456
Commie Blocs
(lemmy.nz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
456 points (91.5% liked)
Memes
57176 readers
435 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Capitalists aren't going to let you abolish their rule without an organized violence that they will tell others is "authoritarian".
You mean a revolution? In that case, I can agree with all but the very last word.
"Authoritarian" is (generally speaking) a word used to describe governments' usage of violence or other means to either establish or maintain rule over their populace.
The capitalist class (or, more generally speaking speaking, the powerful elite) will more often use terms like "barbarians," "rioters," or similar language. They will reserve the word "authoritarian" as a separate method of propaganda to go to war with countries they want to steal natural resources from or to otherwise invade to expand their empire, though I'm not a historian by any means, so the idea of "regieme change" might be a bit newer than I'm thinking.
So all governments
That's just every government. The word is completely meaningless using your definition, you can just say "state" or "government" or "regime".
“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”
― Frederick Engels
Is there a real world example of the bourgeois specifically calling revolutionairies authoritarian, or is that limited to theory?
Yes, see basically every revolution, but look at Cuba for a prime example
Cuba, China, Vietnam, USSR, DPRK, Soviet Afghanistan (The one where women weren't slaves, which the US overthrew in favour of poppy-growing pedophiles), East Germany, Nelson Mandela, Venezuela, Chile, the list goes on. Similarly: Countries that do not have governments, they have "regimes". They do not have Vice-presidents or deputies, they have "hand-picked successors".
Western media regularly calls China and DPRK authoritarian.
Those are governments/countries and not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an organization of people attempting a revolution on their own government.
Oh, they cultivate anarchists domestically to do that.
Define what you mean by anarchist, because we may have very different definitions of the word.
When I say anarchist, I mean those who believe in the philosophical ideals of anarchism, which could manifest in many different forms, but all have one common thread, being having the ideal of the abolition of heirarchy in society (which makes something like AnCap not anarchy despite its name).
Yup, that's the definition.