Zeno's Paradox

bandana-roja:

I’ve been waiting to answer this one! Let’s look at the USSR as a good example.

The USSR, in the most simple, was politically set up in a way that absolutely required the participation of the people. The smallest yet most important organ in the USSR was the people’s soviet, which were these committees set up in multiple communities across the Union that were composed up by members of the working class while moderated by certain officials. From there, the people would introduce candidates to fulfill a certain position or to represent a certain group of people (like nationality), those candidates would be interrogated by the people and officials, and then once democratically elected by the people, that candidate would be assigned to whichever position they ran for. Literally anyone from the working class can offer themselves as a candidate. There was no prerequisite other than being a member of the working class and being able to survive through the constant interrogation of your peers.

And then those elected candidates would vote for their own candidates for higher government positions using essentially the same process but from within their own ranks instead of asking the average civilian for every decision, which would be an endless time consuming process.

All candidates from all levels represented the people that came from below. If a particular candidate did an awful job or lied about the things they would do, the people who put them in power could easily recall or even impeach them via voting. And if you wanted to voluntarily leave a position, you had to receive a majority vote from the people who put you in that position to determine your resignation.  

And regardless of your position, whether you’re the a secretary for the department of education, a sanitation worker, or the chairman of the union itself, every citizen of the Union had an equal vote, meaning everyone only gets the one, and no one person’s vote meant anything more than another.

And yes, the USSR was a one party state, but that didn’t mean you had to be in the communist party to run for anything to be chosen by the people’s soviet. There were two political “entities” in the USSR: the communist party and the independents, which were people that weren’t officially in the communist party but rather started as a non-affiliate. But regardless you would still be in service to the party once you’ve been elected.

The reason for the one party state and the reliance on the working class being the cause everyone’s government position were active deterrents that would make sure that no fascist nor a capitalist would ever get any government position. That there would be no immediate internal threat that would jeopardize all the work put into the previous revolution, and that there would be nothing to impede the progress of the world’s first proletarian revolutionary state.

So in a sense, socialist representation, at least in the case of the USSR, was  a mix of direct and indirect democracy but necessitated the participation of the working class to function.

These two videos get into the very specific functions of the soviet government. Give em a watch!

USSR: Democratic or Totalitarian? (x)

Soviet Government and Electoral System (x)