At what point would you say those “attempts to build socialist utopias” transition to “usurped by dictators”? As I see it, this happens early on in some significant cases. It seems to happen far back enough that I’m inclined to think we have seen very few attempts at socialist utopia, and they have mostly been successful and lacking in (local) deaths (UK, much of Europe since ww2).

I know this is a generalisation; I know that the UK (my home) has engaged in some shady horror abroad and I agree that should factor in to this conversation. But I also feel that the dreadful “communist” experiences you’re alluding to are outliers from the conversation, are dictatorships and oligarchies, and not genuine attempts at socialist utopia.

>At what point would you say those “attempts to build socialist utopias” transition to “usurped by dictators”?

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>not genuine attempts at socialist utopia.

"Unsuccessful" attempts would seem to be a more accurate phrasing than "not genuine".

While I do think you have an interesting point, it could perhaps be the rigid uniformity and anti-individualism which is intrinsic to hard core socialism that has helped lead to those horrid dictatorships we've seen in the past 100 years

Good points.

I have not studied the roots of "hard core socialism" deeply enough to understand where this uniformity comes from. Taking a vary casual glance at Marx, it doesn't seem to be there. He seemed to be arguing for collective ownership and an eventual slide towards "cooperative anarchy" - a conscious balance or dialog between collective and individual desire. It's really hard for me to see where the rigid conformity came from. In other venues, we see rigid conformity tied to hierarchy (military, strict schools).. all venues that tend to have figurehead leaders, and disempowered individuals rather than collective empowerment.

I recently watched a Lex Fridman podcast with Richard Wolff, a philosopher and Marxist economist and he made many of the same compelling points you are making:

https://youtu.be/o0Bi-q89j5Y

>It's really hard for me to see where the rigid conformity came from.

Perhaps its from the concept of "equality of outcome", everyone is treated the same no matter what they do.

>In other venues, we see rigid conformity tied to hierarchy (military, strict schools).. all venues that tend to have figurehead leaders, and disempowered individuals rather than collective empowerment.

It's an interesting correlation, but within those organizations there does at least seem to be some elememts of meritocracy involved. Although, Stalin, Hitler, Mao etc. were all military based dictatorships who preached (though perhaps poorly practiced, or misinterpreted) Marxist ideas.

> It's an interesting correlation, but within those organizations there does at least seem to be some elememts of meritocracy involved. Although, Stalin, Hitler, Mao etc. were all military based dictatorships who preached (though perhaps poorly practiced, or misinterpreted) Marxist ideas.

I think meritocracy can be a by-word for negative discrimination, for enforcing conformity and disempowerment. "They must stay a developer because they're good at it; they must remain a welder because they're fast".. few can change to explore whether they're a good or crap manager or artist without serious negative QoL impacts/risks. Meritocracy is hierarchy's whip.

I think the preach/practice dichotomy is worthy of deeper unpacking. In my limited experience, practicing collective ownership is hard and takes skills, willpower and expectations we're not readily taught (because most of us grow up through multiple hierarchies).

Thanks for the podcast link. Bookmarked.

One of my understandings of the dangers of extreme or utopian "socialism"(communism, whatever you want to call it) is that they're not resilient to failure like this. So, an attempt to build a socialist utopia that gets usurped by dictators is one of the built in failure modes, not an exception as you put it. That doesn’t mean you can’t move in that direction or enact socialist policies just that at the extreme end this is utopian/dystopian horshoe

> So, an attempt to build a socialist utopia that gets usurped by dictators is one of the built in failure modes

Perhaps. I understand the direction you're thinking. We have two or three significant instances of that happening.

My suspicion is that it doesn't come from socialism, but from botched revolution. "The people" organised themselves into militia to prosecute a revolution. The militia benefitted from hierarchical leadership, as is the way with military process. As soon as power was taken from the previous despot, an opportunistic military leader leaped at the chance to replace the despot with themselves rather than truly ceding ownership to "the people". Maybe because the revolutionary leadership had been successful, "the people" accepted the revolutionary leaders should also be the "peacetime" leaders (plus the leaders had the military, so it's hard to argue against them). Hierarchy continued, just with a new face.