Tag: democratic confederalism

To What Extent is Democracy a Tyranny of the Majority?

17/11/2021

This is one of three mini essays submitted for a political science assessment. Given the limited word count and my struggles to adhere to “academic writing”, they’re likely not the best pieces, but ah well, uploading them for shits and giggles. This one basically just runs with the idea of the “tyranny of the majority” to suggest free association among equals from the ground up limits the potential of it taking place.

Democracy, meaning “rule of the people” in Ancient Greek, has taken many forms since its inception. Even Aristotle outlined different variations of both democracy and oligarchy, stating that “a particular form of government may be preferable for some people, but another form may be better for others.” (Aristotle 2020). For him, the polity was the best form of government, leaning towards democracy, although by contemporary standards this conception would be unacceptable.

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Authoritarian Socialism and the Anarchist Alternative

This is the second of two essays I submitted for university this week. For this one the question prompt I chose was “Does socialism always tend towards authoritarianism?” Short answer was no, but I had to write about 1799 more words so this is the long answer talking about the State, Russia, Spain, and anarchism and a bit of democratic confederalism. Title is iffy and unimaginative because screw putting effort into that. All references are down the bottom. Enjoy

Socialism is a school of thought most simply defined by its opposition to capitalism (Heywood 2021: 75). This is, however, an extremely broad range of ideas and there has been much conflict within and between nations, parties and movements about what, and who, constitutes true socialist ideals. Perhaps the greatest of these is the antagonism between democratic and authoritarian visions of socialism. The Twentieth Century saw the rise of authoritarian socialism, manifested primarily through the Russian Revolution in October 1917 and the horrors of the Stalinist regime, and in China under Mao’s Communist Party.

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