Many countries include ‘Democratic’ or ‘People’s’ in their names, even though they are not democratic and do not serve their people. Examples: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Lao People’s Democratic Republic People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria Democratic Republic of the Congo And German Democratic Republic (East Side) in 1949–1990. None of these states are democratic, power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small ruling elite. Who are they fooling with these names?
same reason america espouses freedom but then has 304830483048 laws that restrict every possible thing you can do other than go to work.
Boy wait until you find out the “Patriot Act” was actually about the government spying on you. It’s like politics 101 to give things names that aren’t at all related, but sound good.
Why does trump say he’s “the peace president”? Because they are all evil fucking liars trying to confuse dumb dumbs.
It is usually because whoever grabbed power in that place fooled the people to garner their support, telling them that they would actually become a democracy, socialist, or communist, and then, once they are in power, they mask off and never relinquish that power. Sometimes they may excuse that as a “transitional period” before moving on to the promised state. But those are obvious lies.
There are other reasons, tho, like confusing voters and muddying the waters so the people can’t really know who is actually working for them, or just mockery, like the nazi.
This is why the way countries do elections is very wrong. Votes should not be for parties; they should be for policies and objectives. Then get in power people who claimed to aim for the same policies and objectives, and heavily punish them if they don’t really work towards them once in power.
There’s usually a populist factor that authoritarians use to seize power
Or they swoop in with rizz after the people’s democratic revolution stumbles…
Similar reason why they were called National Socialists.
They had nothing to do with socialism.
I mean the stuff that is produced within the country is produced by the people. So it’s people’s stuff, in the same sense that milk is cow’s milk. It’s not for the cow, but from the cow.
Just like they call the army that has attacked multiple countries and committed genocide the “israel defence force”
Language is the framework of thought. By controlling, twisting, and restricting vocabulary, high-control systems directly restrict what people are capable of thinking. High-control systems maintain power by manipulating fundamental human biology, cognitive architecture, and language. They actively work against societal advancement because their primary goal is self-preservation and the consolidation of status. High-control systems shut down critical analysis, nuance, and long-term planning, trapping individuals in primitive, survival-driven cognitive states. Learn more and ask further questions here: share.google/aimode/A07xJDl8zEiKH71NI
Since the 20th century, linguistic determinism has largely been discredited by studies and abandoned within linguistics, cognitive science, and related fields.
Usually, they are rebranding after a revolution with the goal to establish a democratic or communist government. But then the inherent weakness of those forms of government leads to internal instability due to outside influence and/or internal corruption. The new and unexperienced government gets more and more extreme in an attempt to defend or due to simple greed. The original idea becomes more and more distant until not even a faint shadow of it is left.
It’s not so much that they become more extreme, but they start out that way and just continue. They justify it because they are in a state of revolution to force the change the want; it’s just that the revolution continues indefinitely
Some have “United”.
Oh, they were “united”, under.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Empathy is weakness.
Hello Elmo, nice of you to join the conversation
This is the big one right now.
Fascists, and by extension authoritarians, hate education and vocabulary, so they use the language to lie as much as they can.
Think that’s a bit reductive, and an ironically manipulative use of language. It’s important to remember that many of the countries which exemplify this pattern also emerged out of struggles against colonialism, and therefore contended with both the popularism of liberty and indepdence (democracy) and the inevitable response from external, imperialist powers.
So, there’s some good explanations for why polities that are militaristic, itself conducive to authoritarianism, are that way since EuroAmerican imperialists don’t just allow actually challenging resistance to appear in the periphery with impunity. Then, there’s the fact that “post-” colonial states rarely exist over preexisting, unified cultural or ethnic spaces with a common material interest, and also must be organized into a specific, hierarchal structure to gain recognition from the EuroAmerican global imperialist order and participate in its economy. Inevitably, the political incompatibility of groups within those states leads to irreconcilable conflict, and therefore the need for any state established to defend itself from both external and internal pressures.
The reason why the US and Europe so often support authoritarian dictatorships in response to socialist – or honestly, even liberal evolutions if they aren’t favourable enough – is because these conditions are so conducive to this form of state building, and they benefit from it even if they fail to topple a supposedly threatening government. In the same vain, the fact that you used “fascist” to decribe this, and not something that more clearly references the hegemonically liberal capitalist, EuroAmerican nature of this form of politics itself emblemizes how the production of knowledge under this system creates language that occludes the relationship between these kinds of authoritarian states and the historical processes that lead to them.
Fascists do indeed love to lie, though saying that they do so exceptionally is itself a lie. Most people under liberal capitalists systems don’t even know what fascism is for that very same reason, and often construct it as synonymous with any kind of authoritarianism, or just the word you use when an authoritarian system loses its purported moral virtue. You’ll notice that another commenter here made the typical mistake of associating this same behaviour with socialism or communism, which happens, but hardly happens in the same ways and for the same reasons.
And Leftists too.
Virtually every leftist project anywhere in the world has made literacy an incredibly high priority. Cuba’s literacy rate went from around 70% under capitalism to 99.8% under socialism. Here’s a fucking NYT article from 1976 titled, “North Vietnam Puts the Emphasis on Literacy,” which says, “Since 1958 the North Vietnamese have been stressing complementary education, a fundamental expansion of the literacy campaign. . . Complementary education remains an integral part of North Vietnam’s educational system.” Vietnam went from sub 20% literacy under capitalism to 96% under socialism. For reference, US literacy is at 79%.
Trying to pass off leftist projects as unconcerned with literacy of all thing is one of the wildest and most bizzarely delusional claims I’ve ever seen anyone make on here, which is a high bar considering how many people just spew out whatever BS sounds good knowing they can dismiss anyone who fact checks them as a “tankie.”
If anything, the fact that so-called “authoritarian” leftist projects were so concerned with massive education campaigns, even while dirt poor and even in the midst of fighting for survival should at least give y’all pause regarding the typical, “red fascist” bullshit. It won’t, because you can just choose to ignore that pesky reality in favor of your ideological preconceptions, but who knows, maybe the NYT and Miami University are just communist propaganda.
Authoritarianism is just when the executive branch does things, it shouldn’t have a moral judgement
That’s not how anyone uses it at all.
I mean yes, people love to scream about “authoritarianism” whenever a government they dislike does stuff, but there is absolutely a moral component to that accusation.
Are these leftists in the room with us right now?
Marxist-Leninist theory judges democracy by class content, not procedure. The key question is “democracy for which class?” Liberal democracies are seen as formally free but substantively controlled by capital (bourgeois democracy), while one-party socialist states claim to be “people’s democracies” because the state (in theory) represents the working class/peasantry against capitalist and landlord classes. Popular will, in this framework, isn’t expressed through multiparty competition but through the party as the organized vanguard representing proletarian class interests — elections, if held, ratify this rather than allow contestation between competing class programs.
This is in contrast to Liberal democracy defines democracy procedurally: competitive multiparty elections, freedom of speech/press/association, checks on power, peaceful transfer of power. By this standard, one-party states with suppressed opposition and concentrated power fail regardless of their self-description.
So on the naming question, This is genuinely contested. Two views exist:
Official/Marxist-Leninist justification: These states claim genuine “people’s democracy” precisely because it excludes bourgeois parties and concentrates power to defend workers’ interests against capitalist restoration — so from their own theoretical framework, the name isn’t false, it’s just a different definition of democracy.
Critical/liberal view (widely held in the West and by many scholars): The names are propaganda — legitimizing branding for authoritarian, often personalist or elite-controlled, rule with little actual popular participation or accountability.
Which framing is “correct” depends on which definition of democracy you accept as valid — that’s ultimately a normative/philosophical dispute, not a factual one.
Thank you comrade Deepseek o7
Fair enough, you caught me. Did do some edits but the explanation Qwen gave was way better then anything I could’ve put together, and IMO better then a lot of the other responses here that didn’t give the other side and just gave the western liberal consensus view it gave at the bottom.
It is the best explanation I read so far. AI seems to be generally good at explaining stuff.
Could be, but the post history doesn’t look genAI to me. (I am no expert in detecting genAI output, tho.)
This is a great explanation
I feel like I sense AI but it is stl pretty informative
Just because it’s a well-written answer doesn’t automatically mean it’s AI. There’s a couple syntax errors/typos in there that lead me to believe that at the very least it wasn’t JUST a straight up copy/paste from ChatGPT
deleted by creator
Bro I use double dashes all the time–often to make little asides like I’m doing right now–and have been using them for years. It was just something I picked up by reading actual books. Now AI comes around and I’ll occasionally be falsely accused as one just because of that one small aspect of my writing style. Feels bad man
These states claim genuine “people’s democracy” precisely because it excludes bourgeois parties and concentrates power to defend workers’ interests against capitalist restoration
This makes zero sense. If power is concentrated, then it doesn’t represent workers interests. If it represented all workers interests, then power would be diffused.
How are these one-party governments, gauging the interests of their workers? How are they doing this without democracy and voting? Afaik these countries don’t even ask their citizens for feedback
How are these one-party governments, gauging the interests of their workers?
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Soviet_Democracy
How are they doing this without democracy and voting?
They do have democracy and voting and the actions of their government are far more aligned with the expressed will of their people than any Liberal Democracy (which are all just Oligarchies with a veneer of democracy).
https://act.represent.us/sign/usa-oligarchy-research-explained
The first link above is for the USSR, but the soviet (small ‘s’) form of democracy has been used by many communist democracies that the West decries as authoritarian helholes (which generally just means they refuse to bow to the international capitalist order).
The second is for the US but the only difference of you did the same research for any Liberal Democracy would be a question of degree not of substance.
North Korea has democracy and voting? That’s news to me. They definitely don’t have very much. So you don’t think North Korea is authoritarian?
I think “authoritarian” is a meaningless designation that only really means “geopolitical adversary of the current hegemon”.
The term came into common usage during the Cold War as a way of conflating communist countries with fascist ones in the minds of Western Liberals.
North Korea has a really fucking weird political system but luckily it is not the only country that calls itself socialist. The USA are also undemocratic but you don’t seem to judge all parliamentary “democracies” by one especially bad example
This makes zero sense. If power is concentrated, then it doesn’t represent workers interests. If it represented all workers interests, then power would be diffused.
The person you’re responding to’s description is slightly wrong. A “People’s Republic” defines a Socialist state who’s government is made up of an alliance of parties, rather than a single communist party, and that United front government might have parties intended to represent sections of the national bourgeoisie. So there’s a nominal Power sharing element here.
That said, I’m not sure how it logically follows that a state which represents the interests of workers must therefore be decentralized in some way? These places often end up with centralized political systems (though the list of States OP gave is full of a whole lot of variety in their institutions and political cultures), because of outside influence.
The DPRK is like that because some white guys drew a line across a country, and them bombed it until pilots complained there were no more targets to bomb, and civilians began living in caves. The DPRK (and the ROK for that matter lbr) has been something of a basket case ever since. But that’s because power centralization is a response to material conditions, not a result of what someone named the country.
How are these one-party governments, gauging the interests of their workers? How are they doing this without democracy and voting? Afaik these countries don’t even ask their citizens for feedback
People’s Democracies are defined by the presence of multi-party systems, like I explained earlier. Though these secondary, non-Socialist, parties have greater or lesser degrees of importance depending on what country we’re discussing.
That said, there are all kinds of institutions by which a people’s democracy gauges the interests and feedback of the workers and other represented classes.
I’m going to talk about China, even though it wasn’t referenced in the OP, because it’s a People’s Republic, and I can speak to its institutions with the most confidence:
One way class interests are gauged by the state is through the party system. This doesn’t matter so much in the primary legislature, the National People’s Congress, because the allied parties have a small fraction of the seats, but the NPC is historically a rubber stamp for the much more vibrant, body, The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (where the communist party only has 97 seats out of 2,169), where various sectors of society are represented, including parties, ethic and religious groups, organisations in the arts and sciences, mass organizations that represent women or young people, trade unions, etc.
In all state owned enterprises as well as in large parts of the private sector, there are a network of Workers Congresses which allow workers to engage in firm management.
There are also Party Committees in many workplaces, where the communist party itself plays a role in firm governance. These institutions make sure private companies follow the five year plans set out by the state.
There are also trade unions, which represent workers interests in other ways, and have representation in government.
There are also an extensive amount of Worker, Consumer, and Agricultural Cooperatives in China you might find this interesting, as it speaks to your concerns about decentralization. Between State Owned Enterprises, and the private sector that the state is always trying to reign in, co-ops straddle the line between these, by being worker owner and run firms, more independent of state power, and not beholden to the interests of capital like a private corporation.
People are often (sometimes rightly) critical of the privatization of the Reform and Opening up period. But that capital inflow has allowed China to turn around and invest in a domestic cooperative sector that rivals private capital. Huawei is the largest telecoms company in the world, for instance, and it is a worker co-op.
So there are lots of ways that’s workers interests are guaged and turned into an economic plan that will benefit them. Obviously, these institutions have been more or less effective at different times, or in different parts of the country. And a the Chinese system isn’t universal (The DPRK or former East Germany looked a fair bit different to this. While modern Vietnam or Laos modeled a lot of their own reforms off of China), but hopefully it gives you some insight.
There’s another comment in this discussion that talks about how the closest Chinese word for “people’s republic” is 民主 and means government which works for the benefit of the people. So their definition includes a benevolent dictator.
And that seems to align with what you’ve said too. Sure, there may be commissions for gauging the interests of the people. There may be co-ops. But ultimately the CCP holds all power. They can dissolve the commissions if they want to. They can take over the co-ops if they want to. If the people make demands or raise complaints, the CCP can just ignore them.
I think China is unquestionably lucky that the CCP does seem to actually care about the people. But this amount of authoritarianism does not seem to work as well in many other countries.
And if you genuinely think that what North Korea has right now is the best they can do for their people (even despite the turmoil caused by other countries), then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
There’s another comment in this discussion that talks about how the closest Chinese word for “people’s republic” is 民主 and means government which works for the benefit of the people. So their definition includes a benevolent dictator.
I mean, I guess? I don’t know enough Mandarin to speak on that.
And that seems to align with what you’ve said too. Sure, there may be commissions for gauging the interests of the people. There may be co-ops. But ultimately the CCP holds all power. They can dissolve the commissions if they want to. They can take over the co-ops if they want to. If the people make demands or raise complaints, the CCP can just ignore them.
I think China is unquestionably lucky that the CCP does seem to actually care about the people. But this amount of authoritarianism does not seem to work as well in many other countries.
Look, I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m just answering your questions, and explaining to you what those institutions look like in China. You’re more than welcome to do your own research and come to your own conclusion, but I think you should go into it with a sense of curiosity about the world, rather than trying to get in sick dunks on the internet.
the CCP does seem to actually care about the people
And look, I have my qualms about China’s system too. But they eliminated absolute poverty. Tf are you talking about?
And if you genuinely think that what North Korea has right now is the best they can do for their people (even despite the turmoil caused by other countries), then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
I mean, the DPRK’s ongoing 20x10 regional development policy is using its new influx of Chinese and Russian capital to improve economic development and living standards outside of Pyongyang. So that’s certainly an improvement.
But that can only to so far when the Korean war never ended. If you actually care about the wellbeing of the Korean peninsula, you’d want the war to end, the US to leave and lift all sanctions, and for there to be an internationally mediated peace negotiation that would decide what peaceful future between North and South Korea might look like. Perhaps an EU style arrangement with open borders between the two countries, and shared economic interests, while each gets to retain their respective political and economic systems, as they see fit.
I’m an ardent socialist. I think the cult of personality around the Kim’s is weird and unhelpful. But my opinion is meaningless in the face of the material reasons why that personality cult exists, and the material solutions that need to be implemented in order to bring peace and prosperity to the Korean peninsula.
And I’m simply sharing what I’ve learned from my research on the subject. Not entirely a direct response to your comment, sure, but relevant enough that I felt like sharing, not just to you but other readers.
you’d want the war to end, the US to leave and lift all sanctions, and for there to be an internationally mediated peace negotiation that would decide what peaceful future between North and South Korea might look like.
Or Kim could give up power and reform the government to a more western style of democracy. That would naturally end the war as well, and probably improve relations with South Korea considerably.
If pressure on North Korea is released, there’s no telling if the authoritarian government would change their ways at all. In fact that pressure might be necessary to push them to change.
Is there much scholarly debate on the validity of these opposing definitions? It seems like it’d be difficult to support an argument that the Marxist-Leninist style governments support the working class more than a procedural democracy.
Most of the time they don’t, but In certain cases they can. Yeah obviously North Korea is worse for workers then south korea. But if you look at the current governments of the two superpowers it becomes more contested.
If you look at the government of Xi jinping and the government of Trump, who would you say represents the interests of their people more? Who has higher approval rating in their country, hell who has a higher approval rating globally? Who is enacting more policies that help the people?
Faith in the governments of liberal democracies is near a historic low, people now more then any time since the 30s don’t think the government they voted for represents them. It’s to the point where even the government of Cuba has a higher approval rating then the US government. You could chalk that up to propaganda, but you could probably chalk up the remaining 30% approval of Trump to Fox News propaganda as well.
This isn’t to say I’m in favor of getting rid of procedural democracy, it more often represents the will of the people more then one party states. Just saying it doesn’t always and it’s getting worse at it.
Love it when someone asks why socialists do something, then reject the socialists’ own explanation for the capitalist propaganda explanation.
You shouldn’t be getting downvoted, you are literally just explaining the differences in how democracy is viewed by socialists.
I didn’t downvote, but some might have done due to the obvious AI writing style
Which one of those governments do identify as socialist?
ML is mostly authoritarianism with a smidgen of communist cosplay. It should be called stalinism ihmo, but I think the ‘Democratic’ is similarly applied, as a front that hides the actual fact.
Lol, imagine just straight up repeating lies from the Nazis who joined the CIA after the war and thinking you’re supporting Democracy against Authoritarianism…
I’m begging you to learn something.
It’s not getting rejected for being different, it’s getting rejected for being logically unsound
Your lack of knowledge of how socialist governments function does not make them illogical.
good counterargument, the logic makes sense now
“I still don’t get it therefore your argument was bad” lol
thanks for the explanation
Same reason nazis put socialist in name but promptly killed off socialists and trade unions.
There was a point where the National Socialist Party was actually socialist. But Hitler and his ilk saw a party with popular momentum, joined it, co-opted it, and betrayed the socialist ideals.
Do you have any evidence for this, because I’ve studied history, and I’ve never read anything that indicated the “socialist” part was anything but a scammy populist virtue signal?
Nope. There never was. They were always faar right. They from beginning were a nationalist group that despised democracy. Even before hitler joined them
Is this Stephen miller or Anton lavey
Close enough. Fetterman. Sold himself as a hard working everyman, but he’s closer to Kid Rock.
Maybe he got some brain worms from RFK. Democrat in name only (DINO).
That term is kind of meaningless these days.
Yes
authoritarians employ the double speak because they are liars at the root of their beliefs
like NATO is an occupying army in the countries they have bases and not a defensive cooperative force
ml’s live in an alternate reality cult
