We have the best DoP economy laid out for us, but what about the government for social policy...

citation needed

the idea that the majority is always right means that you think whatever ideology persists in the nation is always right.
if you read Zizek you'd know that liberalism can be reduced to be seen as a utopian attempt to make amends between dissent and social norms., which is exactly what direct democracy tries to (be eliminating dissent).

*be (by

Every DemCen regime has fallen into revisionist politics and none have recovered or reverted to a proper Leninist line

lol kill yourself

Shut the fuck up revisionist

how do people unironically become revisionist "leftists" in current year? like the amount of mental obstacles you have to do gymnastics around is insane even by Zig Forumsyp standards.

imagine fighting a war without an headquarter

Because the headquarters for proletarian revolution can be a bourgeois government with red flags and busts

as I said: kill yourself

imagine starting a Dictatorship of the Proletariat without any Proletariat control

Democratic centralism isn't bourgeois by itself but it gets hijacked by the bourgeoisie every single time if it's not crushed outright, the one exception to this rule has been the CPP-NPA-NDF in the Philippines

Read Marx
Read Engels
Read the Foundations of Leninism

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literally what the fuck else would someone mean when they say "Democratic Centralism that rejects de-Centralization" because direct democracy is the only thing that comes to mind.

Read what Marx and Engels wrote about the state, especially the Paris Commune. Participatory / proletarian democracy is what they supported. I was only mocking the designation of direct democracy as “liberal”

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm#3.1
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch04.htm

Interesting fact: Stalin argued against this when thinking up the structure of the Soviet Union, but was overruled by Lenin.

ignore him he's just a fucking liberal,

That's essentially the position of a naive idealist who just got his first taste of disappointment. You are talking as if you were comparing a point in the past with the current state of affairs, but what you are actually doing is comparing mythical liberal nonsense you learned as a kid in school with your impression of today's society which isn't as silly because you are living in it.

*record scratch* I've never heard anybody claim that. The claim of direct-democracy shills is that referenda are more likely to deliver results you want to see than elected politicians voting on that.

Also the claim that democracy in general, if believed to be accurate by the population or people in power and asserted as a rightful institution, can act to empower whatever is voted on on the basis that to subvert it from a place of authority would be to undermine that authority or the decision that ran against the democratic will. Cockshott also made that argument in one of his socialist referendum videos when somebody suggested the state wouldn't allow such a decision to be made or be enacted. He said something to the effect of they'd be afraid to counteract it because it would de-legitimize them, or that the knowledge of the popularity of the democratically approved act would embolden the population to further resistance, feeling that they are in the position of strength and/or in the majority.

But yeah, never see anybody claim democratic will is some kind of moral arbiter. Not even process obsessed liberals seem to think that.

and I argue that both are equally shitty

"The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production."
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

What we're talking about is the form of the state in socialism. Above, Engels describes how the state's role in socialism will be more and more assume the role of "administration of things" and not a political state that governs people. The question is then: how do we organize the adminstration of things in an effective way?

If the sphere of production is socialized then it follows that a corresponding system of organization must also include a social decision-making process. An administration that only relies upon decisions made by a minority, a bureaucracy, or a political class would all be sub-optimal. Even in capitalist industrial firms there has been a realization that there must be feedback from below. Of course, in capitalism this can only go so far since the class division of the firm reduces incentive on part of workers to improve production or help administer the process. There is also the danger that without direct involvement of the masses in the process of administration a kind of entropy will take place in which different layers of society begin to break apart from each other. The political class, the managerial bureaucracy, the ordinary workers, etc. One group pulls away from another.

My conclusion is that the form of the state in socialism needs to engage the broadest mass of people possible, use their inputs to help guide production and distribution, and focus on administering things while letting people govern themselves. Some kind of direct democracy might be part of this new state, but probably not the totality of it. Holding a national referendum to vote on key issues seems like an easy and effective way to guide decision-making at a national level if only because a measure that passes is guaranteed the (at least temporary) support of a majority or 2/3 majority of the population. An unpopular decision made by a council or parliament, even if it works in theory, might be unworkable due to lack of engagement by the broad masses of people.

I don't think the majority is always "right" but I don't think about this in terms of right and wrong. My perspective on this deals more with the effects or possible side-effects of a given political form and its relationship with the material basis of society.

that's literally what I'm trying to say. direct democracy is not a good way of maintaining material relations because it just ties it together with whatever's viewed as popular.

what do you propose as the alternative?

I don’t know yet. All I know is the best form of government is that which does sophistry a disservice, and direct democracy is not that.
For now that’s what I’m arguing

if that's true then there's no reason NOT to go with referendum, unless there's a third option you know of that I don't

No I’m just observing the fact that most socialist governments (even the libertarian ones) were just minor variations on the political systems of liberal democracies anyway, and the fact that most of the problems in liberal democracies don’t stem from the layout of the state, but from the corruption of state institutions by capital. Liberal democratic institutions as they exist on paper is mostly fine as long as it’s combined with a socialist economy, it doesn’t need to be changed much.

Are you under the impression that Liberal parties never violate Liberal Constitutions?
Are you under the impression that leaders of Socialist Republics never bend the rules for subjective purposes?

Lets say you have your multiple-party Socialism.
What is to stop one individual party from employing Democratic Centralism?
What if this was the largest Party in Government, and revised themselves into Liberalism. What could the smaller Parties do?

What you propose is more likely to fall into Liberalism than what Gorbachev proposed.

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Cockshott believes in having a council selected through sortition and direct democracy.

If you want any kind of democracy, be it multi party, one party, or no party, you have to risk the possibility that people could want a return to capitalism. Clearly single party ML states didn’t prevent that from happening, the only thing they did was stifle democracy, alienating the people and allowing revisionism to fester.

That's not much of a problem. People don't want optimization in the administration of things. Mostly they want it to happen in the background without too much effort; they certainly don't want to have to engage in direct democracy over everything. Zizek's argument against it.

Think the problem is just accessibility, we should start using the internet to vote in a decentralized and possibly anonymous way, but also find a way to make it accountable so you can verify that Comrade Marxlenov didn't recieve 120% of the vote in a dishonest way.

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I'm not sure what people you're talking about.
Why would it require too much effort? They could handle administration tasks during the work day. Voting on a referendum takes like 2 minutes, and it could be done using a mobile phone.
We're not talking about holding referendums to decide on the number of cars produced every week.

These are all just rehashed versions of the "human nature" and "mob rule" arguments against socialism and democracy.

a voting ID key. when you vote this key is put into a database along with your vote, so that you can easily check it later to confirm your vote was counted without having your name given to the public.

You want to argue that results you want to see are equally shitty at what the people in the national parliaments decide? Or do you want to argue that the sentiment of the population at large isn't to the left of what's in parliament (unless you define being on the left as respecting your dog to be trans or whatevs)?

Sophistry is the shit you post. To condemn all alternatives, and then throwing in a mini condemnation status-quo-also-bad means to argue for the status quo.

That's the point of using sortition instead of asking the entire population to vote on everything all the time.

People don't like voting because a) it is made as boring and difficult as possible, especially in the US and UK, and b) because most voting in capitalist countries does not result in meaningful improvements for the voter, therefore making it meaningless

Agreed insofar as if a socialist state's (fully constructed, not 2 years post revolution with transition still underway) population wants capitalism back by a clear majority, the leaders of said socialist state have fucked up massive and are likely complete revisionists/opportunists.

Even at the height of the economic crisis in 1991, with 6 years of unfiltered Western propaganda coming from both outside and inside the Union, and with revisionists and nationalists running hog-wild, a clear majority of Soviet citizens wanted to preserve socialism. While the same cannot be said to be true of, say, Poland or Romania, this was due to improper socialization of society, rampant corruption and revisionism, and idiotic economic choices made by bureaucrats disconnected from working realities.

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This is bait right? these two are diametrically opposed

I should also point out that I recognize the need to engage in repression against the bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionaries even after the revolution. Obviously parties that are blatantly bourgeois/pro-capitalist wouldn’t be allowed. My reasoning for supporting a multi party system is that if you have a genuine single party democracy (not the “””democracy””” of 20th century ML parties) then you might as well abolish the party altogether. If you abolish the party then you may as well allow multiple parties because people will organize into factions anyway.

ikr? sure direct democracy has its flaws, but there's no better way. it's human nature.

I would say the best way to deal with this is through allowing different factions in the party, but only if they all agree to uphold the basic party program. So those who oppose the basic goals and rules outlined in the Communist Manifesto (just as an example) would get banned. Therefore, you have multiple factions while preventing revisionism and opportunism.

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with modern technology and development the required time to transition to socialism would be much shorter, meaning that there wouldn't be as much risk of a party growing corrupt. If the ruling party says that it's going to implement socialism and 10 years later the majority of the economy still lay in the hands of private owners and capitalists, then clearly they have either failed horribly or simply betrayed the revolution.

That’s not really any different from what I said though. There isn’t any real difference between parties swearing allegiance to a socialist constitution and factions swearing allegiance to a communist party. It really confirms what I said earlier about there being no meaningful difference between a single party democracy and a multi party democracy. The only real question is how wide the spectrum of acceptable politics is.

bump

This is what I'm saying. Obviously the population at large is more left because of natural material interests, I'm just saying they're not necessarily any smarter or more effective at governing than politicians.
We need to devise a system which promotes the intellectually honest and altruistic, not the marketing analysts and social media narcissists which American democracy attracts.

Solution is liquid democracy. It is brilliant. Read up on it.
Everyone gets a vote on everything, but they don't have to allocate this vote themselves. Instead they get to transfer it to a delegate. This delegate can be anyone. They get to choose where your vote goes for you.
Thus ignorant people can transfer their vote to their better informed peers. The uninterested can transfer it to someone who is interested. Everyone's voice is represented by someone they individually trust, and is also informed and engaged with the subject. You get full insight into what they are doing.
It is the perfect mix between democracy and technocracy.

The implications could be more radical than this. Here are a few ideas to play with:
- You could transfer votes on different topics to different delegates, because you understand them to have other political viewpoints, or other areas of expertise.
- Your delegates could in turn transfer your votes to other people they trust.
- Whole networks could form of delegates transferring their votes to one another. This could enable the whole of society to engage in niche and local issues.
- Instead of singular individuals, agencies could perform the task of delegate for you. Perhaps even crowd-sourced collectives and computer algorithms. There is lots of space for creative innovation here.

Zero privacy and massive voting-power concentration (feedback loop with people being famous for being famous).

Anyone against direct democracy is automatically a shill for Republican form of government (which is what Marx, Engels and Cockshott call bourgeois democracy, or read liberal democracy). And if you're a shill for bourgeois democracy then you also support the strongest organization of class power ever devised against the working-classes. Only through direct democracy can the Left ever be able to hold power. Here's a modern example: the only reason Jeremy Corbyn is the head of the Labour Party today is because of democratic voting measures for the general party members to elect the head of Labour - if not for those changes Corbyn would not be head of the party today as most Labour MP's voted against him.

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You don't know what that word means.