Separation of powers and "checks and balances"

[Armchair Partisan]

What is to be said about them? It's a pretty standard concept that has been applied, or paid lip service to, in most capitalist countries. The idea is clear - divide up governance into three (or more) branches that must be controlled separately.

What is its role in capitalist fake-democracies today? I mean, its function of preventing too much power from being centralized in one person makes sense, as the bourgeoisie has wanted (ever since the Jacobins) to prevent a single tyrant from arbitrarily intervening with the workings of capitalism. In that sense, it could be an important stabilizing force. On the other hand, it seems to me that the "checks and balances" also ensure that no single government can make sweeping, large-scale (progressive) reform, and to give an excuse to put unelected agents of the ruling class into power, with popular elections only granting control over the less important branches. I guess that is also a stabilizing force, in a way.:lol:

I'm mostly asking so that I know what to say whenever someone talks to me about checks and balances again. Does any of this seem correct to y'all? What are your opinions on this concept? Does anything related to "separation of powers" have any use at all in building socialism after a revolution?

[#FF0000]

Well I think some sort of system of checks and balances is just a smart way to organize things. In the US, though, our system is outrageously complex when compared to others countries. For example, if France wanted to change its constitution, it'd take a simple 3/5s vote in favor from the French parliament. In the US you need something like 4/5s of state legislatures to be on board, which actually means you need several hundred individual chambers to vote in favor.

Checks and balances ought to be present in any type of organization but there's definitely such a thing as over-engineering.

[Sinister Intents]

Well I think some sort of system of checks and balances is just a smart way to organize things. In the US, though, our system is outrageously complex when compared to others countries. For example, if France wanted to change its constitution, it'd take a simple 3/5s vote in favor from the French parliament. In the US you need something like 4/5s of state legislatures to be on board, which actually means you need several hundred individual chambers to vote in favor.

Checks and balances ought to be present in any type of organization but there's definitely such a thing as over-engineering.

Could it be said to be intentionally over engineered?

[#FF0000]

Could it be said to be intentionally over engineered?

Yeah it could be -- the founders talked a lot about protecting democracy from the tyranny of "the mob" as much as the tyranny of the crown. And I guess it worked. Every other country in the world has had some sort of change in government between the 18th and 20th century. Meanwhile the United States government is the oldest in the world.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I believe that the concepts of separation of powers and 'checks & balances' is one of the better contributions of the 18th century revolutions. I'm very suspicious of putting all political power in the hands of one sole person or one sole group of people.

However, the problem with the American model is that the Executive Branch has far too much power.....and that's the point. I would argue that a proper socialsist 'state' would combine the Executive and Legislative Branches.....if not do away with the Executive Branch entirely.

[Vogel]

The US has two ways to amend the constitution, which has been done by every generation except the current one. Either 2/3's of both House and Senate approve it along with 3/4 the states; or 2/3 the states call for a convention then 3/4 of the states approve it without congress. President has no veto, Supreme Court can't strike it down.

It usually takes 7 years.

As for why checks and balances are needed, well i think this article pretty accurately describes Marx's views to the state. https://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state

First thoughts: The state is its own sphere of life. Although the state is supposed to regulate and organize regular life, people will make their interests and the state interests their own. Give all power to one branch, abuse ensues. Marx thought it was a sign of a dysfunctional society.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

First of all, bourgeois democracies are not "fake" democracies. They are, well, bourgeois, and to us they're shit, but that doesn't make them "fake". The reason I bring this up is that there is political line, particularly persistent in American politics but not unknown in the UK etc., that we simply need "real" democracy and that this is somehow equal to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Anyway, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about the proletarian state (or semi-state, as Lenin puts it) as any other state, where "business as usual" needs to be taken care of. The proletarian state is an organisation of the working class for protecting and spreading the revolution. It exists while the world is burning and society is being transformed from the ground up. Maybe the revolutionary authorities will have a control and examination yuan, a chamber of tribunes and god and Simon Bolivar know what else, but surely "checks and balances" are less important in a state of emergency, where the chief task of the political authorities is to act as the naked class rule of the proletariat as it dismantles the old society.

[Fakeblock]

Provisionally, I would say that the separation of powers serves not only the function of structural exclusion of the popular classes from the State apparatus, but also of bringing cohesiveness to the ruling classes - that is of bringing balance to a State that is, by its very nature, traversed by class antagonisms. I would be vary of indulging in the bourgeois myth of power that the concept of 'checks and balances' is built on.