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The one thing that always have buggered me in the Constitution debate is that we basically try to lay down rules and regulations for the Revolution, something that really shouldn't be bound to procedure. The Revolution need to be alive and adjust to the need of the Proletariat as well as the strategies of the bourgeois to stop us. A Constitution could theoretically prevent us from taking necessary measures in a crisis situation.

Well, for one we simply had to do something about the lack of electoral procedure after what happened. Second, while the revolution needs to be allowed to live, it must also be safeguarded.
 
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100% proportional representation! Regional is undemocratic!
 
100% proportional representation! Regional is undemocratic!

Well, you can get very very close to having a proportional results while also having delegates responsible to regions using multi-member STV. Being unable to recall your delegates easily is also undemocratic, no? Also, under this system it is virtually impossible for someone who is not a member of a faction to be elected to the Assembly, which I think encourages partisan behaviour.
 
We can have proportional repersentation with the ability to recall, no?
 
We can have proportional repersentation with the ability to recall, no?

You would have to recall all the delegates though, wouldn't you? Because the delegates don't represent a particular "area". Multi-member STV is proportional representation, indeed with only 100 members of the assembly I would say the result would be exactly the same as a "pure" proportional system. It is much easier to get 10% of the people of Berlin (say) to agree to a recall than 10% of the entire VSVR. Then again I suppose splitting it up might cause regionalism.
 
No, because we can have "areas".
 
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Like the house of repersentatives, every 260 thousand people get a region.
 
Reading the last few pages, I think we have all decided:

1. Freedom of speech
2. Rights and stuff
3. Soviets
4. Area Voting
5. In case of stalemate, potential chairmen fight to the death


So we cool?
 
Like the house of repersentatives, every 260 thousand people get a region.

...but then it's not pure proportional representation. I thought you were proposing that (as is the current system) everyone cast a vote and the seats were allocated accordingly.
 
Well, you can get very very close to having a proportional results while also having delegates responsible to regions using multi-member STV. Being unable to recall your delegates easily is also undemocratic, no? Also, under this system it is virtually impossible for someone who is not a member of a faction to be elected to the Assembly, which I think encourages partisan behaviour.

Since when was STV not proportional?
 
Since when was STV not proportional?

[[It is more proportional than FPTP, but it is not "pure" proportional in the sense that we currently have it or, for example, the real life Israeli Knesset. A "pure" proportional system doesn't have any constituencies, and STV has constituencies. But we're getting wildly off topic here, this debate is taking up too much time, and it doesn't really have a major effect on anything in-game. We should go back to discussing the constitution. :p]]

Keynes, that sounds like a good idea in theory, but it concerns me that it might be rather expensive and time-consuming [[for Tommy]] to conduct elections to the Assembly every year.
 
Reading the last few pages, I think we have all decided:

1. Freedom of speech
2. Rights and stuff
3. Soviets
4. Area Voting
5. In case of stalemate, potential chairmen fight to the death


So we cool?

I don't know if you're serious (except for #5), but I don't think we've agreed on having any of that in the consitution. Really, none of the 4 first points are anything that has to be in the constitution, and might as well be regulated by non-consitutional legislation. The only thing the constitution has to include is the electoral process in order to avoid future deadlocks and ties.
 
We need something drafted that gives people basic rights which cannot be changed. If not as part of the constituiton then in addition too it.

You forget there is not one type of revolution there are many, by guarenteeing everyone of our citizens basic human rights it will make it much harder for those who still oppose us to cast us as evil. and when people are generally happy they do not oppose their rulers. If for some reason people become unhappy, evne if we are not the ones who ahve caused them this wrong, then often rulers, just and unjust, get the blame.

All men are equal and we should gurantee this for our citizens. And if by some strange occurence the VSVR disintegrates give the people something to hold on to, something to remember us by, a token of better times, something to fight for.

A bill of rights or similiar is the isngle biggest deceison we can make that could possibly affect the world beyong our own era.
 
We should affirm the international nature of the VSVR so that positive and negative discriminiation and regionalism based on ethnicity will be unconstitutional. The state should be unitary and indivisible, it's mission to bring socialism to all the world.

Since it seems that some members of the party seek to disestablish the state more or less immediately we should also include a clause that limits the weakening of the state until such a time as a unified world republic has been formed. Even then the state should only relinquish its powers gradually and only when the culture and economy has been made ready for it.

Freedom of expression sounds very sympathetic, but can not be unrestricted. We should restrict peoples rights to make public statements that are counterrevolutionary or otherwise directly harmful to the state or unity of the country. Normal criticicm of the government should not be restricted, but threatening violence if you lose the election should be. So should encouraging capitalism and nationalism. As well as slanderous remarks and hate-speech.
 
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The Development of Marxism

Marxism is represents the single most influential and single most fractured of all the Revolutionary Communist ideologies. By 1905 there existed 3 primary strains of the ideology around the world: Leninism, Plekhanovism and Councilism. Of the three, following the fall of the Luxemburgist faction at the start of 1905, only Leninism was represented within the VSVR. Internationally it was the largest, followed by Plekhanovism and finally the ailing ideology of Councilism. This brief piece aims to give the reader an understanding of how these 3 strains developed and how they interact with the modern world.

DevelopmentofMarxism.jpg


The above diagram attempts to tell the complex story of development of Marxism in pictorial form. It represents all the major schisms and developments of the ideology since its symbolic foundation with the publishing of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

marx_engels2.jpg


The ideas of Marxism were developed during the late 1840s by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It represented one of the earliest attempts to bring together the vague ideas of the communist movement that was growing in Europe at the time. Simply put Marxism differed from other communist ideologies at the time in its call for statism as a transitioniary mechanism to communism, anti-theism and internationalism. Unlike the Anarchist or early socialist movements at the time it was much more structured and scientific in its approach. Within a short time of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto Marxism would find its first test in the attempted revolution in France in 1848 and then later in the Rhineland. Whilst the divided revolutionaries in France failed in the Rhineland Marxists, Anarchists and ‘German Socialists’ (a more utopian strain of non-Marxist statist socialism) joined together to defeat Prussia and establish the VSVR.

From 1850 until 1873 the ideology remained largely unchanged. Although Marx and Engels did clash on the issue of Anarchist violence in 1865 Engels never adapted Marxism away from the ideology established in the 1840s. Indeed the Marxist governed the VSVR between 1855 and 1865 under Karl Marx and in the anti-Civil War wing of the faction would govern in coalition with anti-Civil War groups from various other factions under Engels between 1865 and 1875. However the United Front collapsed in the aftermath of electoral disaster in 1875 and that strain of Orthodox Marxism was extinguished, yet by this stage the ideology had already started to move on.

Ac_bebel.jpg


By leaving the Marxist political faction in 1865 Engels left the weaker portion of the Marxist movement in danger of being the source of a split. August Bebel was unable to provide the inspiring leadership to restore the popularity of his faction and in 1873 Vladimir Lenin took charge. Lenin espoused a version of Marxist thought that was significantly different to the ideology of Marx and Engels. Focussed on revolution through the use of vanguard parties, dismissive of the need for a ‘natural development’ through from feudalism to capitalism to socialism, generally more statist and more aggressive in foreign policy Leninism was the first truly new strand of Marxism. One of Lenin’s first moves was to clear out the dusty old remnants of Bebel’s Orthodox Marxists as he streamlined the faction into a successful institution once more – being Chairman between 1875 and 1880 and again between 1884 and 1890.

Orthodox Marxism would continue under Bebel’s and later Kautsky’s leadership within the VSVR under the Moderate faction for another couple of decades. The faction was weakened in 1884 by a split with Bernstein that created the ideology of Reforism and was finally absorbed into the Marxist-Leninist faction in 1895. By that time Orthodox Marxism had long since ceased to be a major force across the globe.

arton659.jpg


As has already been mentioned the next major split amongst the Marxists after the schism of 1873 was within the smaller Orthodox branch. From 1873 the increasingly authoritarian nature of Leninism had frightened many Marxists; these Marxists regarded the Moderate faction as the natural place to gravitate to as it was both Marxist, pro-democracy and anti-Lenin. This effectively caused a problem with entryism as these ‘Democratic Marxists’ started to outnumber the Orthodox Marxists. In 1884 Bernstein finally removed his supporters from the Moderate faction as he created the Democratic faction. This move was a very successful one. Bernstein’s Democrats essentially represented a wider trend in worldwide socialism. The Democratic faction bore many similarities to the Labour Party in Britain, the American Socialist Part in the US and the Socialist Party in France. These non-revolutionary parties favoured the idea that the capitalist system should be reformed rather than destroyed. Despite early success and a spell in coalition governance between 1890 and 1895 the Democrats quickly saw their popularity dwindle both within the VSVR and without. In 1900 the VSVR based Democrat faction merged with the Anarchists to create what was essentially a non-Marxist body. Outside of the VSVR the Reformists had already started to collapse during the 1890s as many were absorbed into the ideology of Plekhanovism. Reformism would only survive in the ASP and Labour parties of the Anglo-Saxon nations.

rosa-luxemburg-karl-liebkne.jpg


Up until the late 1880s all divisions within Marxism had occurred due to splits within the existing Marxist institutions. However the Luxemburgist movement that emerged in opposition to Lenin in the late 1880s would create an entirely new strain of Marxism that had little relation to Orthodox, Reformist or Leninist Marxism. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht developed the ideas of Council Communism around the importance of the power of local workers’ Councils (Soviets) above the power of the state as well as democracy and anti-Leninism. Between 1890 and 1895 Rosa Luxemburg led a government in coalition with the Democrats and instituted sweeping changes within the Republic that ushered in a period of almost unprecedented peace and stability. However in 1895 she was forced to align with the Marxist-Leninists, against her instincts, and was assassinated in 1897. After this the more pro-Leninist Karl Liebknecht would take over as Chairman and send the Luxemburgist faction drifting back towards the Left. The period from 1895 until the outbreak of the Great War in 1900 marks the high tide of Luxemburgism. During this period Luxemburgism was internationally rising in prominence across the world at the expense of all other factions whilst many, even in the capitalist world, saw it as the ideal form of Communism. Liebknecht’s support throughout the Great War for Trotsky and the economic crash of the Soviet system reversed the rising trend of Luxemburgist popularity. After a poor performance in the 1905 election the faction split with the majority joining the Marxist-Leninists to form a united Marxist faction and finally end the last of the Marxist schisms within the VSVR whilst the minority joined with the non-Marxist Democratic Anarchists.

18433_gorter.jpg


Liebknecht might have brought an end to the Luxemburgist movement within the VSVR but the ideas of Council Communism did not die outside it. Despite the fading away of Luxemburgist movements in many countries a significant minority portion of the movement’s old followers began to rally around the Dutch socialist Herman Gorter. Gorter developed the international Council Communist movement into the ideology of Councilism – essentially an ideology very similar to the Luxemburgists before Rosa Luxemburg’s death. The movement was highly sectarian in its distaste for Leninism, unshakeable in its support for the Soviet economic system and implacable in its demands for democracy.

The final development of Marxism that occurred within the VSVR was the before mentioned merging of Leninism and Luxemburgism that began as early as 1895 when the two factions began a decade of coalition government and was finally completed in the aftermath of the 1905 election. Whilst in 1895 the two factions were almost equals in prominence by 1905 the Leninist portion of the VSVR’s Marxism movement was vastly superior in numbers and political power. The only real change from mainstream Leninism was the acceptance of the idea of a Soviet based economy, yet even this was mixed with thoroughly Leninist support for a degree of central planning.

Georgi_Plekhanov.jpg


The final development in Marxism that we shall deal with in quite unique in that it occurred entirely outside of the VSVR. Unlike so many Russian revolutionaries under the Tsarist regime Georgi Plekhanov did not emigrate to the VSVR but instead stayed in Russia and ended up in Siberia. From 1888 until his escape in 1895 he rotted in isolated imprisonment but during that time made great strides in the development of a new ideology. Plekhanovism supported the idea of a mixed Soviet-planned economy. He saw the Soviets as the only true representatives of the proletarian class and thus the only just way to achieve socialism. In his earlier years Plekhanov supported the idea that Russia had first to go through a phase of capitalism before achieving socialism, however he later relented and believed that it was not capitalism but a large industrial base and a politically conscious proletariat that was required before a revolution could be achieved – by the 1890s Russia already had these things. He was virulently anti-Leninist and would denounce Trotsky for the 15 million deaths of the Great War. He stood firmly to the belief that a revolution imposed from the outside would always fail. Whilst the Russian Revolution had occurred as a native movement only accelerated but not created by the Red Army he believed the Soviet Union would succeed, however he predicted that opposition in countries such as France and Hungary would inevitably lead to the collapse of the socialist regimes in those states. He was heavily critical of the process of ‘socialising Africa’ and supportive of some sort of conciliation with the capitalist powers.

Plekhanov based his support on home grown Russian socialist movements but from the mid 1890s, when his ideas started to become more publicised abroad, he drew in supporters from the Reformist movement (notably Julius Martov), Leninists dissatisfied by Trotsky and Luxemburgists. Around the world Plekhanov and the Soviet Union were regarded as the only true Marxist alternative to Trotsky. The Plekhanovites were the second only to the Leninists in size, not only amongst Marxists but within the entire Communist political spectrum. With such a powerful degree of international support it is surely only time before the Plekhanovites start to make motions into VSVR politics.
 
You know, changes in VSVR politics tend to come in twos. The New Right had both the Revolutionaries and the True Germans, so why not the same for the New Left? It seems there is a place for a domestic grown-swell to swim in the wake of Plekanovism when it enters VSVR politics. Personally I suggest a revived socialist movement as the Democratic Anarchists perhaps collapse with some Dem-leaning Demarchs going with the Free Marxists to form this New Left faction while the rest join the Anarcho-Kadonists. Though that's only one possibility.

Anyways, it would be nice to have a non-marxist socialist alternative to anarchism to exist, and probably die out after an election or two, alongside the marxist alternative to Leninism; and it could essentially form the New Left along with a VSVR Plekky faction.

Just thinking about what a more militant Clement Attlee might be like, and just that both the Anarchists and this Plekanov are into the Soviets and the Nacis want to form syndicates, it seems to me that perhaps there should be some folks who for a very short while revive outside of marxism and anarchism, international socialism. Instead of the Old Right and Luxembourgist/Councilist "All Power to the Soviets", why not "All Power To The Workers" ?

Well, even just as a throwaway of international socialist and workerist criticism, I suggest that there's perhaps an old Marxist periodical that never made the shift to Leninism and faded into obscurity, not being absorbed into the contemporary counter-Leninism of the time, only to be somewhat revived today in the aftermath of the Great War: the Socialist Rally, or perhaps just "Rally". Because more tendency newspapers like the Anarchist Zeal or the pro-trade-union Unity are a good thing.
 
You know, changes in VSVR politics tend to come in twos. The New Right had both the Revolutionaries and the True Germans, so why not the same for the New Left? It seems there is a place for a domestic grown-swell to swim in the wake of Plekanovism when it enters VSVR politics. Personally I suggest a revived socialist movement as the Democratic Anarchists perhaps collapse with some Dem-leaning Demarchs going with the Free Marxists to form this New Left faction while the rest join the Anarcho-Kadonists. Though that's only one possibility.

Anyways, it would be nice to have a non-marxist socialist alternative to anarchism to exist, and probably die out after an election or two, alongside the marxist alternative to Leninism; and it could essentially form the New Left along with a VSVR Plekky faction.

Just thinking about what a more militant Clement Attlee might be like, and just that both the Anarchists and this Plekanov are into the Soviets and the Nacis want to form syndicates, it seems to me that perhaps there should be some folks who for a very short while revive outside of marxism and anarchism, international socialism. Instead of the Old Right and Luxembourgist/Councilist "All Power to the Soviets", why not "All Power To The Workers" ?

Well, even just as a throwaway of international socialist and workerist criticism, I suggest that there's perhaps an old Marxist periodical that never made the shift to Leninism and faded into obscurity, not being absorbed into the contemporary counter-Leninism of the time, only to be somewhat revived today in the aftermath of the Great War: the Socialist Rally, or perhaps just "Rally". Because more tendency newspapers like the Anarchist Zeal or the pro-trade-union Unity are a good thing.

Well TBH in RL there are very few non-Marxist, non-Anarchist communist movements if any after the late 19th century. Just as happened in this AAR non-Marxist socialists (German Socialists) started out reasonably widespread but quickly faded away. In RL most non-Anarchist socialist movements liked to call themselves Marxist even if they had little to do with Marxism.

As for newspapers, not many people write articles anymore so there isn't point in developing whole new papers. For a while there was a lot of articles coming in but now, not so many.

The reason I wrote the above update is a little odd. I decided that alongside the constitution update I was going to post a bit about the Grand Assembly of the Comintern. In that I fealt I had to explain what COuncilism and Plekhanovism was, so I made the diagram. Then I realised that it would probably make little sense to anyone but me so wrote an entire update. :wacko:

My plan of what to include in the constitution is as follows:

Some sort of statement of rights - these are not to be overly precise or restricting

Official and binding definition of the powers of each institution of government

A right to amend the constitution, given enough support

A clause to allow for the abolishment of the constitution as a part of the abolition of the state

A solid definition of how to solve electoral problems such as the one we have recently experienced

That's the basic outline I have in my mind. I had my doubts about the laying out of definite rights but that idea seemed so overwhelmingly popular ...
 
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