Although I have stopped being a Marxist-socialist by early 90s, somehow I still have some "hang-over" on some Marxist concepts until early 2000s. Here's one such discussion a decade ago, on the relationship between a political party and the state. This is 7 pages long, enjoy.
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State-Party Relations
January 2001
Nonoy, et al, Sometime ago I curiously read an article about certain communist intellectuals (not identified) talking about the time when there will be "separation of Party and state" ... just as the separation of church and state in capitalist countries.
They'd mean that the Party would just exert ideological influence and persuasion, not state or police power, to groups of individuals vying for public office over state policies and welfare.
If such were to happen and together with a genuine Bill of Rights, such socialist countries like Vietnam and China would not only catch up but even outdistance western countries. By then there would be a global convergence: social democracy (of the east) = democratic capitalism (of the west).
- Roy Picart
Roy, My understanding of state-party relations is:
(Pol.) Party - defines & explains the policies to the people, must aim to capture state power to implement said policies;
State - implements policies of the victorious pol. party. Though often in multi-party countries, the victorious pol. party enters into alliances with other smaller pol. parties to get majority seats in the legislature and to broaden its mass base and support. But in one-party states like China, Vietnam, N. Korea and Cuba, no need for party alliances as the opposition is always weak.
So in this definition, party-state separation of function is inherent in multi-party states. Such separation of function is also possible in one-party, communist governments. In slowly-democratizing communist govts. like China and Vietnam, state leaders and bureaucrats are not entirely accountable to their respective communist parties but to the general population, majority of whom are not party members. State leaders are striking a balance between their party (which is generally allergic to drastic reforms) and the general public (who want fast, wide-ranging economic liberalization and political democratization).
On social democracy, these are essentially the democratic capitalist states of the west at the moment. Specifically, the welfare states of Scandinavian and Western European countries. These capitalist countries sometimes turn off capitalist enterprises because of the high taxes which their govts. collect to give to the jobless (sometimes encouraging laziness), the sick, to subsidize their farmers, etc.
The convergence that you mention is actually happening now: capitalist countries that act like socialist states, and socialist countries that allow predominance of capitalist enterprises. Vietnam is a socialist country, but the streets of Hanoi, Saigon, Hue, etc. are full of tens of thousands of capitalist enterprises. China is a socialist country but Shanghai, Shenzen, even Beijing, are full of capitalist shops and firms.
Someday, ideologies will become good academic subjects in the schools worldwide, but they will lose their original spirits. They will soon converge with one basic ingredient that unifies their aspirations: information. Information will uplift world economies, substantially reduce poverty as we know it today. But information will never be made perfect for everyone. Just as the next guy has discovered his neighbor's "trade secrets", this neighbor has already developed a new product or service that is far superior to the one that was discovered by his competitor.
- nonoy
Dear Noy and Roy and All:
State-Party Relations:
Classical Marxism situates the relations between state and party within the framework of socialism as the class rule of the proletariat, and socialism as a transitional phase before society could progress to classless and stateless communism. State and party relations also relate to the conept of the "withering away of the state." The classics, in fact, may provide signposts in understanding the remaining socialist experiments.
The basic theoretical postulates on this matter may be outlined as follows:
a) Capitalism is an arrangement of social classes with the bourgeoisie exercising political hegemony over all the others, through the capitalist state;
b) The socialist revolution destroys this hegemony and transfers state power to the proletariat. Hence, Lenin defines socialism as "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or "the proletariat organized as the ruling class";
c) The immediate function of the socialist state is to preserve the dominance of the proletariat, and to serve as the coercive instrument of the the working class. This coercive role means defending the Communist Party and defeating its class enemies, since the CP is the repository of the will of the ruling class (the proletariat). Note that the socialist state, as with all other states, remains a coercive organ of power, existing within society but also above it;
