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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

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

the_other 4y ago
> 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.