this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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How would this picture look like in a socialist democracy like some European countries?
At best European nations are social liberal democracies. No European country is a socialist nation.
Is there a non-liberal democracy that isn't, by definition, flawed?
Humanity is flawed, so any of our constructions will be. But democracy is better than any alternative.
I'm not 100% sure about that, but I was more interested in the intrinsic correlation between democracy and Liberalism.
I just can't imagine a democracy that isn't liberal, because all the basic elements of a democracy crumble soon after. Unless, well, you consider ancient Athens' Democracy to be an actual democracy.
I mean I guess you could have a socialist or feudal democracy, but the problem begins with those when you think about what happens with political dissidents
I'm an American. No European country is a socialist nation.
Fuck off
🙄
What are the minimal requirements of a nation to uphold in order to be considered socialist?
A good faith attempt to end the capitalist mode of production and move to the socialist mode as envisioned by Marx. Elimination of the role of capital in the ownership of industry or production, that's your chief characteristic
Oh by that measure I wholeheartedly agree, there is not a single socialist nation in Europe.
How would you describe the European legislation to protect their citizens from the effects of the market and capital? (Welfare, worker rights, pensions, limited work hours, paid leave etc.)
I'm not looking for dialectical nitpicking (maybe Socratic questioning), I'm asking out of curiosity and a want to understand the differences.
That's social liberalism. It's an offshoot of democratic socialism which discarded the goal of transition to socialism for continuing to reform capitalism. It also describes the US New Deal Coalition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
Thank you, very informative.
China is a socialist democracy too. Dont leave them out.
The only part of China which is at all a democracy is Taiwan
Wholesome democracy Taiwan with their very democratic four decades of martial law and concentration camps
Where people can vote for their leaders of any political bent, while people on the mainland are machine gunned for peacefully protesting to gain the right to do so. Wumau tankie fascists are all the same.
This is like an octopus ink cloud of liberal
and bullshit
They still put Chiang "The butcher of Shanghai" Kai Shek on their money to this day. I have some from my time there. Guy was sort of the Zelensky of his day honestly
Taiwan aka Republic of China aka state of China aka not a country. I dont care what a hand full of redditors have told you but they dont have a seat at the UN, the United States and EU doesnt recognize it as a sovereign nation, Taiwan depends on Chinese government and Chinese exports.
Either way, China claims itself to be a democratic socialist country so just own that.
Yeah ok man I don't care about your geopolitics, the point is that the only part of what is considered China which is at all democratic is Taiwan. The PRC is a totalitarian, one party dictatorship.
There are eight (8) other political parties in the mainland People's Republic of China
Their existence is allowed as long as they recognize the CCP as the leading party. That is unusual for a Communist state, but it is definitely not a democracy.
Not that it is a bad thing, it is just not a democracy.
china is more of a democracy than the US what with its supreme court, senate, and electoral college.
Great, I wasn't talking about America. I am also not American, so maybe you're right about it being corrupt.
It doesn't change the fact that China's CCP allows other parties in a controlled manner, to such an extent that they are allowed to exist as long as they acknowledge the superiority of the CCP.
This leads to the tyranny of the majority, as explained in the writings of John Stewart Mill.
Is it morally wrong? I'm not sure you can judge China the same as other nations. I find China to be very complicated and unique in human history.
Is it a democracy? Certainly not a full one. The Majority's tyranny is an easy discerning factor between democracies and republics.
you might have a more accurate assessment if you got the name of the party right lmao
Is it not CCP? Chinese Communist Party?
communist party of china is the preferred nomenclature, communist parties are usually "communist" first and whatever nation state second, see see pee is a western invention, maybe to scare boomers by reminding them of the CCCP but i'm not sure we have a memo or leak about why the switch was made.
people have mentioned older coverage when china was not the big scary enemy where capitalist media referred to the cpc correctly, but i don't have arbitrary 1990s newspaper articles at hand.
Ok, CPC instead of CCP. Brilliant.
How does that make China a democracy?
presumably how their legislators and executives get their jobs, and who gets to vote would make china a democracy or not?
do you know whether they have elections or how they are held? do you know how proposed laws are considered and declined or instituted? or do you just hear "one party state" and make a pile of assumptions?
ancient athens, the american representative republic, westminster derived parliamentary systems, and school textbook direct democracy aren't the only forms democracy can take, and frankly those systems (except for the school book one that isn't used to run any countries) all have huge flaws and failings, and could fairly be called "not actually democracies" if we look at public opinion polling compared to what public policy is actually made.
logically it can't be true that the members of an association ought to govern themselves by the democratic process, and at the same time a majority of the association may properly strip a minority of its primary political rights. That logical statement is only true if you assume that in a democracy, political power is equal.
And yet, by definition, Democracies are not holding said contradiction to be a paradox or negating factor. As a matter of fact, the only conclusive definition of the word Democracy is "a form of government that allows all eligible members of it to partake in the ruling of the country."
By that definition, China is a democracy. It is, by the Chinese constitution - "The people's Democratic dictatorship", but it is still a democracy. It is actually intentional, to make sure that reactionary forces won't overthrow the communist party. At least, that's what I've read so far.
I stand corrected, and apologize for being confidently wrong in my terminology.
yeah i mean that's the school book scenario and one of the flaws with "simple" democracy that has no mechanism to protect women or queer people from christians, slavevs from their owners etc. the democratic process is more than one thing, especially once your association gets too big and you decide to have representatives. Places like china, viet nam, and cuba are democratic but unless you live in a place that does "democratic centralism" you probably weren't taught about that form in school. I certainly wasn't.
that "people's democratic dictatorship" terminology that you seem bothered by is by way of marx's "dictatorship of the bourgeoise" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and doesn't mean the same thing as "state run by a single dictator". Somebody else can give a better summary but the really bare bones version is that the state is ostensibly putting the interests of the people first and actually controlled by the people, unlike the US which talks a big game about "of the people, by the people, for the people" and then congress never does wildly popular things like legal weed and proper healthcare and does do horridly unpopular things all the time because the rich fucks who own congress benefit.
Keep reading, there's a lot of misconceptions to break and good on you for taking the time.
Look at those goalposts fly
Sounds like an American football reference, didn't get it.
"moving the goalposts" is an informal fallacy, and sports other than handegg have them, so the analogy being made should be perfectly comprehensible
Once you wrote it like this, it is comprehensible. Still, first time I heard it. Don't know what handegg is too.
After reading about the analogy, I fail to see which rules, process or competition was changed (or in this case, conversation) mid-play.
I was consistently talking about China, I was consistently talking about their party system and I was consistently talking about it being non-democratic in comparison to Democratic party systems where there are mechanisms to prevent the tyranny of the majority.
Also, the tyranny of the majority isn't a new thing. The formationg of the modern democracy is circa 1800's. It is a system that was conceived centuries ago. a century before communism. It's not like I pulled a fast one here.
I didn't even say that it is a bad thing for fuck's sake. I haven't even displayed my actual opinion.
I fail to see where the goalpost analogy fits here.
idk take it up with the person who said you were changing standards
Sorry, I thought the same person who stated, answered. Thanks for clearing that up though.
Taiwan hasn't even been "democratic" (in the sense of "murder all political opponents to the left of Reagan for 40 years and then start letting people vote for the party that did this") for more than a few decades, so even at face value this barely counts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)