The USSR was totalitarian because that is what you end up with when you follow Marx/Engels/Lenin on the way to communism. Large-scale communism is like the pot

The USSR was totalitarian because that is what you end up with when you follow Marx/Engels/Lenin on the way to communism. Large-scale communism is like the pot of gold under the rainbow, a goal which will never be reached. It can work to a certain extent on a small scale, up to the maximum number of people which a person can personally know - somewhere between 120 and 150 people. Anything more than that and communism will fail as it becomes easy for freeloaders to hitch a ride, leading to friction within society, which again will lead to 'strong men' to stand up for society and position themselves as leaders, leading to the dissolution of the classless society. Even small-scale communism - think monasteries, Quaker collectives, etc - is not really classless as there are always leaders and followers in any group of people. Communism is the right plan for the wrong species, it works wonders for ants and bees and other similar species but it fails when applied to competitive primates like us. And socialism? State socialism is supposed to be the precursor to communism according to the troika of M/E/L. It has all the disadvantages of capitalism combined with all the disadvantages of communism. Social democracy - as practised in the Sweden of the '60s - can work to a certain extent: in a homogeneous society where the population is raised with something resembling the Benedictine work moral - ora et labora - and where slacking is frowned upon by the community. It is harder to make it work in a heterogeneous society with less social control as it gets all too easy for freeloaders to parasite on the work of others which will lead to friction in society.