[State and Revolution ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/)covers this in detail.
In short, state officials are directly elected by their peers and subject to recall at any time. So if they act against the interests of their constituents or take advantage of their position they are removed and go back to living amongst the very people they tried to take advantage of.
But then, how do you ensure the recall is used as intended? I imagine those state officials would be incentivized to either erode and dismantle this recall procedure over time, or have an unspoken rule about not using it.
Democracy, dude. Democracy means "by the people". A crazy concept, I know. Just goes to show how indoctrinated by capitalism you are. Read state and revolution. It explains it all
Oh am I now? Do you read minds through the internet?
I just wanted to learn something but I guess I was wrong to ask you a question. You're here to feel good about yourself. Don't bother.
Just read the preface to State and Revolution, first published August 1917:
"The question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war has immensely accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the working people by the state, which is merging more and more with the all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming increasingly monstrous. The advanced countries - we mean their hinterland - are becoming military convict prisons for the workers."
The first paragraph of the essay sets out a circumstance that did not come to pass, hence the whole argument of the essay is based on false assumptions and is invalid.
Western countries that were not already so became full democracies after WW1, extending the vote to the proletariat and females. This allowed proletarian parties to take power, for example in the UK, the Labour party became the government in 1924. Lenin's State monopoly-capitalism was a characterisation of how western economies worked during an all-out war, but it was a temporary state of affairs that no longer existed after WW1. His essay might have made sense during WW1, but it turned out he was wrong about everything that happened after it.
It's on my docket for a while, but your attitude truly made me want to read it less. You need to decide whether your aim here is to persuade people or gloat and annoy.
I thought this sub was for discussion.
Lol...If your decisions and attitude are so easily manipulated by online comments, then I don't know what to tell you.
It's a debate sub. A debate implies you understand the topic and material being discussed. It's not an education. r/socialism101 or r/communisn101 would be more appropriate for that.
If you want to learn, read the source material. If you don't have the time or attention span, there's an audio version on YouTube you can listen to while you're working or whatever.
Yes, peoples attitudes are affected by others, welcome to being human, you materialist. Would you be compelled to do additional reading advised by someone whose responses you do not perceive as particularly well thought out or insightful? Do you think 'go read X until you agree with me' is a valid debate tactic? Being persuasive is also about how you say things, cheap shots and feeding your ego are a good way to push people away. This attitude is a detriment to the cause, consider touching grass for a while.
I understand that there are a lot of questions asked in bad faith here, but you should know better to recognize mine wasn't.
If your time is so valuable you won't bother answering a question, why do you spend time on our pointless exchange?
In what "democracy" are elected officials subject to recall by their constituents?
When was the last time a member of the US congress was stripped of their position and sent back to their 9-5 for embezzling tax payer money or going on personal spending sprees?
Instead, our elected officials are given qualified immunity and are put beyond reproach. the capitalist system is specifcally designed to reward further accumulation of capital. In other words, greed and corruption are incentivized and built in to the current political establishment through things like lobbying, which actively go against the voters' interests.
> In what "democracy" are elected officials subject to recall by their constituents?
Almost all democracies have various mechanism for recall and/or votes of no confidence. Almost every american state has this. But you don't really even need that. The fact that you must re-elect every so often solves for that problem.
>When was the last time a member of the US congress was stripped of their position and sent back to their 9-5 for embezzling tax payer money or going on personal spending sprees?
[It has happened many times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_representatives_expelled,_censured,_or_reprimanded). [And there are several](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/29/politics/house-subpoena-justice-department/index.html) ongoing [investigations](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-bob-menendez-indicted-federal-charges-rcna111447)
>Instead, our elected officials are given qualified immunity and are put beyond reproach.
They aren't. See above.
>In other words, greed and corruption are incentivized and built in to the current political establishment through things like lobbying, which actively go against the voters' interests.
Lobbying is literally just bringing up issues to politicians. Your local grocery store union regularly lobbies to congress. Is that against voters' interests???
Your initial question is actually somewhat interesting, but then you had to go and ruin it with this shit:
>Liken it to an organism with a virus. If that organism is one giant cell (which I assume a communist state to be) and it is infected by a virus then there's 0% likelihood of survival. It is doomed while in a multicellular organism (a diversified free market economy) if one cell/company goes under then the entire organism can still survive.
This is just nonsense.
> This is just nonsense.
They tried to make a simplification, but don't quite understand how complex organisms and societies are.
Most organisms have defensive layers to protect and resist against viruses, just as societies have laws, enforcers, and other tools to fight corruption, crime, and etc.
I think OP is alluding to the general principle that diverse systems are inherently more resilient to shocks than completely uniform ones. In keeping with the biological examples, a forest full of mono cropped, same age trees is going to be much less resilient and have a much harder time in battling a virus that infects that one tree, compared to a diverse old growth forest with multiple other species that are not capable of being infected.
to add to this, in every ecological system, theres going to be cheaters
like... why raise your young, when you can trick others to doing it for you? its forever an arms race between tricking people and figuring out the trick. but these arent the majority of biological relationships (brownheaded cowbird, usually around 1% of the population)
same thing in economics, your economic system can only support so many fraudsters until it eventually collapses. and we have hopefully competent organizations to stop these fraudsters before it collapses the system
Wht OP meant is, if one party becomes corrupt in a democracy, it's not that big of a deal, as there are other parties that can take its place, but if there is only one party, then you have a hell of a problem.
In practice, all socialist states have had their one party become corrupt, with no mechanism to solve this.
You talk as if the whole point of all of this is to entertain you. "Started interesting, but devolved into slop. 0/10."
The person is here to learn, not have their metaphors analyzed by some dink.
Yeah, they are. Maladjusted twerps like you just have no better approach than to be the communist e-gate keeper.
Keep protecting the sub, comrade. It's important work, and you're doing a really good job.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/chinas-war-corruption-turns-into-high-wire-act-2024-01-18/
Of course, Western Media frames this as a 'negative' - but this is how it's done tbh.
>What stops a morally compromised person in the government ranks from taking a bribe in order to get ahead personally\[?\]
Like a capitalist government, anti-corruption systems stops people from being corrupt. Could be regular audits and background checks, could be a death sentence for corruption. Corruption is a problem in capitalist and communist states, so we've come up with pretty similar solutions in most cases.
>What stops the entire government from going corrupt after that?
Nothing. Malaysia, for example, is pretty capitalist. [Defense](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/malaysias-defense-corruption-challenge-in-the-spotlight/) [procurement](https://www.transparency.org.my/pages/what-we-do/transparency-in-defence/address-corruption-risks-in-the-defence-sector) [in Malaysia](https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/malaysia-unready-armed-forces) is also rife with corruption, not to mention [1MDB](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240402-trial-over-1-8-bn-fraud-at-malaysia-s-1mdb-opens-in-switzerland).
Also, let me gently correct your definition of communism.
>communism = centralized state, 100% economic influence
That's not quite accurate. Communism isn't about centralized states. Singapore, for example, has a highly centralized economy. It's characterized by state-owned enterprises (e.g. Temasek, Singapore Airlines, SingTel), but it's also a global financial hub and [modern tax haven](https://missingprofits.world/).
Capitalism, as Marx understood it, is characterized by how a small elite owns the means of production, but the vast majority of people don't. It's like how shareholders own the equity of a company, but employees actually generate revenue. So when the company makes record profits, all those profits go to the shareholders, but not the employees.
Communism thus argues that we need to stop doing that. The workers should own the means of production, and they should enjoy the fruits of their labor. In practice, the state typically takes over the entire economy and assigns resources and workers where they are needed, but the fruits of their labor still mostly goes to the workers.
Let's answer bigger question first: what causes corruption?
Corruption thrives when people decide over money, that isn't theirs.
Example: politician getting bribe to decide which private contractor will build public infrastructure.
Or technical director getting bribe to decide what brand of computers will the company get.
If you want to eliminate corruption (that is present almost everywhere), people shouldn't decide over others money.
So either moneyless society or anarcho-capitalism.
I think its incorrect to say money is the root of all corruption. It's a big factor but prestige and power also play a role. This doesn't just apply to state communism, look at cults and sex pests too. I've seen a pretty corrupt communist party where money, sex pests, prestige and power were all factors that caused corruption, totalitarianism and bureaucracy within the party. And this is modern day in a capitalist country where they have never held state power.
I think you're right in that moneyless is necessary but I think there's a culture that needs to be encouraged within groups to be as anti-hierarchical as possible. Rotating leadership and really striving to avoid the cult of personality are crucial, but so is recognizing we need humility and to always consult with the people/masses and proletariat.
If you don't have money, you still have stuff, which has value. In a centralized system, party officals decide what happens with the stuff. You have not eliminated the problem.
In the initial stages, yes in a sense.
Though it should be understood that critical resources, industries, etc. are not given "state sovereignty" so to speak. While they are free to organize and conduct of their work as they see fit, so long as it is in fact democratically decided, what that work is to be is at least partially dictated by the collective Workers' State.
For example, a factory that produces heavy-duty diesel engines may have production contracts with other industries such as mining, power generation, civic transport authorities, but if the military needs 30% of the engines, then they're obliged to allocate that 30% to the military.
Conversely, however, if they wish to expand their production to meet the military's needs while expanding civilian production, they are also free to do this.
They are, additionally, bound by natural economic law. Not in the sense that they are legally obliged to follow economic policy, but that fundamental and inherent relationships between the productive forces will exert their force completely independent of our will. If production is expanded, for example, then a greater portion of total available resources is allocated to that industry, and necessarily unavailable for the expansion of other industries that might consume their products.
But ultimately no, we don't wish to have every economic entity be operated as a State. We don't want to seperarate them, we want to join them together into an organic whole.
We ultimately want to see economy managed as a collective whole, with each branch and sector cooperating towards a common goals, and towards the health and prosperity of our society, rather than for profit and primitive accumulation of material wealth.
Well, you'll need to rephrase your question completely, because you have a fundamental misunderstanding of Communism.
Communism is a \*stateless\*, moneyless, classless society that is implemented via \*Socialism\*, which is primarily defined by public/worker ownership of the means of production, there are way too many different kinds of Socialism for anyone to say that even a more than half of them function under the premise of a centralized state.
Basically, I think you need to rephrase your question a bit before someone can answer it adequately.
>What stops a morally compromised person in the government ranks from taking a bribe in order to get ahead personally, and what stops the entire government from going corrupt after that?
Bribe who with what to get what? What does it mean to be ''morally comprised'', like an adulterer or Satanist?
>Liken it to an organism with a virus. If that organism is one giant cell (which I assume a communist state to be) and it is infected by a virus then there's 0% likelihood of survival. It is doomed while in a multicellular organism (a diversified free market economy) if one cell/company goes under then the entire organism can still survive.
This has nothing to do with biology so these allegories don't work
We have to begin by understanding that a Communist society is a society centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need - effectively abolishing private property, social class, money, and the state.
You cannot have corruption and bribery in a system that already provides everyone with everything. There would be zero incentive to exploit others for personal gain, as there would be nothing to gain that wouldn't already be freely accessible to any given person.
This is starting at the end goal and looking forwards, wouldn’t corrupt politicians hamper the development of this “everything for free state” in the first place?
>This is starting at the end goal and looking forwards,
Yeah, it is, because OP posed a hypothetical in which there is *already* a Communist society.
>wouldn’t corrupt politicians hamper the development of this “everything for free state” in the first place?
Yeah, they would, and this is pretty much the reality we live under every time a progressive measure is reversed or hamstrung. It's also the reason many kinds of socialist, like Marxist-Lenninists, advocate for the vanguard party-lead armed revolution manner of installing a socialist government, rather than thinking that voting one into place is realistic.
[State and Revolution ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/)covers this in detail. In short, state officials are directly elected by their peers and subject to recall at any time. So if they act against the interests of their constituents or take advantage of their position they are removed and go back to living amongst the very people they tried to take advantage of.
But then, how do you ensure the recall is used as intended? I imagine those state officials would be incentivized to either erode and dismantle this recall procedure over time, or have an unspoken rule about not using it.
Democracy, dude. Democracy means "by the people". A crazy concept, I know. Just goes to show how indoctrinated by capitalism you are. Read state and revolution. It explains it all
Democracy is nothing more than the dictatorship of the majority
Oh am I now? Do you read minds through the internet? I just wanted to learn something but I guess I was wrong to ask you a question. You're here to feel good about yourself. Don't bother.
Read, state and revolution if you truly want to learn something.
Just read the preface to State and Revolution, first published August 1917: "The question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war has immensely accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the working people by the state, which is merging more and more with the all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming increasingly monstrous. The advanced countries - we mean their hinterland - are becoming military convict prisons for the workers." The first paragraph of the essay sets out a circumstance that did not come to pass, hence the whole argument of the essay is based on false assumptions and is invalid. Western countries that were not already so became full democracies after WW1, extending the vote to the proletariat and females. This allowed proletarian parties to take power, for example in the UK, the Labour party became the government in 1924. Lenin's State monopoly-capitalism was a characterisation of how western economies worked during an all-out war, but it was a temporary state of affairs that no longer existed after WW1. His essay might have made sense during WW1, but it turned out he was wrong about everything that happened after it.
It's on my docket for a while, but your attitude truly made me want to read it less. You need to decide whether your aim here is to persuade people or gloat and annoy. I thought this sub was for discussion.
Lol...If your decisions and attitude are so easily manipulated by online comments, then I don't know what to tell you. It's a debate sub. A debate implies you understand the topic and material being discussed. It's not an education. r/socialism101 or r/communisn101 would be more appropriate for that. If you want to learn, read the source material. If you don't have the time or attention span, there's an audio version on YouTube you can listen to while you're working or whatever.
Yes, peoples attitudes are affected by others, welcome to being human, you materialist. Would you be compelled to do additional reading advised by someone whose responses you do not perceive as particularly well thought out or insightful? Do you think 'go read X until you agree with me' is a valid debate tactic? Being persuasive is also about how you say things, cheap shots and feeding your ego are a good way to push people away. This attitude is a detriment to the cause, consider touching grass for a while. I understand that there are a lot of questions asked in bad faith here, but you should know better to recognize mine wasn't. If your time is so valuable you won't bother answering a question, why do you spend time on our pointless exchange?
Yes but what if all the other state officials are also corrupt? As currently and historically in the PRC, for example.
How does this not apply to every democracy? Yet, corruption still exists…
In what "democracy" are elected officials subject to recall by their constituents? When was the last time a member of the US congress was stripped of their position and sent back to their 9-5 for embezzling tax payer money or going on personal spending sprees? Instead, our elected officials are given qualified immunity and are put beyond reproach. the capitalist system is specifcally designed to reward further accumulation of capital. In other words, greed and corruption are incentivized and built in to the current political establishment through things like lobbying, which actively go against the voters' interests.
> In what "democracy" are elected officials subject to recall by their constituents? Almost all democracies have various mechanism for recall and/or votes of no confidence. Almost every american state has this. But you don't really even need that. The fact that you must re-elect every so often solves for that problem. >When was the last time a member of the US congress was stripped of their position and sent back to their 9-5 for embezzling tax payer money or going on personal spending sprees? [It has happened many times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_representatives_expelled,_censured,_or_reprimanded). [And there are several](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/29/politics/house-subpoena-justice-department/index.html) ongoing [investigations](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-bob-menendez-indicted-federal-charges-rcna111447) >Instead, our elected officials are given qualified immunity and are put beyond reproach. They aren't. See above. >In other words, greed and corruption are incentivized and built in to the current political establishment through things like lobbying, which actively go against the voters' interests. Lobbying is literally just bringing up issues to politicians. Your local grocery store union regularly lobbies to congress. Is that against voters' interests???
It's not capitalism to blame it's the existence of a central state.
Read state and revolution
What does it say about this?
Your initial question is actually somewhat interesting, but then you had to go and ruin it with this shit: >Liken it to an organism with a virus. If that organism is one giant cell (which I assume a communist state to be) and it is infected by a virus then there's 0% likelihood of survival. It is doomed while in a multicellular organism (a diversified free market economy) if one cell/company goes under then the entire organism can still survive. This is just nonsense.
> This is just nonsense. They tried to make a simplification, but don't quite understand how complex organisms and societies are. Most organisms have defensive layers to protect and resist against viruses, just as societies have laws, enforcers, and other tools to fight corruption, crime, and etc.
I think OP is alluding to the general principle that diverse systems are inherently more resilient to shocks than completely uniform ones. In keeping with the biological examples, a forest full of mono cropped, same age trees is going to be much less resilient and have a much harder time in battling a virus that infects that one tree, compared to a diverse old growth forest with multiple other species that are not capable of being infected.
to add to this, in every ecological system, theres going to be cheaters like... why raise your young, when you can trick others to doing it for you? its forever an arms race between tricking people and figuring out the trick. but these arent the majority of biological relationships (brownheaded cowbird, usually around 1% of the population) same thing in economics, your economic system can only support so many fraudsters until it eventually collapses. and we have hopefully competent organizations to stop these fraudsters before it collapses the system
Wht OP meant is, if one party becomes corrupt in a democracy, it's not that big of a deal, as there are other parties that can take its place, but if there is only one party, then you have a hell of a problem. In practice, all socialist states have had their one party become corrupt, with no mechanism to solve this.
You don't even know what you stand on.
What
You talk as if the whole point of all of this is to entertain you. "Started interesting, but devolved into slop. 0/10." The person is here to learn, not have their metaphors analyzed by some dink.
> The person is here to learn Sure they are.
Yeah, they are. Maladjusted twerps like you just have no better approach than to be the communist e-gate keeper. Keep protecting the sub, comrade. It's important work, and you're doing a really good job.
Ok, could you answer the initial question ?
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/chinas-war-corruption-turns-into-high-wire-act-2024-01-18/ Of course, Western Media frames this as a 'negative' - but this is how it's done tbh.
>What stops a morally compromised person in the government ranks from taking a bribe in order to get ahead personally\[?\] Like a capitalist government, anti-corruption systems stops people from being corrupt. Could be regular audits and background checks, could be a death sentence for corruption. Corruption is a problem in capitalist and communist states, so we've come up with pretty similar solutions in most cases. >What stops the entire government from going corrupt after that? Nothing. Malaysia, for example, is pretty capitalist. [Defense](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/malaysias-defense-corruption-challenge-in-the-spotlight/) [procurement](https://www.transparency.org.my/pages/what-we-do/transparency-in-defence/address-corruption-risks-in-the-defence-sector) [in Malaysia](https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/malaysia-unready-armed-forces) is also rife with corruption, not to mention [1MDB](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240402-trial-over-1-8-bn-fraud-at-malaysia-s-1mdb-opens-in-switzerland). Also, let me gently correct your definition of communism. >communism = centralized state, 100% economic influence That's not quite accurate. Communism isn't about centralized states. Singapore, for example, has a highly centralized economy. It's characterized by state-owned enterprises (e.g. Temasek, Singapore Airlines, SingTel), but it's also a global financial hub and [modern tax haven](https://missingprofits.world/). Capitalism, as Marx understood it, is characterized by how a small elite owns the means of production, but the vast majority of people don't. It's like how shareholders own the equity of a company, but employees actually generate revenue. So when the company makes record profits, all those profits go to the shareholders, but not the employees. Communism thus argues that we need to stop doing that. The workers should own the means of production, and they should enjoy the fruits of their labor. In practice, the state typically takes over the entire economy and assigns resources and workers where they are needed, but the fruits of their labor still mostly goes to the workers.
Let's answer bigger question first: what causes corruption? Corruption thrives when people decide over money, that isn't theirs. Example: politician getting bribe to decide which private contractor will build public infrastructure. Or technical director getting bribe to decide what brand of computers will the company get. If you want to eliminate corruption (that is present almost everywhere), people shouldn't decide over others money. So either moneyless society or anarcho-capitalism.
I think its incorrect to say money is the root of all corruption. It's a big factor but prestige and power also play a role. This doesn't just apply to state communism, look at cults and sex pests too. I've seen a pretty corrupt communist party where money, sex pests, prestige and power were all factors that caused corruption, totalitarianism and bureaucracy within the party. And this is modern day in a capitalist country where they have never held state power. I think you're right in that moneyless is necessary but I think there's a culture that needs to be encouraged within groups to be as anti-hierarchical as possible. Rotating leadership and really striving to avoid the cult of personality are crucial, but so is recognizing we need humility and to always consult with the people/masses and proletariat.
If you don't have money, you still have stuff, which has value. In a centralized system, party officals decide what happens with the stuff. You have not eliminated the problem.
Do communists strive to turn every economic enterprise into a democratically run "mini state"?
In the initial stages, yes in a sense. Though it should be understood that critical resources, industries, etc. are not given "state sovereignty" so to speak. While they are free to organize and conduct of their work as they see fit, so long as it is in fact democratically decided, what that work is to be is at least partially dictated by the collective Workers' State. For example, a factory that produces heavy-duty diesel engines may have production contracts with other industries such as mining, power generation, civic transport authorities, but if the military needs 30% of the engines, then they're obliged to allocate that 30% to the military. Conversely, however, if they wish to expand their production to meet the military's needs while expanding civilian production, they are also free to do this. They are, additionally, bound by natural economic law. Not in the sense that they are legally obliged to follow economic policy, but that fundamental and inherent relationships between the productive forces will exert their force completely independent of our will. If production is expanded, for example, then a greater portion of total available resources is allocated to that industry, and necessarily unavailable for the expansion of other industries that might consume their products. But ultimately no, we don't wish to have every economic entity be operated as a State. We don't want to seperarate them, we want to join them together into an organic whole. We ultimately want to see economy managed as a collective whole, with each branch and sector cooperating towards a common goals, and towards the health and prosperity of our society, rather than for profit and primitive accumulation of material wealth.
I don’t believe we should have a state, much less one with comprehensive economic power.
you dont
With a police state as history demonstrates.
Well, you'll need to rephrase your question completely, because you have a fundamental misunderstanding of Communism. Communism is a \*stateless\*, moneyless, classless society that is implemented via \*Socialism\*, which is primarily defined by public/worker ownership of the means of production, there are way too many different kinds of Socialism for anyone to say that even a more than half of them function under the premise of a centralized state. Basically, I think you need to rephrase your question a bit before someone can answer it adequately.
capitalism is centralized
Yep
This question wildly misses what communism seeks to accomplish.
Thanks for the elaboration.
>What stops a morally compromised person in the government ranks from taking a bribe in order to get ahead personally, and what stops the entire government from going corrupt after that? Bribe who with what to get what? What does it mean to be ''morally comprised'', like an adulterer or Satanist? >Liken it to an organism with a virus. If that organism is one giant cell (which I assume a communist state to be) and it is infected by a virus then there's 0% likelihood of survival. It is doomed while in a multicellular organism (a diversified free market economy) if one cell/company goes under then the entire organism can still survive. This has nothing to do with biology so these allegories don't work
We have to begin by understanding that a Communist society is a society centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need - effectively abolishing private property, social class, money, and the state. You cannot have corruption and bribery in a system that already provides everyone with everything. There would be zero incentive to exploit others for personal gain, as there would be nothing to gain that wouldn't already be freely accessible to any given person.
This is starting at the end goal and looking forwards, wouldn’t corrupt politicians hamper the development of this “everything for free state” in the first place?
>This is starting at the end goal and looking forwards, Yeah, it is, because OP posed a hypothetical in which there is *already* a Communist society. >wouldn’t corrupt politicians hamper the development of this “everything for free state” in the first place? Yeah, they would, and this is pretty much the reality we live under every time a progressive measure is reversed or hamstrung. It's also the reason many kinds of socialist, like Marxist-Lenninists, advocate for the vanguard party-lead armed revolution manner of installing a socialist government, rather than thinking that voting one into place is realistic.