petit-booj nonsense and there’s no such thing as a “democratic Marxist” if you have a Marxist conception of the State and in who’s class interest the State is wielded in.

If you call yourself a “Democratic Marxist” then all you’re telling me is that you have rejected the Marxist conception of the State and the Marxist conception of class society

The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist.

Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau, London, March 18-28, 1875;

As Muad-Dibber has said, bourgeois ‘democracy’ has proven to be the best shell for capitalist rule and to secure capitalist class power and domination of the State over the proletariat

The function of modern day ‘elections’ is to finance both sides of the aisle of ruling parties in the specific interests of different sections of the bourgeoisie (Trump represented the local American bourgeoisie for instance whilst Clinton/Biden represented a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie)

Coupled with privately held media you certainly have the technical freedom to run in an election against bourgeois candidates but you will never break that wall into the popular consciousness and the most you’ll ever get in 0.5-1% of the vote

This is not “democracy” but a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

I’d advise you to read this study (from Princeton and Harvard) that classifies US democracy as an oligarchy where even when popular policies are proposed they do not get passed

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

I think there should be a multi-party system using Single Transferable Vote to ensure that the people’s voice can be heard

Multi-party Bourgeois democracy, regardless of the voting system, has proven to be the safest shell for capitalist rule. The alternate voting systems used in places like Australia or Japan have had no effect whatsoever on this. When capitalists still control the media, and more importantly, the production and finances of these countries, the method of voting has proven to be completely irrelevant.

Its those ebil tankies, who you could learn the most from as to how to prevent this, and build a workers state.

Neither ideology you listed functionally exists.

Marxism is inherently “democratic”, once you have a system that puts political power directly into the hands of proletarian masses at the local and communal levels, you eliminate the need for general elections and term limits. Simply put, once people have control over what happens in their communities, they no longer need local politicians to achieve goals for them. Various Socialist states have a plentitude of political parties, but as you’ll find if you should research them, the vast majority of them are Socialist parties that only really differ in interpretations of ‘what is to be done’ about the material conditions of the country in question. DPRK, for instance, has the Korean Worker’s Party - an ML-Juche party. Then you have the Social Democratic Party, which is still a far-left party that’s only different from WPK because it’s constructed of the nation’s merchants and business owners. Or, North Korea’s petty-bourgeois class.

In fact, the idea that there’s an “authoritarian” and a “libertarian” or “democratic” divide in politics is an intellectual fallacy. All ideologies, no matter how hands-off they may seem, utilise authoritarian methods to ensure the success of their system. The Anarchists of Spain used the militias to force workers to join unions, and used prison labour to boost their production abilities. That’s pretty frickin’ authoritarian if you ask me.

This brings us to Anarcho-Communism - an infantile ideology of anti-communist internet leftists. This is an ideology that’s only able to exist because westerners are simultaneously illiterate beyond belief on leftist politics, and propagandized to oblivion against Communism. This is an ideology for people who read The Communist Manifesto once, but still want to say things like “Stalin killed 245424642454246424542464245 and a half people!!”. I’ve covered this ideology in the past, and I will not conceal my absolute hatred of it. It’s a horseshit half-step that allows people to claim to be Marxists, while they shit all over Marxism.

You’ve said in other places that you’ve been radicalized by breadtube. Honestly, and I say this as someone who used to be very similar, work on changing that asap. Breadtube is filled with liberals who’re only in it for the money, and who use leftist aesthetic purely to fish for views. The actually well educated leftist YouTubers, like Bayarea or Luna Oi, don’t get half the attention shitty neo-libs like Contrapoints or Vaush get. If you want an education on leftism that isn’t just a bunch of anti-communists bickering about shit they don’t understand, please find the time to read literature first hand, and find the time to discuss it with other principled leftists. /c/communism101 and the main /c/communism are great places to discuss the literature and ask valuable questions to improve your understanding. Also please understand that Marxists tend to seem bitter and resentful, especially towards people who’re less as far in their radicalization, and I just wanna make sure you’re aware that it’s because the “fake” left repeatedly steals our aesthetics and theory just to make a mockery of it, and the anti-communists will find literally any excuse to harass us. Many of the people who’ve commented on this post rashly are only reacting from years of people completely misunderstanding Marxism, then telling them that they don’t understand what Marx really meant.

Also, a final note “tankie” is technically a slur. It’s not a terrible thing to say, but it’s used to smear Marxist-Leninists. And originates from anti-communists after they watched the NKVD put down an anti-communist counter-revolution in Hungary. The term directly implies that the user thinks the USSR shouldn’t have defended itself against people who wanted to introduce Western Liberalism to Hungary.

Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests… The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence… they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable."

The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine “only” by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this “only” signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of “quantity being transformed into quality”: democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper.

• Lenin in State and Revolution

The smashing of a state and its subsequent replacement with a proletarian state (i.e. what Marxism-Leninism calls for) IS democratic by the very fact that the new state represents the majority of people rather than the minority bourgeois class. Marxism is democratic. To call for “Democratic Marxism” is both redundant and shows a lack of understanding Marxism, not to mention a lack of understanding of bourgeois democracy and parlimentarism, which Lenin summarizes nicely below:

To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament–this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentaryconstitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

Why do you believe that a multi party system is a precondition for democracy? For example India has a multi party electoral system and we are not democratic at all.

China and DPRK actually have a multi-party system, but in any case, if the working class interests are the center of a party, there’s no need for other parties to guarantee democracy. Democracy is developed both inside and outside the party. This idea that you need multiple meaningless choices is ingrained in bourgeois ideology. But here we are, in bourgeois states with no democracy whatsoever when deciding what our nation produces, why it produces it, how it uses its resources, who benefits from them, but hey, we have 37 different choices of bubblegum flavour and 20 different options of bourgeois parties (all defending the interests of the bourgeoisie).

A multiplicity of parties does not guarantee “democracy”.

The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them. Julius Nyerere

Within a party structured around democratic centralism and the principle of engagement with the masses you can have a far greater degree of democracy than in a multi party state. Also if, as you say, you want a marxist economy why would you want to sacrifice that by allowing non-marxist elements control of the state machine? Capitalism doesn’t persist in capitalist countries because everyone votes for its reinstatement every year. It persists by force; and it will use that force if ever given half a chance through the ballot box. Having a government with a Marxist-Leninist party at the head of governance also does not preclude other parties from being coalition partners with said party e.g China, DDR. Not to mention the fact that previous existing socialisms and currently existing socialisms are marked by great degrees of genuine peoples power at local and national levels, with far greater alignment between policy and the interests of the common people

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stop watching vaush my dude, no offense

I generally agree, but I think more clarification is needed. Existing Liberal, Capitalist Democracies are not adequate vehicles for social change, but in the new state we seek to create, voting can play a major role.

One thing Tankies don’t understand is that the October Revolution was intended to be multi-party. The Bolsheviks saw a new, purer form of democracy not in their own party but in the Soviets, which were muti-party organizations. The first thing they did after seizing power was seek out coalition partners.

The single party state emerged not out of principal but out of a lack of willing partners. Everyone willing to stand by the Revolution had already become a Bolshevik. However, the party eventually fell into stagnation, factionalism, and revisionism. In the end, the system failed. It is worth critically reassessing this model, even while recognizing its historic origin and value. This means not rejecting existing single party states, but being open to alternatives and their potential advantages.