this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Putting aside it is a baseless speculation, how is a system that falls into authoritarianism under a little bit of pressure a good system? If it wasn't capitalists, wouldn't it be something else? Drought? Covid?
I’m currently watching capitalism in America bow to authoritarianism. I fail to see what you’re trying to say
America has always been authoritarian. You and I obey the authority of capital — who controls the state. US democracy has always been an illusion.
That no system is perfect but one of them lasted centuries in multiple countries and one always failed within years, if not immediately.
Also, US failing so hard is mostly the result of the two party system. That shit never really worked properly.
Throw in gerrymandering, a first past the post primary system and the electoral college and you get we’re we are today.
Sprinkle in a dose of Citizens United and the oligarchs get all the power the need/want.
exactly
Looks at present day US and UK
There is still a difference between does not always prevent authoritarianism and causes authoritarianism almost immediately.
The Constitution of the United States has baked-in ownership class superiority coming right out of the gate, thanks to pressure from slave-owning interests.
Capitalism can be done so that it's way more fair than Obama era capitalism¹ but it requires a bulwark of oversight and uncaptured regulatory agencies to preserve a narrow wealth distribution.
Even in Europe wealth disparity is corrosive to the institutions.
I'm not interested in a specific model of not-capitalism. I'm interested in systems that support the public. And capitalism is demonstrably antithetic neoliberal capitalism is antithetical to that.
What we've seen in China and USSR is party-centric communism (soviet — lower case — communism). We haven't seen public-participatory communism.
1 Im not looking at Trump ere because we're already mired deep into an autocratic takeover and policies that work to dismantle institutions and engage in humanitarian wrongdoing.
We haven't seen it because it is inherently unstable. You either get people reintroducing capitalism or create an authoritarian party/leader to prevent that.
I should clarify, we haven't seen public-participatory communism in state governments, but we have seen it in NGOs, such as the Black Panthers and Zapitista Army, the former of which was massacred by FBI hits, and the latter which is still active in the Chiapas territory of Mexico. And they've been around since 1994. < does a websearch, > It appears the ZA controls a not-insignificant amount of territory.
But then we've so far seen all forms of government are unstable, with the current standard being a 1000 year peace. (Maybe the ancient Egyptian empire, but I don't know its history). Many regimes have risen and shown hubris that their rule should last so long, and have fallen to corruption or annexation by other states. Capitalism and authoritarianism facilitate the return of autocracy which, when it exists for long enough, becomes monarchy. The Kim family ruling DPRK (North Korea) serves as a modern example, and Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Jong Un, has been deified to continue the culture of personality.
The US began destabilizing almost immediately. Remember the Constitution of the United States was the second draft, after the Articles of Confederation led to violent disagreement between the colonies. And still, after that the plantation barons introduced backdoors into the Constitution that figure specifically into the current crisis of tyranny, today.
Capitalism gets introduced because the rest of the world uses capitalism. We've seen plenty of communal efforts who provide socialized services within the commune, but will export product to trade with the outside. Middle Ages historians believe villages and hamlets shared openly without concern for parity, and would take their surplus (and cash crops) to towns to be traded or sold at market. But we didn't call this communism we called it subsistence agriculture They'd also reserve a portion for tribute to their liege lord, who kept order, protected against foreign enemies and maintained stores of goods for crisis (specifically, runs of bad winters and short crops).
It'd be nice if Kings governed fairly and compassionately, and corporation upper management could run their companies truly to facilitate long term company growth, but eventually you get a Joffrey Baratheon or IRL, a John of England, a Nero Caesar, or a Vlad Țepeș that brings ruin to the legacy their ancestors have built.
If you're going to denounce government models because they've never worked before, you have to apply the same standard to all other models you contrast it to.
We don't know what works, on account that none of them we've tried so far have succeeded for very long. This is why we need to see them as skeletal models and not as immutable ideologies nor as devices by which to manipulate the public into tolerating autocracy.
Sure, but... This is the part I always get downvoted for:
Communism probably doesn't cause authoritarianism. I say "probably" because we don't know - nobody has ever tried communism yet. Sure, USSR, China, NK all had "communism" on their banners, but they never actually implemented communist values (other than nationalising property). The fact that they all devolved to authoritarian systems is not proof that "communism causes authoritarianism", it only proves that the people in charge of the parties leading the revolutions where autocrats. Lenin was extremely critical of Stalin, for example, and noted in his diaries that him getting into power would be catastrophic. Also, those who are good at leading a violent revolution are not necessarily good at leading a country in peace-time.
As I note above, there are success stories with NGOs. The Zapatistas are still active and going strong. Also the Black Panthers in the US before they were massacred in an FBI operation.
When a society is annexed or wiped out, it can't really be said to be fault of the governing system that it failed.
Well, that depend on your definition of try. The common soviet revolutionaries were not fighting and dying to put Stallin in charge, or to enact purges and gulags. But revolutions are always tricky. We can't tell if the problem is communism or just a revolution going wrong.
But we have a branch of mathematics called Game Theory that is designed to model these situations in theory and it's very difficult to design stable communism even just in theory. Partially just because eliminating the owning class puts all that power into the hands of the political class. Partially because state is not pushed to run the economy properly when there is no competition to compare to. And partially just because there is no practical data, unlike for capitalism.
Regardless, between the risks and costs of a revolution, the uncertainties of entirely untested system and theoretical issue with communism, I find it very much preferable to work on improving social democracies, that we see working in Europe instead of risking it all on communism.
Though I don't know if USA is salvageable without a revolution anyway :/
100% agree on all points.
Communism is as much of a utopia as capitalism ("trickle-down" just does not exist, unless humans stop being humans), but since most large countries are already running a version of capitalism, there's just too much risk involved in a revolution.
I think a socialist-capitalist entity would have the most success. Capitalist market (heavily regulated) + Universal Basic Income, housing & healthcare, all taken care of by the government. That takes care of those on the "lower rungs" while giving incentive to educate/work/get rich for those who are into these kinds of things.
Still multitudes better than soviet union at any time and period.
One authoritarian-devolved state being better than another is not the flex you think it is...
It devolved because people take democracy for granted. And unlike USSR, it can heal without falling apart if people start acting like citizen (I don't have high hopes btw).
My goodness, what nonsense...
It devolved into authoritarianism because Stalin - an authoritarian brute - took over. Lenin even stated in his diaries that Stalin taking over "would be a catastrophe".
It devolved into autherianism as soon as bolsheviks took over, and that was right at the beginning. Stalin was a catastrophe because he was more wicked than the rest of them, but it doesn't mean that whatever Lenin was doing wasn't authoritarian project.
So, now you're saying that they never actually tried communism, because it was authoritarianism from the get go?
I mean, I appreciate the correction, but it only strengthens my point.
It devolved into it in the first years of tries and failures, which was under Lenin's rule.
You need to make up your mind. Was it right away, or after some time?
But, regardless, you're still proving my point - the people who attempted "communism" where autocrats who wanted power more than they wanted communism. And my second point that those who are good at leading a revolution and putting the existing system to the torch are not necessarily great at building something in peace.
Yeah they had pretty good runs, democratic constitution held strong in the US for 250 years. UK is a monarchy, same as ever.
China and NK democracy failed on basically Day 1, USSR only did a little better.
Nothing to do with authoritarianism.
They were never democracies to begin with.
Having an absolute ruler kind of has everything to do with authoritarianism. The UK is flawed to a frightening degree, always has been, that's why it's so out of place and left behind by the rest of Europe.
The UK's king is not an absolute ruler.
Same with Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or the Netherlands - all of which are monarchies, but also 100% democracies, without the "let's ID check everyone trying to access the Internet and block their VPNs" vibe that UK recently acquired.
Lol OK, sorry, it's a constitutional democracy whose parliament is given authority by an absolute ruler. Still pretty shit and I strongly support any movement to do away with monarchs permanently.
It's not baseless speculation, and it's not a little bit of pressure. I'm saying it was a lot of pressure. And I'm saying we don't know what could have happened if the early Soviet Union was left alone to flourish or fail on its own merits.
I'm not sure if we can leave an experimental state to do its own thing, since it is really popular among commercial interests and aristocrats to meddle with establishment systems in order to procure more power, lather, rinse, repeat. All for freedom and for pleasure; nothing ever lasts forever
Regardless, it appears that we're just too tempted when creating our state constitutions to lend favor, at least, to the petite bourgeoisie, who take advantage of that power to secure more power until the state collapses into an autocratic regime or factions into warlord states.
If left alone, it would do the "world revolution" aka military expansion. And that is exactly what it did all the way up to ww2, including the start of ww2 - occupation of Poland together with nazies.
By then, Stalin had seized power. Again, as with democracy, there's a difference between the model of government and the
And it's not like containment was passive. In fact, the US notoriously put down democratic states to erect autocratic regimes that were aligned with ~~US based companies~~ American interests, sparking the development of NGOs who resort to terrorism to fight oppression by NATO-aligned interests. Again, if we're going to compare actual nation states, let's compare actual nation states. Wilson supported the White Army (the monarchists) so there were ill feelings between the Bolsheviks and the US, but Wilson didn't even try to negotiate with the nascent Soviet Union. He just decided (in line with his corporate buddies) that the notion of Marxist communism was evil, and USSR was by fiat.
When we get to strategic nexus regions like Poland or Korea, yes, all the major powers that surround them end up fighting over control of the territory, which sucks when you're indigenous to that borderland. We've yet to establish and enforce the right of sovereignty of weaker nations.
If you want to compare command economics, you contrast it to capitalism. If you want to compare USSR, you do so to USA. The point isn't that they suck, the point is that we need to work out how to get them to suck less
In Das Kapital Marx gets into the weaknesses of capitalism, in which those with power will exploit it to consolidate more power, which is what we've seen.
If you want a capitalist system, figure out how to preserve a public-serving (not commerce-serving) government, that regulates products so that they are safe to use, are offered in good faith (counter-example: AAA games that are really just micro-transaction market fronts), are made without abuse of labor, resources, or environment, and are priced based on their value rather than their scarcity.
If you want a capitalist system, figure out how to get upper management to regard its laborers as human beings rather than props or parts of a machine. (Not just because it's moral, but because well-treated workers are productive beyond the additional cost).
If you want a capitalist system, figure out how to assure a minimum standard of living for everyone in the state, whether they allegedly work or don't work. (The US relies on a lot of labor that is not compensated for, and fails to recognize skills and services that are essential, as we discovered at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown and after it was lifted.
If you want a capitalist system, solve the problems that are consistently endemic to markets. Likewise, if you want a communist or socialist system, you have to solve the problems that come with those models.
Or we can wait until the fascist autocrats of the US purge everyone else (likely into mass graves or ash dumps) and starts cutting into itself. Or until they go to war, and ultimately Chinese bombers blot out the sun over Washington.
If a system ultimately leads to negative outcomes, either you fix it, or you turn to other systems. But saying that we've tried something in the past and it didn't work is not a cause to rule it out.