Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.
And yeah, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with socialism itself, but on that transition. We see the same for other radical transitions. The problem isn’t necessarily what you’re transitioning to, but the process of transition and who is involved. Most countries in the world aren’t socialist, so transitioning to socialism will be a radical change and will attract the worst kinds of leaders. So it’s fair to criticize socialism precisely because a radical transition to it is highly likely to be fraught with authoritarianism.
Even transitions to liberalism runs that risk, but transitioning to liberalism has had a much better track record than transitioning to socialism.
That said, country-wide forms of socialism (arguably “pure” socialism) where capitalism is eradicated naturally come with a distillation of power in the government to control the flow of goods, and that concentration of power is what attracts authoritarians and is what’s being opposed here. So socialism has a built-in problem that lends itself to authoritarianism. Yes, I know there are theoretical anarchist forms of socialism, but they usually have a transition period from an authoritarian system (big counter is libertarian socialism, but that’s pretty “pie in the sky” IMO, as much as I respect Noam Chomsky).
Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.
The reason is because capitalists oppose it. If the world was ruled by Fascists you’d be saying we should try anything else because anyone opposed to Fascists gets undermined. It’s a fault of capitalism, not socialism.
There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them. We can have socialist countries without any issues. It just requires capitalists in the rest of the world not overthrowing them.
Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.
And yeah, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with socialism itself, but on that transition. We see the same for other radical transitions. The problem isn’t necessarily what you’re transitioning to, but the process of transition and who is involved. Most countries in the world aren’t socialist, so transitioning to socialism will be a radical change and will attract the worst kinds of leaders. So it’s fair to criticize socialism precisely because a radical transition to it is highly likely to be fraught with authoritarianism.
Even transitions to liberalism runs that risk, but transitioning to liberalism has had a much better track record than transitioning to socialism.
That said, country-wide forms of socialism (arguably “pure” socialism) where capitalism is eradicated naturally come with a distillation of power in the government to control the flow of goods, and that concentration of power is what attracts authoritarians and is what’s being opposed here. So socialism has a built-in problem that lends itself to authoritarianism. Yes, I know there are theoretical anarchist forms of socialism, but they usually have a transition period from an authoritarian system (big counter is libertarian socialism, but that’s pretty “pie in the sky” IMO, as much as I respect Noam Chomsky).
The reason is because capitalists oppose it. If the world was ruled by Fascists you’d be saying we should try anything else because anyone opposed to Fascists gets undermined. It’s a fault of capitalism, not socialism.
There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them. We can have socialist countries without any issues. It just requires capitalists in the rest of the world not overthrowing them.