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 The democratic will of the people of Berlin, via direct referendum, was repealed because a group of old men in a tribunal said that it’s illegal.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.
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.