1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
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?
That is absolutely a fair criticism.
But is there anywhere doing or attempting democracy by your definition?
Vietnam and Cuba would probably be some of the best examples I think.
You can't seriously be calling Cuba a democracy.
Vietnam is not a democracy. It's a single-party state where the Communist Party of Vietnam is defined as the perpetual leadership in their constitution.
Hi, welcome to the conversation, you should probably read the things I already explained.
The liberal understanding of democracy (that you're operating on) is constraining the power of the state, while ignoring class conflict. The Marxist understanding is a state where the people have succeeded in class conflict to the point that they are able to wield the state against the bourgeoisie, while keeping them out of power. The fact that the communist party has secured power is not somehow a strike against Vietnam, from the Marxist view.
It's always funny to hear this scaremongering over "one party states." I live in the US, where I have a choice between one party that represents the interests of billionaires and another party that represents the interests of billionaires but also hates gay people. When I vote for a third party that's actually in line with my interests, everyone hates me for it. And you know what they say? "The primary is where you're supposed to choose who you like, but then you have to get behind them, to stop the Republicans!" Well, even single-party states still have primary processes, and in a case like Vietnam, you don't even have to worry about the threat of an entity like the Republican party coming to power, thanks to the structure of the government suppressing the political power of the right.
If a one-party state is so horrible, it implies that the Republican party (and similar parties in other countries) existing is somehow a good thing, somehow fulfilling a necessary condition for a country to be a "democracy." Even though it's controlled by a tiny fraction of society and uses every ounce of political power it has to subvert and oppose popular policies!
With that being said, you don't even have to be a member of the communist party of Vietnam to run and hold office in the country. You don't have to be a part of any party, you can run as an independent, and people do.
And yes, ditto for Cuba, I am "seriously" calling it a democracy.