If democracy patently doesn’t work under the separation of powers, what compells you to believe it’s an essential principle to maintain democratic institutions?
He didn’t say that separation by itself is sufficient. So naturally just having separation is not enough.
However, it’s a fact that a dictator needs, by definition, to break the separation of power in order to truly become the authoritarian leader with control over the country.
So NOT having separation of power is actually necessary to destroy a democracy.
I feel that trying to defend those things that someone would need to break in order to remove democracy is not a bad idea if we want to maintain democracy.
There are also a lot of other things that are necessary for a dictatorship… such as the dictator not being held accountable (meaning… transparency and mechanisms for accountability would be another principle to maintain democracy), or the dictator suppressing political opposition or dissent (so protecting opposition, whistleblowers and dissent, instead of prosecuting it would be another one). And I’m sure there are many others.
I mean… sure, you can, in theory, have a democracy without those things… but the more safeguards you remove the more and more you are allowing traits of dictatorship to creep in…
The thing is, how much of a hurdle has the separation of powers been for fascists? I’d say not a whole lot. In my opinion, it’s been much more of a hurdle to pass progressive policy instead, e.g. the rather recent case of the Berlin rent cap repeal. The democratic will of the people of Berlin, via direct referendum, was repealed because a group of old men in a tribunal said that it’s illegal. American politics, as an outsider, are essentially like that: democrats making progressive promises in campaign, and then “we didn’t get to do it because we didn’t have a supermajority :(”, whereas characters like Trump will just get there and say “yeah, no, I’ll do whatever the fuck I want”.
It’s so much of a hurdle that all fascist regimes have been forced to weaken the division and ultimatelly break it completelly in order to build a fascist regime.
A “progressive law” is easy for a fascist in power to overthrow if they actually are able to weaken the division of power.
Why do you think Trump has been able to do a lot more in this term than in the previous one? Because he has been able to weaken that division, the judicial system is on his side, and he has a lot more connections with people inside the state now.
Ok,. so lets imagine your example from Berlin: would the situation have been better if there was no division of power and the same group of old men in a tribunal were the ones deciding the referendum should be made, deciding what laws should be passed, how should they be written and in which manner should they be executed, with which level of strength?
Division of power also means that if a group of old men in the legislative dictates a horrible anti constitutional law, there’s a chance the law can be repelled due to the judiciary being compelled to do so.
Now let’s imagine the opposite in Berlin: what if, instead of a group of old men wearing weird wigs, it was actual representatives of the people chosen through democratic centralism? It’s not like there’s no way to know what people wanted, there was literally a referendum. Why would I want separation of power if all power in my country should be democratic? Separation of powers is a tacit admission that the powers aren’t democratic, hence needing different people to create “checks and balances”.
what if, instead of a group of old men wearing weird wigs, it was actual representatives of the people chosen through democratic centralism?
You are assuming that people will never ever choose the group of old men… or that the group of old men isn’t gonna create an alternative progressive looking group that actually is just as bad, but happens to be very good at propaganda, marketing and appealing to popular social media poison trends / manipulation.
And I say “never ever” because the most dangerous thing is that a malicious group only needs to gain power once, in such a no-barriers system, to impose a dictatorship.
If electing officials were that easy, the people in Berlin would not have needed a referendum to push for this law, the elected officials would have pushed for it instead.
Of course, you can advocate for having direct democracy at any step of the way, but then you are essentially also doing separation of power, since you are essentially translocating the tribunal to the entire population, and it would be just as separate and varied as the whole country itself. I’d argue that direct democracy is the opposite of centralization of power.
Electing officials is mostly complex in capitalism, where the interests of the poor majority are in direct contradiction with the interests of a wealthy elite.
No, what makes the poor majority vote against their own interest is not the contradiction of interests, it’s the manipulation.
Are you not aware of how popular capitalism is with the masses? the poor majority is primarily capitalist in all the capitalist countries.
Manipulation is the name of the game. Appeals to compliance and stability, pushing narratives to vulnerable people in ways that is hard for them to examine them critically, politics being intermixed with social psychology, group-thinking and sometimes even reaching the levels of religious belief.
Manipulation is a tactic used by Nations of all colors… and it’s specially obvious with governments that explicitly seek lack of transparency, opaque systems, suppression of political opposition, silencing dissent, censorship… and… yes, lack of separation of powers (which does help with all of those). Like I sad before, the more safeguards you remove the more and more you are allowing traits of dictatorship to creep in.
The moment you punish people for expressing being unhappy is the moment you can no longer trust that people will be honest when asked if they are happy. This adds extra levels of complexity, it only seems simple if you only look at it from a very superficial surface level.
A fascist usually rises to the head of the executive or the military, not the legislative.
Then again, it is not only the separation of powers that prevent fascism, but it definitely has helped slow down and stop the rise of fascism, especially in the 30s. Didn’t always work, obviously, but it is certainly better than no separation at all (I’m still waiting for you to answer my question, by the way: How would no separation of power be more effective?).
And no, I’m not about to waste my time giving you a history lesson about how the separation of powers helps fight fascism. And I’ll remind you that it is a commonly accepted fact, and that if you wish to claim otherwise, the burden of proof is on you.
China? Really? Yes, they have a fascist problem as they fit a lot of the traits that define fascism, and no, they have no separation of power. Is that what this is about? You’d like to see the CCP model all over the world?
Sure buddy, China has a lot of fascist traits, such as being extremely sensitive towards different ethnical groups in the country (go to a history museum in China and you’ll see that they have specific signs discussing the different ethnicities at the period), lifting a billion people from poverty, land redistribution, quality social services and no use of militarism for the past half century. But I guess that, for you, not getting to vote once every 4 years for the lesser evil who will regardless defund the social services and pursue austerity policy is the highest expression of anti-fascism.
Extremely sensitive towards different ethnic groups? You mean, only the ones they care about? Cause the Uyghurs, amongst other ethnic groups, have something to say to that
I’m not saying they have no good ideas, and they do have good social policies… But let’s not forget that they also repress like hell, using military force if necessary, only allow one party: their own, control the media, jail political opponents (funny, that’s what you were complaining about earlier) and journalists… Guess what, all of this is a bunch of fascist traits.
Fascism doesn’t forbid to inplement policies that are good for the population.
And well, yeah, we’re discussing concepts that protect democracy, so I’m expecting you to show examples of democracies. Democracy implies… voting, yeah.
You’re clearly not here in good faith, so I’ll leave you to your propaganda! Cheers! Hope you manage to move to China someday.
Cause the Uyghurs, amongst other ethnic groups, have something to say to that
What do they have to say? Have you seen polls in Xinjiang or Tibet of degree of satisfaction with the government? I guarantee you they’re much higher than in Catalonia, Quebec, Scotland or any of the Chinatowns/Chicagos of the US.
You mean, only the ones they care about?
Come on, tell me the economic growth in Xinjiang compared to the rest of the country, and now do the same for Scotland. Give me the actual data, and then tell me, to my face, that the Chinese government doesn’t care about its ethnicities more than western governments. For fuck’s sake, have you seen the rate of incarceration of black people in the USA? About one in four black men in the USA go through the prison system in their lives.
let’s not forget that they also repress like hell
That’s your perspective as a westerner. My country, Spain, has political prisoners such as Carles Puigdemont, a so-called “Ley Mordaza” (mouthgag law) has been implemented for 15 years against protestors, and if you go to the USA they have masked agents kidnapping people, putting them in unmarked vans and deporting them. I seriously don’t think china is significantly more repressive than that. Unless you’re willing to concede that Spain and the USA are fascist, why would you say that for China?
If democracy patently doesn’t work under the separation of powers, what compells you to believe it’s an essential principle to maintain democratic institutions?
He didn’t say that separation by itself is sufficient. So naturally just having separation is not enough.
However, it’s a fact that a dictator needs, by definition, to break the separation of power in order to truly become the authoritarian leader with control over the country.
So NOT having separation of power is actually necessary to destroy a democracy.
I feel that trying to defend those things that someone would need to break in order to remove democracy is not a bad idea if we want to maintain democracy.
There are also a lot of other things that are necessary for a dictatorship… such as the dictator not being held accountable (meaning… transparency and mechanisms for accountability would be another principle to maintain democracy), or the dictator suppressing political opposition or dissent (so protecting opposition, whistleblowers and dissent, instead of prosecuting it would be another one). And I’m sure there are many others.
I mean… sure, you can, in theory, have a democracy without those things… but the more safeguards you remove the more and more you are allowing traits of dictatorship to creep in…
The thing is, how much of a hurdle has the separation of powers been for fascists? I’d say not a whole lot. In my opinion, it’s been much more of a hurdle to pass progressive policy instead, e.g. the rather recent case of the Berlin rent cap repeal. The democratic will of the people of Berlin, via direct referendum, was repealed because a group of old men in a tribunal said that it’s illegal. American politics, as an outsider, are essentially like that: democrats making progressive promises in campaign, and then “we didn’t get to do it because we didn’t have a supermajority :(”, whereas characters like Trump will just get there and say “yeah, no, I’ll do whatever the fuck I want”.
It’s so much of a hurdle that all fascist regimes have been forced to weaken the division and ultimatelly break it completelly in order to build a fascist regime.
A “progressive law” is easy for a fascist in power to overthrow if they actually are able to weaken the division of power.
Why do you think Trump has been able to do a lot more in this term than in the previous one? Because he has been able to weaken that division, the judicial system is on his side, and he has a lot more connections with people inside the state now.
Ok,. so lets imagine your example from Berlin: would the situation have been better if there was no division of power and the same group of old men in a tribunal were the ones deciding the referendum should be made, deciding what laws should be passed, how should they be written and in which manner should they be executed, with which level of strength?
Division of power also means that if a group of old men in the legislative dictates a horrible anti constitutional law, there’s a chance the law can be repelled due to the judiciary being compelled to do so.
Now let’s imagine the opposite in Berlin: what if, instead of a group of old men wearing weird wigs, it was actual representatives of the people chosen through democratic centralism? It’s not like there’s no way to know what people wanted, there was literally a referendum. Why would I want separation of power if all power in my country should be democratic? Separation of powers is a tacit admission that the powers aren’t democratic, hence needing different people to create “checks and balances”.
You are assuming that people will never ever choose the group of old men… or that the group of old men isn’t gonna create an alternative progressive looking group that actually is just as bad, but happens to be very good at propaganda, marketing and appealing to popular social media poison trends / manipulation.
And I say “never ever” because the most dangerous thing is that a malicious group only needs to gain power once, in such a no-barriers system, to impose a dictatorship.
If electing officials were that easy, the people in Berlin would not have needed a referendum to push for this law, the elected officials would have pushed for it instead.
Of course, you can advocate for having direct democracy at any step of the way, but then you are essentially also doing separation of power, since you are essentially translocating the tribunal to the entire population, and it would be just as separate and varied as the whole country itself. I’d argue that direct democracy is the opposite of centralization of power.
Electing officials is mostly complex in capitalism, where the interests of the poor majority are in direct contradiction with the interests of a wealthy elite.
No, what makes the poor majority vote against their own interest is not the contradiction of interests, it’s the manipulation.
Are you not aware of how popular capitalism is with the masses? the poor majority is primarily capitalist in all the capitalist countries.
Manipulation is the name of the game. Appeals to compliance and stability, pushing narratives to vulnerable people in ways that is hard for them to examine them critically, politics being intermixed with social psychology, group-thinking and sometimes even reaching the levels of religious belief.
Manipulation is a tactic used by Nations of all colors… and it’s specially obvious with governments that explicitly seek lack of transparency, opaque systems, suppression of political opposition, silencing dissent, censorship… and… yes, lack of separation of powers (which does help with all of those). Like I sad before, the more safeguards you remove the more and more you are allowing traits of dictatorship to creep in.
The moment you punish people for expressing being unhappy is the moment you can no longer trust that people will be honest when asked if they are happy. This adds extra levels of complexity, it only seems simple if you only look at it from a very superficial surface level.
Because the alternative has already been tested thoroughly throughout history?
Because the alternative makes it that much easier for an aspiring fascist to take full control of every branch of power?
In what world do you think that not separating powers can have a more democratic outcome?
In which historical occasion has a fascist risen to legislative power, and the rest of powers were like “nah get outta here” and just kicked them out?
Would you agree that China doesn’t have a fascist problem? Would you agree that China has separation of powers?
A fascist usually rises to the head of the executive or the military, not the legislative.
Then again, it is not only the separation of powers that prevent fascism, but it definitely has helped slow down and stop the rise of fascism, especially in the 30s. Didn’t always work, obviously, but it is certainly better than no separation at all (I’m still waiting for you to answer my question, by the way: How would no separation of power be more effective?).
And no, I’m not about to waste my time giving you a history lesson about how the separation of powers helps fight fascism. And I’ll remind you that it is a commonly accepted fact, and that if you wish to claim otherwise, the burden of proof is on you.
China? Really? Yes, they have a fascist problem as they fit a lot of the traits that define fascism, and no, they have no separation of power. Is that what this is about? You’d like to see the CCP model all over the world?
Sure buddy, China has a lot of fascist traits, such as being extremely sensitive towards different ethnical groups in the country (go to a history museum in China and you’ll see that they have specific signs discussing the different ethnicities at the period), lifting a billion people from poverty, land redistribution, quality social services and no use of militarism for the past half century. But I guess that, for you, not getting to vote once every 4 years for the lesser evil who will regardless defund the social services and pursue austerity policy is the highest expression of anti-fascism.
Extremely sensitive towards different ethnic groups? You mean, only the ones they care about? Cause the Uyghurs, amongst other ethnic groups, have something to say to that
I’m not saying they have no good ideas, and they do have good social policies… But let’s not forget that they also repress like hell, using military force if necessary, only allow one party: their own, control the media, jail political opponents (funny, that’s what you were complaining about earlier) and journalists… Guess what, all of this is a bunch of fascist traits.
Fascism doesn’t forbid to inplement policies that are good for the population.
And well, yeah, we’re discussing concepts that protect democracy, so I’m expecting you to show examples of democracies. Democracy implies… voting, yeah.
You’re clearly not here in good faith, so I’ll leave you to your propaganda! Cheers! Hope you manage to move to China someday.
What do they have to say? Have you seen polls in Xinjiang or Tibet of degree of satisfaction with the government? I guarantee you they’re much higher than in Catalonia, Quebec, Scotland or any of the Chinatowns/Chicagos of the US.
Come on, tell me the economic growth in Xinjiang compared to the rest of the country, and now do the same for Scotland. Give me the actual data, and then tell me, to my face, that the Chinese government doesn’t care about its ethnicities more than western governments. For fuck’s sake, have you seen the rate of incarceration of black people in the USA? About one in four black men in the USA go through the prison system in their lives.
That’s your perspective as a westerner. My country, Spain, has political prisoners such as Carles Puigdemont, a so-called “Ley Mordaza” (mouthgag law) has been implemented for 15 years against protestors, and if you go to the USA they have masked agents kidnapping people, putting them in unmarked vans and deporting them. I seriously don’t think china is significantly more repressive than that. Unless you’re willing to concede that Spain and the USA are fascist, why would you say that for China?
Then why are there multiple parties in the National People’s Congress and its standing body the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress?
Again, a strategy used all over the west.