Authoritarianism isn’t a thing. No state wants to suppress dissent.
Dissent is suppressed when it needs to be because there’s foreign powers trying to destabilize your state. Like when the most powerful country in the world creates a Central Intelligence Agency with the overt purpose of eradicating communism. Which they did covertly through the funding of internal dissent, terrorism and sabotage of infrastructure.
Unless you think the CIA just twiddled their thumbs for 70 years, of course. In that case I recommend reading the book ‘Killing Hope’ by William Blum.
I am trying to be as respectful as possible here, but saying that authoritarianism doesn’t exist is an absolutely insane take. Obviously the CIA did a lot to try and stop communism, we all know that. And why wouldn’t a state want to suppress dissent, do you think that all “communist” regimes were these perfect, do nothing wrong utopias? Of course a state wants to suppress dissent, it gives them more control over their people, Governments are greedy, even if they claim to be communist. I don’t think the extent of mass surveillance, forced propaganda, censorship, and imprisonment could be justified by "stopping a foreign entity. Here are some examples of the things authoritarian “communist” regimes did to supposedly “fight foreign powers”.
Soviet Union (USSR): Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union carried out numerous purges and suppressions of dissent. The Great Purge in the late 1930s resulted in the execution or imprisonment of millions of people, including political opponents, intellectuals, military officers, and ordinary citizens accused of disloyalty or counter-revolutionary activities. The state employed the secret police, censorship, forced labor camps (Gulags), and surveillance to maintain control and suppress dissent.
People’s Republic of China: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a long history of suppressing dissent. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mao Zedong mobilized student groups known as the Red Guards to target intellectuals, artists, and political opponents. Many individuals were persecuted, imprisoned, or killed. In more recent times, the Chinese government has tightened control over the media, the internet, and social media platforms, censoring content, monitoring online activities, and imprisoning activists and dissidents who challenge the party’s authority.
Cuba: The Cuban government under Fidel Castro and his successors has been known for suppressing dissent. The regime has restricted freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, controlling the media and limiting access to information. Independent journalists, activists, and political opponents have been subject to harassment, imprisonment, and surveillance. The government also tightly controls access to the internet and social media platforms.
North Korea: The totalitarian regime in North Korea, led by the Kim family, has implemented strict controls on information and dissent. The state maintains a pervasive surveillance system and enforces ideological conformity through propaganda, censorship, and forced indoctrination. Any form of dissent or criticism of the regime is severely punished, with individuals and even entire families sent to political prison camps.
East Germany: During the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the ruling Socialist Unity Party suppressed dissent through surveillance, censorship, and repression. The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, maintained a vast network of informants and spies to monitor citizens’ activities and control dissent. The government restricted travel, controlled the media, and imprisoned those who challenged the state’s authority.
Most suppression of dissent was done to citizens of the state. If you think that any of this can be justified by “fighting foreign powers”, you are absolutely delusional.
You start by saying you want to be ‘respectful’. You end up calling me ‘absolutely delusional’. It seems you can’t even be consistent in your own behavior. Do you think Einstein was delusional as well? (Source: Born-Einstein Letters)
Again, I recommend you read the book ‘Killing Hope’ by William Blum to properly contextualize the response of socialist states, including the ones you brought up that to be frank read like ChatGPT prompts, if you truly come here to talk in good faith.
Authority exists. It exists everywhere. That’s what states are. What doesn’t exist is this idea of a state that has more authority over its country than other states. Every state has a monopoly of power by definition. That’s what allows a state to define its own laws and values.
There is suppression of dissent because this is the sole purpose of a state. What distinguishes so called ‘authoritarian’ countries is the extent of brute force required to suppress it. In capitalist nations, this presents itself as fascism. In socialist nations this presents itself as Leninism.
I might add you have to at least acknowledge there must be some reason the only socialist states to have ever existed for longer than a year have been exclusively authoritarian. They didn’t outnumber anarchists, socdems or demsocs by any stretch. Leninism has been as succesful as it is because socialist states live in a capitalist world. A world that wants to eradicate communism root and stem with whatever magnitude of violence and cruelty necessary. Lenin and Stalin expressed this and reality has proven their thesis correct.
Now, you bring up examples, which you seem to be unaware are sourced primarily from CIA investigations. First, I would like to note that you call these actions disproportionate while admitting to being ignorant to the interference these countries faced. Second, I would note you trivialize the mass poverty in western states, disassociate it with its fascist sattelite states and ignore mass policing by the NSA on a GLOBAL scale. You also ignore the immensive devastation these states wrought upon their colonies, including recurring mass famines, only ever seeming to consider these deaths mass murder the moment managment falls into the hands of a collectivist meaning to eradicate it.
Of every single country you’ve mentioned, I would like to remind you the US and its allies have invaded extensively, used terrorism, had numerous assassination attempts and in China particularly used WMD.
Now I would like you to compare this response to the response of the west to the isolated 9/11 attack by Al Qaeda(an organization funded by the US to overthrow the socialist Afghan government), rendering entire cities level to the ground, murdering millions of men, women and children and letting whoever knows how many more to die of famine or drown at the European border.
Is it ‘ethical’ or ‘utopian’? Absolutely not (and you evidently don’t understand what communism is if you think it can be utopian while having a state at the same time).
But these measures undountedly are the grim reality of the way every state operates. It doesn’t matter if it’s socialist, capitalist, feudal or anything else. So the question isn’t if you support purges or no purges. They are the current reality of every state. The question is whether you support a movement for the transition away from the state towards communism or the continuation of the state.
Socialist states aren’t perfect, far from it. But mismanagement is not the same as malice that is pervasive in capitalist society.
wait, so you’re saying that even the fascist states (e.g. the nazis) were only trying to defend themselves against foreign powers trying to destabilize their state? or am i misinterpreting you?
a state doesn’t have a mind of its own, it consists of people and those people are often power-hungry and do actively want to suppress dissent regardless of what would be good for the state. the whole point of socialism is to dismantle hierarchies, but by placing a powerful leader without accountability on the top you have undermined the whole concept
maybe cia actions were what caused them to be authoritarian, but that doesn’t excuse their actions in any way. the moment they became authoritarian, cia had already defeated socialism
suppressing “dissent” in the form of e.g. refusing to follow laws about distribution of resources (within reason) is one thing, but suppressing dissenting voices is a whole different thing altogether and those two shouldn’t be lumped together in one category. the former is a part of the normal job of a state while the latter is authoritarianism
wait, so you’re saying that even the fascist states (e.g. the nazis) were only trying to defend themselves against foreign powers trying to destabilize their state? or am i misinterpreting you?
I was referencing socialist states, but yes they do both resist political pressure. The difference is fascist states are a minority class resisting domestic dissent by the majority class. It’s a forced ideology undermining a natural uprising, which is why it draws so many parallels with socialism in its revolutionary anti-establishment sentiment but is as a result lacking in internal consistency. In other words it’s reactionary.
The post WW1 German government was resisting political pressure from socialist factions that were especially dominant in Germany due to the aftermath of the war. There was constant turmoil including insurgencies, massacres, executions and of course the massive surge of the KPD into electoral politics that lead capitalists to fund the staunchly anti-communist Nazi party (read “Who Financed Hitler” by James Pool) and subsequently purged communist thought.
a state doesn’t have a mind of its own, it consists of people
The state is the monopoly of power in the hands of one class; they’re a state because the interests of the people in it align. Though it can, the state doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. What capitalists believe or think about on a personal level is irrelevant, their material interests lead them to support the same thing.
those people are often power-hungry
They’re power hungry, so they appeal to the interests of the most powerless class in defiance of the most powerful class, only to then alienate the powerless class as well? They’re power hungry so they isolate their state from the world stage and reduce themselves to running an impoverished nation? I think your view of ‘authoritarianism’ is shaped by the misconceptions about the cause of Nazi Germany addressed above.
Even if we assume this is true, it’s not a useful observation. It avoids pinpointing the conditions we need to address. There isn’t much we can do about an ‘evil’ dormant in an undefined subset of the population. You’re just fingerpointing, which is a primer for fascism.
by placing a powerful leader without accountability on the top you have undermined the whole concept
First, there’s no lack of accountability. Socialist parties consist of MILLIONS in members and hundreds to thousands in parliament, which is much larger than all parties in liberal democracies combined. Socialist countries don’t have singular dictators but operate through massive debate and cooperation. What they lack are people promoting goals contrary to socialism (and yes this does lead to wrongful punishment, that’s par for the course given the chaotic nature of covert war). Accountability and dissent are WILDLY different things that can’t be conflated. Every state is accountable to the material interests it serves.
Second, the concept of socialism is abolition of the state. There’s no ‘rule’ or empirical justification prescribing socialism to be an erratic transition rather than gradual. The point of communism isn’t just electing different leaders. Where you think socialism must come from tolerance to an undefined time of unchecked capitalist rule before an abstract ‘mass revolution’ ushers in socialism, communists simply think socialism must come from intolerance to capitalist rule but concrete tolerance to state functions that can resist capitalist subjugation until they aren’t needed anymore.
By tolerating the bureaucracy of capitalism for the sake of awaiting ‘principled’ instantaneous global revolution, you’re already admitting you’re willing to compromise for the goal of socialism. So it doesn’t make sense to pretend your aversion to socialist states has anything to do with principled opposition to a similar bureaucratic structure serving the working class(by providing housing, education, healthcare and food) instead of elites.
You can believe Leninism is a flawed way to achieve socialism and maybe even doomed to fail, but if you can’t even appreciate it as better than capitalism, you’re just not a socialist.
maybe cia actions were what caused them to be authoritarian, but that doesn’t excuse their actions in any way. the moment they became authoritarian, cia had already defeated socialism
‘Authoritarian’ is just a state, no more powerful than any other, at war. I don’t understand what you mean by ‘excusing actions’ when you admit it’s caused by US intervention. You’re saying their actions aren’t excusable while personally providing the excuse.
And what’s the point in a ‘principled stance’ when this stance consists of letting your own people be massacred and condemning billions of people to extreme poverty? What’s the point of ‘principles’ when it consists of tolerating the mass genocide of the entire planet? You tolerate the obscenely rich and ‘peaceful’ because dominant tyranny of capitalism, but the minority socialist states that always form in the countries with the worst conditions must be flawless and overcome hurdles with complete ethical perfection.
You don’t seem to appreciate that the struggle for socialism is a war, not civil debate. You demand people meet artillery fire with a cool headed essay recital and wonder why anarchist communes are nowhere to be found.
sure, it’s a war and violence might be necessary, but it’s a question of proportionality. you don’t meet a peaceful protest with artillery fire either
you also seem to be under the belief that anyone who dissents or in any way acts against the will of the state are doing so because of foreign interference instead of simply from their own volition. in neither case do deserve to be killed unless they are themselves violent or otherwise explicitly soldiers. i guess a more common issue than powerhungriness among communist leaders is the related issue of extreme paranoia which leads to tons of innocent people being killed or imprisoned. this is an example of something that can be triggered by CIA, but not excused by CIAs actions
why do leninist states even have a singular leader in the top if they’re trying to abolish hierarchy? why not cap it off with a committee with some further safeguards to prevent the power from getting to their head instead?
i doubt you yourself believe that all the actions of people in the top of the party represents the class of the proletariat that they are trying to represent instead of a hybrid between that an actions to further the class they themselves are now in as elite party members. this issue is furthered by corruption which all communist states are vulnerable to (especially since they are initially centralizing a lot of power) and which a very large amount of precautions need to be taken against to prevent it from collapsing the system on its own even without outside interference. now, capitalism isn’t better with corruption since the system is essentially a case of legalizing corruption under a formal system, but that’s also why it doesn’t collapse from corruption
i don’t mind the bureaucracy of a communist state at all, i don’t see where you got that. just the extreme actions against any dissenting voices, especially since they usually are talking about some real problem that needs to be addressed rather than just destabilizing for the sake of destabilizing
i also hope that you agree that russia is no longer in any way a communist state?
Authoritarianism isn’t a thing. No state wants to suppress dissent.
Dissent is suppressed when it needs to be because there’s foreign powers trying to destabilize your state. Like when the most powerful country in the world creates a Central Intelligence Agency with the overt purpose of eradicating communism. Which they did covertly through the funding of internal dissent, terrorism and sabotage of infrastructure.
Unless you think the CIA just twiddled their thumbs for 70 years, of course. In that case I recommend reading the book ‘Killing Hope’ by William Blum.
I am trying to be as respectful as possible here, but saying that authoritarianism doesn’t exist is an absolutely insane take. Obviously the CIA did a lot to try and stop communism, we all know that. And why wouldn’t a state want to suppress dissent, do you think that all “communist” regimes were these perfect, do nothing wrong utopias? Of course a state wants to suppress dissent, it gives them more control over their people, Governments are greedy, even if they claim to be communist. I don’t think the extent of mass surveillance, forced propaganda, censorship, and imprisonment could be justified by "stopping a foreign entity. Here are some examples of the things authoritarian “communist” regimes did to supposedly “fight foreign powers”.
Soviet Union (USSR): Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union carried out numerous purges and suppressions of dissent. The Great Purge in the late 1930s resulted in the execution or imprisonment of millions of people, including political opponents, intellectuals, military officers, and ordinary citizens accused of disloyalty or counter-revolutionary activities. The state employed the secret police, censorship, forced labor camps (Gulags), and surveillance to maintain control and suppress dissent.
People’s Republic of China: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a long history of suppressing dissent. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mao Zedong mobilized student groups known as the Red Guards to target intellectuals, artists, and political opponents. Many individuals were persecuted, imprisoned, or killed. In more recent times, the Chinese government has tightened control over the media, the internet, and social media platforms, censoring content, monitoring online activities, and imprisoning activists and dissidents who challenge the party’s authority.
Cuba: The Cuban government under Fidel Castro and his successors has been known for suppressing dissent. The regime has restricted freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, controlling the media and limiting access to information. Independent journalists, activists, and political opponents have been subject to harassment, imprisonment, and surveillance. The government also tightly controls access to the internet and social media platforms.
North Korea: The totalitarian regime in North Korea, led by the Kim family, has implemented strict controls on information and dissent. The state maintains a pervasive surveillance system and enforces ideological conformity through propaganda, censorship, and forced indoctrination. Any form of dissent or criticism of the regime is severely punished, with individuals and even entire families sent to political prison camps.
East Germany: During the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the ruling Socialist Unity Party suppressed dissent through surveillance, censorship, and repression. The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, maintained a vast network of informants and spies to monitor citizens’ activities and control dissent. The government restricted travel, controlled the media, and imprisoned those who challenged the state’s authority.
Most suppression of dissent was done to citizens of the state. If you think that any of this can be justified by “fighting foreign powers”, you are absolutely delusional.
You start by saying you want to be ‘respectful’. You end up calling me ‘absolutely delusional’. It seems you can’t even be consistent in your own behavior. Do you think Einstein was delusional as well? (Source: Born-Einstein Letters)
Again, I recommend you read the book ‘Killing Hope’ by William Blum to properly contextualize the response of socialist states, including the ones you brought up that to be frank read like ChatGPT prompts, if you truly come here to talk in good faith.
Authority exists. It exists everywhere. That’s what states are. What doesn’t exist is this idea of a state that has more authority over its country than other states. Every state has a monopoly of power by definition. That’s what allows a state to define its own laws and values.
There is suppression of dissent because this is the sole purpose of a state. What distinguishes so called ‘authoritarian’ countries is the extent of brute force required to suppress it. In capitalist nations, this presents itself as fascism. In socialist nations this presents itself as Leninism.
I might add you have to at least acknowledge there must be some reason the only socialist states to have ever existed for longer than a year have been exclusively authoritarian. They didn’t outnumber anarchists, socdems or demsocs by any stretch. Leninism has been as succesful as it is because socialist states live in a capitalist world. A world that wants to eradicate communism root and stem with whatever magnitude of violence and cruelty necessary. Lenin and Stalin expressed this and reality has proven their thesis correct.
Now, you bring up examples, which you seem to be unaware are sourced primarily from CIA investigations. First, I would like to note that you call these actions disproportionate while admitting to being ignorant to the interference these countries faced. Second, I would note you trivialize the mass poverty in western states, disassociate it with its fascist sattelite states and ignore mass policing by the NSA on a GLOBAL scale. You also ignore the immensive devastation these states wrought upon their colonies, including recurring mass famines, only ever seeming to consider these deaths mass murder the moment managment falls into the hands of a collectivist meaning to eradicate it.
Of every single country you’ve mentioned, I would like to remind you the US and its allies have invaded extensively, used terrorism, had numerous assassination attempts and in China particularly used WMD.
Now I would like you to compare this response to the response of the west to the isolated 9/11 attack by Al Qaeda(an organization funded by the US to overthrow the socialist Afghan government), rendering entire cities level to the ground, murdering millions of men, women and children and letting whoever knows how many more to die of famine or drown at the European border.
Is it ‘ethical’ or ‘utopian’? Absolutely not (and you evidently don’t understand what communism is if you think it can be utopian while having a state at the same time).
But these measures undountedly are the grim reality of the way every state operates. It doesn’t matter if it’s socialist, capitalist, feudal or anything else. So the question isn’t if you support purges or no purges. They are the current reality of every state. The question is whether you support a movement for the transition away from the state towards communism or the continuation of the state.
Socialist states aren’t perfect, far from it. But mismanagement is not the same as malice that is pervasive in capitalist society.
wait, so you’re saying that even the fascist states (e.g. the nazis) were only trying to defend themselves against foreign powers trying to destabilize their state? or am i misinterpreting you?
a state doesn’t have a mind of its own, it consists of people and those people are often power-hungry and do actively want to suppress dissent regardless of what would be good for the state. the whole point of socialism is to dismantle hierarchies, but by placing a powerful leader without accountability on the top you have undermined the whole concept
maybe cia actions were what caused them to be authoritarian, but that doesn’t excuse their actions in any way. the moment they became authoritarian, cia had already defeated socialism
suppressing “dissent” in the form of e.g. refusing to follow laws about distribution of resources (within reason) is one thing, but suppressing dissenting voices is a whole different thing altogether and those two shouldn’t be lumped together in one category. the former is a part of the normal job of a state while the latter is authoritarianism
I was referencing socialist states, but yes they do both resist political pressure. The difference is fascist states are a minority class resisting domestic dissent by the majority class. It’s a forced ideology undermining a natural uprising, which is why it draws so many parallels with socialism in its revolutionary anti-establishment sentiment but is as a result lacking in internal consistency. In other words it’s reactionary.
The post WW1 German government was resisting political pressure from socialist factions that were especially dominant in Germany due to the aftermath of the war. There was constant turmoil including insurgencies, massacres, executions and of course the massive surge of the KPD into electoral politics that lead capitalists to fund the staunchly anti-communist Nazi party (read “Who Financed Hitler” by James Pool) and subsequently purged communist thought.
The state is the monopoly of power in the hands of one class; they’re a state because the interests of the people in it align. Though it can, the state doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. What capitalists believe or think about on a personal level is irrelevant, their material interests lead them to support the same thing.
They’re power hungry, so they appeal to the interests of the most powerless class in defiance of the most powerful class, only to then alienate the powerless class as well? They’re power hungry so they isolate their state from the world stage and reduce themselves to running an impoverished nation? I think your view of ‘authoritarianism’ is shaped by the misconceptions about the cause of Nazi Germany addressed above.
Even if we assume this is true, it’s not a useful observation. It avoids pinpointing the conditions we need to address. There isn’t much we can do about an ‘evil’ dormant in an undefined subset of the population. You’re just fingerpointing, which is a primer for fascism.
First, there’s no lack of accountability. Socialist parties consist of MILLIONS in members and hundreds to thousands in parliament, which is much larger than all parties in liberal democracies combined. Socialist countries don’t have singular dictators but operate through massive debate and cooperation. What they lack are people promoting goals contrary to socialism (and yes this does lead to wrongful punishment, that’s par for the course given the chaotic nature of covert war). Accountability and dissent are WILDLY different things that can’t be conflated. Every state is accountable to the material interests it serves.
Second, the concept of socialism is abolition of the state. There’s no ‘rule’ or empirical justification prescribing socialism to be an erratic transition rather than gradual. The point of communism isn’t just electing different leaders. Where you think socialism must come from tolerance to an undefined time of unchecked capitalist rule before an abstract ‘mass revolution’ ushers in socialism, communists simply think socialism must come from intolerance to capitalist rule but concrete tolerance to state functions that can resist capitalist subjugation until they aren’t needed anymore.
By tolerating the bureaucracy of capitalism for the sake of awaiting ‘principled’ instantaneous global revolution, you’re already admitting you’re willing to compromise for the goal of socialism. So it doesn’t make sense to pretend your aversion to socialist states has anything to do with principled opposition to a similar bureaucratic structure serving the working class(by providing housing, education, healthcare and food) instead of elites.
You can believe Leninism is a flawed way to achieve socialism and maybe even doomed to fail, but if you can’t even appreciate it as better than capitalism, you’re just not a socialist.
‘Authoritarian’ is just a state, no more powerful than any other, at war. I don’t understand what you mean by ‘excusing actions’ when you admit it’s caused by US intervention. You’re saying their actions aren’t excusable while personally providing the excuse.
And what’s the point in a ‘principled stance’ when this stance consists of letting your own people be massacred and condemning billions of people to extreme poverty? What’s the point of ‘principles’ when it consists of tolerating the mass genocide of the entire planet? You tolerate the obscenely rich and ‘peaceful’ because dominant tyranny of capitalism, but the minority socialist states that always form in the countries with the worst conditions must be flawless and overcome hurdles with complete ethical perfection.
You don’t seem to appreciate that the struggle for socialism is a war, not civil debate. You demand people meet artillery fire with a cool headed essay recital and wonder why anarchist communes are nowhere to be found.
sure, it’s a war and violence might be necessary, but it’s a question of proportionality. you don’t meet a peaceful protest with artillery fire either
you also seem to be under the belief that anyone who dissents or in any way acts against the will of the state are doing so because of foreign interference instead of simply from their own volition. in neither case do deserve to be killed unless they are themselves violent or otherwise explicitly soldiers. i guess a more common issue than powerhungriness among communist leaders is the related issue of extreme paranoia which leads to tons of innocent people being killed or imprisoned. this is an example of something that can be triggered by CIA, but not excused by CIAs actions
why do leninist states even have a singular leader in the top if they’re trying to abolish hierarchy? why not cap it off with a committee with some further safeguards to prevent the power from getting to their head instead?
i doubt you yourself believe that all the actions of people in the top of the party represents the class of the proletariat that they are trying to represent instead of a hybrid between that an actions to further the class they themselves are now in as elite party members. this issue is furthered by corruption which all communist states are vulnerable to (especially since they are initially centralizing a lot of power) and which a very large amount of precautions need to be taken against to prevent it from collapsing the system on its own even without outside interference. now, capitalism isn’t better with corruption since the system is essentially a case of legalizing corruption under a formal system, but that’s also why it doesn’t collapse from corruption
i don’t mind the bureaucracy of a communist state at all, i don’t see where you got that. just the extreme actions against any dissenting voices, especially since they usually are talking about some real problem that needs to be addressed rather than just destabilizing for the sake of destabilizing
i also hope that you agree that russia is no longer in any way a communist state?