In b4 someone calls me a tankie
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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A good indicator is not having the same leader for decades. Term limits are a democratic safeguard and China has mostly abolished them. That does not bode well.
How is term limits a good indicator? If you're doing a good job why should you br kicked out after an arbitrary amount of time?
Because exceptionalism is a poison regardless of your political philosophy - other people can do an equally good job. Why is it necessary for power to be held by a singular person for so long?
If someone else can do the job equally as well, why must they also do it? So someone can do a thing and someone else can they must swap roles every now and then just because?
Why is it necessary for a role to be changed on some arbitrary basis?
If I go to the grocery and see the same person running the counter. Am I supposed to go "um excuse me, but you were here last week, and someone equally qualified needs to have a turn"?
Those aren't answers to my question - but sure, I'll answer yours: term limits are a safeguard against one person consolidating power. Having them ensures that there will be political structures subordinate to them that survive a transfer of power, and thus said power can't be singly consolidated.
Distribution of power is a very basic concept of communism, I think you just don't know what you're talking about.
Those structures can still exist without term limits. The power can lay in the hands of the people who put that person into power. The same people who went "this guy's good at his job we should have him leading things" are the exact same people who can go "hang on this guy is no longer doing a good job leading things, let's replace him".
You're seriously arguing that cronyism is a self-correcting system?
Congratulations that's... the worst take I've ever seen.
Could you please explain to me how you managed to get that from what I said?
In a ideal situation this sort of failsafe wouldn't be needed - but your line is "The power can lay in the hands of the people who put that person into power". What if, just suppose, the people putting that person into power aren't the proletariat? A totally wild hypothetical here I know, when would something like THAT ever happen. But those people, by your hypothetical would then be the ones with the power to go “hang on this guy is no longer doing a good job leading things, let’s replace him”.
So when I say term limits aren't necessary if the people have the power and therefore the same power putting someone into a role is the same power that can remove them, your response is "but what if people don't have power". If they don't have power then they don't have power. You didn't address what I said.
What? But... you didn't say that. That's not what you said at all. That's why I didn't address it, because you didn't say it. I addressed what you said.
Yes it is.
Yes what is? Repeating the same comment doesn't make it suddenly say something different, and it still doesn't address the part where it's a safeguard for a non-ideal situation.
Even countries that have term limits don't give all the power to whoever is in charge. If they did then that person could just declare there being no more term limits and themselves the god emperor or whatever to start abusing their power. It's not like the thought to abuse power never crosses someone's mind until after they've been in charge for 6 years so if we replace them before that happens we prevent people abusing power. They can't do that because they can't. There are already structures in place that prevent abusing power. Things like distributing power across multiple people and only being in charge of what's necessary. Things like a constitution, things like a senate, having a process for laws to be reviewed and signed off before they can be put into effect.
Yes? Term limits are a tool for ensuring those structures, they're not the only tool available nor are they the only one in use, and nobody is saying they are. I'm totally at a loss as to why you're arguing against them when you've made such a good summary of what they are and have highlighted the importance of such structures within a government system.
Term limits aren't necessary. We don't have term limits for anything else. If someone is doing a good job doing whatever that means they should keep doing their job. The instant they stop doing their job that's when you replace them. Not just replace them every few years because someone else might be able to do that job just as good.
Your entire argument hinges on it just not being necessary, but you've never provided a reason beyond "well what if they're doing a good job"? You've a great case for why we do need a variety of structures to check one person obtaining too much power, but you're arguing against term limits because "what if one person happens to be really good at their job?"
You're not engaging with the answer here, which has been repeatedly given (arguably by marx) but I'll happily reiterate it in more plain language: "no one person is so good at their job that they should be unwilling to step down from power". Nobody is so unique that an equally competent person cannot be found - but many people are so corrupt that they will remain in power as long as possible unless there are hard checks to prevent them from doing so.
Right that is the reason.
Those structures are still there. You haven't given a reason why term limits are also one of those necessary structures.
But that's the thing. He CAN step down. That's what I've been saying. He got into his position from the assembly who voted him in. If he starts being shit at his job the same assembly that voted him in will vote him out.
You're assuming that being in power is the problem when the problem is abusing power. Xi can't do literally whatever they hell he wants. He can't pass the "give me the power to do literally whatever I want" law and if he for whatever reason tried to be a dick he would be replaced.
Yes, that's the bad reason I've been repeatedly debunking over all the flaws inherent to it and that you're somehow entrenched in thinking is a good point?
Look just... stop trying to assert that you know what you're talking about. You're so bad at this that you've pivoted to arguing that an indirect representative democracy is in itself a reasonable and sufficient check on authoritarian power. That's a joke - or the punchline to several jokes, really - and it's antithetical to everything to do with communism and/or socialism. Just... come on.
(And dude you've brought Xi into this when I was never talking about China - I get you like them real hard but I'm not discussing them?)
No you haven't you've just said "yes and this is one of those structures" You have to actually explain why it's necessary.
At this point you're just trolling. This thread began with China as an example of a dictatorship which lead into the discussion about term limits as the main reason for that. I'm not going to keep feeding the troll. Blocked.
Lmfao yeah, that was convincing.
Putin approves of your message.
It is not merely about doing a good job, it is about the ethics of power. Power corrupts, so the only reasonable recourse is to share it with as many people as possible and wield it for a limited amount of time. And it's also about ethics, what gives one person the right to have power over others for a limitless amount of time?
Frankly, you seem like you're about to argue for people just doing as they're told and not worrying their pretty little heads with this, which is against any sane left wing ideals.
People do have power. That's literally what China does. The assembly holds all the power and there's like 2000 members. So they have a guy be the leader to keep things organised. Xi Jinping doesn't have the power to do whatever he wants he just has the power to guide 2000 people in a room so you don't have 2000 people all arguing over each other.
I agree it's stupid to say "let's give one guy all the power to literally do whatever he wants" but that isn't the case here. You also can't give all the power to someone in countries with term limits. There's checks and balances in place like having a congress or whatever. It's not like countries with new presidents every few years hand over the keys to the entire country and the president can do whatever the fuck he wants like madating everyone who meets him has to suck him off and the only thing that stops him becoming a full blown dictator and declaring that actually there will be no more elections is that humans are stupid and the thought to do that only crosses a presidents mind after 6 years and this is circumvented by replacing him with a new guy before that happens.
Those same checks and balances that exist in other countries also exist in China. Government power exists in the hands of the assembly not the president. Xi Jinping can't do whatever the fuck he wants he just the team leader.
You're just assuming because they don't have term limits that means they give one guy literally all the power and let him do whatever he wants and they all have to listen to him. Again this is the equivalent of seeing the same person at the grocery counter as last week and screaming at them calling them a dictator. When they're just in charge of scanning your items and the same power that put them in charge of that role can take them out of that rule of they start being shit at their job. Well actually this analogy runs thin when you bring up that you can't change who your boss is but that's not my point.
He might not have absolute power in the state but your comparison with a common employee is frankly laughable. He is the agenda setter for the highest tiers of Chinese Government, he has the power to appoint multiple executive positions and he is the supreme military leader. He's not just a random cog in the machine like the grocery clerk, he has real, actual, abusable power and democratic systems must limit any person's access to abusable power, even if you believe there hasn't been abuse yet. The issue is not that, the issue is that some day, a person with ill intent might maneuver themselves into holding Xi Jinping's office and abusing said power, hence the need for the newcomer's terms to also be limited.
For the record, though, I think the fact that Xi has managed to remove his term limits is in and of itself an abuse of power, regardless of what else he has done.
This is the key part about what I'm saying. People are assuming Xi has absolute power when he doesn't. His role in the assembly is basically being the figurehead. It's the assembly that has power and passes laws and shit. But because its politics people use the no term limits thing as evidence that his power is absolute but they're wrong. That's why I used the grocer example. No one behaves this way with any other scenario but because it's politics that must mean he's a dictator and not that hey maybe if he's doing a good job running the assembly the assembly should keep him in charge instead of swapping him for someone else to do the exact same shit. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Access to the nuclear arsenal seems like excessive power for a figurehead. Xi Jinping holds that office.
No that's a separate role. That's power he has because he's in charge of the military. Every country has a guy in charge of the military is that guy the dictator of every country?
The other countries have a term limit for who wields that power.
What about the UK and Australia?
You have fallen prey to American exceptionalism: “It isn’t democracy unless it’s American democracy.”
All European democracies have term limits too. Heck, even ancient civilizations had term limits, and disregarding those has always lead to worse outcomes for the common man.