Now, I’m a democratic Marxist, meaning that I believe in a Marxist economy within a democratic political system. Now in all Tankie states, the elections are never unopposed. I think there should be a multi-party system using Single Transferable Vote to ensure that the people’s voice can be heard. Also, on AnComs: I have many AnCom-like views, but I believe that multi-party democratic socialist states are just as legitimate as collectives of anarchist communes.

(Hopefully I won’t get many downvotes from this)

  • SFloss (they/them)
    9·
    3 years ago

    Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests… The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence… they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable."

    The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine “only” by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this “only” signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of “quantity being transformed into quality”: democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper.

    • Lenin in State and Revolution

    The smashing of a state and its subsequent replacement with a proletarian state (i.e. what Marxism-Leninism calls for) IS democratic by the very fact that the new state represents the majority of people rather than the minority bourgeois class. Marxism is democratic. To call for “Democratic Marxism” is both redundant and shows a lack of understanding Marxism, not to mention a lack of understanding of bourgeois democracy and parlimentarism, which Lenin summarizes nicely below:

    To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament–this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentaryconstitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

    • GrandAyatollaLenin
      2·
      3 years ago

      I would agree that the Revolution is democratic, but it’s a fallacy to assume the work ends with the seizure of power. History has shown that the proletarian state continues to exist for decades, not just as an administrative apparatus, but as a tool of class struggle against internal and external enemies, i.e. it exists as a political instrument, as a state in the full sense of the word. And when the proletarian state does disappear, its never been from the conclusion of the struggle, but from its failure.

      Once a Revolutionary state has been established, it can not be counted on to stay Revolutionary forever. As both domestic and international circumstances change, it can become unrepresentative and undemocratic. Nor can further Revolution correct these errors without risking earlier achievement. That would be dangerous in the context of global Imperialism.

      It’s therefore essential that workers have a genuine way to impart change within the state, at a sufficiently high level, that these methods be clearly presented to them, and that workers be allowed to organize for change without harassment by the existing authorities. A multiparty system is the ideal response.