Does a truly Socialist Society utilize Political Parties?

[Tyler Durden]

Poll question: Does a truly Socialist Society utilize Political Parties?

I'm not talking about "interest groups" that get together to petition the government. That, given the existence of the internet, can be completely non-partisan and requires no seed money or lobbying.

My opinion: ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Opinions? Comments?

[Tyler Durden]

1. Here I support my opinion:

Cleita put forth the idea that political service is not unlike service in a military: if it exists, it should be universal and compulsory, like Jury Duty without excuses.

Given this basis, Political Parties are not only unneccessary, but are useless and likely a detriment to the Democratic Process. Any artificial grouping becomes a defacto "class structure," and also requires support in the form of Capital. Once again, the sin of PAID lobbying rears its ugly head and corruption is inevitable.

No Parties, no reason to donate to Parties, no temptation to bribe or extort.

[Boojatta]

22. Huh?

"not unlike service in a military: if it exists, it should be universal and compulsory"

Do you also want universal compulsory service in the police, in public libraries, and at the post office?

[westerebus]

2. Anything goes.

Why set limits up front? A free society needs the all to form opinion, to shout out what it wants for itself in front of the society as a whole. A bond of common cause can lead to organization for the purpose of the group's interests. IMHO you will not recognize the future parties with the title DU or the party of god. That's not necessarily a bad thing. My caution would be to limit the power of any single party with in the structure of whatever government is decided upon. It may not be a democracy. The proverbial shit happens.

[Cerridwen]

3. Why add yet another artificial divide?

As we can see here at DU, even Democrats aren't neatly and easily categorized (Socialist Progressive Group, anyone?).

I'd rather see societies of any flavor attempt to create unity/community rather than division.

Will there be politics involved in any society; socialist or otherwise? If you define politics as the quest for power and position, I think we can be assured that politics in some form will exist. I'd prefer to NOT give it another platform.

I'm with you on this: ABSOLUTELY NOT.

[More Than A Feeling]

4. Why do you call political parties artificial?

Isn't disagreement over how way to run a society inevitable, and organizing around particular viewpoints to win power to enact them a foreseeable result?

[Cerridwen]

5. Because, as they exist today, they give the impression that

all the members agree on all the issues and that if you don't agree with all the issues, then you must not be a pure (insert party name here). It actually creates more division than unity.

People may agree on individual issues but to assume we all agree on all the issues...well, we're over here posting in the Socialist Progressive Group. We're an example of what I'm saying.

In addition, rather than addressing individual issues, we get people more concerned with their place in the party than in addressing the issues their party is supposed to be addressing. Too much energy is wasted on personal goals of "leadership" that could be better spent advocating for an issue.

edit for additional thought.

[More Than A Feeling]

6. I have to admit, I hate most calls for party unity around here, since they usually involve

people to my right telling me to "stfu" or that they think they know how to use my vote better than me. Other Democratic blogs are better, though.

[Cerridwen]

7. Yep, and as you noted, party unity usually means

let's all unify around what *I* say we unify around - said by whomever's in charge at the moment (or by whatever poster has decided to carry the party banner for that thread).

To bowdlerize Lincoln, "we can agree on all of the issues some of the time; some of the issues all of the time; but we can't agree on all of the issues all of the time."

[westerebus]

8. The original question.

Does a truly socialist society utilize political parties? Why wouldn't they? Why would they limit the right of fellow citizens to assemble and form political parties? Unless your interested in a socialist totalitarian form of government in which party loyalty is the means of authority. Your argument appears to be against such a demand. The value of the individual is not diminished in a socialist society. It would be protected. Human rights are not cast aside for the larger good of the society. I would think the protections to assemble and organize into multiple parties forms a checks and balances lacking in the system today. Then again that's just me.

[Greyhound]

9. Had to go with "Political Parties are incompatible with a Socialist Society" as the

best answer to the question. Not that I think "outlawing" them is required, or even a good idea as such. I think the political party stems from the idea of a group with common interests, and ideas for achieving them, coming together to make their ideas real.

The problem begins when the coalition, or party, becomes superior to the idea itself. When the power of commonality exceeds the motivation to implement the idea(s) we get what we have now, a system where we must advocate the group even when the group is detrimental to our interests (any Democrat is better than a Republik).

So, rather than political parties as we currently understand them, how about a more or less fixed group of issue based organizations with fluid membership? An analogy would be the groups are the server nodes forming the internetz and the voters are the netizens (users), site 'a' attracts 10,000 netizens today while site 'z' gets 205,000 and site 'j' only attracts 550, and it can all change tomorrow. This way the groups (sites) will have to constantly evolve to attract more voters (netizens) to grow, or not if growth is not their goal.

[westerebus]

11. Can "we" govern by referendum on the net?

I'm speaking rhetorically. Are "we" going to vote a'la american idol how to spend taxes?

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Well that depends on your definition of "a truly Socialist Society "

But in my opinion, outside of utopian fantasies, the alternative to competitive political parties is tyranny. No thanks on that.

[Tyler Durden]

17. Only if you accept one idea or the other with no in between.

We aren't talking about 2 or 3 political parties: a truly SOCIALIST paradigm exists with 300,000,000 political parties in a state that has 300,000,000 citizens; the government exists as a coalition of the whole.

[Cleita]

12. Historically one party systems don't work, any more than state

religions do. I'm all for freedom of religion and political parties for the reason that we may not want to be under the influence of a party or religion that we disagree with. I mean what if the fascists take complete control like they are trying to do now, wouldn't we want the choice of being able to speak out against them as socialists or democrats like we still are able to do now?

So if socialists and/or democrats are the majority, most likely theirs will be the policies that rule. Still we need to allow the conservatives to be able to meet and vote according to their consciences even if they remain in the minority and IMHO, in a country with honest elections and parliamentary style legislatures, social policies will win out more often than not.

I personally though would like a true democracy as I have posted before, where we do our duty once in a lifetime, like we do jury duty. All political views would be present depending on who was selected at that time for that term. There would be no elections, campaigns or other corruption. Maybe really contentious issues could be put up for a vote by referendum to the public at large.

[westerebus]

13. Possibilities..

Sounds like a plan to me. I'm impressed with the idea of a draft for political office and term limits for those offices. Political parties could petition for their issues instead of determining who gets elected and sets the agenda.

[leftofthedial]

14. The oligarchy uses political parties to divide the people

America's two-party system is the fundamental platform for the class war being waged by the oligarchs against the rest of us. IMHO political parties are profoundly anti-democratic.

No. No need for political parties. I'd regulate any political alliance very strictly.

[westerebus]

15. Two party system needs correcting.

Agreeded!

[leftofthedial]

16. any formal political alliance

unavoidably obscures the identity of the true decision maker(s) and also inevitably dilutes responsibility.

We see this in practice today, as the Democrats in Congress hide behind the party's apparent support for un-American and anti-democratic agendae like the illegal occupation of Iraq, "free trade" screw-workers policies, pro-corporate deregulation,etc.

No parties is by far the most Democratic approach.

[westerebus]

18. Look behind the curtain.

As in follow the money, you can find the identity of those anti democratic groups or persons.

More parties not less parties. More competition,less regulation,smaller federal government and no elections for national office. Local state government with citizen control not party hacks with deep pockets.

A Bill of workers' rights,universal health care,financial support for higher education and trade schools, a national referendum system on capital spending projects (cuts out pork),and more control by the "we" instead of the corporatist.

[leftofthedial]

19. current economic system--

more parties

socialist government--no parties, or perhaps more parties to the point that there is one "party" per member of government.

I'm sick of Democrats hiding behind the DLC and the other anti-human and anti-American acts of groups of Democrats.


and absolutely NO corporatists

[Odin2005]

20. I consider socialism an economic system, not a kind of society.

A Liberal Socialist like myself consider the premise of the question to be nonsense. Liberal Democracy and Socialism only conflict in the minds of Marxist true believers.

[govegan]

21. No vote here, but opinions and comments

Scott and Helen Nearing wrote a little known, but highly informative, analysis and survey in 1958. It was titled Socialists Around the World. As they wrote in the dedication: "To the thousands of fine and friendly folk we met in our seventy-fice thousand miles of travel from 1952 to 1957."

In the introductory chapter "Comrades in Many Lands," they wrote:

The majority of socialists in the world put collective ownership and operation of the means of production before freedom, at least during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, are satisfied to have the democratic aspects of public life subordinated to the urgencies of the emergency which necessarily accompanies any basic shift in property ownership and the exercise of power. Many socialists frankly accept the necessity of a more or less open dictatorship or oligarchical control through the transition period.


(a few paragraphs later)

Our experience leads us to believe that socialists would provide social services, not equally, but in proportion to need. The only equality they stress is equality of opportunity to live useful, creative, significant, rewarding lives.

......

The socialist movement grew up before the development of experimental psychology. One of its basic precepts was the hatred of capitalism, and often of capitalists. If hatred, as the psychologists tell us, is not merely negative but corrosive and destructive, a theory and practice built upon hatred would tend to be annihilative. For our part, we feel that socialism is a positive, constructive movement and that socialists who wish to contribute to the movement should abandon hatred and be positive and constructive.

In more recent times, I admire what Hugo Chavez is doing with his Bolivarian revolutionary movement in South America, and of course in Venezuela in particular. Mr. Chavez is making wise use of a political party structure within Venezuela.

So my opinion would be that political parties are useful, and maybe even necessary, especially during relatively peaceful transitions to a more socialist and progressive organization of society.

Political parties are essentially a means of organization of collective interests. It is difficult to envision any type of socialist society that would not prevail itself of the collective representation afforded by "political" parties. This does not mean that the fascist organization that was so successfully prevalent in the twentieth century, and which propagates and sustains itself with massive propaganda and manipulation of public perception, should be tolerated in a truly socialist society. The ugly capitalist notion that money talks, and that those individuals with the most money should therefore talk the loudest, is incompatible with healthy and sound political organization.

[Dragonbreathp9d]

23. I think that political parties

(though different from our own) would happen naturally as people who have similar view points tend to come together. Even within socialism there will be issues that need to be discussed and thought out and debated - this will provide for political parties, though there may be many and people may identify with more than one. So in a sense, my answer is anything goes, but I doubt it would resemble out political parties.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

24. A true socialist society would have done away with political parties

however during the transitional stage to socialism, the party of the working class ought to have been thoroughly and extremely democratic to prevent Stalinist tyranny. The party of the working class would make other political parties redundant and whithered away before the party of the working class can abolish itself in reaching the socialist epoch stage.