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Supreme state organ of power
The supreme state organ of power (SSOP) is a type of legislature and the highest representative institution in communist states operating under the Marxist–Leninist principle of unified power. Unlike systems based on the fusion or separation of powers, the SSOP holds legislative, executive, judicial, and all other forms of state power. Formally regarded as the embodiment of popular sovereignty and the head of the unified state apparatus, its activities in practice are closely shaped by the ruling communist party.
The SSOP's theoretical origins trace back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of a “supreme power” of the people, Karl Marx’s call for unity of state power, and Vladimir Lenin’s vision of soviets as working organs which combined lawmaking and execution. The world's first SSOP was the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, established after the 1917 October Revolution, and it became the prototype for similar institutions in other communist states.
SSOPs meet periodically, with most of their powers delegated to their permanent organs. These organs exercise most of the SSOP's powers and act as the supreme state organ of power between SSOP sessions. The balance between plenary sessions and permanent organs vary; SSOP sessions in the Soviet Union were infrequent and primarily ratified party decisions, but historically in states such as Poland, Yugoslavia, and in present-day Vietnam SSOP sessions sometimes act as legislative forums where policies are debated and amended. In all communist states, SSOPs also have important symbolic roles as expressions of popular sovereignty and channels for representation and often include workers, peasants, women, and ethnic minorities in greater proportions than in similar entities in liberal democracies. They continue to exist in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam, although their roles vary considerably.
The concept of the SSOP traces its historical origins to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who championed the establishment of "one supreme power that governs us according to wise laws". This idea had a sizable impact on Marxist−Leninist theory, and was used to argue for the rejection of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism, was skeptical of the state in general and its executive powers in particular. Marx aimed to end the situation in which the state became "independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitical excrescence." He believed that what he considered the modern constitutions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie vested power in the executive at the expense of the legislature, and he criticised the French Constitution of 1848 for replacing the hereditary monarchy with an elected monarch (the president of the republic).
From Marx's perspective, in France the separation of powers increased the president's power vis-à-vis that of the legislature. The president alone became a symbol of state authority, and the 1848 French constitution had created a system with "two heads [...] the Legislative Assembly, on the one hand, [and] the President on the other." Marx believed that the presidency threatened the constitutional order, and its powers could easily be abused by a person who sought to overthrow the legislature and establish a personal dictatorship (as Louis-Napoléon did in 1851).
Marx vehemently opposed the separation of powers. He said about Article 19 of the 1848 French constitution, which stated that the "separation of powers is the first principle of a free government", "Here we have the old constitutional folly. The condition of a 'free government' is not the division, but the unity of power. The machinery of government cannot be too simple. It is always the craft of knaves to make it complicated and mysterious." By "unity of power", Marx supported the concentration of state powers in a national elected-representative organ rather than an individual. In Marx's mind, according to scholar Bruno Leipold, this would weaken the state's executive powers. Unity of power evolved into the unified power principle of communist states.
Marx preferred the French Constitution of 1793, which subordinated the executive and all other state organs to the National Assembly. That constitution established a form of government known as assembly government. In this form, the government (as the state executive) was an internal organ of the national representative institution. The underlying idea behind assembly government was to reject the separation of powers and a mixed government, in the belief that the popularly-elected national-representative institution had the right to intervene in all state affairs. The French experiment with assembly government was short-lived, and Marx sought another model that fit his theoretical framework – a model not conceived by the bourgeoisie, since "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."
He eventually found his model of socialist governance in the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx believed that the form of government outlined by the commune was a "new point of departure of world-historical importance", and called it "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour." The commune had replaced representative government with the idea of popular delegation through imperative mandates, the right to recall elected representatives, and the establishment of legislative supremacy. Marx called this form of government a social republic: "a Republic is only in France and Europe possible as a 'Social Republic', that is a Republic which disowns the capital and landowner class of the State machinery to supersede it by the Commune, that frankly avows 'social emancipation' as the great goal of the Republic and guarantees thus that social transformation by the Communal organisation."
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Supreme state organ of power
The supreme state organ of power (SSOP) is a type of legislature and the highest representative institution in communist states operating under the Marxist–Leninist principle of unified power. Unlike systems based on the fusion or separation of powers, the SSOP holds legislative, executive, judicial, and all other forms of state power. Formally regarded as the embodiment of popular sovereignty and the head of the unified state apparatus, its activities in practice are closely shaped by the ruling communist party.
The SSOP's theoretical origins trace back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of a “supreme power” of the people, Karl Marx’s call for unity of state power, and Vladimir Lenin’s vision of soviets as working organs which combined lawmaking and execution. The world's first SSOP was the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, established after the 1917 October Revolution, and it became the prototype for similar institutions in other communist states.
SSOPs meet periodically, with most of their powers delegated to their permanent organs. These organs exercise most of the SSOP's powers and act as the supreme state organ of power between SSOP sessions. The balance between plenary sessions and permanent organs vary; SSOP sessions in the Soviet Union were infrequent and primarily ratified party decisions, but historically in states such as Poland, Yugoslavia, and in present-day Vietnam SSOP sessions sometimes act as legislative forums where policies are debated and amended. In all communist states, SSOPs also have important symbolic roles as expressions of popular sovereignty and channels for representation and often include workers, peasants, women, and ethnic minorities in greater proportions than in similar entities in liberal democracies. They continue to exist in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam, although their roles vary considerably.
The concept of the SSOP traces its historical origins to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who championed the establishment of "one supreme power that governs us according to wise laws". This idea had a sizable impact on Marxist−Leninist theory, and was used to argue for the rejection of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism, was skeptical of the state in general and its executive powers in particular. Marx aimed to end the situation in which the state became "independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitical excrescence." He believed that what he considered the modern constitutions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie vested power in the executive at the expense of the legislature, and he criticised the French Constitution of 1848 for replacing the hereditary monarchy with an elected monarch (the president of the republic).
From Marx's perspective, in France the separation of powers increased the president's power vis-à-vis that of the legislature. The president alone became a symbol of state authority, and the 1848 French constitution had created a system with "two heads [...] the Legislative Assembly, on the one hand, [and] the President on the other." Marx believed that the presidency threatened the constitutional order, and its powers could easily be abused by a person who sought to overthrow the legislature and establish a personal dictatorship (as Louis-Napoléon did in 1851).
Marx vehemently opposed the separation of powers. He said about Article 19 of the 1848 French constitution, which stated that the "separation of powers is the first principle of a free government", "Here we have the old constitutional folly. The condition of a 'free government' is not the division, but the unity of power. The machinery of government cannot be too simple. It is always the craft of knaves to make it complicated and mysterious." By "unity of power", Marx supported the concentration of state powers in a national elected-representative organ rather than an individual. In Marx's mind, according to scholar Bruno Leipold, this would weaken the state's executive powers. Unity of power evolved into the unified power principle of communist states.
Marx preferred the French Constitution of 1793, which subordinated the executive and all other state organs to the National Assembly. That constitution established a form of government known as assembly government. In this form, the government (as the state executive) was an internal organ of the national representative institution. The underlying idea behind assembly government was to reject the separation of powers and a mixed government, in the belief that the popularly-elected national-representative institution had the right to intervene in all state affairs. The French experiment with assembly government was short-lived, and Marx sought another model that fit his theoretical framework – a model not conceived by the bourgeoisie, since "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."
He eventually found his model of socialist governance in the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx believed that the form of government outlined by the commune was a "new point of departure of world-historical importance", and called it "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour." The commune had replaced representative government with the idea of popular delegation through imperative mandates, the right to recall elected representatives, and the establishment of legislative supremacy. Marx called this form of government a social republic: "a Republic is only in France and Europe possible as a 'Social Republic', that is a Republic which disowns the capital and landowner class of the State machinery to supersede it by the Commune, that frankly avows 'social emancipation' as the great goal of the Republic and guarantees thus that social transformation by the Communal organisation."