Ask Lemmy

Any system that gives a relative few authority over everyone else will sooner or later become autocratic, simply because that power inevitably comes to be held by those who desire it the most and are most willing to do whatever it takes to gain and hold it, and they tend to be greedy, power-hungry, dishonest, amoral assholes.

As far as that goes, the only real differences between systems are the specific hoops the assholes have to jump through.

Broadly, in a capitalist system, political power is awarded to the wealthy, while in a communist system, wealth is awarded to the politically powerful.

So the greedy, power-hungry, dishonest, amoral assholes follow different paths in different cases - accumulating wealth with which to buy access to political power in one or climbing the ranks of the ruling party in order to gain wealth in another - but the overall dynamic is always the same.

And that's a large part of the reason that I'm an anarchist.

On Authority by Engels, question answered almost 200 years ago

Because at its very base it’s conceived in violation of consent.

“From each according to his capacity” is the absolute essence of exploitation. Like, there’s no more straightforward way of saying “You look like resources and we’re gonna take everything you have”.

It’s only a “good idea” if you don’t think of people as having free will and the ability to consent. Communism is a great idea if you’re playing Command & Conquer and all your little units exist only to act as pawns in your game.

Let's look at it this way - they were already going to be dictatorships, the dictator picked what he told the people they'd get. Most of the big ones all say Power To The People as they're pushing their way to the top, but as soon as they get there they make themselves permanent. Some of them took a pretty good stab at it like Mao or Stalin, but they killed their people in droves to make it happen. Once that happens you gotta stay in power or they're going to kill you. And of course, with themselves at the top of the heap, they took everything for themselves and The Party, and The Party became the end all and be all instead of actually advancing the country.

Thats like asking why North Korea became a dictatorship when it is a people's democracy.

Power gaps get filled, small states get conquered.

First, and above all else, there are assholes (US) who will prevent you from having nice things. Democracy is the easiest vector to let CIA/money get a corrupt asshole into power. Democracy tends to be a fiction anyway. Money/CIA/Media control is just part of the reason. Should you let corrupt assholes vote or run for power?

A country that has an army has dictatorial power, whether there is a theater of elections or not. An autocratic chain of command controls it, and if you don't behave, regardless of your constitution, you get smacked by the army.

In the US, there is communism for the corporatist oligarchy. Government they own will protect them from competition and bail them out when they fail. The CIA/media defines the communists as anyone who is not as pro business as the most pro business corporatist oligarch. US is a pure dictatorship in that Israel first corporatist oligarchy is guaranteed to win every seat/election, or 95%+ of the seats anyway. Every NATO country has a CIA allegiant party leader is also guaranteed to produce a CIA allegiant government. CIA vets all appointments to EU government to be pro US dictatorial NATO. IMF has 50%+ of votes all from US colonies.

Celebrating media simplifications of Democracy vs. non-US-compliant is the wrong metric to apply to nations. Industrial policy meant to promote equitable prosperity or defense from Imperialist forces determined to subjugate them are more important to a nation than what US media describes them as. "Everyone" loved Russia when they had Yeltsin as a puppet privatizing everything cheaply to US interests, just as they love Zelensky for the same. Ukraine, since US coup, is an apartheid ethnostate, which cannot qualify for any objective definition of democracy (we praise it for it anyway), and recently has suspended all elections.

What tends to emerge from the ashes of war and empire.

My bro your lucky you didn't ask this in lemmy.ml,hexbears and lemmygrad.