That depends on if you believe in Stalin’s ideas of a vanguard or Trotskys ideas of a vanguard. According to Trotsky the vanguard of the workers should be democratically elected.
Every socialist society that has or currently exists practices democratic elections. If you live in a capitalist country, however, you have been taught from childhood that those democratic practices are illegitimate.
Of course, I was taught that Liberal capitalist ran democracy is somehow the only legitimate form of democracy. The question is how should democracy be implemented in a way that ensures the workers have power.
I mean, personally I think the Chinese nailed it. How else do you have government satisfaction rates - as measured by outside observers - that are 90% and above?
The study I’m referencing was an anonymous study conducted by Harvard between 2003 and 2016. It would strain credulity to suggest that the study’s participants all anonymously said that they love their government out of fear - firstly because they rated their government a lot lower in 2003 than they did in 2016, secondly because Harvard isn’t exactly in the pocket of the Communist Party of China.
I’m not suggesting study bias, but I am suggesting that Chinese citizens’ social media and internet use is now so closely monitored by the CPP that it has a chilling effect on free speech, and this may have influenced the results even if they were told the study was anonymous.
Secondly, since Xi took power, according to that same report, he has “effectively sidelined functional and professional institutions of party and state”, in addition to removing term limits. These are all classic authoritarian strongman moves. The study goes on to point out that having an effective authoritarian as leader - one who has helped improve the lives of many Chinese citizens - is of course going to be popular. The old saying goes that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, and that may be true in some regards, right up until the point it isn’t benevolent anymore. Which is more or less inevitable imo.
While I cite that source for its wide ranging polls of Chinese citizen opinion, I think that a lot of the analysis is bunk because they start from the assumption that Xi is a dictator and base all of their conclusions off of that without first proving it. If you ask the Chinese people whether or not their system is democratic, the overwhelming majority say that it is.
When asked whether they believe their country is democratic, those in China topped the list, with some 83% saying the communist-led People’s Republic was a democracy. A resounding 91% said that democracy is important to them.
Now, this isn’t a great poll to base an entire political viewpoint on, because it’s actually pretty hard to define what a democracy is and what it needs to do to be considered a democracy. I think that the gold standard would be some kind of long term survey to see if government policy consistently reflects the opinions and desires of the electorate, like was done in this study of the US Government (I’m not aware of an equivalent to this study being performed in China).
What the hell are you talking about? China is using “communism” to mask the fact that they’re a state capitalist dictatorship. Nothing about China is socialist and in many ways corporations in China face even less regulations and restrictions then the west. I would also like to see the source of that statistic because outside observers have been banned from making any statistics about the Chinese government and economy.
We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction.
This puts the 2016 central government satisfaction at 93.1%, Provincial at 81.7%, County at 73.9%, and Township at 70.2%. 75.1% of respondents also replied that they were “satisfied with eventual outcome” after an interaction with a local official.
Now granted this is all pre-COVID, pre-Xi Jinping’s third term, Pre-Hong Kong protests - but also pre-elimination of absolute poverty, pre-green energy revolution, and pre-massive rise in worker wages.
That depends on if you believe in Stalin’s ideas of a vanguard or Trotskys ideas of a vanguard. According to Trotsky the vanguard of the workers should be democratically elected.
Or, hear me out, you can be a non-Marxist socialist, because socialism does not only mean Marxism.
I’m aware, however I assume the person was specifically referring to Stalinism.
Then the assumptions they forwarded as absolutes need to be addressed instead of accepted.
Every socialist society that has or currently exists practices democratic elections. If you live in a capitalist country, however, you have been taught from childhood that those democratic practices are illegitimate.
Of course, I was taught that Liberal capitalist ran democracy is somehow the only legitimate form of democracy. The question is how should democracy be implemented in a way that ensures the workers have power.
I mean, personally I think the Chinese nailed it. How else do you have government satisfaction rates - as measured by outside observers - that are 90% and above?
It couldn’t possibly be that people are too scared to criticize the CCP, right? … right?
The study I’m referencing was an anonymous study conducted by Harvard between 2003 and 2016. It would strain credulity to suggest that the study’s participants all anonymously said that they love their government out of fear - firstly because they rated their government a lot lower in 2003 than they did in 2016, secondly because Harvard isn’t exactly in the pocket of the Communist Party of China.
I’m not suggesting study bias, but I am suggesting that Chinese citizens’ social media and internet use is now so closely monitored by the CPP that it has a chilling effect on free speech, and this may have influenced the results even if they were told the study was anonymous.
Secondly, since Xi took power, according to that same report, he has “effectively sidelined functional and professional institutions of party and state”, in addition to removing term limits. These are all classic authoritarian strongman moves. The study goes on to point out that having an effective authoritarian as leader - one who has helped improve the lives of many Chinese citizens - is of course going to be popular. The old saying goes that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, and that may be true in some regards, right up until the point it isn’t benevolent anymore. Which is more or less inevitable imo.
While I cite that source for its wide ranging polls of Chinese citizen opinion, I think that a lot of the analysis is bunk because they start from the assumption that Xi is a dictator and base all of their conclusions off of that without first proving it. If you ask the Chinese people whether or not their system is democratic, the overwhelming majority say that it is.
Now, this isn’t a great poll to base an entire political viewpoint on, because it’s actually pretty hard to define what a democracy is and what it needs to do to be considered a democracy. I think that the gold standard would be some kind of long term survey to see if government policy consistently reflects the opinions and desires of the electorate, like was done in this study of the US Government (I’m not aware of an equivalent to this study being performed in China).
What the hell are you talking about? China is using “communism” to mask the fact that they’re a state capitalist dictatorship. Nothing about China is socialist and in many ways corporations in China face even less regulations and restrictions then the west. I would also like to see the source of that statistic because outside observers have been banned from making any statistics about the Chinese government and economy.
Here’s the Harvard study I’m referencing.
This puts the 2016 central government satisfaction at 93.1%, Provincial at 81.7%, County at 73.9%, and Township at 70.2%. 75.1% of respondents also replied that they were “satisfied with eventual outcome” after an interaction with a local official.
Now granted this is all pre-COVID, pre-Xi Jinping’s third term, Pre-Hong Kong protests - but also pre-elimination of absolute poverty, pre-green energy revolution, and pre-massive rise in worker wages.