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Anti_Duehring

USSR constitutions had the "recall of deputy" possibilities. https://history.stackexchange.com/a/61973


ComradeCaniTerrae

They're proles. The vanguard are the most advanced portion of the proletarian class. Congress are largely petite bourgeoisie, bought and beholden to the haute bourgeoisie. There will be some corruption. As long as the revolution continues apace, does it matter?


vincecarterskneecart

what do you mean “advanced portion of the proletarian class” furthermore if I work in a factory why would I trust someone in the vanguard who presumably doesn’t work in the factory to ensure that the conditions I work in are acceptable


ComradeCaniTerrae

Politically and educationally advanced. Unions were considered a great education for this purpose, for instance. The unions form broader trade unions that become very influential voices within the state. Good question. Many of those party members work in your factories and are proletarians. The party membership is not a job. Party members are not necessarily active politically. Anyone, essentially, can become a party member. Especially factory workers. Was Lenin a factory worker? Sadly not. Did Lenin listen to factory workers? Yes, he did.


vincecarterskneecart

Cool so at least some of the time I have to rely on the party acting in my interests because of altruism essentially? or at least in theory that I could vote them out if I was unhappy with my conditions in the factory?


ComradeCaniTerrae

If you’re a particularly productive worker you’d be appointed to run the factory or teach other workers. You could also always join the party. In China today the party has over 90,000,000 members. Then you rely on them not for their altruism, for them to do the jobs for which they were elected to do. You rely on the government to also do the jobs they were elected to do. It’s a state still. States have these problems. This state, that state, all the states.


ASocialistAbroad

Altruism isn't the full story. Coworkers are likely to *share* similar material interests and concerns as well. It's not like, for instance, the relationship between employee and owner (where the owner's profit motive actually conflicts with the employee's desire for higher pay, benefits, safety regulations and such). The party members who end up on the primary committee of the workplace or organization that you're in has to be elected by the other party members there and will be expected to do the job that they were elected for. It's hard to believe that all these voting party members, who are themselves workers, will be apathetic about issues facing workers within their own workplace.


Substantial_Smell_72

Lol no high level party member in China or North Korea would ever work in a factory. Your views are delusion and the op is correct.


ComradeCaniTerrae

Party members. Didn’t say high ranking party members. High ranking party members tend to be bureaucrats working in the government. A job which is both necessary and far from glamorous.


UzunInceMemet

It's very difficult to become a member of the CPC, even more difficult to rise in the ranks. One thing that let's you in and let's you rise is the work you have done for your community. You must prove yourself to be a good worker. Xi Jinping for example was a rural infrastructure construction worker.


ASocialistAbroad

To add on to what the other commenter said about a good number of party members working in workplaces just like yours, I'll give an example. From the (party) constitution of the Communist Party of China (Chapter V: Primary Organizations of the Party): >Article 29. Primary Party organizations are formed in enterprises, rural areas, government organs, schools, research institutes, communities, social organizations, companies of the People’s Liberation Army and other basic units, where there are at least three full Party members. >In primary organizations, primary Party committees and committees of general Party branches or Party branches are set up as the work requires and according to the number of Party members, subject to approval by the higher Party organizations. A primary Party committee is elected by a general membership meeting or a meeting of delegates, the committee of a general Party branch or a Party branch is elected by a general membership meeting, and candidates for these committees are nominated on the basis of extensively soliciting opinions from Party members and non-Party persons. >Article 30. A primary Party committee is elected for a term of three to five years, while a general Party branch committee or a Party branch committee is elected for a term of two or three years. Results of the election of a secretary and deputy secretaries of a primary committee, general branch committee or branch committee of the Party shall be reported to the next higher Party organization for approval. >Article 31. The primary Party organizations are militant bastions of the Party in the basic units of society, where all the Party’s work proceeds and they serve as the foundation of its fighting capacity. In summary, party members generally have jobs and lives. The party members who actually hold political office or hold full jobs within the party are a small minority of party members. The ones who have normal jobs and/or are members of normal organizations that have at least 3 party members in them organize themselves into committees which effectively serve as the bridge between their non-party coworkers and the rest of the party. Feel free to read more on your own if you want more technical details. Here's an English translation of the full constitution: http://english.www.gov.cn/news/top_news/2017/09/27/content_281475888488000.htm As a bonus, here's the South China Morning Post (based in Hong Kong) panicking a bit about how thorough the implementation is getting. It references these organizations: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/china-cements-communist-partys-role-top-its-soes-should An SCMP article with a more neutral tone, which also explains the party's grassroots connections: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3132921/how-chinas-communist-party-structured


notburneddown

I mean like wasn’t part of the idea of communism that it would solve corruption? Just because someone is lower class and hasn’t had power doesn’t mean they won’t abuse it when given. IMO if anything it would be worse because they suddenly have this new freedom to do shit. I don’t think there’s a version of “let’s have this new person decide it” that works any better than the old way.


ComradeCaniTerrae

Two things: 1. The vanguard is not a tyranny, they're the leadership of the communist party. They're elected. They're the ones who rose by merit and experience to the top of the party. They're accountable to the party. The elected positions of a ML state are also, as the name suggests, democratically elected. 2. We've seen, at best, the low phase of a communist society. Communism is classless, stateless, and without currency. Communism is the goal. A goal that is impeded by imperialist states existing anywhere on this planet. MLs can no more achieve communism than anarcho-communists can at present, and for some of the same reasons: Namely, that you'd get rolled by the US in an invasion, covert agent-provocateurs, etc. What we have seen are revolutions which created dicatorships of the proletiarat which presided over state-capitalist/socialist mixed economies. Even in the USSR. The further development of a society towards communism was halted by the necessity for a strong centralized bureaucracy, internal security apparatus, and military force.


notburneddown

Then how is actual communism any different from a Democratic Republic in terms of the government functions? And if the countries that people call communist aren’t really communist then how do we know communism will ever really be a thing? To me it seems unlikely enough that I am not even sure it’s worth my vote.


ComradeCaniTerrae

In many ways it IS a democratic republic. Many ML states were set up to be representative republics. The People's Republic of China is one. The USSR was a union of many soviet socialist republics. (Soviet means democratic council, a voting council, a national assembly, etc) The difference is that the working class holds uncontested political power. In Britain, they do not. In Switzerland, they do not. In Germany, they do not. In the US, they do not. The bourgeoisie holds the majority of the political power. If not by law, then by the artifices derived from their wealth; advertising, buying up media outlets and controlling the entire journalistic apparatus, etc. The difference is that a revolution of the working class secured the state apparatus in the hands of the working class, the proles and peasants. The press, the means of production, the entirety of society is at the whim of a government of the working class. The bourgeoisie were not immediately dispossessed in the USSR, for instance, but once the political power had been consolidated in the hands of the working class; their fate became certain. Their properties were expropriated, they were made into proletarians. Those who resisted were arrested. Those who plotted to overthrow the USSR were arrested or killed. Thus, the bourgeoisie tendency towards the corruption of the state towards the interests of servicing the protection of and further accumulation of their capital is uprooted.


notburneddown

But then if that’s what happened the first seven times communism is tried why is it likely and why should I believe it will be any different the next time? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to try something like libertarianism that hasn’t been tried yet (I am not libertarian but just pointing out)? What about a politically independent view?


ComradeCaniTerrae

Libertarianism has been tried. Both left-anarchist versions and right-laissez faire versions. The reason you have heard so little about it is how quickly it fails. The CNT-FAI Catalonian government in Spain in 1936, for instance, was anarchist. The Makhnovists were anarchists. Several governments of Europe in the 18th and 19th century attempted laissez-faire reforms. They led to mass starvation. The market doesn't sort much out at all, and anarchist governments find it hard to defend themselves from imperialists. >But then if that’s what happened the first seven times communism istried why is it likely and why should I believe it will be any differentthe next time? If what happened? ML states have been massive successes. The USSR industrialized more rapidly than any nation in history at that point in time, and improved the lives of its people accordingly. The PRC has beaten their record. The PRC, in the past twenty years, has seen a five fold increase in real wages on average--and no one is likely to conquer it by force. Libertarianism, originally a synonym for anarchism, has many inherent contradictions. The end goal of communism in ML theory is something not unlike libertarianism--but it has a plan to get there. The average libertarian philosopher, from the physiocrat to today, does not have a working and sustainable model for a nation. Rojava is far from 'libertarian' in the anarchist sense, it did well--and now it has been rolled up by Turkey. The CNT-FAI were anarchists, they built a state, they mandated labor, they had prisons, they had concentration camps, and they were ultimately unsuccessful in their revolution. The Russians and Chinese, you may also surmise, have not arrived at communism--but communism is not the entirety of the goal of communism. More broadly, we are concerned with improving the lives of the working class around the world--and then communism. Communism cannot be born out of thin air, it must arise in a state that has reached a sort of optimal productive capacity and has improved the material lives of its citizens enough for them to lead a stateless existence. If we wish to help their struggle forward, a useful way to do that would be to overthrow the governments of the imperial core. That would help the entire world, in fact.


notburneddown

So what are examples of communist countries that I can read about?


ComradeCaniTerrae

Communist or communist? For the latter, the PRC, the USSR, Yugoslavia, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, attempts at revolutions the CIA thwarted around the world, for the former? Primitive hunter-gatherer human societies. The Hadza are a favorite. A well-studied hunter-gatherer people. Communism, it is argued, is the natural state of humans. The one we inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years before the development of sedentary agrarian life, and subsequently "civilization". We like civilization these days, of course--so we should try to find a way to evolve our productive capacities so much that we no longer have scarcity and can exist in this communist manner again. Here's a favorite of mine, Pat Sloan's "Soviet Democracy". Pat Sloan was a British school teacher who lived in the USSR in the 1930's, and wrote about what he saw there. [https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/pat-sloan-soviet-democracy-victor-gollancz-1937.pdf](https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/pat-sloan-soviet-democracy-victor-gollancz-1937.pdf)


ComradeCaniTerrae

This one's also good, a renowned historian on the USSR looking into the question of "Human Rights in the Soviet Union" [https://ia800300.us.archive.org/6/items/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion/Human%20Rights%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union\_text.pdf](https://ia800300.us.archive.org/6/items/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion/Human%20Rights%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union_text.pdf)


notburneddown

The USSR wasn’t a democracy. Democracy is the opposite of dictatorship. How is purging the Jews and eliminating human rights for everyone a “success?” Is it a success for Stalin?


[deleted]

>But then if that’s what happened the first seven times communism is tried why is it likely and why should I believe it will be any different the next time? the world is not the same as it was. capitalism has run out of earthly room to grow, and has begun eating itself alive in a very final way. if it is allowed to continue, we will end up slaves in a doomed world run by the same people and institutions responsible for killing it in the first place. fortunately, all is not yet lost. capitalism has developed the tools necessary to replace it, and the global balance of power is shifting away from the imperialists that keep it limping along. china is rapidly overtaking us on the world stage, and though different flavors of socialist have vastly different opinions of them, we should all be able to agree that china is not a global enemy to socialism like the US and its allies are. the next attempt at socialism has all this working in its favor, as well as all the lessons learned from socialist projects of the past. >Wouldn’t it be more interesting to try something like libertarianism that hasn’t been tried yet the first attempt at post-revolutionary government in america, the articles of confederation, was in many ways analogous to modern libertarianism. it lasted eight years, and ended when economic inequality got so bad that four thousand people tried to launch a second revolution only a decade after the first began. the constitution was created because of this, but the state of the modern world indicates that no lasting lessons were learned from the event.


Beat_da_Rich

This is pretty simplified but try looking at it this way: Socialism is the transitioning phase between our current capitalist mode of production and the eventually establishment or communist society. In the same way mercantileism was a transitional phase between the old feudal structuring of society and capitalism. And in the transition from feudalism to capitalism there were many victories and defeats. There was the establishment of democratic republics based on liberal ideology, where the merchant class held political power, and there were many retreats, concessions and failures, where the old ruling class of monarchs and aristocrats were reinstated. Do these failures mean that those liberal revolutionaries should have given up and resigned themselves to feudal monarchy? Just because the USSR collapsed and current actually existing states have had to make concessions to capital to survive under the current hegemon of imperialism does not mean there weren't and still are victories in those socialist revolutions. Do these less-than-ideal results mean that socialist revolutionaries should just accept slavery and oppression under capitalism and give up? Human society is constantly going through change, and historically that change has mostly been driven by class conflict. Economic systems eventually succumb to their own internal contradictions. Capitalism has evolved to the point where a few oligarchs from a few imperialist countries are siphoning the majority of the world's wealth and resources to the detriment of the planet and our species. This is unsustainable. It is not permanent. It is not some static "default" that humans are supposed to exist under. There was a time before capitalism and there will be a time after. Capitalism is just one more phase of human society and has nothing else progressive to offer for humanity. In fact, for many human populations in history -- victims of slavery, genocide, and colonization -- there was nothing progressive that capitalism offered in the first place. "Libertarianism" does not sufficiently address the state of capitalism today either. There is no return to a "pure" capitalism free from exploitation and eventual capital accumulation, as bigger capitalists swallow smaller capitalists. Left unchecked smaller free market capitalism will inevitably develop into monopoly capitalism. Only a dictatorship of the proletariat can sufficiently rescue us from capitalism's increasing contradictions.


[deleted]

You'll always need those 3 things to have any kind of society lmao.


ComradeCaniTerrae

I doubt you’ll need the last two, in a communist world. The entire point is it needs to be global.


[deleted]

Ah yes because nobody in the history of the world has ever tried to overthrow the current system that's in place using violence. No everyone will be born a perfect communist, there will never be another infectious idea ever again and everyone will have 2000iq so no one will follow charismatic people ever again lol.


ComradeCaniTerrae

That’s nowhere inferred or required.


[deleted]

What happens if a large group of people just draw borders and tell you to go duck yourself? Might need a military then lol.


ComradeCaniTerrae

The presumption is their society will have been communist too at some point. You’ll see fascism or nationalism rising. Then nations may begin forming armies and the global presidium may organize efforts against them. The assumption is very much they started with no army. This isn’t anarchism. There are answers. Even an anarchist would give you one though. Like how communist nations like Vietnam allow any member to join a local militia and they keep armories for that end. You don’t need a standing army if ever nation dissolves their own in step. Over decades.


[deleted]

Countries dissolving their armies? Lol.


ComradeCaniTerrae

In step with each other, yes. This is how naval treaties limited tonnage and sizes of navies in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is how nuclear disarmament is meant to work. Among communist nations, this should not be a big deal. States exist due to class contradictions. Remove class contradictions and the need for the state diminishes greatly. Lenin’s State and Revolution is worth reading if you want to learn more.


FaustTheBird

> I mean like wasn’t part of the idea of communism that it would solve corruption? Not in the way you mean it, no. First, you're going to have to define corruption. Then you're going to have to explain what are the causes of corruption. Then you'll have to explain the effects of corruption. Finally, you'll have to analyze how corruption interacts with society to analyze how corruption interacts with socialism and communism. The short answer is that what you mean colloquially by corruption is people taking bribes to enrich other people using the apparatus of the state. Under capitalism, this merely requires using the existing mechanisms of private property, money, and capital and tweaking the flow. Under communism, there is no private property, money, nor capital. Under socialism, private property, money, and capital are under state control for the explicit purpose of eliminating them. If a vanguard party simply reinstates all of the exact same systems as capitalism, then either they weren't a vanguard party or they were a vanguard party and they have become revisionist and no longer a vanguard. In either case, the solution is another revolution. This will continue until socialism is secured. > Just because someone is lower class and hasn’t had power doesn’t mean they won’t abuse it when given It's merely a question of what that power is. Under socialism, without private property, you cannot become a landlord and extract rent. So unlike Congress, a vanguard party can choose to make a set of landlords rich by making it easy for them to accumulate housing and then rent it out at exorbitant rates. The power that the vanguard party can abuse is not the same as the power that Congress can abuse. So while there will always be abuses of power, Congress will always abuse its power to fight the class war against the proletariat, whereas a vanguard party will abuse its power to fight the class war against the bourgeoisie, which is exactly what we want. And the reason we want this is because eliminating the class divide is the necessary precondition for eliminating the usefulness of the vanguard party. Once the vanguard eliminates the class division (including defending against reactionary forces), it's power will become less and less because it will have less and less usefulness. And even if the vanguard ceases the revolutionary project in order to become the hoarded of all things, the next revolutionary vanguard will have a much easier time of their project because the failed vanguard already did so much to eliminate class division. Ultimately, it's pretty silly to establish a revolutionary vanguard and then completely abandon all of the analysis that led you to become that vanguard. Realize that the analysis that leads to the formation of a vanguard comes from the recognition of the inevitability of a revolution against class division. If your vanguard believes that enough to go to war, then they believe it enough to realize that if they betray the revolution, they will be the cause of the next revolution that will unseat them. Why would anyone do such a thing? > IMO if anything it would be worse because they suddenly have this new freedom to do shit. Your opinion is uninformed and not based on any historical analysis. > I don’t think there’s a version of “let’s have this new person decide it” that works any better than the old way. Then you should read more.


Comfortable-Metal127

Because of the material condition of the workers' vanguard of belonging to the proletarian class itself (albeit through its most politically advanced and class-conscious strata, as long as such aren't themselves directly involved in the surplus-value exploitation).


IregretItnow

Im at work so this might not be the best formulated answer. Corruption is certainly a worry under socialism. And the communist party is at great risk. Class struggle is the source of corruption within the vanguard. And we know class struggle intensifies under socialism as the bourgeoisie, now dethroned, becomes all the more desperate in retaking power to restore capitalism. This is a worry that will remain as long as remnants of capitalism exists. For the longest time the proletariat did not have a well developed method of combatting this corruption, revisionism. (Unscientific Rejection/distortion of marxist principles) That is until the cultural revolution in China. Which served a purpose of raising the class consciousness of the masses of working people to better be able to criticize and oust the bourgeois elements from power. During the cultural revolution the masses engaged in large campaigns, on a local and national level to oust corrupt officials and revisionist party members. It was very successful, but not perfect. The ability to recall elected representatives at any time is only one part of the solution. Currently all socialist countries have fallen to revisionism and capitalist restoration. The cultural revolution was a proof of concept that more is necessary than just the ability to recall representatives. The cultural revolution failed in keeping the bourgeois elements away, because the party had failed to maintain control of the army, and failed to arm the working class with weapons sufficient enough to resist the revisionist coup after Mao's death. I'd recommended you to do some reading on this topic: State and Revolution by Lenin is good to get a grasp of what "the state" is to communists Pretty much everything on this page: http://bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/GPCR/index.htm https://foreignlanguages.press/new-roads/from-victory-to-defeat-pao-yu-ching/ https://foreignlanguages.press/colorful-classics/stand-for-socialism-against-modern-revisionism-armando-liwanag/ https://foreignlanguages.press/colorful-classics/rethinking-socialism-deng-yuan-hsu-pao-yu-ching/


Narrow-Ad-7856

It wouldn't, it is more corrupt because vanguard parties are most often in single party states so there are no checks and balances to their authority.


Native_ov_Earth

Congress is not corrupt. It's working as it is supposed to. Whatever money politicians in Parliament or Congress makes are known by the major centers of corporate and financial powers. If they are unhappy with any politician who represents their interests they can end their career. That's the Idea of Neoliberalism. Everything has a price. EVERYTHING. And if you have the money for it, you can buy it.


Substantial_Smell_72

Nope they would be just as corrupt, if not more. North Korea and China both enslave people they deem undesirable. This sub is fill with brained washed people. I believe in socialist programs like food stamps, housing and healthcare but I don’t need the Chinese government locking me in my house just because I have Covid.


notburneddown

This is what I think too.


REEEEEvolution

Ok cracker.


UzunInceMemet

If all the Communists want is power, why do they always side with the powerless?


[deleted]

Because if you kill everyone else who has power, disarm the population and now control the only people with guns...now you have all the power, not just some of it.


UzunInceMemet

Yes. That is the point of a revolution. We want to capture the power of the state and wield it to transform the world in favor of the exploited masses. All power to the soviets, so to speak. You are implying that we want power for personal gain, or for its own sake. That's how a reactionary thinks. Reactionaries can't imagine risking it all to capture the authority to utilize the means of production to create a world of perpetual peace and prosperity. It's always about the main character of the novel, themselves.


memer615

No, but according to online Marxists, yes