My Conflict with the Idea of Government

[CheekyCabbage]

This thought has been running through my head for ages and I can't make heads or tails of it. I understand the oppressive powers of government, yet it seems to make things more efficient when used in a way where direct democracy is involved. Or better explained, when groups of people govern themselves it cannot oppress themselves, therefore it is ok. However, a central government seems more beneficial to tie together larger groups, which would make sense in today's world as it is getting smaller and smaller because of the internet and technology. Would it make sense for a small commune to represent itself in a larger gathering of these representatives of the communes, in a federation of sorts? I understand looking at history with the Articles of Confederation this failed, or does it not apply here? I am a man of science and I push for the unknown and discovery, as stagnation scares me. What I am getting at here, is a hybrid of government to function enough to ensure the stability of all peoples, yet being as close as possibly to the people so that it has no power to possibly harm anyone.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone could help me figure out this dilema, as I cannot stay sane with the battles of the ideas of gov't vs no gov't in my head. I personally require a large amount of self control, so my instinct sees almost/no gov't unfathomable and slightly wrong. Or I just insane at this point? I accept and welcome all debate, as well I hope this is the right place for this thread. If need be, please could someone move this thread to its proper place? I thank you all in advance, and if further clarification is needed I will graciously give it. I can be vague in many areas.

[Q]

Marxists have traditionally been advocating a "democratic republic", that is, a genuine democracy which enables our class to take power as a class. Yet it is also a republic, a "public good", that unites, in potential, the entirety of humanity. So, you identify correctly some contradictory tendencies between locality and centrality.

In bourgeois statehood there is a concept that might be useful here: the Americans call it homerule, in Europe it is called subsidiarity. It is the idea that everything that can reasonably be carried out and decided locally or regionally, should be done on that level. The Netherlands for example defines itself as a "decentralised unitary state" and I'm sure other states have similar implementations.

It should be noted though that bourgeois statehood is not actually democratic or actually decentralised. It is not democratic because elections have nothing to do with a democracy; the ancient Greeks already correctly saw it as an oligarchic principle. Yet, around half the 19th century this began to be intermixed. To proof the point, look around: Are all of these ruling politicians really ruling according to "the people's" wishes, which exist overwhelmigly of workers? Of course not. Paul Cockshott wrote a useful article about this (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/788/democracy-or-oligarchy/) back in 2009, which I still wholeheartly recommend.

The state is also not really decentralised. Most of the decisions that matter happen on a centralised level, only to be carried out on a more local level. This is what is happening frequently in the Netherlands and again I'm sure in many other countries as well.

So, undoubtedly the soviet model will be brought up too. This is the idea that worker councils (soviets) take over the political reigns of society. A local council is elected by the local population, a regional council is elected by the representatives of the local council, which in turn elects the national council, etc. This has its own democratic limitations however. The [i]direct impact/i] of the local population is decimated at each higher stage of the soviet model. Furthermore, historically speaking, have soviets not been in continuous session, meaning it couldn't act as a political body. Each time this model was tried in the 20th century, an established political force had to quickly step in to start governing society.

Israeli Marxist Moshé Machover has written an essay (http://thecommune.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/machoverdecisionmaking.pdf) extensively critiqueing the soviet model, mathematically proving that it is not democratic. You don't have to understand mathematics to understand the argument though, I very much recommend this read as well.

Last but not least Terril Bouricius, an academic, has made an extensive proposal (http://www.publicdeliberation.net/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=jpd) about how a genuine democracy could work in a society of billions.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Marxists have traditionally been advocating a "democratic republic", that is, a genuine democracy which enables our class to take power as a class. Yet it is also a republic, a "public good", that unites, in potential, the entirety of humanity. So, you identify correctly some contradictory tendencies between locality and centrality.

This is confused. Marxists have advocated a democratic republic as a bourgeois-democratic demand in those states in which the tasks of the bourgeois revolution had not been carried out in full - the states ruled by a coalition of the haute bourgeoisie and feudal or semi-feudal classes (the Russian aristocracy, the Junkertum etc.) for example. Today, given the weakness of the local bourgeoisie in regions of delayed capitalist development and their relation to imperialism, this demand needs to be understood in a new way. But that is another matter entirely.


In bourgeois statehood there is a concept that might be useful here: the Americans call it homerule, in Europe it is called subsidiarity. It is the idea that everything that can reasonably be carried out and decided locally or regionally, should be done on that level.

Should it? Why should that be the case? People who worship decentralisation more often than not express the locally- and nationally-limited interests of the petite bourgeoisie than any sort of proletarian class-consciousness.


It should be noted though that bourgeois statehood is not actually democratic or actually decentralised. It is not democratic because elections have nothing to do with a democracy; the ancient Greeks already correctly saw it as an oligarchic principle. Yet, around half the 19th century this began to be intermixed. To proof the point, look around: Are all of these ruling politicians really ruling according to "the people's" wishes, which exist overwhelmigly of workers? Of course not. Paul Cockshott wrote a useful article about this (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/788/democracy-or-oligarchy/) back in 2009, which I still wholeheartly recommend.

Ah, this old argument. How the ancient Greeks saw democracy is irrelevant. In the year two thousand and fourteenth of Our Lord, democracy means a state in which the legislature and the executive posts are elected. Almost every state is a democracy. The fact that these states are - let's be honest here - utter shit - simply means that bourgeois democracy is utter shit. By claiming that these are not "real" democracies you simply open the way for an alliance with radical liberals who want some sort of "real" democracy, with no class content, to be achieved by limiting campaign contributions or modifying the parliamentary rules or instituting sortition or whatever. A bourgeois state where the executive offices are chosen on the basis of sortition would still be utter shit, and the change to sortition would not bring us one step closer to the overthrow of bourgeois property relations.


The state is also not really decentralised. Most of the decisions that matter happen on a centralised level, only to be carried out on a more local level. This is what is happening frequently in the Netherlands and again I'm sure in many other countries as well.

And I'm sure that would be the case in a socialist society as well, given that we live in a world where global commerce has already linked the various regions of the planet together to such an extent that they can not be separated. Either production is planned on the level of society, or we are back to market mechanisms and the attendant anarchy.


So, undoubtedly the soviet model will be brought up too. This is the idea that worker councils (soviets) take over the political reigns of society. A local council is elected by the local population, a regional council is elected by the representatives of the local council, which in turn elects the national council, etc. This has its own democratic limitations however. The [i]direct impact/i] of the local population is decimated at each higher stage of the soviet model. Furthermore, historically speaking, have soviets not been in continuous session, meaning it couldn't act as a political body. Each time this model was tried in the 20th century, an established political force had to quickly step in to start governing society.

This shows a complete misunderstanding of what made soviets distinct. A system of nested collegial bodies is nothing special - the point is that the soviets were working bodies. They couldn't be in continuous session, among other reasons, because they weren't mere talk-shops but a way for working people to directly participate in the administration of society.

[Q]

Signal words like "confused", "irrelevant", "complete misunderstanding" and just putting up an unsourced rant about what 870 thinks is right is what we might have come to expect of him. Why people thank such mindnumbing garbage is something that I just won't understand.

Sorry, you're just not worth my time anymore 870. You may yell your ideology all as much you like. When you actually start to engage in arguments, source your arguments or stop misrepresenting the argument of your debating opponents, do give me a shout.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Signal words like "confused", "irrelevant", "complete misunderstanding" and just putting up an unsourced rant about what 870 thinks is right is what we might have come to expect of him. Why people thank such mindnumbing garbage is something that I just won't understand.

Sorry, you're just not worth my time anymore 870. You may yell your ideology all as much you like. When you actually start to engage in arguments, source your arguments or stop misrepresenting the argument of your debating opponents, do give me a shout.

Hey, don't get me wrong, the only reason you're not on my ignore list is that you're a mod, and apparently it would completely ruin the site if the users were able to filter out your constant claims about how the microscopic current associated with Lih is "orthodox Marxism".

The fact remains, however, that your claims about the actually existing democratic republics not being "real" democracies are an obvious sop to liberalism (as is your constant championing of the European Union), and the "argument", so to speak, you always give for this claim is just embarrassing. Maybe you think we live in anarchy, too, since the office of the archon eponymous has been vacant for quite a few centuries.

Oh, and complaining that my posts are "unsourced" is really rich considering your only "source" that is relevant to this discussion is an opinion piece by Cockshott (again, though, don't get me wrong, Cockshott is a smart fellow, but that opinion piece is not a "source" in an academic sense).

[Tim Cornelis]

I didn't really understand why orthodox Marxists felt the need to refer to the dictatorship of the proletariat as 'democratic republic', until I found this one sentence which could be interpreted as them being synonymous, it reads: "If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown." (A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891, Friedrich Engels). It would seem from this that the democratic republic is the dictatorship of the proletariat under which the party of the working class comes to power. However, I cannot really understand why, reading the entire text, one would come to that conclusion as it refers to the USA and France as "democratic republics". Other than that one sentence I cannot find one source that you could somehow interpret that it uses 'democratic republic' to refer to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

This sentence provides more context that should clear up any misinterpretation: "The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which in our modern social conditions becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out" (Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels)

"But one thing has been forgotten. Since the German Workers' party expressly declares that it acts within "the present-day national state", hence within its own state, the Prusso-German Empire — its demands would indeed be otherwise largely meaningless, since one only demands what one has not got — it should not have forgotten the chief thing, namely, that all those pretty little gewgaws rest on the recognition of the so-called sovereignty of the people and hence are appropriate only in a democratic republic.

Since one has not the courage — and wisely so, for the circumstances demand caution — to demand the democratic republic, as the French workers' programs under Louis Philippe and under Louis Napoleon did, one should not have resorted, either, to the subterfuge, neither "honest" [1] nor decent, of demanding things which have meaning only in a democratic republic from a state which is nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with a feudal admixture, already influenced by the bourgeoisie, and bureaucratically carpentered, and then to assure this state into the bargain that one imagines one will be able to force such things upon it "by legal means".

Even vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium in the democratic republic, and has no suspicion that it is precisely in this last form of state of bourgeois society that the class struggle has to be fought out to a conclusion — even it towers mountains above this kind of democratism, which keeps within the limits of what is permitted by the police and not permitted by logic." (Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx)

"And people think they have taken quite an extraordinary bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap." (Civil War in France).

"Furthermore it must not be forgotten that it is precisely the democratic republic which is the logical form of bourgeois rule ... And yet the democratic republic always remains the last form of bourgeois rule, that in which it goes to pieces. With this I conclude this rigmarole." (Friedrich Engels to Eduard Bernstein In Zurich).

Democratic republic is synonymous with liberal democracy and bourgeois democracy.

The notion that "this is not a real democracy" is a true political pet peeve of mine, I'll try to explain why.

"It should be noted though that bourgeois statehood is not actually democratic or actually decentralised. It is not democratic because elections have nothing to do with a democracy; the ancient Greeks already correctly saw it as an oligarchic principle. Yet, around half the 19th century this began to be intermixed. To proof the point, look around: Are all of these ruling politicians really ruling according to "the people's" wishes, which exist overwhelmigly of workers? Of course not. Paul Cockshott wrote a useful article about this back in 2009, which I still wholeheartly recommend."

This in itself already hints at two fallacies: the no true Scottsman fallacy and an etymological fallacy.

The Ancient Greek's concept of democracy was that about one third of the ruling class was permitted to rule Athens for a number of years. If only their definition of democracy is legitimate then any sort of 'socialist democracy' is by definition 'undemocratic'. But indeed their position on democracy is irrelevant as it has attained a different meaning over time and has become shorthand to refer to 'liberal democracy'.* Similarly,

(*"Liberal democracy is a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of liberalism, i.e. protecting the rights of the individual, which are generally enshrined in law. It is characterised by fair, free, and competitive elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all persons. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world.").

And of course, ^ this definition applies to the Netherlands, USA, France, and Italy, etc. So yes, Western countries are genuine democracies in that they have implemented a functioning system of liberal democracy. The objective of socialists should not be to say that we are for a true democracy but expose liberal democracy as not being ideologically neutral (and the term liberal democracy lends itself well for this) and instead fight for a socialist democracy.

You displayed wroth at the lack of sources used, but for the arguments I addressed so far you yourself did not provide sources.

As for the sources you did provide: I read a bit of the Israeli Marxist, but forgot the name of the essay after I closed the PDF. I anticipated it to be a decent article, however whether the majority is truly served in a DOTP should be of secondary concern. As long as the institutions do not reproduce class society it doesn't matter whether the soviet system has limitations in being representative.

[Five Year Plan]

To clarify some things in your post, Tim, which I mostly agree with.


I didn't really understand why orthodox Marxists felt the need to refer to the dictatorship of the proletariat as 'democratic republic', until I found this one sentence which could be interpreted as them being synonymous, it reads: "If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown." (A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891, Friedrich Engels). It would seem from this that the democratic republic is the dictatorship of the proletariat under which the party of the working class comes to power. However, I cannot really understand why, reading the entire text, one would come to that conclusion as it refers to the USA and France as "democratic republics". Other than that one sentence I cannot find one source that you could somehow interpret that it uses 'democratic republic' to refer to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

I think the words you are ignoring in your attempt to understand the Engels quote are bolded above. Engels is making an argument against the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat is somehow anti-democratic or that democracy is "poison" to socialism (as some people on this site, like Remus Bleys, have said they think), or that you can have socialism under a monarchy (as the poster known as "impossible" has stated). The point was not to talk about the substance of democracy in a way that did not differentiate its class basis.


This sentence provides more context that should clear up any misinterpretation: "The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which in our modern social conditions becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out" (Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels)Right, so socialists should struggle for democratic forms, as Marx and Engels did in their day, without ever stopping short at just advocating for a bourgeois democracy. That's because there's no hint that, if these democratic forms alone are achieved, that they automatically carry with them a proletarian class content. It's possible that a bourgeoisie might, in unique situations, institute "democracy" in places (like Japan) for its own purposes, so long as the working-class movement there has effectively been silence, and that the institution of democracy doesn't carry the threat of destabilization. Adding proletarian class content to democracy requires a proletarian revolution, which should be the banner under which socialists struggle for democracy in places where there currently is none (as 870 points out, a limited number of societies).

All the rest of your quotes are variations on this same thing. Q talks about struggling for democracy independent of proletarian revolution, and independent on the class basis of the democracy. For Marx and Engels, democracy was important precisely because it represented the form of governance under which a proletarian dictatorship would have to assume power. When democratic demands are backed by militant mass activity by the working class, they can help propel the working class to a revolutionary seizure of power, especially in cases (like in developing parts of the world right now) where the comprador bourgeoisie will fight grassroots working-class movements for democracy tooth and nail as destabilizing the dictatorial form in which exploitation is currently being carried out, and therefore destabilizing exploitation itself.

The way Q talks about democracy makes it sound as if he is a stageist wanting to implement "true" bourgeois democracy before turning to actual socialist propaganda.

[Thirsty Crow]

Should it? Why should that be the case? People who worship decentralisation more often than not express the locally- and nationally-limited interests of the petite bourgeoisie than any sort of proletarian class-consciousness.
I don't think you read the part you responded to with this all that carefully. Or maybe it is that there are some political problems here.

It is quite irrelevant what you think of assorted decentralization folk. Indeed, it might just be that their politics is grounded in the social experience of the petite bourgeoisie. But we're not talking that here, but a functional revolutionary dictatorship of the working class.

In this sense, this is the most sensible approach:


In bourgeois statehood there is a concept that might be useful here: the Americans call it homerule, in Europe it is called subsidiarity. It is the idea that everything that can reasonably be carried out and decided locally or regionally, should be done on that level.

Disregard the fact that this forms a part of bourgeois political theory. The idea itself is definitely useful and preferable to a fSU style centralism, with the important focus being the part about feasibility ("that can reasonably").

This also implies a demarcation between these matters of local and/or regional governance and public matters (such as organizing production and distribution and so on). I don't actually think you're making that important distinction and instead suspect that any form of decentralization can threaten to involve these matters, such as organizing production and distribution. It is not necessarily so.



The fact that these states are - let's be honest here - utter shit - simply means that bourgeois democracy is utter shit. By claiming that these are not "real" democracies you simply open the way for an alliance with radical liberals who want some sort of "real" democracy, with no class content, to be achieved by limiting campaign contributions or modifying the parliamentary rules or instituting sortition or whatever.

I think this is precisely the point to this vague talk of a "democratic republic" and a "real democracy", to get bourgeois "radicals" onto the fold.