I feel like I shouldn't be ignorant about stuff like that when they are playing more and more of a role on the world stage and the US is ramping up hostilities.
It's incredible how much MLs rationalize and justify capitalism while simultaneously accusing anarchists of being capitalists somehow. It's 100% projection
accusing anarchists of being capitalists somehow
I've heard a lot of criticisms of anarchism, but I don't think I've ever heard that one.
Occasionally stooges for the CIA, sure. But you can’t doubt their commitment to ending wage relations.
I saw it on here recently.And it's common. They think workers owning businesses is capitalism because it's still a businessNo it wasn't on here. It's on r/genzedong
"Anarchism also known as edgy and cool capitalism"
https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/ire3py/anarchist_just_means_anticommunist/g4ztvli/
Dr. Economy, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Oh, come on! Let's meet her colleagues: Professor Evan Geopolitics, Sir Reginald Diplomacy, and Cecilia Trade-Relations, Esq.
https://libgen.lc/item/index.php?md5=B38A8EC588A093730064FBB1D8ACDC43
Not a scholar but I've read the wiki articles and I've studied this kind of thing so I'll take a shot
So the first thing to remember is that the Communist Party (CPC) is legally a separate entity (and has its own politics and structure) but it is by far the largest party in China and legally the ruling party, but not above the rule of law. This means that CPC politics are very much PRC politics, but I won't cover that here. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is sort of jointly led by the government and the CPC. Other smaller parties exist and independents can run for office, but if an individual is hostile to the CPC, they have no shot in national politics and will likely struggle locally as well. Hostile parties are illegal. It is also important to remember the Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative districts which means they have their own political and legal systems.
The legislative body of the PRC is the National People's Congress which has 2980 seats. about 2100 of which are held by the CPC. There are also delegations from the PLA, Hong Kong, Macau, one from Chinese abroad, and one from Taiwan (these last two are kind of a joke though). Representatives are elected by regional congresses, the representatives of which are elected by local congresses, the representatives of which are elected form villages/neighborhoods (there might be another congress you have to get through depending on where you live). These elections have a limited number of candidates per seat (like a 100:130-150 ratio).
The NPC in full meets for roughly two weeks a year due to its size, though members are usually involved in poltiics yearly. This meeting is usually held in conjunction with the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which is sort of an advisory body made up of popular front parties as well as popular organizations without legal powers. The NPC elects the Presidium, a body of 178 members which appoints the state council, president, vice president, and which oversees the election of the members of the NPC's standing committee (NPCSC), a body of 175 members which functions as the year round legislative organ.
The executive functions are mostly carried out by the State Council of the PRC which includes 35 members, most of which represent different departments of the state. The highest position both in the State council and the PRC is the Premier (currently Li Keqiang), who serves as head of government and is responsible for the government bureaucracy. The Premier is usually a member of the CPC standing committee.
The President and the Vice President of the PRC serve a largely ceremonial role because while they have fairly broad powers, they need approval by the NPC or its standing committee to exercise any of them except for state visits. This is complicated though because the Presidency has been held by the General Secretary of the CPC since 1993 (Currently Xi Jinping).
Finally there is the judicial system, whose judges are appointed by the people's congresses at their respective levels and functions similarly to Western judiciaries.
Thanks for researching and making a big summary!
Asking questions for whoever knows the answers.
Hostile parties are illegal
What are the bounds on this? If someone built a party around a different communist idea, like more emphasis on workplace democracy (syndies) or more emphasis on computerized planning (cybersyn), would that be within the legal bounds?
(I checked the existing secondary parties but it seems to be mostly the leftover dregs of historical splitter movements, so I didn't learn anything about present practice.)
Representatives are elected by regional congresses, the representatives of which are elected by local congresses, the representatives of which are elected form villages/neighborhoods
What sort of election processes do these use? FPTP? Party list? Consensus?
These elections have a limited number of candidates per seat (like a 100:130-150 ratio).
I didn't understand this bit, could you clarify?
For the last part, I'm pretty sure this means that if ten seats are up for election, 13-15 people can run.
The CPC runs things at the national level pretty much unopposed but down at the lower levels one might be able to try out some different stuff. The only trade union allowed in China is the ACFTU which has 302 million members and is kind of a state organization so you wouldn't see a syndicalist party. As far as I'm aware, a lot of the economic policy is done at the provincial level with the national government setting quotas and things like that and those are also largely controlled by the CPC. That being said, the CPC is not some immobile bureaucracy that can't evolve like the late USSR was.
As for your second question, here is the 1979 law on elections which I believe is still the current one.
CHAPTER VIII ELECTION PROCEDURE
[Article 31] Where the deputies to a people's congress are to be elected directly by the voters, the election shall be conducted at polling centres in the various electoral districts or at election meetings. The polling centres or election meetings shall be presided over by the election committee.
[Article 32] Where a local people's congress at or above the county level is to elect deputies to the people's congress at the next higher level, the election shall be presided over by the presidium of the lower people's congress.
[Article 33] The election of deputies to the national and local people's congresses shall be by secret ballot.
If a voter is illiterate or handicapped and is therefore unable to write his ballot, he may entrust another person to write it for him.
[Article 34] A voter may vote for or against a candidate for deputy and may vote instead for any other voter or abstain.
[Article 35] A voter who is absent from his electoral district during the time of an election may, with the approval of the election committee and by written authorization, entrust another voter with a proxy vote. A voter shall not stand proxy for more than three persons.
[Article 36] When balloting has been concluded, scrutinizers and vote counters elected by the voters or deputies and members of the election committee or members of the presidium of the people's congress shall check the number of people who voted against the number of voter cast and make a record of it; the record shall be signed by the scrutinizers.
[Article 37] An election shall be null and void if the number of votes cast is greater than the number of people who voted, and it shall be valid if the number of votes cast is less than the number of people who voted.
A ballot shall be null and void if more candidates are voted for than the number of deputies to be elected, and it shall be valid if fewer candidates are voted for than the number of deputies to be elected.
[Article 38] In a direct election of deputies to the people's congresses, the election shall be valid if more than half of all the voters in an electoral district cast their votes. Candidates for deputies shall be elected only if they have obtained more than half of the votes cast by the voters that take part in the election.
When a local people's congress at or above the county level is to elect deputies to a people's congress at the next hgiher level, candidates for deputies shall be elected only if they have obtained more than half of the votes of all the deputies.
When the number of candidates for deputies who have obtained more than half of the votes exceeds the number of deputies to be elected, those who have obtained the most votes shall be elected. If the number of votes for some candidates is tied, making it impossible to determine who is elected, another balloting shall be conducted between those candidates to resolve the tie.
If the number of elected deputies who have obtained more than half of the votes is less than the number of deputies to be elected, another election shall be held among the candidates for deputies who failed to be elected to make up the difference. Those who obtain the most votes shall be elected; however, to be elected they must obtain no less than one third of the votes cast.
[Article 39] The election committee or the presidium of the people's congress shall determine, in accordance with this Law, whether or not the result of an election is valid and shall announce it accordingly.
For your third question, iridaniotter's answer is correct as far as I'm aware however chapter 8 of that law is on nomination of candidates so you can read that if you want more info
Thanks!
So, summarizing: An election is for multiple candidates to fill N interchangeable seats. Voters can vote for up to N candidates. The top N candidates who received at least 50% of the vote get seats. If fewer than N candidates meet the 50% threshold, a runoff election is run with the leftovers until all seats are filled.
It sounds like it should have a roughly equivalent result to approval voting, though it's a lot more work to get that result. Approval voting is very good though.
The 10:13-10:15 ratio rule is still weird to me. I wonder what that's for.
The 10:13-15 thing is just so that there is a candidate pool to choose from and there is some competition. Competitive elections are usually considered important for democratic society (whatever that means). If you have 150 candidates to fill 100 seats, you have competition (even if the ideological difference isn't that significant), and ideally the Chinese government would like to see between 130 and 150 candidates for that 100 seat election, that way its not just the party picking candidates in candidate selection, the people have some choice.
There really isn't a great translation to US politics because of how representation works here, but it would be kind of like the federal government mandating there be at least two candidates in an election for a city council seat.
Oh, the low end of the limit is great. I guess I'm more surprised by the high end being only 1.5x the number of seats. My local elections usually have five candidates per position (of course they're FPTP so only two matter).
Article 3 of the PRC's constitution:
Article 3. The state organs of the People's Republic of China apply the principle of democratic centralism The National People's Congress and the local people's congresses at different levels are instituted through democratic election. They are responsible to the people and subject to their supervision. All administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs of the state are created by the people's congresses to which they are responsible and under whose supervision they operate. The division of functions and powers between the central and local state organs is guided by the principle of giving full play to the initiative and enthusiasm of the local authorities under the unified leadership of the central authorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism
This is like reading the bill of rights and then believing americans actually have freedom of speech
It really pisses me off when I get responses that don't actually reply to anything I said but instead seek to just soapbox. This isn't a reply to me, at least not to anything I actually said because I definitely made no value judgement and all I did was tell him what the system was called so he could go do more reading.
Respond to human beings not to some imagined wider audience. It's rude af.
I dunno, they have a point. Ideally I would like something to point to besides a wikipedia article on their constitution, something that's harder to dismiss then going "oh they don't actually follow that." But I don't really know what kind of source that would even be.
It would have to be a massive pile of books.
The only valid thing to do here is to make sure people are informed with the correct terminology for them to be able to research the topic properly. There is no comment-length response that will suffice for a topic that will span dozens of research papers and a small mountain of literature.
I know. Although for that topic it's rather difficult as the information available is basically non-existent due to the secretive nature of the country. That isn't the case for this topic, all you need to really start digging is the correct terminology for searching.
Whereas we can observe, how the US violates it's Constitution. In case of North Korea you don't have any info except from dissidents. ___
Exactly. Citing their constitution is meaningless because we know many countries do not actually adhere to the text of their constitution, but we also can’t be sure they don’t adhere to theirs because we don’t have clear knowledge of conditions within the country.
Why then critique a socialist state when you have no knowledge about their situation?
You shouldn't. But if you have no knowledge about their situation you also shouldn't praise them, which is what some people attempt to do by citing their constitution without actually knowing whether it is followed in practice. If we cannot get real knowledge about Korea then we should avoid praise or critique, except of course to defend them from imperialism.
Of course I can praise them. A socialist Constitution, even when implemented half as much as the us implements theirs (if history has taught us anything, there is no country behaving worse than the us), it's still a better country for the people than any neoliberal capitalist state.
The point being made of that you have no real evidence to believe that it’s actually any better for the working class there. Sure, they’re probably better than the US but that’s not saying much because so is everyone else. If we can’t trust any media about Korea then we should reserve judgement about whether the system there is good or not and stick to anti-imperialism.
Soapboxing or just segwaying is not only standard in similar online spaces like Twitter or reddit; it's part of the normal flow of real life conversations. People will talk about whatever the fuck they want to talk about. You're getting mad about rules you made up and don't apply anywhere. This is not your private chat, you don't get to police what kind of responses are acceptable on your precious posts.
Maybe it's a good time to log off for a bit when one is correcting people on their goddamn online manners and asking them to quote your comments like a reddit debate guy.
Maybe it’s a good time to log off for a bit when one is correcting people on their goddamn online manners and asking them to quote your comments like a reddit debate guy.
The irony of this
Those spaces(reddit/twitter) encourage you to pander to the audience because every post is a game you earn a global pts score for. They're specifically designed in an unhealthy way to encourage people to stop talking to each other and to instead pander to the audience of onlookers that will be dishing out (or not) their points.
In the pre-social media period where we all used forums without being trained into that behaviour we actually responded to the person we were sending a message to. We talked. We sent our messages with the intention of actually addressing the person as a human being and not simply to pander to an audience.
Gameification is responsible for the behaviour you're calling "standard" and it is not only unhealthy but something that prevents us from having real conversations and treating one another like real human beings.
Actually engaging directly with the person you're responding to is healthy and something that should be promoted. Soapboxing and sending messages that aren't actually directed at the person you're responding to should be extremely discouraged. It is annoying as fuck getting a phone notification that is basically not a message that's even for me.
You're willingly taking part in a public online forum, don't demand it to work like your fantasy notion of human conversation. You think real life conversations don't have random comments, changes of topics or people addressing the group?
Your nostalgia about the good old days of internet forums is just wrong. Even without 'points' public online conversations were completely different from private ones.
At the very least don't be a hypocrite. The person had a very valid response about how maybe reading state propaganda is not the best source of objective information - how is that not a valid reply to your posting of said state propaganda? You decided it wasn't addressed toward you, got mad and started to soapbox yourself and rudely lecture them - how very 'normal human conversation' of you. I think you didn't like your wikipedia article being challenged and all this talk about real human conversations is just your internal justification of being mad about a hurt ego, cause you sure as shit don't practice what you preach.
Online is making people less connected, woaaah how novel, I'm going to use that fact to create real human connections by berating people about petty and asinine shit.
Posting a part of the constitution referring to democratic centralism with no value judgement one way or another is not "state propaganda".
IDK what you're talking about, but what I'm saying is you can't just take a states word for it when they say they're good. If someone is asking "how does the Chinese government operate," telling them what the Chinese government says about itself is useless
Quote the part of my comment where I made any comment one way or the other that made a value judgement. He needed to know the name of it to do actual research and he got the fucking name of it.
K if you're not gonna read what I'm saying I'm gonna stop talking to you. Bye
You weren't really responding to me. You have no idea what my opinion on this topic is, if that message was for me then you just assumed what my position was from absolutely nothing, no? I was perhaps a little grumpier than I could have been in my response, but this is something that really bothers me and immediately sets me off.
I'm not explaining your intentions, I'm explaining the reception. You said nothing to indicate you were talking to her. She responded understandably. Is this how you want to treat fellow members or what? Just move on, bud.
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Ah so this is one of those I'm a miserable bastard so I hope you'll be one too kind of arrangements.
Comrade, I know you've mentioned you're having a hard time. It would be cool to actually be there for one another so I'm trying to be for you right now. Can you just drop the pretense and be real with me here?
Lol at reading my post history and trying to use my struggles with mental illness against me as a rhetorical device. Fuck you, "comrade," you're a piece of shit
I'm not trying to win anything, man, I'm trying to help someone who's clearly having a rough time. Your response in this thread vastly out of proportion to a normal response and I recognize that behavior as someone who's been there myself. So think I'm a piece of shit all you want, but talk to me so we can get somewhere that you're in a better place.
It’s quite literally not “useless” in any sense of that word, what a ridiculous assessment
Speaking as someone in another country, America has a pretty weird obsession with freedom of speech and guns.
Sure, it’s bourgeois speech and petty bourgeois gun ownership, but it’s still a weird commitment to it.
