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Originally Posted by dda
Would a truly communist state have a democracy? Would it be totalitarian? What would be the ruling mechanism?
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Communism in the longer term wouldn't necessarily have what we would term a "state".
But for the purposes of your question, yes there would be a democracy and no it wouldn't be totalitarian. As to it's ruling mechanism, who knows? That depends on the history, culture and conditions of wherever this place is. Liberal democracy in the United Kingdom is different to liberal democracy in Japan because the two are very different countries. Socialist / communist Britain would be different to socialist / communist Japan for precisely the same reasons.
This is not evading the question but merely that to try and have some scientific plan / prescription for what society will look like is totalitarian in approach and utterly ahistorical.
In terms of what structure I'd
like to see than I would say a variety of power organs would exist where people might interact with political power in more or less democratic ways. So at work they might operate through some workers council type format, at home they might be members of the Sunnydale Residents Association, in their part time they might be members of other organisations. How each of these functioned would partially depend on their members desire, the needs of the time, etc. I'm very hostile on the most past to centralisation so there would be less need for general elections, etc but I think a rule of thumb is that any group / organisation which wields political power should be democratically accountable on some level.
(It's not clear whether such formations could realistically exist as nation-states, but that's another discussion. Any time there has been a state which has called itself communist it has been attacked from outside by states/interests wishing to reverse this change, usually in collusion with the old order. The evils of Stalin are totally inexcusable in any form ever but they are slightly more understandable when one considers the western post-revolutionary intervention, war communism, the German threat, etc.)