Attempts to implement communism at the scale of a nation state have always involved significant concentration of power. It may be impossible to do otherwise.
Power corrupts, and concentrations of power attract the corrupt.
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Attempts to implement communism at the scale of a nation state have always involved significant concentration of power. It may be impossible to do otherwise.
Power corrupts, and concentrations of power attract the corrupt.
So you're saying with enough checks and balances that distribute power widely enough through legal offices and separations of power, some sort of democratic socialism would in theory be possible (assuming a peaceful transition via pre-deternend legislative changes were in place and ready to be followed)?
For a real Marxist revolution to take place, the entire populace has to stand up at once and decide to make this change. This requires humanity to do some pretty broad and general evolution before we, as a race, are nearly ready. Checks and balances won't fix the fundamental problem that humans are selfish and want more for themselves at the expense of others.
It's odd that humans being selfish and wanting more for themselves is an argument for a system where stamping on people to make your share bigger and keeping others down is encouraged rather than trying to dampen those impulses.
Or on the flip side, maybe they seem so much of that philosophical/ethical black hole "Human Nature" in a system where they're encouraged because our current economic mode strongly encourages them, rather than them being immutable fact?
Marx opined that certain material conditions had to be achieved before a socialist state could be successfully made. These material conditions include bourgeois capitalist democracy. Marx explicitly said that capitalism forges the tools with which it will be destroyed.
A certain subset of communists known as Marxist-Leninists decided that bourgeois capitalist democracy wasn't necessary if you just oppressed people REALLY hard, you could skip straight to a socialist state. And because they 'succeeded' in overthrowing traditional Marxists in 1917 Russia and getting the full power of a massive country to spread their ideology, they've had bootlickers calling their particular brand of insanity the only 'real' form of communism ever since.
When we think of 'communist' countries, we think of Marxist-Leninist countries which tried to jump from feudal societies to socialist societies, which, quite obviously from the results, doesn't work. Doesn't stop the cultists from licking boots, of course.
There's also a story in the hammer and sickle itself. It was spun as a symbol of 'all workers' but its original purpose was to depict an alliance between farmers (who owned the land they worked) and the tiny population of wage earners in Russia's largest cities (who didn't even own their homes). The farmers saw no reason for the new policies so concessions had to be made.
Lenin's Russia had to leverage the state apparatus to fiercely industrialize and capitalize, effectively creating an enormous business conglomerate with a company store that encompassed nearly every product in the nation outside the black market. But with all the complacency of abject monopoly. They couldn't skip generalized capitalism, and so they created it in a way that seriously disadvantaged workers as capitalism does.
Centralization of decision-making. It's ironic actually. One of the main problems of capitalism that Marx described is the separation between labor and ownership. All the talk about "means of production".
Communism actually makes it worse. In capitalism yes you have the owners who have all the control and reap all the benefits, but you have many capitalists competing, so the power is kinda distributed inside the capitalist class. The way communism was always implemented is through a communist party and state control of the economy.
You get an even smaller group of people controlling the means of production. It amplifies exactly the main problem of capitalism by creating a very hierarchical class society where the party leadership takes a role of what is almost "nobility".
There's also just a fundamental problem with planned economies from a purely economic standpoint: they are much less efficient at actually providing the minimum set of goods and services required by a population, and they're worse at achieving growth. See the most recent Nobel Prize in economics for a citation. Funnily enough, the same paper's arguments apply equally to oligarchic economies and crony capitalist economies, which are semi-planned economies by a small group of the ultra wealthy.
More specifically to the OP, communist countries have planned economies, which by nature requires a strong authority to tightly control production. Hence why communist states always have very consolidated political power structures. And once the power is consolidated, all it takes is one bad actor to get that power and ruin everything.
Géza Hofi was one of the greatest comedians in Hungarian history. He was active under and very outspoken about the failures of the ruling communist party. One of his most memorable performances was "How many pigs will be born?" (video, unfortunately without subtitles).
Party officials, wearing nice brown trench coats, visit old man Joe's farm.
"Comrade Joseph, how many pigs will be born?"
"I don't know."
"Shut your mouth, peasant, and give me the number."
"What's the plan?"
"14."
"Then it'll be 14. Have you told the swine? Better that you talk to her, since you're both on the same level."
(the story goes on, but I don't want to translate the entire thing)
If you think about it every company is a tiny planned economy with all the power held by a few people, too.
Some of them even make brainwashing propaganda for their employees to think that sacrificing themselves to the company is glorious.
but you have many capitalists competing, so the power is kinda distributed inside the capitalist class.
This isn't always true, and is arguably not the natural state of capitalism. Capitalism, without state intervention, will tend towards monopoly as economies of scale and market power push out any competition.
Chile was a communist country and didnt become autocratic because of it, the US murdered their democratically elected president then planted a dictator in his place. So my guess is it doesn't always end that way on it's own. Russia speedran the capitalism to fascim transition to, it's been capitalist since 1991, sham elections since 2005, so they're not a good example of any kind of economic or government system. China has a tight grip on their population but don't let the propaganda distract you from the fact that the US is just as much a surveillance state as China with the one exception being how much China micromanages it's people when they leave the country, but I wouldn't bet against America keeping tabs on expats the same way it was found out that America was spying on its allies in the EU.
I think this question ignores mountains of contexts in an attemtp at reducing a problem into one facet.
The US may collect as much or more information as China but their enforcement actions taken based on this information are far far more limited.
Not always. The US bombed striking workers on Blair mountain, and bombed a Philly neighborhood in the 80s to target activists. A portland protestor who shot a fascist demonstrator in self defence was summarily murdered by the cops days later before they even announced their presence. An unarmed cop city protestor was shot dead after one cop pretended a gunshot behind him was from the protestors. And god help you if youre a Boeing whistleblower or sex trafficker to the politicians. Even if China does this more often its hard to ascribe that to communism if the most anti communist nation in history does the same thing but just less often. These targeted things hide in the statistics for killings by cops because cops in the US kill more people annualy than mass shooters do.
Because most real-world implementations of communism was the idea that a "vanguard party" would excercise total control over the country. The idea is eventually the state would "wither away" after communism is acheived.
Yea imagine how that goes. Once a party gets total power, they ain't giving it up, that's the problem.
To play devil's advocate, none of those vanguard parties were ever allowed to exist peacefully. They were always attacked, from the inside and out, by capitalist and fascistic powers. It's kind of hard to get rid of the state when it is needed to defend from other nations and groups looking to destroy it.
I'm not saying that a Vanguard party would necessarily ever voluntarily give up it's powers and disintegrate into pure communism without a large part of the world struggling against it, but it would be more likely to.
That is just pure speculation, though, because we live in a world that has shown that it will struggle against communism until the end. The Vanguard Party idea is flawed, because it fails to account for this indefinitely long struggle, and fails time and time again to offer a valid exit strategy into the next stage of Socialism/Communism.
Ideologically, Leninism supported vanguardism, a variation on Marxism that said that the Communist party was supposed to drag the early-20th-century proletariat into the revolution, instead of waiting for late capitalism where the proletariat would (according to Marx) naturally become revolutionary. This, and the notion of "false consciousness", authorized Communist parties to go against the expressed (democratic) will of the proletariat, on the theory that the proletariat's judgment was clouded by false consciousness, while still claiming to act in the interests of the proletariat.
Basically, "we (the party) know better than you (the people)" was ingrained into Leninism from the beginning, and the major communist revolutions either were or became Leninist. Maoism was a branch off of Leninism as well.
Keep in mind that it wasn't even the proletariat that accomplished the Revolutions, it was the peasantry. Marx wasn't against the idea but he would have been surprised.
Equating all socialism with the authoritarian regimes of the 20th century oversimplifies a complex political tradition.
Dictatorial tendencies are not intrinsic to socialism but are contingent on specific historical and political contexts.
Russia: The Bolsheviks' turn to authoritarianism was partly due to the civil war, external invasions, and a lack of democratic traditions. These circumstances led to the consolidation of power to preserve the revolution, not as an inevitable feature of socialist theory.
In other contexts, socialist movements (e.g., in Scandinavia) have successfully implemented social democratic policies without authoritarianism.
The role of individual leaders and political choices in shaping socialist experiments. Figures like Lenin and Stalin made decisions that prioritized centralized control, which deviated from the principles of worker self-management and democratic participation.
These deviations were not a necessary outcome of socialism but reflected the particular decisions and dynamics of those historical moments. So a small sample size of major socialist states and people cloud judgement.
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures. For example, the USSR faced significant opposition from capitalist countries, which influenced its militarization and political centralization. This external pressure created a siege mentality that undermined the potential for democratic governance.
Democratic socialism has thrived in various countries, showing that socialism can coexist with democratic principles. Examples include the welfare states of Scandinavia, where socialism has enhanced equality and social welfare without undermining political freedoms.
There is some truth to this but it overlooks the fact that the Bolsheviks were distinct from other socialist parties from the very beginning by their top-down, authoritarian party structure, with Lenin in control. As soon as they gained power, they immediately worked to impose this type of management on the entirety of Russian society by crushing first the Duma, then the Soviets, and finally eliminating any autonomy exercised by their own supporters, the labor unions. They also immediately began engaging in electoral chicanery and postponing or rigging elections in their favor. By destroying or subsuming every other institution in society, the party structure became the primary structure of governance, and Russia became a totalitarian state. Most of this took place even before the civil war and was arguably a major contributor to it.
So why did Russia become a dictatorship? Because the Bolsheviks decided it was desirable based on their understanding and development of socialist theory, and other forces failed to stop them for various reasons. It’s pretty much that simple. The civil war and foreign pressures probably strengthened this tendency but I don’t believe it was the primary cause.
And of course, almost every other socialist revolution since that time was inspired by the Bolsheviks since they “succeeded”. So they largely sought to impose dictatorships as well.
Ultimately it all goes back to Marx and his idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is one of the crucial flaws of Marxism in my view.
GREAT answer!
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures.
THIS. This is THE reason most Marxists give for the necessity of authoritarianism in the first stages of transition to a Communist society.
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures. For example, the USSR faced significant opposition from capitalist countries, which influenced its militarization and political centralization. This external pressure created a siege mentality that undermined the potential for democratic governance.
This is something that I wish more people who talked about this would acknowledge and engage with. I get it, authoritarianism isn't good. It's not like we want that. It's not the goal. But it's really easy to sit on the sidelines from a relatively cushy life in the imperial core and judge all the people out there who are dealing with the historical reality of colonialism and feudalism and the current reality of imperialism. They are actively engaged in the practical task of liberating themselves from forces, both external and internal (old power structures/privileges) that seek to violently return them to a condition of servitude. The decisions they made have to be viewed through the lens of that context.
That doesn't mean we can't discuss and criticize them, but it's worth engaging in the nuance of the history rather than out of hand dismissing their attempts as inherently illegitimate, evil, and/or misguided. What were the conditions they were operating under? What dangers did they face? Were their actions the best strategy for achieving the future they wanted? Was what they gave up too great? Did they have the capability to take a more open path? Have/had their decisions irreparably led them astray or were/are they still on the path to that eventual communist society on some time scale?
If you think they're wrong for what they did, you still have to be able to answer the question of how you protect your revolution from forces that will spy on you, sabotage your industry, fund right wing militias to terrorize people, sanction and blockade you, or even invade you? Or if you think the path wasn't even violent revolution in the first place, what is your answer to how you get to where you want to be when the power structure that would need to allow this is also invested in not allowing this? It's a bit harder to see how this is made difficult or even impossible in liberal "democracies," but it should be uncontroversial to acknowledge that some kind of force was necessary to escape from illiberal systems like Feudalism in Russia/China or from colonial regimes like in Vietnam.
The one thing I'd push back on from your comment is about the welfare states of Europe. That's not really what socialism is about. They've made life better for people in their own country, yes, but it's on the backs of those exploited in the third world. That's why communism is inherently internationalist. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." You need to be able to build a movement that can work to lift everyone up with you, or at least not drag them down for your own benefit. I'd be interested to have more of a discussion on this, but that's the standpoint I'd start from.
Imagine asking a question to a less qualified, more ideologically antagonistic group of people than you just have.
That's fair, but frankly, in my experience, the average American's idea of communism is "evil bad oppression big gubmint dictatorship". I was never taught in school about the theory behind communism or the practical government of the USSR (regardless of how close they may or may not have been), so I have little understanding into how these systems actually work and whether it's actually beneficial for those under them. I'm trying to rectify that on my own time but there's many people who don't care enough to do so and just parrot the same thought terminating cliches like "human nature".
Since you said you're trying to rectify that, allow me to hijack and recommend my introductory Marxist reading list. Section 1 is all you need to get the basics and a decent contextualization of AES states, but you can feel free to continue onward. Nearly every work has an audiobook and a text format linked, and the 2 works without an audiobook are short (and there are hopes of getting an audiobook for them, fingers crossed!).
There's a lot of confusion in these comments regarding Marxist theory, presumably from people who haven't actually engaged with the source material, so I want to clarify something I see repeated frequently in this thread with little pushback. The Marxist theory of the State is not the same as the Anarchist, nor the liberal. Marx defined the State as a tool of class oppression.
The reason I state this is because there's a confused notion that Marxists think there should be
I'll address these in order. First, the Vanguard is in no-way meant to be unaccountable, nor a small group of elites, but the most politically active, practiced, and experienced among the proletariat elected by the rest of the proletariat. The concept of the "Mass Line" is crucial to Marxist theory, that is, the insepperability of the Vanguard from the masses. If this line is broken, the Vanguard loses legitimacy and ceases to be effective, whether it falls into Tailism or Commandism. These tendencies must be fought daily, and don't simply vanish by decree.
Secondly, the basis for Marxian Communism is the developmental trends of Capitalism. Markets start highly decentralized, but gradually the better Capitalists outcompete and grow, and as they grow they must develop new methods of accounting and planning. Capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, yet socialization increases as these conglomerations begin to reach monstrous heights and require incredibly complex planning. The development of such methods and tools is the real, scientific foundation of Public Ownership and Central Planning.
Continuing, once the Proletariat takes control and creates a Proletarian State, the Proletariat, the more experienced among them the Vanguard, gradually wrests from the bourgeoisie their Capital with respect to that industries and sectors that have sufficiently developed. This process continues until all Capital has been folded into the Public Sector, at which point laws meant for restraining the bourgeoisie begin to become superfluous and "die out." The Vanguard doesn't "dissolve" or "cede power," but itself as a concept also dies out, as over time new methods of planning and infrastructure make its role more superfluous. Classes in general are abolished once all property is in the Public Sector, and as such the State no longer exists either, as there isn't a class to oppress.
This is why Marxists say the State "withers away." It isn't about demolishing itself, but that Marx and Engels had a particular vision of what the State even is, and why they said it could not be abolished overnight.
Hope that helped! As a side note, asking this on Lemmy.world, an anti-Marxist instance, is only ever going to get you answers biased in that direction. I suggest asking on other instances as well to get a more complete view.
Lots of reasons, but here's one:
Because one of, if not the main purpose of money is to provide a decentralized way of transferring information about economic needs and capabilities. Without that mechanism in place, the only way of determining where goods can be created and where they need to go (a massive problem that it is a daily miracle we don't generally have to deal with) is by an overbearing authoritarian state.
Spoken like someone that hasn't paid attention to the supply chains of places like Walmart.
We already have command economies. They exist and are functional. The owners are simply siphoning away the surplus value.
So you're saying you agree?
Walmart is absolutely a result of capitalism, those intricate supply chains are in place to make money. Maybe we could do it without a common way to track needs for a while, but would it adapt? Would the alternative resist corruption better? The invention of Money almost seems an inevitable consequence from one perspective.
I don't think this answers the original question, but it's an interesting side topic.
Most universal answer I can give is:
Every country that has attempted communism has been desperate and vulnerable.
Desperate to find a strongman to save their crumbling old government, and vulnerable to having the CIA appoint their own strongman in turn.
It's the opportunist problem. We see this throughout rebellions in history, not just when communist countries are made. Basically, anytime conditions are bad enough for the people to demand change it's really easy for someone to trade on their ignorance. They can push policies that sound like they'll help but really consolidate power. And if anyone speaks up, they're an enemy of the people.
For a non Communist example of this in modern history check out the French Revolution.
Because communism is the end goal, but one of the transitionary phases is the dictatorship of the proletariat , where a representative of the people is given sweeping power to prevent a counterrevolution from the bourgeoisie.
But that kind of power is hard to give up; foreign powers are trying to sew discord, and it's really convenient to get stuff done. It's ok, you're one of the good guys anyways, right?
So communism never really makes it past that stage
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Those who seek power least deserve it
I think those quotes answer your question well enough
Most countries we would label as communist didn't form as Marx expected. Marx expected relatively advanced nations to revolt and claim control over capital. Instead, most Communist revolutions occurred in generally despotic and less developed countries.
When times are good, the government can use the material improvement of people's lives as a reason to be in power. However, if times stop being good, the government becomes more overtly autocratic to maintain control.
Hate to break the news, but it appears capitalism is also heading in that direction.
Eventually, "our" pretty much always becomes "my".
Why? I'm not clear, but power corrupts regardless of the political system surrounding it (e.g. look at pretty much any HOA).
Because there was never anything communist about these states in any way whatsoever.
Communism is a state (as in a social, political and economic condition, not a government). None of these states ever reached this condition, and, therefore, was never communist. And, one could argue, that their development literally went the opposite way to what could be called communist with a straight face. As the anarchist Bakunin famously said, "the people's boot is still a boot."
This is why the Maoist-types call this shit "democratic centralism," which is essentially just double-speak for "what the party says goes."
This does not make the idea of communism invalid - but it's still as perfectly vague as ever, unfortunately.
My take on it from the theory is that most advocates say that you have to go through a period of single party socialism before the state somewhat fades away and it becomes communism.
I don't think it's actually possible in reality for a single party state to cede the power back to the people afterwards.
They had no communist intentions to begin with. The benefits of communism are just an easy way to market any nefarious movement with anticommunist intentions
The core principles of communism are basically an antithesis of these authoritarians/totalitarians/autocratics/oligarchs (how ever you want to describe them). Such a shift isn't accidental
Where was communism adopted?
Countries with a strong history of authoritarian leadership, which continued under communism but with a fig leaf of public support. Kind of like how the US was formed as a democracy, but only for male white land owners who were already the ruling class.
The governmental structure has an impact on culture, but it doesn't magically override existing social connections and norms. The people really did elect Putin before he consolidated power and turned it into completely sham elections. The communist party in China was originally what the people wanted before being turned into an authoritarian regime.
It isn't like this is that unique to the countries that adopted communism. Many large countries, including western democracies, end up leaning into authoritarian tendencies over time because central leadership structures tend to encourage the leadership styles of 'strong men'. If the culture isn't there to hold those that abuse their power accountable, that country will slide into authoritarianism over time.
Personally, I don't see communism ever scaling well above maybe a few hundred people because the more people that someone doesn't know is involved the harder it is for the whole to feel like a community. Democracy has a similar scaling problem, but it doesn't lean into authoritarianism as fast. yeah,
watch the video on the rules for rulers by the youtube channel cgpgrey for one explanation.
The same threat that democracy faces, it's vulnerable to charismatic people who become entrenched and draconian. I'm not convinced it can ever work without some competing force that resists the consolidation of power, such as highly educated and politically involved populace.
Communism probably works at smaller scales but for larger populations it would only be feasible when the leadership is benevolent. A robot administrator would be an interesting experiment.
From my limited understanding (because enthusiastic support for mass executions of anti-communists caused me to totally abandon it as a viable ideology) Lenin posited that it was necessary to violently rid the world of capitalist tendencies by force in order to protect the slow transition to the collectivist utopia he envisioned. This is my biggest problem with Marxism....or perhaps the brand of Marxism that has been adopted.
My background: I consider myself a libertarian socialist at the moment. I wholeheartedly agree that capitalism will kill our planet but I am not willing to support an autoritarian regime that promises to execute or imprison its critics for life (which both the US and China do ALL THE TIME). From my limited understanding, Marx didn't start there but was "radicalized" into firmly believing that the only way to get capitalists to go along with his plan is to eliminate them from society. The authoritarian behaviour reportedly came about from a very real need to prevent capitalists from meddling in order to protect their consumer ideology throughout the world.
If I am wrong, the people on hexbear have also misunderstood it. They believe that the only way to the utopia they want is through China's authoritarian methods. Their support for China is about as pervasive there as lemmy.world's support for DLC style neoliberal globalism.
I don't think that is exclusive to communism. I rather assume that this has more to do with how the government is structured. Long-running politicians tend to being more open to corruption.
I can easily see Trump going the same way. He has assembled enough power within the system to break it from within like most dictators did.