Problem with the Democracy/Authoritarian

[NobilisSaeva]

It doesn't properly take into account anarchist views if you are opposed to democracy but also opposed to other authoritarian forms of rule. I'd probably reframe it as Populism vs. Meritocracy.

[Genora51]

It doesn't properly take into account anarchist views

How so? It would be useful to have some examples of questions and the associated scores which devalue certain anarchist positions.

[ten7ei]

I think it's rather complicated and I don't know which particular case NibilisSaeva means but there is often used the term "government" which actually means a kind of regulation. Anarchists are for regulation but not for government.

Anarchists are for equality but not made by the government as stated here: oppression by corporations is more of a concern than oppression by governments. It is necessary for the government to intervene in the economy to protect consumers. Excessive government intervention is a threat to the economy.

Here is the statement where anachists are for democary but not for a government: Democracy is more than a decision-making process.

edit: probably i should mention that I used the view of an anarcho communist. Still the statements are misrepresenting some ideologies

[ten7ei]

Aren't anarchist usually democratic by definition. Basically the most extreme democracy.

Democracy means rule by the population and in anarchism there is no state government which makes it only possible for the population to govern. All other types of democracy are only semi democratic.

If you consider anarcho capitalism as part of anachrism too then in this case I can understand the argument because there is no democracy but the rule by the most powerful "companies".

[CrazyRei]

I think it's rather complicated and I don't know which particular case NibilisSaeva means but there is often used the term "government" which actually means a kind of regulation. Anarchists are for regulation but not for government.

Any suggestions on a better way to regulate than the government? Anarchism is stupid and will never work, just like Communism, Globalism, Fascism, and unfettered Capitalism.

[Genora51]

@CrazyRei Much as you may feel strongly about the merits or disadvantages of a certain political ideology, this isn’t really the place for that sort of debate. If you feel that a certain ideology’s views are inaccurately represented by the test, please use this thread for that and other value-neutral discussion rather than allowing it to devolve into simple value judgements of the politics at hand. That’s not relevant here.

[CrazyRei]

@CrazyRei Much as you may feel strongly about the merits or disadvantages of a certain political ideology, this isn’t really the place for that sort of debate. If you feel that a certain ideology’s views are inaccurately represented by the test, please use this thread for that and other value-neutral discussion rather than allowing it to devolve into simple value judgements of the politics at hand. That’s not relevant here.

Fair.

[ProletarianBanner]

Democracy is a form of government, therefore, anarchists are against democracy in that sense, we communists also, not only seek a stateless society, therefore one without government and therefore technically without democracy, we see the inevitability of communism as a result of the resolution of the inherent contradictions within capitalism and the resolution of class antagonisms. Communism and socialism are indeed different. Socialism is when there is still a state and class antagonisms have not been fully resolved. Communism is stateless and therefore classless as the state only exists as a tool to be utilized by whichever class wields political power and is a direct result of class society, it's not there to "maintain your roads," it's there to maintain its power and status. Socialism itself is democratic however. All socialism is democratic, capitalism is only democracy for the minority, for the rich, that is not democracy, especially as it serves the interests of a rich minority. Socialist nations not only served the interests of the working class, they had democracy inside and outside the workplace in the form of elections, every citizen regardless of nationality or gender had the equal right to elect and be elected.

Read Lenin:

"And so in capitalist society, we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority." - Vladimir Lenin

"There is no democracy without socialism and no socialism without democracy."

Lenin on Democracy, taken from The State and Revolution, Chapter 4 and 5 by Vladimir Lenin

"Chapter 4

In the usual argument about the state, the mistake is constantly made against which Engels warned and which we have in passing indicated above, namely, it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.

At first sight, this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even suspect us of excepting the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed--for democracy means the recognition of this very principle.

No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another.

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not except the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether, since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.

Chapter 5

Democracy for the vast majority of people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes(i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.

Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism--the proletariat, and enables it to crush, sash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even republican-bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire population.

From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism--from this moment the need for government of any kind begin to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the "state" which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away.

For when all have learned to administer and actually to independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over the parasites, the sons of the wealthy, the swindlers and other "guardians of capitalist traditions", the escape from this popular accounting and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental intellectuals, and they scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of the community will very soon become a habit.

Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its higher phase, and with it to the complete withering away of the state."

[ProletarianBanner]

I think it's rather complicated and I don't know which particular case NibilisSaeva means but there is often used the term "government" which actually means a kind of regulation. Anarchists are for regulation but not for government.

Any suggestions on a better way to regulate than the government? Anarchism is stupid and will never work, just like Communism, Globalism, Fascism, and unfettered Capitalism.

Anarchism is rather stupid as it is idealist, communism, however, is built upon scientific socialism.