Communism
Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.
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Marxists of all tendencies are welcome here.
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Check out ProleWiki for a communist wikipedia.
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Let's reframe the question so you better understand the answer.
If dictatorships are happening in North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, China, and Cuba, then why do they keep having elections?
Everyone needs to have elections for legitimacy, domestically and internationally.
So, yes, dictatorships still need votes. If they don't get those votes, then either there is a coup or the election is rigged so that the people who were supposed to win now win anyway. I'm sure you would say this happens in Venezuela with Maduro, for example. In the US the Presidential elections, at least, are a sham because, off the top of my head, we already know within the popular consciousness that two elections were recently decided against the will of the popular vote: Trump v. Clinton in 2016 through the electoral college and Bush v. Gore in 2000 through the Supreme Court. Popular votes are just a recommendation, not a mandate, in US national elections. Putting aside all the hurdles and assuming they were all equally on the same ballot nationwide, do you think that if 51+% of the population all voted for the PSL Presidential candidate that the Republicans and Democrats would actually allow them to take power, or would they use one of these already established apparatuses to prevent it?