System of Government

The organizational form of the state power. Mao Zedong pointed out that “the system of government is a matter of how political power is organized, the form in which one social class or another chooses to arrange its apparatus of political power to oppose its enemies and protect itself”. It shows which organizational form the ruling class chooses and adopts to carry out its class rule and the administration of society under certain historical conditions according to its own needs. In a given society, there is a relation of dialectical unity between the state system and the system of government, which is a relation between content and form. On the one hand, the system of government is determined by the state system. State system is the content, fundamental, and embodies the class essence of the state. The system of government should correspond to the state system and serve it. The ruling class can adopt a system of government it deems most appropriate according to its political needs and the changing situation of the struggle. The state system, i.e., the class character of the state, is, in the last instance, the primary factor that determines the system of government. On the other hand, the system of government is the form, the system of government reflects the state system, and it must correspond to the requirements of the state system, obey and serve the will and interests of the ruling class, and embody the nature of the state system. The system of government has a relative independence and a reaction upon the state system, i.e., it can fortify or weaken the state system. An appropriate and sound system of government plays a very important role in maintaining and fortifying the ruling position of the ruling class and in realizing its will and interests. Conversely, an inappropriate system of government is not conducive to the fortification and development of the state system. Mao Zedong pointed out that there is no state which does not have an appropriate apparatus of political power to represent it. This means that without an appropriate and sound apparatus of the system of government, it is also impossible to fully reflect and realize the will and interests of the ruling class and to exercise the power of the state effectively on behalf of the state.

Due to the historical conditions of each country, the contrast of class forces at home and abroad and different national properties and other factors, systems of government as the organizational form of political power vary. Countries with identical state system may adopt different systems of government, but they all embody the dictatorship of a certain class. For example, slave-owning states had imperial and republican systems of government, like the Roman Empire and the Athenian Republic. Lenin held that there are various forms of this machine, the state. The slave-owning state could be a monarchy, an aristocratic republic or even a democratic republic. In fact, the forms of administration varied extremely, but their essence was always the same: the slaves enjoyed no rights and constituted an oppressed class; they were not regarded as human beings. We find the same thing in the feudal state. The system of government adopted by feudal states are monarchy and republic. The states of the dictatorship of the bourgeois have the forms of democratic republic and constitutional monarchy and also the deformed fascist system of government. The systems of government that appeared in history were absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, aristocratic republic, democratic republic, etc. The system of government of socialist countries can only strive for a democratic republic, which is determined by the class character of the socialist state. Socialist countries have the same state system, but their system of government can also be distinctive. History also shows that countries with different state systems can adopt the same form of the system of government, for example, both the slave-owning state and the feudal state adopted absolute monarchy, and both the socialist state and the capitalist state adopted democratic republic. However, there is an essential difference between the two due to the fundamental nature of the state, one being socialist democratic republic and the other capitalist democratic republic.

In his book The Civil War in France, Marx dealt with the essential difference between the proletarian republic and the bourgeois republic. He pointed out: “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 organization.”

Bourgeois ideologists try to conceal the essence of the bourgeois dictatorship with “parliamentary democracy”, boasting that the bourgeois “parliamentary democracy” represents the rights and interests of the whole people, but its real nature is still an instrument of the ruling class for holding down the people and oppressing them. The system of government of the People’s Republic of China is the system of people’s congresses, which takes democratic centralism as its organizational principle and belongs to the category of democratic republic.