

They won't install corporatism and they have abandoned expansionist plans after Tuđman died. Mostly because the EU pressured them to do so, but still. The only really fascist parties in Croatia are fringe parties, like HČSP, A-HSP and all other HSP varieties, while HDZ is trying to look more like a European demochristian party. It's still reactionary to the core, though.

The referendum itself is a bastardization of democracy. Human rights simply cannot be a matter of referendums, because that way everything will turn into mob rule. I agree with Semendyaev on the proletarian democracy bit, and we really should fight this petty bourgeois idiocy till the end.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That depends on how one understands fascism, though. I think corporatism is a fairly bad indicator - the European Union is also corporatist to an extent, after all, and elements of corporatism are common in bourgeois states. In a shocking departure from my usual views, I agree with Trotsky: fascism is a bourgeois-Bonapartist movement that mobilises the lower strata against the labour movement. Even after his majesty, the president Tuđman, died, HDZ continued this strategy, though their Bonapartist credentials are perhaps suspect.

[Roberto]

Nazi Tuđman regime? That kind of balkanoid terminological accuracy is typical in Croatia for the people who cannot rise above the WWII theme. How is the Tuđman regime nazi? It was not totalitarian, it did not create a one-party state, it did not create a national-socialist totalitarian state, it did not remove the traditional religious morality with social-darwinism, it did not exterminate corruption and personal connection based system.

Tuđman regime in the ninethies was a corrupt war-profiteering paternalistic one but not really even capitalist (as they did not want a free market or even market transparancy), not really nationalist (as they wanted to join the EU from the start). They are more alike a really big cartel organization but not a far right party.

Besides, many reactionary movements mobilized lower strata to fight the labor movement, Bismarck did it... does that make all of those 19th century reactionaries fascist? Of course not.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Nazi Tuđman regime? That kind of balkanoid terminological accuracy is typical in Croatia for the people who cannot rise above the WWII theme. How is the Tuđman regime nazi? It was not totalitarian,

"Totalitarianism" is a nonsense term, invented in its modern sense by Kirkpatrick in order to demonise workers' states as "totalitarian" (whereas, of course, the fascist states and military dictatorships that the US supported were merely "authoritarian").


it did not create a one-party state,

Neither did Vargas, Peron or king Michael.


it did not create a national-socialist totalitarian state,

Again, this doesn't mean anything. National "socialism" is an obtuse name for finance capital with state backing, something that existed in Croatia under his highness, the president Tuđman.


it did not remove the traditional religious morality with social-darwinism,

Neither did Franco, Salazar or, for that matter, Hitler.


it did not exterminate corruption and personal connection based system.

No fascist regime did.


Tuđman regime in the ninethies was a corrupt war-profiteering paternalistic one but not really even capitalist (as they did not want a free market or even market transparancy),

No one cares about your right-"libertarian" obsession with "free" markets. The Tuđman regime privatised the economy - or privatised it de jure after it had already been privatised de facto - and that's it.


not really nationalist (as they wanted to join the EU from the start). They are more alike a really big cartel organization but not a far right party.

Except for that whole business with invading another state, carrying out ethnic cleansing and targeted murder and so on.


Besides, many reactionary movements mobilized lower strata to fight the labor movement, Bismarck did it...

Not really. Bismarck might have counted on the electoral support of the lower strata, but he did not mobilise them - there was no Bismarckian SA. In contrast, HDZ had mobilised the lower strata, first in their criminal militias, then in "army" units drawn from prisoners and smugglers, now in various "veterans' associations", "spontaneous" protests like the ones in Split etc. etc.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Floskule. In a classless society there will be no capitalist class and with priority of equality everyone will vote and the majority which is dumb, uncreative and passive sheeple will just undermine the system.Are workers any more inherently "dumb or uncreative" than the current ruling class - surely they are more creative and smarter that the old aristocracy :lol:?

I reject this whole premise. People don't have much power in society currently and so many people just ignore politics or accept ideas handed down to them. For many years it was a common argument that Blacks in the US jim-crow South were "passive" and "sheeple" who needed and wanted guidence from their rulers; even more recently it was long claimed that Egyptians are too passive and accomodating to oppose their dictatorship. Social uprisings shatter these ideas and perceptions. Really I think "passivity" or "apathy" in society are just a manifestation (or a way people interpret a manifestation) of alienation and powerlessness.

Ultimately when we hear these sorts of charaterizations in the mainstream it's a sort of victim-blaming. People with power or in the mainstream often claim democracy of the majority is impossible or undesireable when really they want to make excuses for a lack of democracy.

[Tim Cornelis]

"Totalitarianism" is a nonsense term, invented in its modern sense by Kirkpatrick in order to demonise workers' states as "totalitarian" (whereas, of course, the fascist states and military dictatorships that the US supported were merely "authoritarian").

That's because they were merely authoritarian. And your reason for totalitarianism being a nonsense term is a fallacy. It does not prove it's nonsense.


Neither did Vargas, Peron or king Michael.

None of them were Nazis either.


Again, this doesn't mean anything. National "socialism" is an obtuse name for finance capital with state backing, something that existed in Croatia under his highness, the president Tuđman.

National-Socialism, Nazism, or Hitlerism is much more than that.



No fascist regime did.

Nazi-Germany and Fascist Italy were pretty successful in combating corruption. That's one thing that sets totalitarianism apart from authoritarianism, its success in combating corruption.



Except for that whole business with invading another state, carrying out ethnic cleansing and targeted murder and so on.

Many non-fascist countries have done that.

[helot]

Some of the left, especially anarchists, have a tendency to fetishise democracy.

and they're criticised by any anarchist worthy the name for fetishising form over content.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's because they were merely authoritarian. And your reason for totalitarianism being a nonsense term is a fallacy. It does not prove it's nonsense.

I assumed that people were coherent enough to use their own head instead of believing every washed up Cold Warrior. Apparently, I was wrong.

So, totalitarianism. How it's supposed to work is that "totalitarian" states control every aspect of the lives of their citizens, whereas "merely authoritarian" states simply limit their political participation. Of course, this is absolute bollocks. No state, not even Democratic Kampuchea, controlled every aspect of the citizens' lives. Furthermore, those states that Cold Warriors - and Left Communists, apparently - consider "totalitarian" were usually far less overbearing and interfered in the private lives of their citizens much less than "merely authoritarian" states.

And you would have us believe that Democratic Germany, where citizens had more rights and liberties than they do in modern liberal democracies, was "totalitarian", whereas the American puppet Chile, with its death camps, state-sponsored rape, castration of homosexuals and so on, was "merely authoritarian". With leftists like that, who needs rightists?


None of them were Nazis either.

They were fascists, and I'm not going to play silly little games where people pretend that German fascism was somehow special.


National-Socialism, Nazism, or Hitlerism is much more than that.

That was the content of their economic programme.


Nazi-Germany and Fascist Italy were pretty successful in combating corruption. That's one thing that sets totalitarianism apart from authoritarianism, its success in combating corruption.

Oh god, are you for real? Goering pilfering artwork and amassing a personal fortune through graft and shady contracts is not corruption? The baron Acerbo pocketing money from drainage projects is not corruption?


Many non-fascist countries have done that.

I was responding to the outright bizarre claim that the Tuđman regime was not nationalist.

[Skyhilist]

Direct democracy wouldn't be any worse that representative democracy. If most people think gay marriage should be unconstitutional, don't you think they're going to vote in candidates who think the same thing? What makes you think that the ruling class is going to have a better sense of morals that the populace? Direct democracy under capitalism can be pretty bad but representative democracy is no better.

Also the direct democracy advocated by libertarian socialists takes place during and after the revolution. If there's enough class consciousness for people to carry out a revolution, then obviously there's been a radical leftward shift in public views and I don't think we'd still have to worry about the majority of people making stupid decisions like rejecting gay rights, so direct democracy would make a lot more sense.

[Djoko]

Direct democracy is only real democracy

[Lynx]

Direct democracy does not equate to 'rule by referendum'.

[Djoko]

Demokratia= demos (people) + kratos (rule)

Direct democracy with referendums is a must, people itself have to make decisions about everything if you want emancipation of working class.

[Lynx]

A referendum is a last resort, when consensus cannot be reached. In a direct democracy, there would have been participation, analysis and debate. That is how you make decisions.

This Croatian referendum has more in common with marketing than democracy.