On parties and police states...

[Maniac]

As is evidenced by the comment from Drogue, Voltaire and me in the Constitutional proposal thread, there seems to be a split in our faction regarding some issues. As usual, a poll to hopefully solve them! I put the voting limit on three days.

Question1: Should our state have a multiple-party-system or a one-party-system?

Question2: If the one-party-system wins, how should the official party be called?
Options I included are:
Communist Party
The Party
People's New Revolutionary Party
Write-in

Question3: If the one-party-system wins, should political movements be allowed to call themselves "parties"?

Question4: If the one-party-system wins, should political movements be allowed to call themselves "factions"?

[Voltaire]

As should be evident by our constitution we are indeed a communist state, our General Secretary is General Secretary of the Communist Party. Only the Communist Party, the Party of the People, should be allowed to stand for government and be the only official party in the Human Hive.

For RP purposes other parties can form, but their members should not be able to stand for government (unless they overthrow us via revolution). Factions within the Communist Party of course can exist, against mainly for RP purposes.

[Nubclear]

There are no parties.

Only GUILDS

[Octavian X]

For RP purposes, there is only one Party (Personally, I like the Reople's New Revolutionary Party). However, political movements should be allowed to form for game political purposes, and should be allowed to call themselves as they please.

[Drogue]

What do you mean 1 or multi party? We already decided that others could form themselves into groups, is this meant to remove that? If one party wins, are we allowed to form groups? If yes, then what is the difference?

Originally posted by Voltaire
As should be evident by our constitution we are indeed a communist state

We don't have a constitution, it has not been ratified yet. And we are not taken as being communist. The Hive is a Police State, not a communist faction. If you wanted a workers paradise, you should have tried to be Drones. Our economic system is a point of debate, not a given. It is not the Hive ideal.

Originally posted by Voltaire
For RP purposes other parties can form, but their members should not be able to stand for government (unless they overthrow us via revolution). Factions within the Communist Party of course can exist, against mainly for RP purposes.

The Parties are for fun. This game would be boring without them IMHO. Yet you are now saying they have no place? And since when does your party get to start as rulers, and all other shave to attempt a revolution. Moreover, the last time I checked, we had not agreed on revolutions being a part of this game.

[Drogue]

Also, why should some people be able to say what others can called their parties? How can we call them factions, seeing that we are the Hive, a faction in the game. How can we have both factions being called factions and parties being called factions?

Wouldn't it be weird having a party called the Communist Party if we aren't running Planned?

[Lemmy]

Sub-Faction for science and knowledge!

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Drogue
What do you mean 1 or multi party? We already decided that others could form themselves into groups, is this meant to remove that?

No. Octavian X explains it well: if the one-party system options wins, as seems likely, for RP purposes, there will be only one Party. However, political movements, groups, cliques, societies... are allowed to form for game political purposes,

If one party wins, are we allowed to form groups? If yes, then what is the difference?

The difference would be the groups aren't allowed to call themselves a "Party".

[Drogue]

So the difference is in name only?

Though this seems unlikely, what if one party wins, but also "Movements called "parties"? YES!". Then there would be only one party, but there would be many?

I still stand by what I said that I don't see why it is up to others the name of any particular group to which they don't belong. And this poll is a little late seeing as parties have been discussed for weeks with some started already.

[Snowflake]

I voted one party system and Movements called "parties"? YES!. The idea being the government is controlled mainly by the Party but there could also be many alternative parties that do not controll the government. Kind of like the current China situation. You could serve in the government and be a member of the alternative parties. But all understands when we say the Party we mean the Party, not any of the alternative parties. You could advocate different ideologies and social agendas. However, if you serve in the government, you must not act against the Party, at least not openly until the time you are going to throw in a revolution. And the Party itself can evolve too. Different groups could fight to gain influence and control.

[Drogue]

I agree completely with HongHu

[Voltaire]

Wouldn't it be weird having a party called the Communist Party if we aren't running Planned?

coughchinacough

[Drogue]

What would you class China as? Admittedly they have some form of a market there, but still "State-owned enterprises dominate China's economy". It is closest to a Planned economy of the three, though I will admit it is by no means a totally planned economy. You think the Communist Party would let it become a complete Free Market? Or even anything that closely resembled it?

[Nubclear]

Yep.

Have you seen some of those Nokia commercials in China? Talk about neat....

[Impaler[WrG]]

Well to be honest "Planned" economics is not actualy Comunism. Its say quite clearly in the Datalinks that Planned is a heavily regulated FreeMarket, this is what the United States and much of Europe was using untill the Reagan/Thatcher Deregulations. In the US the companies were not state owned in Europe they generaly were, but in both cases they were heavily regulated.

Free Market would be more in line with how things are done now in the US or a hypothetical total Lasa-Fare economic system which dosn't exist in any modernized country, Europe is still more regulated and might be considered to be Planned or between Freemarket and Planned with the Scandinavian countries being the farthest left with high taxes and high social services.

A truly Markxest recive according to needs/work acording to ability/no private property type economic system dosen't exist in SMAC (and if it did the modifiers would absolutly stink).

Besides the fact that "Comunism" is a combined political/economic system. Its a combination of extream Socialism, esentialy a 100% tax with a Dictatorship (in the idealized Comunist state the goverment "melts away" and the whole population in essence becomes the goverment, this ofcorse never actualy happens as some Dictator or Olagarcy starts running everything). This is why the USSR was called the united soviet SOCIALIST republic, their economic system was hyper-Socialims with the eventual GOAL of comunism. Russia would now be considered a Planned economy as would China, China will move to a FreeMarket soon though as state owned companies become less significant and regulation is relaxed.