Why did communism always turn into a kind of dictatorship?
Why did communism always turn into a kind of dictatorship?
Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
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So to begin with all communism so far has never been democratically voted in as far as I know and pretty much starts with an ideological military government that then needs to transition back to democracy.
Many do transition to a one party system where all democracy is contained within the party and essentially becomes a "primaries only" type.
Then slowly over time power consolidations and purges bring it towards a dictatorship because there are no checks and balances against it.
So it seems to me that the only way to get to the ideological communism is through democracy and constitutional changes, proportional representation and coalition governments that don't allow any one toxic pernon to consolidate power.
Well communism has never been achieved, so the name is always aspirational.
But aside from that split hair, you might be interested in reading about communism in India:
"The Communist Party in Kerala has functioned under the conditions of a liberal democracy, relying on success in multi-party elections to remain in power. CPI's 1957 constitution stated it would allow the existence of opposing parties after it had a parliamentary majority."
I stand corrected, that's an excellent case of socialism working that was democratically elected in a multi party system. I didn't know one existed! Thanks for sharing. It also has some really good numbers for a state in India.
Here's a paragraph from Wikipedia page on Kerala for everyone else that didn't know about it.
Kerala has the lowest positive population growth rate in India, 3.44%; the highest Human Development Index (HDI), 0.784 in 2018 (0.712 in 2015); the highest literacy rate, 96.2% in the 2018 literacy survey conducted by the National Statistical Office, India;[11] the highest life expectancy, 77.3 years; and the highest sex ratio, 1,084 women per 1,000 men. Kerala is the least impoverished state in India according to NITI Aayog's Sustainable Development Goals dashboard and Reserve Bank of India's Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy.[22][23] Kerala is the second-most urbanised major state in the country with 47.7% urban population according to the 2011 Census of India.[24] The state topped in the country to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals according to the annual report of NITI Aayog published in 2019.[25] The state has the highest media exposure in India with newspapers publishing in nine languages, mainly Malayalam and sometimes English. Hinduism is practised by more than half of the population, followed by Islam and Christianity.