in your opinion, is the uk losing it's democracy

@Emosaur By theory and definition, you may be right; but whoever the "proletariat" may be, no state that calls itself and its single political party "Communist" has ever met that criterion, and has never been anything but a dictatorship of the self-perpetuating bureaucracy.

Even the hypothetical "dictatorship of the proletariat" would still be a dictatorship, run by those who rise to the top by be being the strongest, loudest and most ruthless.

As happened in Russia, really: the Revolution ended the monarchy but left the country weak enough for the Bolsheviks to take over by coup then deem the nation "Socialist" with the "Communist Party" in charge.

One country that is regarded as communist and is so administratively, does not describe itself thus. It is one the most repressive regimes on Earth, under the third generation of a dynasty that calls its system Kimilism: North Korea.

@Emosaur I know, and I did not say that calling itself "communist" or "socialist" makes a country that, according to pure political theory - which seems never work to work in practice.

Though even if it tried being ruled by the "proletariat", who would qualify whom as suitably proletariat, by what and whose definition? I think it would rapidly descend either into chaos or dictatorship by the strongest.

I don't think North Korea "socialist" in a Marxist way, any more than I think it democratic; beyond adopting administrative ideas and systems that have become associated with "socialist" nations.

@Emosaur Perhaps I should have explained myself better. I was thinking of one-party tyrannies, not democracies that espouse "socialist" ideals such as proper education, health and welfare systems

At one time I might have agreed with privatising State organisations and the public utilities; but I now see this as having been a huge mistake, at least in Britain even if it worked in other countries.

The main charge when publicly-owned was of poor management but much of that was down to governments, of all parties, trying to run them and taking too much of the operating profits as tax (where profits applied, as obviously they do not or should not, in certain areas).

The biggest problem now is not so much how well they are run, though they need governmental oversight bodies to try to keep them in check and deliver as they should; but that all too often the profits and even the entire ownerships vanish overseas to any old spivs going - from Wall Street to Hong Kong (so to the PFR), from Indonesia to Middle Eastern governments of dubious character.

Some to entire nations. For example, if I catch a train from my town in Southern England to the North, the first part, to Bristol, is courtesy of Edinburgh-based First Group, the continuation by Deutsche Bahn, Germany's state-owned railway company. British households buying their electricity from EDF are propping up the nation of France.

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The weakness I see in that definition of "the proletariat" owning and running everything is that of creating a new "Bourgeoisie", among those actually managing it all. You'd still need a government of some sort above them, too; and would that be itself another level of new "Bourgeoisie"?

President Allende's ways may well have worked but he may have been unusual in that. Presumably the USA had interfered for its own reasons, not to help the Chileans. Such systems as you list can and have worked in the UK, Scandinavia, etc, too; helped by these being long-established, stable and fairly wealthy nations of people not afraid to tell their governments off for any mistakes or clumsiness, but also not given to revolting at the drop of a beret.

Elsewhere though, so many have tried and failed, sometimes because the reforms are felt to be insufficient and too slow, sometimes because factions merely want their own power and to Hell with the citizenry.

The difficulty with those countries that like to call themselves "socialist republics" or "communist", are they are run by bureaucratic bourgeoises who want both socialist ideals, and usually manage to provide those, and absolute power.

The notion that you can have both a democratic, multi-party society with private and State-run industries and functioning State systems of caring for its members' primary needs, baffles them. I don't know what Marx or Engels would have made of that notion though.

@Emosaur I see. Thank you.

Using the labels in their common way rather than strict definition, I don't think there's much to choose between regimes called "communist" and those called "fascist", even if the economies are run in different ways.

I suppose Labour's concept of socialist methods in mid-20C Britain was that of State-run services but where these could and should make a trading profit (the railways, water, etc.), that is at a sensible level, and divided between internal investment and the Treasury for the benefit of the country as a whole. The beneficiaries would include those services that cannot make a profit because they are not "trading": roads, defence, the Police, health, education, and the like.

I don't know if that was close to the Chilean model, but unfortunately the publicly-owned industries and services became bedevilled by too much interference, money-taking and poor oversight by both Labour and Conservative governments, making them difficult to operate and then taking all the public blame for being "inefficient".


I think any country that tried to operate without some sort of overall government would soon not operate at all. Political idealism does not account for human weakness, and the country would still need some form of general moderation and control. It also needs to interact with other countries, some friends, some potentially hostile, and that can only be done with a reasonably strong government helped by good diplomatic and security services.

I define the 'State' as the geographical entity, its population and cultures. The Government then, as the body that administers the State, and rightly that should be for the State not itself.

So I agree the Government should serve the State, not vice-versa; and democracies such as those of Western Europe, Australia, Canada, etc do strive to work that way even though wobbling between largely-socialist and largely-capitalist economies according to whichever "side" wins their General Elections.

None are perfect though, no human system ever can be; and in an ever more complicated, unstable and fractious word faced with very serious common problems, maintaining that ideal will become ever harder.