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Marx opined that certain material conditions had to be achieved before a socialist state could be successfully made. These material conditions include bourgeois capitalist democracy. Marx explicitly said that capitalism forges the tools with which it will be destroyed.

A certain subset of communists known as Marxist-Leninists decided that bourgeois capitalist democracy wasn't necessary if you just oppressed people REALLY hard, you could skip straight to a socialist state. And because they 'succeeded' in overthrowing traditional Marxists in 1917 Russia and getting the full power of a massive country to spread their ideology, they've had bootlickers calling their particular brand of insanity the only 'real' form of communism ever since.

When we think of 'communist' countries, we think of Marxist-Leninist countries which tried to jump from feudal societies to socialist societies, which, quite obviously from the results, doesn't work. Doesn't stop the cultists from licking boots, of course.

Attempts to implement communism at the scale of a nation state have always involved significant concentration of power. It may be impossible to do otherwise.

Power corrupts, and concentrations of power attract the corrupt.

Because communism is the end goal, but one of the transitionary phases is the dictatorship of the proletariat , where a representative of the people is given sweeping power to prevent a counterrevolution from the bourgeoisie.

But that kind of power is hard to give up; foreign powers are trying to sew discord, and it's really convenient to get stuff done. It's ok, you're one of the good guys anyways, right?
So communism never really makes it past that stage

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Those who seek power least deserve it

I think those quotes answer your question well enough

There's a lot of confusion in these comments regarding Marxist theory, presumably from people who haven't actually engaged with the source material, so I want to clarify something I see repeated frequently in this thread with little pushback. The Marxist theory of the State is not the same as the Anarchist, nor the liberal. Marx defined the State as a tool of class oppression.

The reason I state this is because there's a confused notion that Marxists think there should be

1. An unaccountable Vanguard
2. The Vanguard does stuff. At a certain arbitrary point the Vanguard dissolves and society embraces full horizontalism

I'll address these in order. First, the Vanguard is in no-way meant to be unaccountable, nor a small group of elites, but the most politically active, practiced, and experienced among the proletariat elected by the rest of the proletariat. The concept of the "Mass Line" is crucial to Marxist theory, that is, the insepperability of the Vanguard from the masses. If this line is broken, the Vanguard loses legitimacy and ceases to be effective, whether it falls into Tailism or Commandism. These tendencies must be fought daily, and don't simply vanish by decree.

Secondly, the basis for Marxian Communism is the developmental trends of Capitalism. Markets start highly decentralized, but gradually the better Capitalists outcompete and grow, and as they grow they must develop new methods of accounting and planning. Capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, yet socialization increases as these conglomerations begin to reach monstrous heights and require incredibly complex planning. The development of such methods and tools is the real, scientific foundation of Public Ownership and Central Planning.

Continuing, once the Proletariat takes control and creates a Proletarian State, the Proletariat, the more experienced among them the Vanguard, gradually wrests from the bourgeoisie their Capital with respect to that industries and sectors that have sufficiently developed. This process continues until all Capital has been folded into the Public Sector, at which point laws meant for restraining the bourgeoisie begin to become superfluous and "die out." The Vanguard doesn't "dissolve" or "cede power," but itself as a concept also dies out, as over time new methods of planning and infrastructure make its role more superfluous. Classes in general are abolished once all property is in the Public Sector, and as such the State no longer exists either, as there isn't a class to oppress.

This is why Marxists say the State "withers away." It isn't about demolishing itself, but that Marx and Engels had a particular vision of what the State even is, and why they said it could not be abolished overnight.

Hope that helped! As a side note, asking this on Lemmy.world, an anti-Marxist instance, is only ever going to get you answers biased in that direction. I suggest asking on other instances as well to get a more complete view.

Imagine asking a question to a less qualified, more ideologically antagonistic group of people than you just have.

It's the opportunist problem. We see this throughout rebellions in history, not just when communist countries are made. Basically, anytime conditions are bad enough for the people to demand change it's really easy for someone to trade on their ignorance. They can push policies that sound like they'll help but really consolidate power. And if anyone speaks up, they're an enemy of the people.

For a non Communist example of this in modern history check out the French Revolution.

Because most real-world implementations of communism was the idea that a "vanguard party" would excercise total control over the country. The idea is eventually the state would "wither away" after communism is acheived.

Yea imagine how that goes. Once a party gets total power, they ain't giving it up, that's the problem.

Chile was a communist country and didnt become autocratic because of it, the US murdered their democratically elected president then planted a dictator in his place. So my guess is it doesn't always end that way on it's own. Russia speedran the capitalism to fascim transition to, it's been capitalist since 1991, sham elections since 2005, so they're not a good example of any kind of economic or government system. China has a tight grip on their population but don't let the propaganda distract you from the fact that the US is just as much a surveillance state as China with the one exception being how much China micromanages it's people when they leave the country, but I wouldn't bet against America keeping tabs on expats the same way it was found out that America was spying on its allies in the EU.

I think this question ignores mountains of contexts in an attemtp at reducing a problem into one facet.

Centralization of decision-making. It's ironic actually. One of the main problems of capitalism that Marx described is the separation between labor and ownership. All the talk about "means of production".

Communism actually makes it worse. In capitalism yes you have the owners who have all the control and reap all the benefits, but you have many capitalists competing, so the power is kinda distributed inside the capitalist class. The way communism was always implemented is through a communist party and state control of the economy.

You get an even smaller group of people controlling the means of production. It amplifies exactly the main problem of capitalism by creating a very hierarchical class society where the party leadership takes a role of what is almost "nobility".

Because there was never anything communist about these states in any way whatsoever.

Communism is a state (as in a social, political and economic condition, not a government). None of these states ever reached this condition, and, therefore, was never communist. And, one could argue, that their development literally went the opposite way to what could be called communist with a straight face. As the anarchist Bakunin famously said, "the people's boot is still a boot."

This is why the Maoist-types call this shit "democratic centralism," which is essentially just double-speak for "what the party says goes."

This does not make the idea of communism invalid - but it's still as perfectly vague as ever, unfortunately.

I don't think that is exclusive to communism. I rather assume that this has more to do with how the government is structured. Long-running politicians tend to being more open to corruption.

I can easily see Trump going the same way. He has assembled enough power within the system to break it from within like most dictators did.

Most universal answer I can give is:

Every country that has attempted communism has been desperate and vulnerable.

Desperate to find a strongman to save their crumbling old government, and vulnerable to having the CIA appoint their own strongman in turn.

Well it didn't happen in every case. In the UK socialists became a big faction within the post war labour party and created the NHS. Almost every other country in Europe has a similar story with the creation of their own healthcare systems. Russia and China have never been democracies at any point in their history so maybe that has more to do with it than socialist and communist ideas.

So to begin with all communism so far has never been democratically voted in as far as I know and pretty much starts with an ideological military government that then needs to transition back to democracy.

Many do transition to a one party system where all democracy is contained within the party and essentially becomes a "primaries only" type.

Then slowly over time power consolidations and purges bring it towards a dictatorship because there are no checks and balances against it.

So it seems to me that the only way to get to the ideological communism is through democracy and constitutional changes, proportional representation and coalition governments that don't allow any one toxic pernon to consolidate power.

Because some people are more equal than others

Most countries we would label as communist didn't form as Marx expected. Marx expected relatively advanced nations to revolt and claim control over capital. Instead, most Communist revolutions occurred in generally despotic and less developed countries.

When times are good, the government can use the material improvement of people's lives as a reason to be in power. However, if times stop being good, the government becomes more overtly autocratic to maintain control.

Greed. The Achilles heel of humans since the beginning of time. Greed breeds hate, hate breeds fear, and fear breeds violence.

Because, at a high level, communism requires that a leader or group of leaders get things on track and then give up all of their power over time. Instead, the type of people who tend to lead revolutions are the same type of people who are unlikely to want to give up power and instead end up wanting more power. So no true communism has ever existed because it never gets to that phase.

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.