Ask Lemmy

Because the Soviet Union was autocratic and communist/socialist countries had to choose between cosying up to them and being destroyed by the CIA.

You can really ask the same question about capitalist societies. Why is there such oppression? Why is there a group that can do anything and a group that cannot? Regardless of your political system, human behavior is the same and it usually involves insecure ape-like people who want power for power's sake. Communism, just like every political system ever created, trends towards this sort of behavior.

As someone else said, desperation will cause people to move towards authoritarian thought, be that the extreme right (fascism) or the extreme left (communism).

I think because true communism never existed. All the previous attempts were flawed, people got corrupted, misused their power and it's difficult to overcome human nature. It might work in theory (or not). But so far the attempts ~~weren't that many and they~~ were all flawed for different reasons.

Because at its very base it’s conceived in violation of consent.

“From each according to his capacity” is the absolute essence of exploitation. Like, there’s no more straightforward way of saying “You look like resources and we’re gonna take everything you have”.

It’s only a “good idea” if you don’t think of people as having free will and the ability to consent. Communism is a great idea if you’re playing Command & Conquer and all your little units exist only to act as pawns in your game.

In modern communist societies the government has an insane amount of power and control over just about everything. This power and control attracts a certain type of person who thirsts for power and control. People usually develop a bloodthirsty desire for power and control due to underlying psychological issues. These issues influence the person to think they ALWAYS need more power (think anorexic person who weighs 95lbs but still insists they are overweight).

It's a human nature problem imo.

Because you concentrate all resources into the government and not distabute it with money. Communism = work for the government and hope they give you hand outs; Capitalism = work for enough money to buy anything you want, the better your skill the more money you make. The best system is obv social-democracy.

Because thats the end result of embiggening the state: The state gets bigger, and the oligarchs just changes faces.

It was something Marx remarked on later, post Paris Commune.

Short answer: Power abhors a vacuum. Natural hierarchies develop out of good old tribalism rather fast even with frameworks in place to avoid them.

Everybody wants to rule the world 🎶

They had no communist intentions to begin with. The benefits of communism are just an easy way to market any nefarious movement with anticommunist intentions

The core principles of communism are basically an antithesis of these authoritarians/totalitarians/autocratics/oligarchs (how ever you want to describe them). Such a shift isn't accidental

By its nature, communism requires large amounts of control, as it's a centrally planned economy. The state decides if it needs more coal, wheat, tools, steel, etc, then conscipts people as workers for various industries. Instead of an economy controlled by demand business owners, it is controlled by the state.

To maintain that control you need to maintain control of the people.

Because extremes don't work.

From what I've seen over the past 100 years, pure capitalist societies fail (hello Americans!) just lie pure communist societies (hello Russia!)

What works well are free societies that mix strong capitalism systems to fund strong social systems and safety nets (hello, north west Europe!)

Because it is not human nature and has to be forced on people. Eventually even those who are in charge of it fall into the normal human nature of social structures and such.

What makes sense to me, is that unlike capitalism, communism requires a government to function. Well, and how do governments fail? By turning into a dictatorship.