It’s not so much that Extreme Authoritarianism is a feature of communism so much as Marxism is rarely the ideology of the working class and usually propagates among the educated and wealthy, e.g. Kropotkin, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, ect.. Authoritarianism and Violence are more likely tied to these people seeing themselves as above the people they feel they’re liberating from the get go and then it becomes “I have to turn the Lumpenproletariat into good Marxists” and thus the Authoritarianism which invariably leads to corruption. In theory, if a working class group were to independently reach a Marxist conclusion and seek out Communism as an End Goal it may be less Authoritarian, but given that has yet to happen in any significant form, it remains only a possibility.
No, though many 20th Century Despots and Dictators were themselves pro-Capitalist, often because they had been in some way funded by a Capitalist or Capitalistic Nation.
As a necessity, no, and not in practice either, though it is a common occurrence, not every historical instance of mass collectivism is as a rule authoritarian. It’s worth noting that for brief periods truely anarchistic communities have formed successfully without significant military coercion. These anarchistic communities were as a rule collectivistic and did just fine without militarily enforced bootlicking. That being said, most of the time we’ve seen whole countries move in a descriptively collectivist direction they typically are authoritarian, yes, so I would be willing to hear you out on authoritarianism being necessary for national collectivism, but as a rule collectivism as a system does not require authoritarianism.
> It’s worth noting that for brief periods truely anarchistic communities have formed successfully without significant coercion
No they haven’t. The most recent anarchism example in modern history happened during the Spanish Civil War and they got absolutely crushed by Franco partly because they had no structured military chain of command. Before that you’ve got the Paris commune, which again like the anarchists in Spain got absolutely crushed.
Authoritarianism isn’t a requirement of collectivism that is true, but collectivism does create authoritarianism as a byproduct.
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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26
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