Correct - both are authoritarian regimes

Is one supposed to be better than the other?

One lifted millions of people out of abject poverty, provided them with food, housing, education, and healthcare, while the other has been terrorizing the world throughout its whole existence. But to an enlightened liberal these look exactly the same.

Authoritarianism is a meaningless term used by edgy children whose brains haven't fully developed yet. The reality is that all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority. The state is fundamentally an instrument that’s used by the ruling class to maintain its dominance. The whole notion that political systems can be neatly categorized into authoritarian or democratic binaries is deeply infantile.

Every government derives its authority from its monopoly on legal violence. The ability to enforce laws, suppress dissent, and maintain order is derived from control over police, military, and judicial systems. Whether a government is labelled authoritarian or democratic, the fundamental basis of its power lies here. Therefore, the only meaningful questions to ask are which class interests it represents, and to what extent can it be held accountable to them.

What ultimately matters is which class controls the institutions of state violence. In capitalist democracies, the government represent the interests of the economic elites who fund political campaigns, own media outlets, and control key industries. Western public lacks the mechanisms necessary to hold the government to account, and the ruling class is disconnected from the broader population. That’s precisely what’s driving political discontent all across western sphere today. Meanwhile, in so-called authoritarian regimes, the ruling party serves the working class as seen in countries like China, Cuba, or Vietnam. Hence why there is widespread public trust in these government and they enjoy broad support from the masses.

Would you say it is a good example of a communist state? Or at least, a good country that should have continued operating the way it did? More good than bad?

If you don't like the word authoritarian why did you use it? And why did you get defensive when someone agreed with your image.

Even sarcastically I don't see what you goal here was. To say the us and the soviet union are similarly inhumane? Or the us is slightly worse?

Ok, and?

I was being sarcastic and poking fun at people using it. Congrats on taking the bait. What the picture says is that the US which libs championed as a 'free and enlightened society' in the 90s was incarcerating more people than USSR did during Stalin years. Rate of incarceration in USSR dropped significantly after that while it remains as high as ever in the US today.

Having grown up in USSR, I would say that it was a good example of a socialist state. It was unarguably more good than bad, and anybody with even a minimally functioning brain can see that the collapse of USSR was a huge tragedy for humanity. But perhaps you see capitalist restoration in the eastern bloc as a positive?

I agree with your overall point, still I think there needs to be some context.

Here is the graph for USSR's prison population (I could only find it in russian on yandex, because search engines are so fucked up nowadays):

USSR really did have a relatively high imprisonment rate throughout its existence, and I think its punishment-focused penitentiary system was one of its worst sides. I'm glad that other socialist states are improving theirs, and I hope one day they can reach a point where prisons in their current form would no longer be necessary.

As an aside, I find it really interesting that there was a simultaneous increase in prison population in both USSR and the US in the 80s:

While in the US it was mainly caused by "law and order" politics popularized after the revolutionary movements of the 70s, combined with privatization of prison labor, I couldn't find any well-sourced explanations for why it happened in USSR.

I don't particularly care about the eastern bloc. I just usually hear people, even "communists" talk about Stalinism being a pretty bad thing.

Authoritarianism is a meaningless term used by edgy children whose brains haven't fully developed yet

You tend to lose a bit of credibility when you start your argument with this kind of sentences. After that you would need to prove that your reasoning is at least as qualitative, as, say, Hannah Arendt's work, and unfortunately it is far off the mark.

Thank you for providing concrete example of why gulags will indeed be necessary after a socialist revolution.

That's an amazing counterpoint, thank you.

It was correct of you to put communists in quotes there.

Aww, is google banned at the troll farm?

No worries. Dismissing the very concept of authoritarianism right off the bat was a nice move, too.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/prisoners-1996

Only 1.1m

Libs being confronted with the fact that propaganda terms they've memorized are meaningless never gets old.

You still believe in the existence of propaganda or even the concept of memory? Smh, you need to break the chains of bourgeois discourse and ascend to ad hominem attacks

Why's that?

Can you name a non-authoritarian government?

"I, the arbiter of credibility, have decided this claim is self-evidently ridiculous for reasons I don't need to explain"

Hannah Arendt

Lol, of course

Do you dismiss the very concept of Badguyism?

What year? It wouldn't happen to be immediately before, during or post ww2, would it? Because west Germany and the Gladoi-style nazification of capitalist Europe are the perfect counterpoint to show why you have to execute nazis.

Because no actual communist would say anything of the sort.

Thank you for providing much needed levity in this thread.

*weakest

ok there fash

meanwhile in the real world

• A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country's economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country's switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary's integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

• The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

• Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

• A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -"during the time of socialism". The survey focused on the respondents' views on the transition "from socialism to capitalism", and a clear majority said they trusted social institutions the most during the rule of Yugoslav communist president Josip Broz Tito. The standard of living during Tito's rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was also assessed as best, whereas the Milosevic decade of the 1990s, and the subsequent decade since the fall of his regime are seen as "more or less the same". 45 percent said they trusted social institutions most under communism with 23 percent choosing the 2001-2003 period when Zoran Djinđic was prime minister. Only 19 per cent selected present-day institutions.

Ha! They told me the odds of winning the lottery were infinitesimal and yet I have been called a lib on lemmy.ml. Nobody will believe me.

my bad, i'll fix it

I even fixed the spelling!

The reality is that all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority.

Yeah, and isn't that a problem? Like, why just take for granted that all governments we've tried so far are coercive, instead of trying to build one that isn't?

Wait, now this needs some clarification. Is it anti-communists as someone who is against communists or anti-communists as people who share a hatred of communism? Because one might be downright libelous

But thanks for your reactivity, I feel like lib is a bit lazy

Which goes to show that "authoritarian" is just a vague, vibes based signifier with no useful purpose.

"You lose credibility when you make a thesis statement I don't already agree with!"

I wish you Reddit losers would actually learn what an ad hominem is before you spew it everywhere.

Just someone who is against communism. I did not intend to make it seam you hated us.

What you might want to think real hard about is why hierarchies form in the first place, and what problem they solve. Then you might start to understand why every society converges on this model at a certain point or it dies out.

I'd genuinely like to hear your answer on this, because it's something I think a lot about as an anarchist. Specifically, do you think the problem power hierarchies solve can only be solved by power hierarchies? Do you think that problem necessarily exists and needs solving in all contexts, perhaps because of some innate human nature? Who is it that has told you this is the case--that the fact that history is filled with hierarchies should be interpreted as "hierarchies are inevitable"--instead of, say, "power over others is an unhealthy coping mechanism humans have consistently turned to in the face of the unknown and maybe we should try to build a society that Doesn't Do That before we give up and resign ourselves to benevolent kings again"?

They probably thought of Warhammer 40000 where 1000 psykers per day are sacrificed to the God Emperor, idk.

Or maybe USA where around 1000 people per day was dying from avoidable pandemic so that the line could go up and the answer from government was to stop counting the dead.

Thanks for providing us with an example! I almost had forgotten what it meant, being too busy with the Reddit losing and whatnot. Sorry I have to go there is this sponsored post about investing in crypto - I could lose a massive amount of money and dignity, can't pass the opportunity.

It was more "you lose credibility when you make a grotesque thesis statement, both in substance and on the form".

The form is sufficiently obvious I suppose. If I call you an edgy moron even before you disagree with me, you're not exactly looking for a nice conversation.

On the merits of the existence of authoritarianism, dismissing the work of someone like Adorno - just like that - is genuinely hilarious.

Great, because you've become very dear to me. xoxox

I think this comes from Giles in the novelization of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not from Arendt. But easy to confuse when you have read neither