Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?
Why are socialist and communist countries usually considered more authoritarian than capitalist countries?
Just as capitalist states are "authoritarian" against working class interests, socialist states are "authoritarian" against capitalist interests.
The state is a tool for one class to oppress another. The goal of (most) communists is to transition from capitalism — where the capitalist class is in power — to a stateless, classless communist society via socialism — where the working class is in power.
Public perception of which is more "authoritarian" therefore depends on which class is currently in power and is able to manufacture consent, and that is the capitalist class in the vast majority of the world right now since the USSR's overthrow.
Because we live in a capitalist society where capitalists control our media and education. Back in the fifties, you’d be jailed or even killed for being a communist (or gay) in the United States of America. Why do we view this as any less authoritarian than the USSR? Because it’s our past.
When slaves rise up and throw the master out of the house they built, the master's first instinct is to gather his friends and and crush the uprising before it's example can inspire others. If the former slaves want to keep their freedom, and if they don't want their sacrifices to have been for nothing, they need to secure the house, and quickly.
In 1917, the people of Russia cast off their feudal monarch. In 1918, America and nine other countries invaded Russia to fight for the czar, to crush the worker's uprising and restore the monarch to the throne. They don't teach us about it in school.
Here's a 2 minute bop set to a Parenti lecture that covers this. The basic fact is that a capitalist empire will never willingly surrender control of an exploitable land where labor and resources can be had for cheap or free, not without a fight. The lecture is at least 30 years old now, but has only gotten more prescient with the genocidal crackdown in Palestine against a liberation movement that threatens America's ability to control the region's trade through it's military outpost of Isreal. To make it even more relevant, there are communist groups like the PFLP fighting the IOF in Palestine at this very moment-this is all very much one struggle against economic imperialism, and against colonialism.
Just as an aside, we here in the capitalist west are authoritarian as fuck lol, we've just structured our systems of exploitation in such a way that it looks like a million separate companies fucking you over instead of an entire economic model fucking everyone over (and enforced at gunpoint), which is what it is.
They aren't?
Americans live in an authoritarian plutocracy, but refuse to believe it
Isn't that generally said by countries that oppose them?
The land of the less authoritarian had race discrimination until half a century ago, right? Seeing the BLM, it seems to have a prominent role even now. So are they any better?
Because authority carried out under the pretenses of private property is whitewashed in liberal states, who are the ones in your question doing the "considering".
because capitalists have to lie about reality to preserve their ill gotten gains.
From Losurdo - A critique of the category of totalitarianism:
Nowadays we constantly hear denunciations, directed toward Islam, of ‘religious totalitarianism’ or of the ‘new totalitarian enemy that is terrorism’. The language of the Cold War has reappeared with renewed vitality, as confirmed by the warning that American Senator Joseph Lieberman has issued to Saudi Arabia: beware the seduction of Islamic totalitarianism, and do not let a ‘theological iron curtain’ separate you from the Western world.
Even though the target has changed, the denunciation of totalitarianism continues to function with perfect efficiency as an ideology of war against the enemies of the Western world. And this ideology justifies the violation of the Geneva Convention, the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the embargo and collective punishment inflicted upon the Iraqis and other peoples, and the further torment perpetrated against the Palestinians. The struggle against totalitarianism serves to legitimate and transfigure the total war against the ‘barbarians’ who are alien to the Western world.
Projection of the contradiction of capital, capitalists states only allow freedom to those that can pay and has the illusion of free choice only when it comes to consumption.
It's simple to label a government as "authoritarian" just because they have things called "laws" that prevent you from exploiting their people. Likewise, it's convenient to repeatedly tell your citizens that distant, non-English-speaking countries are "authoritarian." The truth is, for every Westerner who can afford to travel and verify these claims, a million others will just accept what the media tells them. They'll even go on to reinforce these narratives, despite having no firsthand experience or direct connection to these places.
Exclusively based on vibes and lies/media presentation. It's just manufactured concensus, we teach 9 year Olds that it's freedom VS authoritarian capitalism VS communism
It's just bullshit, capitalist countries are authoritarian as fuck
Because propaganda works
Because mass media, manufactured consent, and regulatory capture are the “good” kind of coercion.
Because our bourgeois state propaganda and corporate media tell us that they are, because it’s in their best interest that we believe it.
I see a lot of comments saying they aren't. I'd disagree, but I agree they don't have to be. The issue is most of the major powers in the world have opposed leftist governments anytime they show up. The ones that didn't have a strong central power and cultural hegymony collapsed under the pressure. Any nation that had a weaker central power was either destroyed, couped, or undermined by the west.
There is nothing intrinsically authoritarian about leftism (really, I'd say it's less authoritarian in it's ideals), but authoritarianism is easier to hold together when outside pressures are trying to destroy you.
I could say that bourgeois ownership of media and academia and the state means that those institutions will represent the biases and interests of the bourgeoisie, and so people in first-world capitalist countries end up living in a sort of self-propagating anti-communist media bubble; but the thing about propaganda is that people are rarely ever truly "tricked" by it, propaganda is always most effective when it reinforces something that someone already believes on some level.
This is why the second part to building anti-communist sentiment has to do with super-exploitation, imperialism, and the labor aristocracy. This is to say, workers in first-world capitalist countries are materially invested in capitalism, through various perks and "treats" that workers of "poorer" countries are deprived of. By being materially invested in capitalism, workers of the first world are primed to take on a sort of "bourgeois mindset", as it were.
There's more that can be said, too, I'd strongly recommend listening to this speech by the leader of Revolutionary Grenada, Maurice Bishop, but I think that's a good start...
Most large-scale attempts at communism were managed in a centralized way top-down by force. One strong leader, usually with a cult of personality. Glorification of the military. Devaluation of individual life and emphasis on sacrifice for the common good. Suppression of dissent by violence.
You can see the parallels with fascism. I'd even argue that what we know as communism and fascism mainly differ in their approach to the economy.
On the other hand, capitalism exists and thrives in chaos. It doesn't exclude authoritarianism - actually it tends to produce it when capitalists capture the government. But some capitalist countries manage not to slide all the way and have been keeping up some kind of freedom for decades, so it kinda works.
Socialist countries are not, the entire Scandinavian block are super socialist, and not authoritarian.
As for Communist countries, no one has actually implemented communism, only in name. Communism means the workers, not the state, control the means of production. The state controlling them allows for bad actors to seize control.
Authoritarianism has nothing to do with economic systems and everything to do with government structure. The Soviet bloc/China and other communist countries were authoritarian because the populous allowed their governments too much power. China is ultra capitalist now and they're as authoritarian if not more so.
People remember communist countries as more authoritarian because they're the more taught examples. Pinochet was a turbo capitalist and he was one of the most authoritarian rulers in history.
Marketing
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bc crackers got lucky 500 years ago by finding an entire hemisphere of free money, thus any "free commerce" after this date necessarily advantages crackers, and "authoritarian" (AKA anti-freecommerce) measures are necessary to avoid a horde of crackers (and one Iranian cuck) owning the entire oil deposits of Iran
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bc crackers lie about everything including the 1st definition, and most people regardless of race only watch and listen to cracker media and learn cracker languages and spend their time in cracker echo-chambers, and also most people are just stoopid (way too stupid to be cognizant of this), so even when point #1 ceases to be true and commerce starts to benefit some Asian country who pulled themselves up against all titanic odds, you will still have billions of people agreeing with the worldwide cracker circlejerk
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Because they are. They are all very bad at social justice, probably because no matter the best intentions, humans are going to fuck it up. China isn't even communist, it's capitalist through and through. They have lousy worker protections, banks, housing markets, stock markets. The USSR was as expansionist and militaristic as any fascist regime, just like the current Russian one. Korea is essentially a tyrannical monarchy, no real communism to be found there. Why do you think the first ones to go up against the wall after a revolution are the true believers? Because they know it's all gone wrong.
When you have a lot of bullets, you will never run out of targets. Or in other words, if your revolution involves killing a lot of people in the name of the people, you're doing it wrong.
Edit: added another post that should go here, deleted the other one.
some people have to be forced into being a part of a social system.
IE, there are people who would rather let others die in the streets than have their taxes raised. some people are just terrible human beings who believe 'i got mine, fuck everyone else' which is antithetical to socialism, and requires a heavy hand via regulation.
From a Swedish standpoint, this is just nonsense. The Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Island and Denmark) are all in the top six most democratic countries in the world (according to The economist, England). These are were much socialist countries and most definitely democratic.
Then you have china, soviet and alike. Those are countries that call(ed) themself communist. I will argue that that's however mostly used as a label to legitimate the government and to obscure what they really are, in the same manner north Korea is formaly named the democratic people's republic of Korea (DPRK). Those countries does/did not operate as communist states the way that Marx and other political theorists imaginend them.
Under communism, sovereign authority is attributable. If you ask the US president, they'll say they have little power. If you ask senators, or congresspeople, or local representatives, the media, the bourgeoisie, neither do any of they wield power. Where authoritarianism occurs under capitalism, apparently no one is responsible for it. Under communism, it's directly attributable to communists.
Both are often authoritarian, but the argument that communists are more authoritarian is simply an easier one to make.
Wew lad but can you ever tell this is .ml.
So, thought experiment for you. What do you need to overthrow a government and oust a bunch of rich assholes from power? Well, you need power of your own, right? You need loyal comrades.
And say you actually manage it. Chances are it was tough. Some didn't make it. But now you're sitting on all this wealth and power. Are you just going to give it back? To who? What if someone abuses it?
You're the one who did the work. You're the one with a vision for the future. And now you have these loyal comrades and surely they deserve something for their sacrifices and hard work?
And so it goes.
Anyway, it's less about Communism as a set of ideas and more about what power does to revolutionaries and how that mixes with the local culture.
Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄
mccarthyism, red scare, American and western Europe propaganda. listen to Blow Back podcast it explains a lot of political meddling and how capitalism is working in its best interest in crippling socialism
We haven’t had a “communist” country yet. Communism is a spontaneous, free market for voluntarily donated goods and services.
Communism is basically how groups of people under about 100 behave naturally. Any group of friends on a road trip is inherently communist, as is any tribe of people, as is any family.
At larger scale, this kind of “just pay attention and do what needs doing” approach to economic distribution breaks down. Marx believed that with enough material abundance, humans would naturally behave communistically at larger scales as well. I think he’s wrong, but it remains to be seen.
So far we’ve never had communism at the scale of a county. We’ve had socialism, which is where the government forcibly redistributes wealth.
The reason that socialist countries are more authoritarian is that socialism is by definition the non-free-market version of that process.
Under capitalism, if you have an acre of farmland, that’s your acre of farmland until you decide to sell it. Under socialism, whether it’s your acre of farmland is the decision of the central economic planning committee, and in order for that committee to be able to decide whether you keep your farm or not, it needs to have the authority and power to take it from you. And the policy to do so.
Do you see why this requires a more authoritarian society?
Let’s look at it another way. Under capitalism, ie under what we call the “free market”, you own the farm. That means you have authority over it. You have authority over yourself. There’s just as much authority; it’s just that the authority is broken into little bits and distributed to people who own capital.
Under socialism, the people own the farm. Except “the people” can’t effectively operate with anything like a will, due to a lack of borg hive mind telepathy mechanics unifying their will into a single instrument, and so “the people’s” authority is wielded by the Central Committee.
When authority is centralized in this way, taken away from individuals and given instead to the state, we call this an “authoritarian” state.
Authoritarian therefore doesn’t refer to more authority; it refers to the authority being concentrated in the center.
And the authority over economic decisions being concentrated in the center is, by definition, “socialism”.
When you have a lot of bullets, you will never run out of targets. Or in other words, if your revolution involves killing a lot of people in the name of the people, you're doing it wrong.
Politically they have ended up authoritarian in many instances. However, capitalism has as much "authoritarianism", just economically. Try whatever -ism you like, enough percentage of population is psychopathic and will climb to a position of power in some form or another. It's in our collective nature.
I believe it's inherent to the system. The whole point of a communist system is a centrally planned, and controlled, economy. This gives the state immense control and as inherent to every form of government, self preservation at any cost.
As discussed in "rules for rulers" by cgp grey, there is no such thing as a benevolent or kind dictator. All politicians and leaders will use any means available to themselves to further their own ambitions.
from my own experience observing people migrating from the soviet union, they're considered more authoritarian for the efforts to keep the workers in the worker's paradise, the moment you have to put up walls and border checkpoints to keep people in, it's over. you're an authoritarian state, no longer actually socialist imho.
It's masquerading.
Well, us socialists have free health care and education. Most of us socialist states have female bodily autonomy. Were not big on banning books either. Most importantly we recognise a false dichotomy. Also we actually know what socialism is. Try visiting Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe. You'll notice that they're are not authoritarian at all. You might just be an American, but that's not your fault.
Because countries that call themselves communist are just dictators lying about it...
I mean, you're asking about two separate political axis: economy, and control.
Look at the Nordic countries and even most Western Europeans and you'll see socialist countries that aren't authoritarian.
Theres not a single communist country tho. So when you talk like there are, people assume you have no clue what you're talking about about.
Like, what countries do you think are communist?
Im not sure what you mean by socialist countries. But communists countries are more oppresive:
- They have leaders that stay in power for decades. Opposition is often punished.
- There is nor freedom of speech, speaking against the government gets you in jail or worse.
- In some of those countries, people are not allowed to leave the country.
And for the record, I agree that poverty is extremely oppressive as well and we need more socialist reforms in capitalist countries, tax harder the rich, break monopolies, foster more unions and so on, I just dont agree that communism is the magical land you all think it is and the solution to all the problems. Nobody seems to want immigrate to North Korea for a reason.
Their governments have more or full control
For communist countries, because they are.
Because authoritarians took over the Soviet Union and proceeded to try to run every other revolution.
If you are allowed to have all sort of capitals, that's really saying you have more freedom than usual.
Because the communism is a convenient ideology for totalitarian states to exploit and control the population.
It's exactly like the middle-ages Christianity, with the Bible promoting humanitarian ideology, and the church exploiting the hell out of the population.
That's also why communists banned all religions, they don't want any competition.
Because communism doesn't work for large, heterogenous groups, so increasing amounts of coercion are used to keep the system running.
And new forms of government such as socialism are generally more succeptible to corruption as people find the new loopholes; as a government gets more corrupt, those who corrupted it seek to consolidate their power.
I think socialism can be made workable, as we examine and correct the problems with previous attempts. I don't think communism works well for human societies, as it requires people to act better than we know they do.
Because the rulers under communism are still the political class and not the working man. And instead of being able to uplift yourself via entrepreneurship you have the state controlling every aspect of your life, your career, and your ability to own property
