this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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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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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 25 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (3 children)

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

  1. An unaccountable Vanguard
  2. The Vanguard does stuff. At a certain arbitrary point the Vanguard dissolves and society embraces full horizontalism

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.

[–] TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

Lemmy.world, an anti-Marxist instance

I wouldn’t call Lemmy.world anti-Marxist. I would say there has definitely been some knee-jerk to the heavy-handed moderation of Lemmy.ml, but being opposed to the more extreme methods of Lemmy.ml doesn’t mean opposition to Marxism in concept. It means you’ll get a broader set of responses since criticism won’t get deleted by the mods/admins, but there are still plenty of leftists on Lemmy.world.

Similar to how opposing Stalinism doesn’t mean one opposes Marxism, you know?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (13 children)

Lemmy.world defederated from the largest explicitly Marxist aligned instances, their thread going over why spells out pretty clearly that opposition to liberalism was the key determining factor in doing so. Lemmy.ml isn't even a Marxist instance, only admin'd and moderated by Marxists, yet is the instance with undeniably the most conflict with Lemmy.world currently among their federated instances. Moreover, many lemmy.world mods have expressed negative opinions towards Marxism directly, here's an example.

Lemmy.world is a liberal instance, is admin'd and moderated largely as such, and has taken deliberate measures against Marxism and Marxists. I believe it's fair to consider Lemmy.world to overall be anti-Marxist. Does that mean no users share Marxist sympathies? No, of course not, but overall the bias is clear. Similarly, by defederating from the larger Marxist-aligned instances, a thread on Lemmy.world is shutting out the viewpoints of most of the Marxists, rather than having a "broad" view, this minimizes the variance in responses.

Just my 2 cents.

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 26 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] eran_morad@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Yup. And I've spent the last decade and a half telling people the working class isn't going to take it anymore.

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[–] squid_slime@lemm.ee 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Because it is a dictatorship.

A dictatorship of the proletariat.

For real though we've not seen communism yet.

[–] bonus_crab@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago

Because it was spread by a totalitarian communist dictatorship. if the USSR were democratic , they wouldve spread democracy.

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