Well, us socialists have free health care and education. Most of us socialist states have female bodily autonomy. Were not big on banning books either. Most importantly we recognise a false dichotomy. Also we actually know what socialism is. Try visiting Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe.
You'll notice that they're are not authoritarian at all. You might just be an American, but that's not your fault.
We havenāt had a ācommunistā country yet. Communism is a spontaneous, free market for voluntarily donated goods and services.
Communism is basically how groups of people under about 100 behave naturally. Any group of friends on a road trip is inherently communist, as is any tribe of people, as is any family.
At larger scale, this kind of ājust pay attention and do what needs doingā approach to economic distribution breaks down. Marx believed that with enough material abundance, humans would naturally behave communistically at larger scales as well. I think heās wrong, but it remains to be seen.
So far weāve never had communism at the scale of a county. Weāve had socialism, which is where the government forcibly redistributes wealth.
The reason that socialist countries are more authoritarian is that socialism is by definition the non-free-market version of that process.
Under capitalism, if you have an acre of farmland, thatās your acre of farmland until you decide to sell it. Under socialism, whether itās your acre of farmland is the decision of the central economic planning committee, and in order for that committee to be able to decide whether you keep your farm or not, it needs to have the authority and power to take it from you. And the policy to do so.
Do you see why this requires a more authoritarian society?
Letās look at it another way. Under capitalism, ie under what we call the āfree marketā, you own the farm. That means you have authority over it. You have authority over yourself. Thereās just as much authority; itās just that the authority is broken into little bits and distributed to people who own capital.
Under socialism, the people own the farm. Except āthe peopleā canāt effectively operate with anything like a will, due to a lack of borg hive mind telepathy mechanics unifying their will into a single instrument, and so āthe peopleāsā authority is wielded by the Central Committee.
When authority is centralized in this way, taken away from individuals and given instead to the state, we call this an āauthoritarianā state.
Authoritarian therefore doesnāt refer to more authority; it refers to the authority being concentrated in the center.
And the authority over economic decisions being concentrated in the center is, by definition, āsocialismā.
Just to clarify since I donāt think I did in the above comment: by the above explanation communism is not authoritarian. Communism is the free, distributed decision-making version of socialism. Communism is a free market scenario, just like capitalism. Itās just a gift economy instead of a trade economy.
To be more accurate when talking online its better to distinguish between who is intended to be in charge (capitalism vs socialism) and what political systems are in place to implement it.
China for example has some state capitalist characteristics meaning the state is ran in part and for the owners of capital. This is where some of their strongest economic intervention its policies stem from.
Another example would be community cooperatives operating outside of the state. They clearly are not "capitalistic" by their nature but also are not a form of central planning.
Another weird breakdown of these dichotomyies are inside of a megacorps operations, which while the corp is clearly owned by, and operated by the owners of capital (as virtual representation of shares) internally it is ran as centrally planned entity with no free market between departments (though some entities do expirment with heavily regulated market like Amazon does).
Tldr
Its a complicated subject, but boiling everything down to a false dichotomy based on 50 years of evidence does it a huge disservice. A better one to separate the intended stakeholders and what is the intended ways allowed for conflict resolution and coordination.
A socialist business (exanple worker owned cooperatives)
A capitalistic business (publically traded companies)
Of course most modern organizations have multiple interest groups so you can have a state that has both capitalist favored laws, and working class and small business owner and NGO and etc etc
mccarthyism, red scare, American and western Europe propaganda. listen to Blow Back podcast it explains a lot of political meddling and how capitalism is working in its best interest in crippling socialism
Socialist countries are not, the entire Scandinavian block are super socialist, and not authoritarian.
As for Communist countries, no one has actually implemented communism, only in name. Communism means the workers, not the state, control the means of production. The state controlling them allows for bad actors to seize control.
Scandinavian countries are not "super socialist" - sure, we have robust social welfare systems, but these are funded through taxation on regulated market economies with private ownership. That is not socialism.
I know that there were some experiments with trying to transfer into a socialist system here in Sweden during the 70s (I think?), but those failed in a spectacular fashion and were rolled back. They are the reason that many famous "Swedish" brands such as IKEA aren't actually based in Sweden.
Because they are. They are all very bad at social justice, probably because no matter the best intentions, humans are going to fuck it up. China isn't even communist, it's capitalist through and through. They have lousy worker protections, banks, housing markets, stock markets. The USSR was as expansionist and militaristic as any fascist regime, just like the current Russian one. Korea is essentially a tyrannical monarchy, no real communism to be found there. Why do you think the first ones to go up against the wall after a revolution are the true believers? Because they know it's all gone wrong.
When you have a lot of bullets, you will never run out of targets. Or in other words, if your revolution involves killing a lot of people in the name of the people, you're doing it wrong.
Edit: added another post that should go here, deleted the other one.
I see a lot of comments saying they aren't. I'd disagree, but I agree they don't have to be. The issue is most of the major powers in the world have opposed leftist governments anytime they show up. The ones that didn't have a strong central power and cultural hegymony collapsed under the pressure. Any nation that had a weaker central power was either destroyed, couped, or undermined by the west.
There is nothing intrinsically authoritarian about leftism (really, I'd say it's less authoritarian in it's ideals), but authoritarianism is easier to hold together when outside pressures are trying to destroy you.
Politically they have ended up authoritarian in many instances. However, capitalism has as much "authoritarianism", just economically. Try whatever -ism you like, enough percentage of population is psychopathic and will climb to a position of power in some form or another. It's in our collective nature.
I don't know why that comment is collecting downvotes. They are referencing George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
Context: "Animal Farm" is a story about how communism can devolve into dictatorship. In the story, the animals on a farm drive out their tyrannical drunkard farmer. They write on the barn wall: "all animals are equal" and live in communist utopia. But some animals, too, hunger for power and status. Rather than overturn the system, they undermine it by adding "...but some animals are more equal than others" to the barn wall, legitimizing a ruling class (themselves) because they are "more equal."
For anyone interested they're currently releasing a modern retelling in comic book form called Animal Pound, next issue is #5 of 6, and the collected trade paperback will be along later after issue #6.
It's fantastic imo so far. The Pound has just found their new autocrat, their Napoleon, and shit is getting real for the poor lil bunnies.
Authoritarianism has nothing to do with economic systems and everything to do with government structure. The Soviet bloc/China and other communist countries were authoritarian because the populous allowed their governments too much power. China is ultra capitalist now and they're as authoritarian if not more so.
People remember communist countries as more authoritarian because they're the more taught examples. Pinochet was a turbo capitalist and he was one of the most authoritarian rulers in history.
Im not sure what you mean by socialist countries. But communists countries are more oppresive:
They have leaders that stay in power for decades. Opposition is often punished.
There is nor freedom of speech, speaking against the government gets you in jail or worse.
In some of those countries, people are not allowed to leave the country.
And for the record, I agree that poverty is extremely oppressive as well and we need more socialist reforms in capitalist countries, tax harder the rich, break monopolies, foster more unions and so on, I just dont agree that communism is the magical land you all think it is and the solution to all the problems. Nobody seems to want immigrate to North Korea for a reason.