Ask Lemmy

3 explanations, in order from what I believe most likely to least:

1. It could be selection bias. All communist nations originated from dictatorships, and as democracy isn't a key part of communism, any democratic ideas get kicked to the side. It may require a dictatorship in the first place for a communist revolution to occur, as democracy may lead to people feeling content enough with the system that they may not feel it needs fundamental change.

2. The inevitable need for concentration of power in the hands of a few. Assume that the powerful will always try to concentrate power in their own hands one way or another. Capitalist societies use wealth (a.k.a. purchasing power) to replace the concentration of political power that a dictator would enjoy. As communist societies lack such a mechanism, the powers-that-be can only use political power to force their own superiority.

3. The centralization of economics leads to concentration of economic power that can be used effectively to buy loyalty from would-be challengers to a dictator's power.

Lea Ypi's book Free is a phenomenal book describing the albanian communist period. Can't recommend it enough.

I grew up in DDR. It fails because it doesn't reflect reality. People are different, can do different things, and want different things. An ideology that simplifies people into classes, stands between people and their dreams. And will always need an ever increasing police force to force reality to look like the ideology.

in theory communism makes resources the property of everyone. In practice, somebody has to manage the resources, and in doing so controls them. if you control the resources, and especially if you have the power to defend that control, you effectively own them. this means that while in theory the people own everything, the truth is that the government owns everything. by similar logic to the first bit, if they own everything then they have control of everything, meaning that they are authoritarian. that being one of the major defining characteristics of a dictator its not far from there to become one even if you aren't trying to. ironically, this is all how it's intended to work save for the dictator part. this is the apple mouse charging port of communism, an intentional thing with a bad result that can't be given up without invalidateing things you have said or done.

also, communism tends to be brought about by coups and coups tend to lead to authoritarian leaders, compounding the above issue.

Because people like Communism and they don't understand it, so dictators lie and say they are communist to get in power.

Because the Soviet Union was autocratic and communist/socialist countries had to choose between cosying up to them and being destroyed by the CIA.

Because thats the end result of embiggening the state: The state gets bigger, and the oligarchs just changes faces.

It was something Marx remarked on later, post Paris Commune.

because of a few things

a) when you start a game of monopoly, everybody is equal. by the end of the game, wealth (think of wealth as an analog to power) snowballs and only one or two people will have all the resources.

when you start a communist government, it's not a fresh game of monopoly. it's a continuation of the previous game. and the vast majority of people are joining in after the wealth has been accumulated. therefore, power remains in the hand of the powerful

b) there is a large variance in human capabilities. to be frank, the vast majority of people are sheep. their world view is narrow and motivation stunted. they don't really care very much about things outside of their life and they don't want to learn, grow, etc. there isn't anything wrong with that, and there's sort of a whole religion based on this

but some people are very talented, ambitious, and greedy. these people will end up at higher positions, no matter your form of government. humans tend to naturally distribute ourselves in hierarchies. aka pyramids

this goes all the way back to our primate roots. look at chimps where the male leader of the pack has dibs on which female monkey he wants to mate with. the weaker monkeys have to bow their head and take what they can get.

tldr: hierarchy and pyramids are in the very fabric of human existence. doesn't matter what form of government or economic system you pick. pyramid will develop somehow, someway

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