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?
You're viewing a single thread.
Because, at a high level, communism requires that a leader or group of leaders get things on track and then give up all of their power over time. Instead, the type of people who tend to lead revolutions are the same type of people who are unlikely to want to give up power and instead end up wanting more power. So no true communism has ever existed because it never gets to that phase.
That's Leninist "Communism".
As a reminder, Lenin lost the 1917 election and then seized power to make himself a dictator, then wrote about how dictators are essential to communism.
The Truth is that Dictators are anathema to communism. A dictator who seizes the means of production is called a king, and the people are then called serfs. It's a full step backwards in the pursuit of the communist dream.
In 1917, there were 2 governments, the Worker and Peasant supported Soviet Government, and the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie supported liberal Provisional Government. Lenin was elected via the Soviet system, and the Socialist Revolutionaries were elected in the bourgeois controlled Provisional Government. After the election, the Soviet Government disbanded the Provisional Government via revolution, the same measures proposed by Marx the entire time.
Secondly, Lenin never once wrote about how dictators are essential to Communism. Lenin fully believed in Soviet Democracy, ie workers councils, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a term coined by Karl Marx to describe a Socialist State that had not fully absorbed all Capital into the Public Sector, and thus had to suppress the still existing Bourgeoisie. The reason for this is that Capital can only be wrested by the degree to which it develops! Per Engels:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
Dictators are indeed antithetical to Communism, but you've entirely misframed Marx, Lenin, the USSR, and the October Revolution. The Soviet Republic in control of a largely Publicly Owned, Centrally Planned economy is in no way comparable to feudalism, but is actually existing Socialism.
Funilly enough, Lenin described exactly what you're now doing in The State and Revolution:
What is now happening to Marx's teaching has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the teachings of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the working-class movement concur in this "doctoring" of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now "Marxists" (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, but yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the "national-German" Marx, who, they aver, educated the workers' unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of conducting a predatory war!
It's funny that you describe Communism as a "dream," it accurately depicts your idealistic understanding of it, along with your "reminder."
That's an interesting reading of history... I'm sure.
But the truth is that Lenin lost the 1917 election, threw a hissy fit and demanded that the newly elected assembly cede all power to him, or else.
The Bolsheviks seized power and banned all opposition parties, and then Lenin justified his coup by claiming that "Vanguard Parties" are part of communism, when all they actually are is a dictatorship.
Stalin wasn't the first Soviet Dictator. He was just more honest about being a monster. Well, to himself, anyway.
It isn't an "interesting reading of history," it's what literally happened. The fact that you're placing such importance on the vestigial Provisional Government's election when the Workers had already embraced the Soviet Government and used it for all intents and purposes as their only government is liberalism, and anti-revolutionary.
Secondly, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as envisioned by Marx is fully compatible with a One-Party system. Multi-party systems are not more democratic, just more divided. Within the Soviet system, there was more democratic control than in the liberal Provisional Government system.
Finally, the idea that a mass worker party can be a dictatorship, as in the modern, single-person autocracy, is absurd. Vanguard Parties, moreover, are a proven method to establish Socialism. They aren't unaccountable cabals, but large worker parties made up of the most politically experienced of the Proletariat, which has been successfully replicated in countries like Cuba and the PRC in establishing Socialism.
You seriously need to read Marx, it's desparately obvious that you are working off of Wikipedia articles and not actual Marxist theory. I suggest my intro to Marxism list.
Lenin was a monster. He just had slightly better PR after his death because Stalin was so much worse.
Because one party bullshit dictatorships are not the proletariat.
They are the new feudal lords, who then need the guillotine.
The Bolsheviks were a minority party overall, if they hadn't been they would have won Russia's only free and fair election. But they lost and launched a coup.
Then the tankies come in and pretend the new lords are still part of the people.
One Party democratic systems are not dictatorships. I don't know how else to explain this in clearer and more simple terms, moreover the Bolsheviks were made up of the Proletariat, and countless workers joined their ranks.
Further, the economic system of the USSR was based on Public Ownership and Central Planning, not agrarian feudalism. You keep using words that have specific meanings to elicit an emotional response despite having no actual bearing in reality.
Finally, the Bolsheviks were the majority, that's what the name "Bolshevik" stems from. Why is it that you rely on the muddy results of a vestigial illegitimate government that had already been abandoned by the Workers, and not the Soviet Government that existed alongside it and had already elected Lenin and the Bolsheviks prior to the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly? You are calling liberal dictatorships of the bourgeoisie "free and fair elections," this is the level you stoop to in order to piss on Marx's grave one last time.
Additionally, it was a revolution, not a coup, as the majority of people supported the Soviet Government over the liberal Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks enjoyed the power they had because they were real representatives of the Working Class, even Kropotkin recognized this.
Your idea of "Marxism" doesn't follow any strain of Marxism historically, it's so confused and self-contradictory that you end up praising liberalism and calling Socialism "feudalism." Again, read Marx.
Keep telling yourself that.
But no, the truth is single party "communism" is just a new form of nobility and peasants. How many millions did Stalin and Mao kill? All because they had totalitarian control.
If Leninism worked, the Soviet Union wouldn't have fallen. But no, Leninism led directly to Stalinism. There were no guardrails, no protections, because Lenin had already banned opposition, Which is dictator 101.
One Party Communism is the Communism of Marx, Lenin didn't invent that. Lenin's contributions to Marxism were more with respect to analysis of Capitalism as it reaches Imperialism, the Soviet method of democracy, the concept of Democratic Centralism, the role of the peasantry in revolution, and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination.
Moreover, the collapse of the USSR was multifaceted. If you want an honest critique of the USSR, my reading list includes Blackshirts and Reds in the very first section, and you'd do well to read it. My point isn't that the USSR was a utopia, but that it was real, and authentically Socialist, and thus the problems it faced are real and need to be learned from for any Socialist movement going forward.
Marxism-Leninism is still the guiding ideology of Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China, and more, and all have managed to learn from the experiences of the USSR, and its downfall. The fact that you think Marxism-Leninism does not work implies you believe all of these states will inevitably fall for the same reasons the USSR did, despite having entirely different circumstances and learning from it.
Finally, Lenin banned factionalism. Open discussion was allowed, not wrecking or going against the Socialist system entirely. The Soviet system was still democratic.
Do you consider yourself a Marxist?
Theoretically, one could spontaneously be created from scratch starting with a small group of people on a new world who have never experienced a centralized form of government. Formal governing is not required if the society is small enough and there are no outside forces at work to create a threat. But once governing is required, there will generally be forces at work that will centralize it. The only exception might be in a society with very limited need for cooperation due to plentiful resources available to all, such as a utopia like Star Trek's Earth.
In all other, realistic scenarios, there will need to be a revolution. That will always be led by a person or group of people to organize the overthrow and coordinate the changes. This group will inevitably be in search of power themselves, corrupted by the power they are given, or infiltrated by those in search of such power and are unlikely to give up that power.
That village that talks out their problems and thus needs no government is A, a fiction, and B, a form of extreme democracy. Every decision is discussed and agreed upon by the group. That's extreme democracy.
And if you push for more democracy, you can get it. But you have to resist the revolutionaries and the fascists. All while prepping to be a revolutionary if required.
Work within the system as much as possible, because when it's gone, when that fragile peace is broken, nothing good can come out. As you said, the revolution is inevitably betrayed.
Now if we could actually teach people what a Tariff is. Fuckers voting for Trump wanting to bring prices down, when that's exactly the opposite of what happens with a Tariff. And Democrats abandoning their base to chase a mythical center that just does not exist...
I understand the push for revolution. I just know that in order for things to get better, the transition to communism needs to happen slowly and democratically.
Which is why I was emphasizing that theoretically it is possible, but that it's not realistic. The realistic scenario is revolution which would require centralized leadership which then never actually gives up the power and money they were put there to redistribute and decentralize. Thus it's never been done. The only way for communism to exist without the need for a group of people to give up power would be in that theoretical world where no elite-run government ever existed to need to take the power and wealth away from and that only historically has existed in very small communities prior to them having regular contact with hostile outsiders. Currently only a few "untouched" tribal societies exist in that way.
Of course, we're ignoring the European Social democracies, many of which are well on their way to true communism.
It's a slow process, but they're doing the work to get there. But they don't count? for reasons?
Seriously. The blueprint of how to get to communism from democracy is right there in the European Social Democracies.
Universal healthcare and efforts to make food and housing basic rights. That's like 90% of what you need.
Social Democracies cannot get to Communism without revolution and replacement with Socialism. This is because the dominant system in Social Democracy, especially the nordic countries, is Capitalism and Imperialism. They fund their safety nets from massive exploitation of the Global South with brutal IMF loans, exporting Capital for outsourcing production, and more, they are parasitic.
Further, European Social Democracies are seeing sliding worker protections and social safety nets. Because the Capitalists are in control, they wear down the safety nets via austerity politics to further their profits. This is due to the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, Capitalists are forced to expand internationally and seek further and further exploitation due to competition forcing rates of profit down, so they counteract by expanding to raise absolute profits. Austerity measures are one example of Capitalists lowering their expenditures.
Next, Socialism is democratic. Whether it be the Soviet Model (for more in-depth accounting of it, Soviet Democracy by American Pat Sloan who participated in and observed it directly in the 1930s), or otherwise, Socialism has always been democratic. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the dictatorship by the proletarian class as a whole against the bourgeois clasd as a whole, as a direct contrast to liberal democratic dictatorships of the bourgeoisie found in the world over, including European Social Democracy.
Social Safety Nets alone are not Worker supremacy over Capital, hence why the US saw the erosion of social safety nets from FDR to complete obliteration, and why we are seeing the same trend in European countries. This is unavoidable as long as Capital is the dominant factor in the economy and humans are not, due to the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. In 1900, Rosa Luxemburg already proved why this is the case in Reform or Revolution. Reformism has never worked, because it cannot work. Even when a Communist does get in via existing democratic systems, such as Salvadore Allende in Chile, they get couped by the national bourgeoisie with the aid of Imperialist countries like the United States or EU.
Finally, there is no "true communism." Every country will have a different path to Communism, but certain factors will remain the same, such as the necessity of revolution. The idea of a pure, untainted "true communism" that has never been actually tried is a western-chauvanistic attitude that necessitates that workers in AES countries are simply "too dumb" to understand what communism is or how to build it, despite their real, practical work. The only Communism is the kind that exists in the real world, not in the figments of imagination alone.
You would do well to watch Dr. Michael Parenti's 1986 lecture and read his seminal historical book Blackshirts and Reds.
This is an incorrect interpretation of the phrase "withering away of the state," which I elaborated on here.
I'm not really talking about Marxist communism. See my other comment, but in any realistic scenarios, communism is unlikely to form spontaneously as the first form of government in a new society.
And since revolution on a large scale requires centralized coordination and leadership, there will always be someone or some group given centralized power that is unlikely to allow for decentralization to happen on a large scale and is actually more likely to grab the power of the previous government system and keep it centralized, "for the good of the people" or "to defend the people" or whatever. Even well meaning revolutionaries are highly likely to crave control and be unlikely to want to allow "someone else" to change what they put in place. This then leaves in place the centralization indefinitely and never leads to communism.
Communism is centralized. Central Planning and Public Ownership are the core foundations of the economy in Communism. You're talking about Anarchism as though Marxists were trying to achieve that, and you're calling Anarchism "Communism."
But communism is less centralized than representative democracy or dictatorship or whatever the pre-revolution government likely was. These portions of the government must decentralize as part of the process of moving between government types. That decentralization is essential or it's not true communism, it's the fake things that pretend to be communism like PRC, USSR, DPRK, etc.
The only way that some amount of decentralization doesn't need to happen is if were talking about a society with no previous need for government forming into a communist state, which is what I mentioned was extremely unlikely, even if there were societies isolated enough to still exist without any form of centralized government.
No, Communism is centralization. It isn't less decentralized than pre-revolution government, but more. That's the point, to fold the entire private sector eventually into the Public, with Central Planning. You keep saying "decentralization is essential for Communism" but that's Anarchism. AES are examples of Socialist States trying to work towards Communism.
Where on Earth are you getting your ideas? It certainly isn't Marx.
No, now you're talking only about Marxist communism. Communism as a whole does not state that a single central power owns everything or that individuals can't own property. Marx was very much against almost all personal property, but communism is simply about making the means of production owned by the people doing the production and not a small subset of individuals. That doesn't mean ownership by a single entity. That very much could be local community governments that own each factory or power plant or whatever. And it's only about the "means of production" not the products necessarily. People can still own the products in many forms of communism. Communism doesn't necessarily dictate a specific economic theory beyond the idea that entities that produce goods that are to be owned by the people, should be owned by the people making the goods, not individuals, and especially not individuals who don't participate in the production, only in the sale and profit of the goods they don't produce.
You're conflsting Communism, which refers in 99% of cases to Marxism, with Socialism, which is more broad.
No there are many forms of communism besides Marxist. None have been successfully implemented, including Marxist communism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies
Socialism, specifically in Marxism, is one of the steps of economic change between capitalism and communism. But yes it has many different forms outside of Marxism, just like communism has many different forms outside of Marxism.
But I'm talking about communist ideology overall which in a very broad sense is designed to transfer power and economic control from the elite and/or wealthy to the general population, which by definition is a decentralization of power and wealth. Marxism starts with a centralized government designed to gather up all of the resources and power from those elite classes and redistribute that to the people, so while it starts out centralized, centralization is not the goal even in Marxism. But that's the only step that has ever been implemented, so many people mistake it as the only step.