If diverse opinions were allowed, what was the entire focus on eradicating factionalism?

The general line according to Stalin (e.g. in “Foundations of Leninism”) was that there should be thorough and exhaustive debates among those with differing opinions within the Party but that, once a resolution was reached by a vote following the debate, further fighting on the topic as a Party official was essentially a form of wrecking, though of course matters were revisited periodically (for good and for ill). Even if you disagreed, you were then expected to go along with whatever the motion was in the interest of the integrity of the Party as an actor. This was “Diversity of opinion, unity of action”.

I don’t really have a developed opinion on it (I guess I should have left this to cowbee for that reason) but I definitely have sympathy for this approach when I look at it in the context of glory hounds like Trotsky being constantly contrarian for the sake of political brinkmanship instead of, you know, acting in good faith and believing in things besides that he should be top dog. There shouldn’t be tolerance for people like that, and the long-term harm that Trotsky’s opposition bloc did to the SU is hard to fathom.

where it means that everyone must vote whatever the elite thinks

citation needed

I disagree about sortition, but I appreciate pushing back on elitist, misanthropic bullshit like you did. I think elections with a strong ability to quickly recall faithless representatives is a much better solution because it involves the decision-making of the whole community, rather than a community member chosen at random.

Seems like campaign finance reform is a more pertinent question then.

I’ve always really loved Zarbon. He has a cool design that fits his snobbish attitude and then when he sacrifices his looks to transform into his grotesque true form, to was a good foreshadowing of Frieza.

Also the Ginyu Force, of course. Ginyu himself is great and even the oft-overlooked Guldo is pretty interesting (and DBZ needs more weird bullshit powers like his).

No it is democratic, which the KPD at this point was no longer. They were working on setting up a Stalinist dictatorship and no longer a council democracy.

I was going to let it go, but this really bugs me. What are you even talking about here?

First in our current system the president needs Congress to get things done

There is quite a lot that the President can do independently using Executive Orders. Even tasks that, on paper, require congressional approval can be subverted, and you can look at the US’s record of entering undeclared wars as evidence of that.

Beyond that, see what I already said about how there’s no such thing as an autocrat.

Second, we’ve seen with the freedom caucus that a small group of congressmen can wield a lot of power

These are people who would do the best in an imaginary Fuhrer Trump political machine. Think of it like getting promoted to a bigger, more powerful Freedom Caucus.

Third, I think we definitely can expect a very different Trump in a second term versus his first term and he definitely HAS expressed an interest in this with all of his dictation envy too become Fuhrer and worse there is a large portion of the population that is content to be rolled under a Trump dictatorship.

People have been talking about him admiring dictators before he was elected and all throughout his first term. There’s nothing new here, no evidence that suggests something has changed.

I promise you it’s just hysteria. So there’s a chance of something beneficial happening in this conversation, I want you to just take note of this conviction you have that Trump will be Hitler and then, if he is elected, just remember it as he blunders his way through being racist and doing war crimes just the same as he did before with no particular change besides Vance leading a new rhetorical tact.

No, I won’t be doing a mirror version of this exercise. I’m a communist, so if I’m wrong and he’s a neo-neo-Nazi, I get the wall anyway and it’s no harm done.

It has very little support, it’s DOA. That’s just what happens. Look at all of Bernie’s failed bills; they just don’t push the needle. You can tell me that at some point in the future the Rapture will definitely happen, the righteous will be saved and the sinners will be cast into perdition and so on, but I don’t see any reason to believe it considering the history of the Democrats for the last 40 years and their incredible ability to pretend to want good things while either conspiring with open rightists or making limp gestures like this.

You will not see the Democratic Party vote its own power away, it just won’t happen.

Making a declaration is worthless. This is three people saying that they’d like to do something and they will fail just as these attempts have always failed. I can give them as people some amount of credit for trying to make the world better, but that does not exonerate the system! The system – including the rest of the Democratic Party – will still put their attempt down regardless.

Do you not see the difference here? The fact that people can and do propose to do good things now and again and those attempts are shot down even by the so-called left wing party is not a defense of the republic, but an indictment!

There’s no need to be so smarmy. Anyway, the individuals may behave in aberrant ways (or perhaps as a red herring, up to your interpretation), but the Democratic Party will reject it just as the Republicans will. I’m talking about classes and political parties, not every person as an individual.

If it passes, I’ll eat my hat, but it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell.

both the Communist and the Nazis were against democracy

This is ridiculous, the Communists opposed the Weimar Republic, but they absolutely supported democracy. In their view, in fact, they supported a much more authentic form of democracy by extricating private interests from the process.

Hindenburg used decrees to work with the Nazis so they could form a government.

We keep glossing over this “liberals siding with Nazis” thing

The Communists however never tried to work with the democratic forces.

I really think the word you’re looking for here is “liberal”

Point should be obvious.

You’re making significant assumptions, such as any of the liberals actually being willing to work the with the Communists, which would be a hell of a change for the SPD after that business with the Freikorps. Otherwise, the argument is just “join the SPD” and assume that they can bring their voters with them while completely abandoning their revolutionary project and putting themselves under the discipline of a liberal party. I feel that this is something of a muddy issue that you’re interpreting in a convenient way.

“Aren’t you as well?” Fair question, and there’s a lot about this situation that I can’t speak to, but what I said before I am completely sure holds, which is that Hitler gained power, on the most proximate level, because of liberal collaborators.

I appreciate the kind words and am glad to see an open socialist on .world

Well, two things:

One, that is a very alarmist view of Trump. He liked slinging around executive orders, but he had neither the ambition nor the audacity to be a Hitler. It simply isn’t realistic to think he’ll execute his second term by toppling the Republic, he doesn’t have visions like that, even if many people have visions like that for him (including Mike Lindel, somewhat hilariously, with his apparent attempt to get Trump to do a false flag and establish emergency powers).

Second, look at history. Inevitably, some people who release leopards do get their faces eaten, but becoming an executor of a fascist regime isn’t a loss of power, it’s a change in title at worst and, if anything, something of an increase in power. Imagining Trump becomes a fascist autocrat, that doesn’t actually mean that his whim is enough to unilaterally move things however he likes, and that is true of every leader in history. The reason for this is that his power, his authority, doesn’t come from himself, it comes from the class (or classes, historically) that support him, so he needs to make sure to keep them on his side or they will absolutely just kill and replace him. The petty Congressmen that support him know this, and are fine with working in a paradigm where they benefit from his support and are left with a broad range of things that he views as acceptable (since Trump won’t try to micromanage the whole country) in which to exert their personal agendas as they see fit.

But again, Fuhrer Trump is a fantasy. Maybe Tom Cotton poses such a threat, but Trump does not.

Does this all make sense?

The German history it gives is a massive distortion of the reality of liberals giving Hitler power. I can copy one of the explanations for you if it is required.

If you think Castro is worse than Harris, you’ve been successfully duped by your masters.

No way it’s something connected to America, one of the most direct inspirations for the Nazis. No, the reason there’s this Nazi apologia must be the sissy pee.

I don’t think that the state being Zionist means that it actually represents the views of American Jews. The state has a 0% tolerance for anti-zionism, but a significant portion of the Jewish population is anti-zionist (“not in our name” and all that).

Yes, but you’re going to need to find a way to think beyond that, because both parties understand that it’s in their interests to oppose rcv, so “vote democrat until we get rcv” effectively means “vote democrat forever”.

Fundamentally, there is a limit to the extent that a capitalist democracy will tolerate actual democratic power, because eclipsing the power of capitalists obviously means threatening their position. They will not sit idly by and allow their power to be voted away.

The Nazis had also tried to overthrow the government once by that point, so making a coalition that included the Nazis is no less backing “an enemy of the Weimar Republic”. The difference is, of course, that one is an enemy to capitalism and the other is an enemy of communism. It’s no wonder that liberals would choose the latter.

There’s a difference between history being people and history being Great Men tm. They are including people in material reality and saying that material reality is what creates the basis for the procession of history, not the appearance of great individuals who stand outside it and move it unilaterally.

I don’t understand why people are even arguing against this. It’s widely understood even in popular liberal academia that Great Man Theory is primitive, idealist, childish, and absurd and that you need to look at material circumstances, class interests, popular movements, and so on to understand why things happen.