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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because of a few things
a) when you start a game of monopoly, everybody is equal. by the end of the game, wealth (think of wealth as an analog to power) snowballs and only one or two people will have all the resources.
when you start a communist government, it's not a fresh game of monopoly. it's a continuation of the previous game. and the vast majority of people are joining in after the wealth has been accumulated. therefore, power remains in the hand of the powerful
b) there is a large variance in human capabilities. to be frank, the vast majority of people are sheep. their world view is narrow and motivation stunted. they don't really care very much about things outside of their life and they don't want to learn, grow, etc. there isn't anything wrong with that, and there's sort of a whole religion based on this
but some people are very talented, ambitious, and greedy. these people will end up at higher positions, no matter your form of government. humans tend to naturally distribute ourselves in hierarchies. aka pyramids
this goes all the way back to our primate roots. look at chimps where the male leader of the pack has dibs on which female monkey he wants to mate with. the weaker monkeys have to bow their head and take what they can get.
tldr: hierarchy and pyramids are in the very fabric of human existence. doesn't matter what form of government or economic system you pick. pyramid will develop somehow, someway
Calling the skill and ambition distribution a pyramid is really an artifact of history, not biology. If you want to take on 'human nature' you have to examine millions of years of evolution as mostly egalitarian troupe hominids, and state that groups bigger than 100 people are something we haven't had time to evolve for yet.
So you put in checks and balances, it's what makes governance complex, and egalitarian governance is ironically going to be more complex and relational.
The Haudenosaunee / Iroquois Confederacy is a good example of how to approach such a problem.
mostly egalitarian troupe hominids
"mostly" is pulling a lot of weight in that statement, eh?
sure, we took care of the elderly and others in the tribe. packs of wild dogs and monkeys have been seen to do that as well. share food, etc. but if our early tribes are anything like what we see in primates, and it almost certainly was, the distribution of power was not equal.
there are monkeys with differing levels. baboons have a much stricter hierarchy than bonobos, but the structure is still there
The Haudenosaunee / Iroquois Confederacy is a good example of how to approach such a problem
I do not claim it is impossible, although I also do not believe that the exceptions disprove the rule. My favorite example personally is the brief anarchist experiment during the Spanish Civil War. The anarchists managed to at least for a short period of time replicate what I believe would be the ideal society.
the issue is that this type of society simply loses to other more authoritarian ones in a sort of Darwinist playing field. the vanguard party commies beat the anarchists and then the nationalists beat the communists. bye bye egalitarian power structure
Calling the skill and ambition distribution a pyramid is really an artifact of history, not biology
let's say i am a foot taller than you and weigh 100 pounds more. we have just finished a hunt and we are distributing the spoils. let's say I take double your portion. you speak up "hey I deserve an equal amount" and then I simply look at you and say "no"
what are you gonna do? my genetic makeup (along with external factors of course, like my mother's nutrition while i was in the womb) caused me to have more physical power than you. you have no choice but to bow your head and take what you get.
that doesn't mean it's impossible, for example, to create alliances with others in the tribe and end up with a "social victory" and we actually see these types of behaviors in chimps. but I think that in itself is just another form of power. social intelligence, political and diplomatic maneuvering is a function of intelligence which like physical strength is a makeup genetic (as well as external, like before)
so you may be physically weaker, but mentally stronger. but in the end, power is power.
the older I get, the more I realize how deeply ingrained this structure is in our societies. I wish it weren't, but it really is. the only way around it, I think, would require a radical restructuring of our society and would necessarily have to be just as dystopian as the opposite extreme