this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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There is no such thing as authoritarian socialism, that is a paradox. Marx and Lenin argued that the only viable path to communism as an ends, which involves the withering away of the state, required a transitionary period.
Marx proposed something akin to direct democracy — which he called dictatorship of the proletariat — while Lenin proposed the idea of a centralized, rightist vanguard party that would seize power on behalf of the people and oversee the transition. Rightist means to leftist ends. It was a gamble that did not succeed as Lenin’s illness and death, and the rise of Stalinism, remade the vanguard into a permanent new ruling class in direct conflict with Marx’s stated ethos.
Which became "communism" / authoritarian socialism.
“Withering away of the state” and “it’s like, how much more STATE can you get? The answer is none. None more state” are extreme opposites.
Did the state wither away? No. Then communism was not accomplished.
Stalinism was as communist as Hitler’s National Socialists were socialist. False branding is a hallmark of rightism. Their propagandized, muddied, impoverished use of language does not magically turn their little hand-carved lies into real boys.
I'm using the standard meaning of authoritarian socialism: "Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first represented in the Soviet Bloc"
I know what you are using. It’s capitalist propaganda and always has been. We need to stop using paradoxical terminology that was designed deliberately to confuse and terrify. What you are describing is literally known as “state capitalism.” Funny how that, like all the intentional-by-design failings of capitalism, gets rebranded as “socialism” in an effort to preserve capitalism’s entirely-gaslit reputation.
Socialism demands equality and equity, which fundamentally cannot exist in a stratified society. If there is a ruling class, they own and control the economy and nothing belongs to the people. So like I said, it’s paradoxical.