I agree with all of this, but I will grant the "anti-authoritarians" the fact that such a situation is untenable. If we're going to have a class war, it should be expected to come paired with some form of martial law. It's wartime, after all, and the pre-existing civic institutions which served the roles of justice and the protection of civil liberties were toppled because they were deemed incapable of bringing about justice and protecting civil liberties. Things are going to get worse before they get better - but things need to get better.
I think one of the reasons "socialism in one state" generally turned out to be a failure was that it resulted in a stalemate. A permanent class war being fought through the proxy of the state which in turn required a perpetual wartime footing. This is a trap which needs to be avoided. We want fully automated luxury communism after all, not a drab landscape of Hoxhaist pillboxes and paranoia.
This is missing a material analysis though comrade
If people as smart, dedicated and brave as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hoxha, Mugabe, Ortega, Sankara and Qadaffi and the hundreds of millions of brave people that followed them all ended up in roughly the same spot something bigger is at work than "this leader is authoritarian"
What's more unless we're great man theorists then we understand that the masses sought leaders of men of steel with the caliber of the people mentioned above.
If US imperialism collapses we can indeed walk into fully automated luxury communism (and thats presupposing another power doesn't simply fill the power vacuum). But looking at Cuba, DPRK or China now who are all still on a perpetual wartime footing I think this is utopian.
I agree with all of this, but I will grant the "anti-authoritarians" the fact that such a situation is untenable. If we're going to have a class war, it should be expected to come paired with some form of martial law. It's wartime, after all, and the pre-existing civic institutions which served the roles of justice and the protection of civil liberties were toppled because they were deemed incapable of bringing about justice and protecting civil liberties. Things are going to get worse before they get better - but things need to get better.
I think one of the reasons "socialism in one state" generally turned out to be a failure was that it resulted in a stalemate. A permanent class war being fought through the proxy of the state which in turn required a perpetual wartime footing. This is a trap which needs to be avoided. We want fully automated luxury communism after all, not a drab landscape of Hoxhaist pillboxes and paranoia.
This is missing a material analysis though comrade
If people as smart, dedicated and brave as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hoxha, Mugabe, Ortega, Sankara and Qadaffi and the hundreds of millions of brave people that followed them all ended up in roughly the same spot something bigger is at work than "this leader is authoritarian"
What's more unless we're great man theorists then we understand that the masses sought leaders of men of steel with the caliber of the people mentioned above.
If US imperialism collapses we can indeed walk into fully automated luxury communism (and thats presupposing another power doesn't simply fill the power vacuum). But looking at Cuba, DPRK or China now who are all still on a perpetual wartime footing I think this is utopian.