Comment by nickbauman
11 years ago
The Soviet Union was a dictatorship. Democratic socialists are natural foes of dictatorships the world over.
11 years ago
The Soviet Union was a dictatorship. Democratic socialists are natural foes of dictatorships the world over.
Subthread detached from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10118981 and marked off-topic.
Democratic socialists are quite capable of forming dictatorships themselves. See: Venezula under Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega.
That's a very liberal (no pun intended) use of the term "dictatorship". I think we should be careful to reserve it for countries which are actually dictatorships, not just countries whose policies or methods of government we disagree with or dislike. Venezuela and Nicaragua were not dictatorships under any realistic definition of the word; they had democratically elected governments within the rule of law, with finite terms and with clear means of political participation.
The problem with "dictatorship" is that it's become a curse word. There is a similar problem with "fascism": it has become a way to insult people or governments, whether their are actually fascist (unlikely) or not (more likely).
Pretty sure once you abolish time limits, build a dynasty and squash all opposition you are a dictator.
You can be Stalin, you can be more pleasant like Hugo, or you can be "Benevolent" like Lee Kuan Yew. A dictatorship is still a dictatorship benevolent or otherwise.
We can use one definition of the word, that offered on the Wikipedia page for Dictatorship:
"is a form of government where political authority is monopolized by a person or political entity, and exercised through various mechanisms to ensure the entity's power remains strong."
Both Chavez and Ortega regularly intimidated opposition media and relied heavily on propaganda to maintain popular support. Both abolished term limits in their respective countries to remain Presidents for Life. Chavez personally selected his successor, Nicolas Maduro, who narrowly beat Henrique Capriles, Chavez's main opposition, in the 2013 presidential elections, elections that Capriles protested as fraudulent. When Ortega couldn't get the Supreme Court to support his unlimited term limits, he replaced dissenting Justices with sympathetic ones.
If these aren't all the signs of a dictatorship, I don't know what is.
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I've never understood the difference between a stereotypical dictatorship and mob rule by the (inevitably unenlightened) majority in a true democracy. I'm not sure there is a difference. They both sound like hell on Earth.
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If they form dictatorships, they are by definition not democratic socialists
Sure. One form of government often changes to another. Democratic Republics change into oligarchies, like what's going on in the US.