Ask a Red, Second Edition

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The two emerged essentially in parallel, each influencing the other tremendously. Far more than either party would like to admit.
Fair point, fair point. I'm probably playing a little too casually into the Trotskyist tendency to claim apolistic succession from Lenin, there.

just like how North Korea is "Democratic".
Very trite.
 
I was reading your response in the other thread and was wondering at what point did kings "feel" they were divinely given authority. Kingdoms only work at certain points of size and "reach". It seems to me, that a large kingdom would have at some point the feel that there is a lack of representation. The "rule" would have to be broken up, or a more secure feeling of governance would have to be implemented.

I am also interested in your take on the "jewish" custom of loans and debts that only lasted 50 years, thus not placing the burden on the next generation, but yet allowing the flow of "economy" to begin fresh. They also had private property that remained in each family that when lost for some "stupid" reason, was also returned to the family every 50 years.

Thanks
 
It seems to me that what you're taking issue with here isn't actually direct democracy, or at least not as such, but of unbridled majoritarianism. The obvious solution to such issues is, just as in liberal democratic forms, the introduction of various constitutional restraints on majority power. These are not all incompatible with even extremely devolved councilist forms, and the assumption that only neat and ordered state powers are capable of avoiding "mob rule" is essentially an upper-class prejudice against the "swinish multitude" which the average punter like you and I, being of that same multitude, would be best to reject as elitist and anti-democratic. In practice, powerful and well-organised minorities pose the greater threat to democracy, as illustrated today by corporate influence in government, and in historical revolutionary situations by the ascendency of party bureaucrats. The "tyrannical majority" is, in the list of reasonable concerns, very much a distant second.

I see what your getting at, but, I don't know, when I think direct democracy, I think of places like Switzerland where they banned minarets from being constructed, which you would think would be something of a protected right, but no I guess.
 
Also, without a state in place it becomes much more difficult for the majority to impose its rulings on everyone. These constitutional limits for minority rights are necessary precisely because the state has ridiculous amounts of power over the populace.
 
I see what your getting at, but, I don't know, when I think direct democracy, I think of places like Switzerland where they banned minarets from being constructed, which you would think would be something of a protected right, but no I guess.
And in good old constitutional Britain, homosexuality was illegal well into the 1960s. These things are a bit more complex than political structure alone.

Opinion of a red on Hugo Chavez and Venezuela
He's a force for good, overall, but what he's building is really just a somewhat radical social democracy, rather than socialism proper (let alone "lower stage communism", in the Marxian sense). The long-term significance of the Venezuelan situation, rather, is the increasing mobilisation and empowerment of the working class, particular the impoverished people of the barrios, which is beginning to go beyond the recurring left-wing populist movements of that region. The real test of the Venezuelan movement will be whether or not the working class are able to break with Chavez's essentially petty-bourgeois socialism, and begin to assert political power outside of the state apparatus.
 
At what point in time did you become a Socialist?
 
Also, without a state in place it becomes much more difficult for the majority to impose its rulings on everyone. These constitutional limits for minority rights are necessary precisely because the state has ridiculous amounts of power over the populace.
Like I said, you're starting to sound like Murray Rothbard.
 
I like the bit where one of their preferred 'civics' is eudaimonic, in light of which his barbaric description on the Alpha Centauri website is simply inexplicable.
 
Why is it that some of the worst human rights offenders of the 20th century have been self described "Socialist" nations? Stalin, Pol Pot, even Nazi Germany called itself "National Socialist". Granted, there have been many self described non-socialist countries involved in various attrocities but so called socialist ones don't seem to be any great exception.
 
This was asked within the last three pages.
 
Why is it that some of the worst human rights offenders of the 20th century have been self described "Socialist" nations? Stalin, Pol Pot, even Nazi Germany called itself "National Socialist". Granted, there have been many self described non-socialist countries involved in various attrocities but so called socialist ones don't seem to be any great exception.
Because virtually every political movement in the 20th century described itself as socialist at one point or another. It was what the kewl kids were doing.
You will notice that very few of the worst human rights offenders of the 19th century described themselves as "socialist"
 
Anyone who considers the Nazis even vaguely socialists after the Night of the Long Knives and the purge of the Strasserites and Rhom is probably not the best person to be asking those questions.
Yes, Nazism was 'National Socialism', but North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but nobody is going to include them under a list of 'atrocities comitted by democracies'. In the same vein, you shouldn't include the Nazis on a list of 'socialist atrocities'.
 
Does the USSR under Stalin resemble a Socialist economy or just State Capitalism?
 
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