So i think it's important to remember that the people voting those early liberals were envisioning were all white male landowners, and if there's any group of people the system is actually accountable to, what do they tend to have in common?
The most powerful politicians rarely have to be disciplined by capital either, because it's not as simple as just lying, getting into the position to even try for those elections requires working your way through a political system designed to produce liberal capitalist politicians. The more powerful a position, the more impossible it is to simply hide who you are and come out unchanged. It's really quite solid for maintaining the interests of a certain class.
Why not have a similar system but for a communist party? I think requiring years to decades of consistent accomplishment within an explicitly communist and worker centric party that you're accountable to is a pretty good way to select people for powerful and important jobs. Sure some rightists could lie their way through, but they shouldn't ever get that far without going mask off, and like leftists in the democratic party someone going against the ideals in a lower level position can only do so much before getting purged or brought in line.
Eliminating positions of power does sound nice, and it should be done as much as feasible, but outright eliminating formally structured power doesn't eliminate social power. I think it's more practical and realistic to intentionally design a system of power to minimize the effect of historical oppressions and biases than it is to abolish formalized power and rely on everyone being self aware enough to not immediately reinvent the oppressions we've been taught.
honestly not versed enough in the history of the USSR to get into it, although the PRC uses a similar system and they haven't collapsed like that. i've heard a big issue the USSR faced was failing to transition power to a younger generation, in part because the october revolutionaries were just that popular. socialism is under constant threat, and in a revolution or being encircled by capitalist imperialism there's a lot of very important, high stakes decisions to make. someone has to make those calls. if we kick it down to direct referendums, someone's got to write the options. can kind of just keep going down the line until we get to the point of everyone responds to the issue how they see fit, and yeah that's a lot of choice but is the choice even meaningful at that point? it's the accountability problem again. being bound by authority doesn't always feel great but if it goes both ways that's a type of power. that's kind of the point of representatives to me, if there isn't authority somewhere then that authority retreats into social dynamics, and if that authority isn't being responsible you've got to navigate a much more opaque system without clear rules.
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So i think it's important to remember that the people voting those early liberals were envisioning were all white male landowners, and if there's any group of people the system is actually accountable to, what do they tend to have in common?
The most powerful politicians rarely have to be disciplined by capital either, because it's not as simple as just lying, getting into the position to even try for those elections requires working your way through a political system designed to produce liberal capitalist politicians. The more powerful a position, the more impossible it is to simply hide who you are and come out unchanged. It's really quite solid for maintaining the interests of a certain class.
Why not have a similar system but for a communist party? I think requiring years to decades of consistent accomplishment within an explicitly communist and worker centric party that you're accountable to is a pretty good way to select people for powerful and important jobs. Sure some rightists could lie their way through, but they shouldn't ever get that far without going mask off, and like leftists in the democratic party someone going against the ideals in a lower level position can only do so much before getting purged or brought in line.
Eliminating positions of power does sound nice, and it should be done as much as feasible, but outright eliminating formally structured power doesn't eliminate social power. I think it's more practical and realistic to intentionally design a system of power to minimize the effect of historical oppressions and biases than it is to abolish formalized power and rely on everyone being self aware enough to not immediately reinvent the oppressions we've been taught.
deleted by creator
honestly not versed enough in the history of the USSR to get into it, although the PRC uses a similar system and they haven't collapsed like that. i've heard a big issue the USSR faced was failing to transition power to a younger generation, in part because the october revolutionaries were just that popular. socialism is under constant threat, and in a revolution or being encircled by capitalist imperialism there's a lot of very important, high stakes decisions to make. someone has to make those calls. if we kick it down to direct referendums, someone's got to write the options. can kind of just keep going down the line until we get to the point of everyone responds to the issue how they see fit, and yeah that's a lot of choice but is the choice even meaningful at that point? it's the accountability problem again. being bound by authority doesn't always feel great but if it goes both ways that's a type of power. that's kind of the point of representatives to me, if there isn't authority somewhere then that authority retreats into social dynamics, and if that authority isn't being responsible you've got to navigate a much more opaque system without clear rules.
deleted by creator