this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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All socialist states will have to use authority, though, in order to disempower capitalists and fascists, and protect the gains of the revolution. Capitalists will see this as authoritarian, but it's also liberating for the working classes. States don't just wield power for the sake of it, they are thoroughly connected to class struggle and as such class analysis needs to be at the core of understanding authority.
Okay, sure, but we aren't talking about capitalism but existing/formerly existing socialist states like the USSR, PRC, Cuba, etc. That doesn't apply to those.
It was a dictatorship of the proletariat, ie the proletariat was in control and oppressed capitalists. For the working classes, ie the proletariat and the peasantry, it was a dramatic expansion in democratization, and society was oriented around fulfilling their needs. The gap between the richest and poorest was about ten times, compared to the hundreds of thousands to millions in the Tsarist and capitalist eras.
It was not a dictatorship because it did not produce the material results you would expect from a dictatorship.
If it had been a system in power of a few people against the vast majority, as was for example monarchic feudalism (the state immediately before the USSR, the Russian Empire, being a good example of it), you would expect vast inequality leading to a two-class system with vastly different life metrics, wealth, and a degradation of the rights of the working people.
However, the Soviet Union had the lowest wealth inequality the region has ever seen, the highest earners were the highly trained professionals (not policitians as you may have been led to believe) and the salary difference were perhaps at most tenfold; access to healthcare was universal and free, as was education to the highest level, pensions for retirement were universal with men retiring at 60 and women at 55, homelessness was abolished and everyone had access to affordable housing (3% of monthly income on average), and everyone had the right to a job making unemployment nonexistant.
A system producing these outcomes is not the result of 4 generations of "benevolent dictators" from 1917 to 1991, it's outrageous making such claims.