this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Often times what you've been told is "authoritarianism" by socialists is actually a different organisational structure of democratic institutions that fundamentally produces a more democratic outcome than the liberal democracy you're familiar with. The problem for socialists is that it's very easy to slander a system nobody fully understands, and it takes a considerable amount of learning and investigating to learn that the system is actually good and provides more democracy, not less, DiEM standing for democracy in europe movement. This is in fact the angle that one of the main multi-country European socialist coalitions are pushing at the current moment in time, more democracy, not less. The point is that liberal democracy doesn't produce democratic outcomes and that is because it is structurally designed not to.
The Cuban system you are currently learning about here is actually a slight variant on the Soviet system.
China also uses a variant, with their own differences, as does Vietnam and several other socialist countries. Each have their peculiar differences, what's important to understand is that liberal democracy doesn't come in one flavour, it is adapted and different in every country, the same applies to socialist democracy as well.
This can be a lot to take in and a very deep rabbit hole to go down. I'm quite happy to answer any questions.
So the part I don't get is how a lot of these countries end up with the same leaders for life? You think if they were so democratic that they'd change out occasionally. I know the USSR changed leaders a few times after Stalin and not sure what's happening with Cuba now, I think they just put in term limits, but before that there was Stalin for decades, Fidel Castro for decades, Mao, now Xi Jinping, etc. Keeping one leader for that long gives an opportunity for them to centralize power.
I also worry that so many representative layers dilutes the people's will from the bottom to the top, but to be honest, I have no idea of that's true or just a gut feeling. I'd have to see some study, like the one that showed that popular will doesn't seem to affect whether something happens in the US unless rich people are also for it lol.
Other than that, it sounds pretty good. I definitely have to do more research in that European democracy movement. We could definitely do with some more democracy in the US (less gerrymandering, no electoral college, etc.). Thanks for the explanations!
The tendency towards long-term political figureheads comes down to a few root causes generally:
The late stage Soviet system did have issues with this sort of thing, less so because those at the top were consolidating power and more because they weren't investing in the party and recruiting new blood into their ranks, which resulted in the same party members remaining in power for decades and contributed to the eventual collapse of the union later on as the common Soviet was less a devoted Marxist and more a person living within a Marxist society.
I've never actually learned this stuff, I'm reading through this thread and I'm still not getting some things that maybe should be obvious. What is the role/function (both ostensibly and in practice) of both the communist party itself and their leader more specifically?
The answer largely depends on the specific country/party; socialism is a scientific ideology, after all, and often experiments with new ideas or processes depending on the specific conditions of that country and its needs.
Generalizing though, the party is an ideological animal whereas the government/state is a practical one. The latter concentrates on day-to-day issues like infrastructure, education, the economy, etc while the former acts to guide the state towards the goals of socialism. As a practical example, the government may be working to expand light industry to create more luxury goods for its people while the party would be working to ensure the long-term benefits of such go to the working class and not get consolidated into the hands of a wealthy minority. Both the party and the state are tightly integrated to ensure that this isn't just a bunch of armchair Marxists reading theory and yelling at a government that largely ignores them, so you'll often find that party membership is essentially required to get into the state in the first place (though there are, contrary to popular belief, multiple parties within typical ML governments. China, North Korea, Cuba, etc all have multiple parties, just with a very dominant communist party, so there is some wiggle room here).
The confusion around long-lived leaders generally boils down to this separation of party and state: a populist figure like the Kims might start off as both head of state and head of party, but gradually shift duties more towards the latter until they completely abandon the head of state position. Since the party still has massive influence this means they still have quite a lot of sway, but they're not making the day-to-day decisions directly anymore.