Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
Ideologically, Leninism supported vanguardism, a variation on Marxism that said that the Communist party was supposed to drag the early-20th-century proletariat into the revolution, instead of waiting for late capitalism where the proletariat would (according to Marx) naturally become revolutionary. This, and the notion of “false consciousness”, authorized Communist parties to go against the expressed (democratic) will of the proletariat, on the theory that the proletariat’s judgment was clouded by false consciousness, while still claiming to act in the interests of the proletariat.
Basically, “we (the party) know better than you (the people)” was ingrained into Leninism from the beginning, and the major communist revolutions either were or became Leninist. Maoism was a branch off of Leninism as well.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t even the proletariat that accomplished the Revolutions, it was the peasantry. Marx wasn’t against the idea but he would have been surprised.
I love learning new things that had just never occurred to me before. It happens a lot more here than it ever did back on Reddit.