Soviet Democracy

The meme argument against the USSR is that it wasn't democratic. Yet almost no one seems to know how its government, elections, workplaces etc. actually functioned. From what little I've read on this topic, they seemed to have a lot of representative democracy and decision-making on local levels. Bourgeois property rights and multi-party governments aren't the only possible form of "democracy".
Didn't Stalin himself plan to resign several times but was pressured to stay in power? You can say he's a crazy murderer I guess, but he was elected on all his positions. I'd like to see an analysis on what exactly was flawed with citizen/worker participation in tje runnig of the state and not just memes that it was authoritarian.

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There's not really anything undemocratic about their political system on paper so I wanna know exactly in what way it was undemocratic in practice. Lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the press maybe? I think those rights were in their constitution but that doesn't guarantee anything.

Oops wrong flag

Watch Finnish Bolsheviks video about the Soviet system of government:
youtu.be/9PoYzPfguJc
It covers a lot. Generall it is to say that proletarian democracy function by keeping out capitalists out of the ballot paper (as opposed having captialist policy as a prerequisition of constitutional legality, the right to private property and free of contract in particular, in bourgeois liberal democracy). In practice that means only worker organizations can nominate delegates for the Soviets, such as cooperatives, worker councils, youth organizations, trade unions (very powerful) and women's organizations.

Besides this form of state democracy, the second biggest channel of democracy was the trade union system. The trade unions collectively (as opposed to particularistic tariff negotiations in social democracy) negotiate the salaries of all the workers (!!) of all industries with the state - not only that, they are democratically integrated into the central planning through this negotiations as this has to take value allocation into account.

Party power. The party and the state formed a dichotomy, and after Stalin's death, they should have been merged. Despite the poltiburo being elected, power was usually held up very close and tight in terms of party leadership, which doesn't mean that there wasn't overwhelming proletarian support for the leadership until Krushchev (who was quite unpopular and seized power through a coup). It was still very much a proletarian party and to talk about "party bureaucracy" is deliberately trying to obsfucate things to further his anti-soviet political agenda. Basically the fact that the party entertained legal procedures and didn't directly purge "opportunists" (which is of course is open to interpretation) through collective action (which is not clearly subjective as well), is, as Bordigists claim, apperently a sign of bureaucratic alienation of the party which is so completely dishonest if you think about it. Under Stalin there was many collective action and purging of opportunists that Stalin had to call a stop on this regulary, and it also opened doors for straight-out traitors (Yezhov) who engaged in psychopathic violence, furthermore workers snitched out managers and all the time whenever they displayed capitalistic behavior, there are foreign witness accounts of this such as John Scots "Behind the Urals" who was literal CIA later so he can't be accused to being biased. Yet for Bordigists and Leftcoms this still doesn't go far enough according to this meme of "organic centralism" which was phrased out better in Mao's mass line concept later.

As a side point, this is also my problem with Rojava. It doesn't just not keep capitalists off the ballots, it straight out protects private property and entrepreneurship and legitimizes it through municipal councilism. It's literally libertarian class collaboration and not in any way a proletarian movement.

Holy fuck, the soviet union was based

fuck anyone who says they aren't socialist
syndicalism ftw

Rojava doesn't claim to be socialist yet.
socialism is just part of their plan, something tells me they won't actually carry it out though.

You mean the same trade unions which Lenin subordinated to the state back in 1918?

The soviets basically functioned as rubber stamps though, the party decided everything. When the Kronstadt soviet tried to actually claim autonomy they got killed by le icepick man.
It's the same blackmail as under liberal democracy, "you don't like what the government does? well, the soviets/electorate approved it!"

That being said, I'm not some liberal who believes there was not even the tiniest bit of people's power in the soviet union. The soviets were a revolutionary model of governance back then.

Is North Korea democratic? I seen people arguing that it is

east side of the berlin wall got jumped, that is all people need to know about the soviet union

So kinda like china right?

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This. Don't be fooled. The Soviet legislature and trade unions were nothing more than a rubber stamp. Actual dissent was punished and the supposed organs of proletarian democracy were either toothless or firmly under state control.

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The Soviet Union was not "leftist."

The dissolution of the Soviet Union never had popular support among the citizens themselves. After it happened there were numerous interviews about their feelings of uncertainty, especially among members of the military.

cccp was fine by me

sauce.