# Why were most Communists totalitarian? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 19, 2018, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771 "2018-11-19T06:43:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/21 "2018-11-19T15:33:26Z")
Communist ideology is inherently conflict based. The capitalists are perpetually in conflict with the working class. In order to achieve communism capitalists have to be defeated violently and bloodily. This is very explicit in all communists ideology. Thus violent people are attracted to communism. Communist ideology is very specific about the evils of capitalism but assumes that when communism is achieved and the evil is gone everything will work itself out. Of course in the real world, there are still coordination problems to deal with, and all the other issues that an economy and a political system have to deal with. Being violent ideologues communist leaders with all they knew, violence. The problem could never be with the ideology only with the opponents and the way to deal with opponents was to crush them. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/22 "2018-11-19T15:54:42Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I’ve seen this discussed before in short form, usually with glib, easy answers like, “power corrupts”, or “they just hijacked the ideology because they wanted power”. But as much as I love to punch totalitarians, it doesn’t ring true to me. Fascism was always just as attractive during the time communism rose, and it seems a lot simpler: there’s us, there’s them outside our borders(as well as minorities inside our borders), and you should be for us. Oh, and here’s a dab of socialism so we seem to be champions of the working class. Communism, though, was freakin’ complicated. People don’t need to be educated to make a nationalist pitch to them. Communism by contrast requires indoctrination and some fairly complex ideas. Plus there’s limited appeal. Nationalism can be sold to poor, middle class, and rich alike. Communism is primarily a lower working class phenomenon. Even the middle class is generally hostile to the idea. Just seems an unnecessarily complicated way to just take power and lord it over people. > > But nowhere among those ideas is totalitarianism really a selling point. Nor does it seem particularly necessary to control people’s lives to the extent communist nations did. Why are free unions a problem? Why is a free press a problem? Why must foreign ideas be kept out? Why must the world of the arts be controlled? Why can free elections never be allowed? And most importantly, from an ideological standpoint, what was accomplished between the Bolshevik Revolution and the 1980s when it all started to crumble? Was there any progress at all towards any communist goals? It was just all sacrifice and toil all the time for the workers and not so much as reliable bread supplies or a decent car or house 60 years later, and all the authorities had to offer were exhortations to work harder. They were full of five year economic plans but did they have any plans to actually make the system work for the average person at some point? I think the simplest answer is the correct one…Communism has to be imposed at all levels to ‘work’. A lot of people think that it merely has to be imposed on the upper classes and the bourgeoisie but that’s not so. Look at how Communist states came down on the workers and peasants as well, especially when they tried to impose collectivism. Some of the most brutal slaughters by Communist states happened when the party came down on these classes. At all levels, Communist states try and impose their will on a people and make it conform to their idealized reality…and it just doesn’t work. Mao with his idiotic agriculture reforms, attempt to impose heavy industry and industrial steel manufacture in every backyard, etc etc are perfect examples of how, even when they aren’t deliberately trying to be brutal they kill 10’s of millions simply because they use force to try and impose their idealism on reality. What’s funny is how intellectuals, even on this board STILL keep the flame of this idiotic idea afloat and attempt No True Scotsman type arguments that this isn’t an inherent flaw in Communism, just that all those who attempted it on a large scale were obviously monsters (or misunderstood) and did it wrong. But the NEXT time it’s sure to work out perfectly! ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/23 "2018-11-19T16:06:36Z")
An important factor to consider is history. The peoples in these areas were accustomed to living under a Tsar, or other Kings and Princes and Emperors, and existing as serfs (which is maybe kinda slaves). We in the democratic west have a hard time wrapping our heads around how these people went in the direction they did, because we fall into the trap of thinking they were starting from where we are. That is not the case. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/24 "2018-11-19T16:14:20Z")
Marxist theory is concerned with material inequality – who has the goodies, the wealth. It does not specifically advocate totalitarianism but it also doesn’t specifically concern itself with unequal authority and coercion and power as areas where we ought to be concerned about inequality. So from that standpoint, if all the tangible resources are distributed fairly, we’re all cool here even if all the authority is directly vested in an absolute ruler of some sort. Marxist theory does specify that in order to solve the material inequality problem, the workers’ state must be coercive (must seize the authority to force the redistribution of resources out of the hands of the eeevil boirgeois capitalists who have concentrated it in their own hands). There is no concern that this authority would be abused – instead it will magically “wither away”. Result = totalitarian governments ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/25 "2018-11-19T16:20:14Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > An important factor to consider is history. The peoples in these areas were accustomed to living under a Tsar, or other Kings and Princes and Emperors, and existing as serfs (which is maybe kinda slaves). We in the democratic west have a hard time wrapping our heads around how these people went in the direction they did, because we fall into the trap of thinking they were starting from where we are. That is not the case. Other countries had kings, princes and emperors and were able to move past that. I don’t think that’s a good excuse. The best case to underscore the differences is Korea. Just look at the difference between Communist North Korea and South Korea. They are all Korean people who either lived under the thumb of the Chinese or more recently the Japanese, and who before that had a king of their own. Yet today, they are pretty different. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/26 "2018-11-19T16:54:02Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Survival of the fittest, sort of. People in a complex society won’t willingly live in a communist system for very long, so any state that tries democratic communism isn’t going to last more than a few years-- maybe just a few months. The ones that do last are the ones where the system is imposed on the population without the choice of voting it out, so those are the ones of note. > > Communism works well at the smallest of social levels-- family group or maybe a little larger. Parents will often sacrifice almost anything for the children. Once you have large, complex societies, the bonds that bind humans to each other like a family group break down. > > Extreme political systems like Communism or Libertarianism just don’t last through many election cycles. And that’s because they are not suited to the way people actually want to live in complex societies. They don’t want to share everything but they don’t want to be completely on their own, either. Of course libertarianism has nothing to do with being completely on your own. It seeks to bring individuals together in voluntary arrangements, so it both benefits from and fosters social cohesion. Free-market capitalism, one aspect of libertarianism, especially encourages cooperation and reliance on trusted connections on a worldwide scale. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/27 "2018-11-19T18:11:53Z")
The arguments above are largely based on a [presentism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)) fallacy. Note that while Russia chose a quasi-Marxist economic model, the Italian and German fascists also were Authoritarian. Authoritarianism values orderliness and authority, and distrusts outsiders and social change. As western society is currently experiencing another rise of authoritarianism as demonstrated by Brexit and Donald Trump, why not drop the Monday morning quarterbacking and assumptions that it is directly related to an economic model and explain why a population may tend to authoritarianism? As economic models are separate from this the political axis that was common across that part of Eurasia it seems that question is more relevant to finding the cause. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/28 "2018-11-19T19:07:20Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > That sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t explain why the Soviets enforced their version of communism on their satellite allies. Dubcek in 1968 and Solidarity in 1980 shouldn’t have been a threat at all, just different ways of doing things under the communist system. The Soviets authoritarians wanted power and that meant authoritarians who were subservient to the Soviet Union in their satellites. People doing things their own way may have meant the communists there decided that there was a better way than the Soviet way (and it may have led to ordinary people in the Soviet Union realizing there can exist communism without the heavy handed ness). Anyways, you’ve hit on something there that there were movements of less authoritarian communism or socialism that were snuffed out by the Soviet Union (in the Warsaw Pact area) or United States (in the “third world”). So I wonder if perhaps things may have been a bit different if Poland or Iran or Chile were able to develop their systems without violent outside influence. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/29 "2018-11-19T20:57:09Z")
Were the sandanistas in Nicaragua Dictators? They had some abuses but they held elections in 1984. Looking online, even they had censorship and disappearances. So maybe so. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/30 "2018-11-19T21:03:07Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > The arguments above are largely based on a [URL=“[Presentism (historical analysis) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis))”]why not drop the Monday morning quarterbacking and assumptions that it is directly related to an economic model and explain why a population may tend to authoritarianism? Your average person likes an authoritarian government, that is true. The average person just wants life to be simple, to not be bothered by nuance or shades of grey, and if the Great Leader makes someone disappear, well that’s probably because they deserved it. “Doesn’t effect me none.” Rational, slow moving, deliberative government just gives the average man angst, making them get angry because everyone expects them to think about things. But so, any style of government is quite liable to venture towards authoritarianism, particularly if it is more populist, collectivist, or Democratic. Long live Republics. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/31 "2018-11-19T21:26:27Z")
In Russia and China those governments were instituted as the result of extremely violent wars against strong enemies. Communist or not, the winners of those wars won control of states with essentially no history of democracy as a means of making decisions. It would have been seen as very difficult/impossible to keep control if you let all the people you just beat in a very difficult war have the same political rights and freedoms as the “good guys.” From this line of thinking it’s very easy to then fall into permanent authoritarianism. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/32 "2018-11-19T23:51:42Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > The Soviets authoritarians wanted power and that meant authoritarians who were subservient to the Soviet Union in their satellites. People doing things their own way may have meant the communists there decided that there was a better way than the Soviet way (and it may have led to ordinary people in the Soviet Union realizing there can exist communism without the heavy handed ness). > > Anyways, you’ve hit on something there that there were movements of less authoritarian communism or socialism that were snuffed out by the Soviet Union (in the Warsaw Pact area) or United States (in the “third world”). So I wonder if perhaps things may have been a bit different if Poland or Iran or Chile were able to develop their systems without violent outside influence. Wasn’t Mexico fairly revolutionary socialist and also democratic during the years the PRI dominated? Of course, as in all democracies, one party states can’t last forever, so Mexico is now a lot more capitalist and free than it was then, but it does seem to be an example of a socialist democratic government that lasted quite awhile. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2018, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/33 "2018-11-19T23:53:28Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Were the sandanistas in Nicaragua Dictators? They had some abuses but they held elections in 1984. > > Looking online, even they had censorship and disappearances. So maybe so. Latin American socialism usually keeps democracy but controls the flow of information to rig the system in the ruling party’s favor. But if there’s enough anger at the government they’ll still lose eventually, and they did. And now they are back. Democracy. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/34 "2018-11-20T01:37:32Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Of course libertarianism has nothing to do with being completely on your own. Of course it does. In the context of a government system, you aren’t going to get help from the state if you fall on bad times. You might get private charity, but not public assistance. Most people aren’t willing to take the risk of there not being a public safety net of some sort. And lots of people want a public safety net even if they think they’ll never need it themselves. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/35 "2018-11-20T01:45:28Z")
Tolernace for a social safety net seems entirely based on how much of an impact it has on people’s paychecks. If people aren’t paying a lot in taxes, it’s an easy sell. “For just 1% more of your pay, we’ll give you income security if you lose your job!” But if people are paying high taxes, their tolerance for further safety net measures becomes quite low. It also matters how good the government is at determining need and preventing fraud. One of the problems with communism was that almost all the European versions had a culture of working the system to get the easiest ride you could. and why not? Working hard gained you nothing. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/36 "2018-11-20T04:13:43Z")
Y’all got me on ignore or somethin’? Yeesh, I’m not _that_ goddam boring, am I? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/37 "2018-11-20T04:28:01Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > As much as people claim to want equality, they actually don’t want equality. Nobody plays the Powerball thinking, “I want to be like the 99.99999% who don’t win.” They want to be that lucky one. A Marxist would tell you the people are being duped. Only .00001% actually wins the grand prize; the lottery system did nothing for the other 99.99999%. A Marxist would say the capitalism system promises you great wealth but actually gives you nothing. A communist system would only promise you enough to live on but would actually deliver it. (And a realist would observe the communist system actually lies just as much as the capitalist system does.) ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/38 "2018-11-20T05:10:44Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Tolernace for a social safety net seems entirely based on how much of an impact it has on people’s paychecks. If people aren’t paying a lot in taxes, it’s an easy sell. “For just 1% more of your pay, we’ll give you income security if you lose your job!” But if people are paying high taxes, their tolerance for further safety net measures becomes quite low. It also matters how good the government is at determining need and preventing fraud. One of the problems with communism was that almost all the European versions had a culture of working the system to get the easiest ride you could. and why not? Working hard gained you nothing. Also obviously it depends on how likely people are to think they will get to use it. In the US, a lot of our social safety nets apply to the poor and elderly. For someone who is 30, they don’t really think about being elderly because that is 40 years off. And they aren’t poor so they don’t get pell grants, subsidized rent, medicaid, daycare, food stamps. So they aren’t seeing a lot of direct benefit from a social welfare state. Meanwhile a nation with universal healthcare can point to the benefits of the welfare state to the average citizen. In America our public health care systems only apply to the poor and elderly. Also tolerance for a social safety net is also based on how homogeneous a culture feels. If a culture is easily divided into Us vs. Them, and only Them get to use welfare, then that creates a lot of resentment. In the US where welfare is portrayed as something that black people and latino immigrants use, it is very infuriating for native born white people to pay taxes to fund that system. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/39 "2018-11-20T06:19:53Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > That sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t explain why the Soviets enforced their version of communism on their satellite allies. Dubcek in 1968 and Solidarity in 1980 shouldn’t have been a threat at all, just different ways of doing things under the communist system. Because they couldn’t imagine an alternative that would not - in their view - imperil their security. “Finlandisation” or an Austria-Hungary solution wasn’t an option for the larger countries of central Europe so directly between them and West Germany (not least because the NATO powers weren’t willing to accept a neutralised West Germany). And given the underlying strength of immoderate nationalism in those countries, that wasn’t entirely groundless a fear. The Soviets knew no other way of counter-acting it than repression, from the show trials of the late 40s onwards. As a result, little or nothing could change in most of the satellites till the Soviet Union did. That said, Tito managed to direct Yugoslavia on its own way both economically and strategically, and Romania under Ceausescu made a great show of independence in international politics. Hungary under the post-1956 Kadar regime achieved a greater degree of economic relaxation than all the others, but the relationship with the USSR could never be questioned. And all three were still dictatorships. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771/40 "2018-11-20T06:43:06Z")
It’s the way imperialism worked in the 20th century: US puppets (not allies, different thing) were more varied in their official internal organization because the US is also pluralistic internally. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-most-communists-totalitarian/824771.md?page=3)