Comment on I've heard New Yorkers are devastated
Don_alForno@feddit.org 1 day agoto be a communist he would have to have been a dictator who seized power with force rather than democratically elected.
Communism and dictatorship have nothing to do with each other.
Communism is revolutionary, Socialism can be reformative.
In the context of the United States, Democratic Socialism is perfectly compatible with the constitution and the ideals of freedom and democracy; Communism, on the other hand, requires overthrowing the existing institutions which make it incompatible.
Most historical “Communist” movements are vanguardist, and vanguardism doesn’t end well, they end up being authoritarian.
It’s just one of life’s funny little coincidences…
I wouldn’t call it a coincidence that western capitalist states, especially the US, would do some pretty heavy lifting to convince all of their people that any actually existing socialist state is, or would invariably become, a dictatorship and horrible to live under. Socialism and capitalism are fundamentally opposed to one another and pretty much every aspect of US governance is fully controlled by, rabidly anti-communist, capitalists. They made absolutely sure of that in the red scare.
Except that every communist country is and was a dictatorship.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The one thing that communism and dictatorship have in common is that the one pretty much requires a revolution and the other often appears after a revolution.
They have similar origin stories.
The problem with revolutions is that revolutions need a strong man to rally around who can quickly make decisions without compromise and who is in close to complete power. A democratic revolution would not happen, since it’s not fast and decisive enough. But when the revolution is done and that same strongman is still in power, and he gets to decide how the new government is run, only very few of them are capable of handing the power over to a democratic government. And if you run a government like a revolution we tend to call that dictatorship.