I'm going to give a Marxist economic explanation for why Communist countries don't implement basic things like direct democracy at all levels, freedom of speech, freedom of association/assembly etc.
It's important to have a scientific understanding of why these countries are the way they are. Blanket denunciation of authoritarianism is not enlightening and won't prevent us from repeating the mistakes.
So basically, socialism is about abolishing money and commodity-production. As long as money exists, you can use money to command labour. As long as the state is the source of money, the state can simply print money and exploit people by taking their labour using the free printed money. All communist countries do/did this.
Another source of exploitation is subjective prices. As long as prices are subjectively set by the state through price controls (rather than objectively calculated using labor-time), it's very easy to set up imaginary prices that don't reflect the true amount of work put in by the workers. All communist countries do/did this.
As long as money exists, the salaries are also subjective. Unproductive bureaucrats can pay themselves well without doing any productive labor. The bureaucrats form a pseudo-class that protects its own material interests, which are now directly opposed to the working class.
As long as money exists, you will have a black market. The capitalist mode of exchange can be reintroduced very easily, by simply stealing from factories or shops and reselling. By the 1980s, the USSR had a gigantic shadow economy run by secret black market millionaires who paid off the bureaucrats.
As long as subjective prices are used, it is very difficult to accurately and efficiently plan the economy. If prices do not reflect their labor content as they do in capitalist economies, then it's not possible to decide which investment is truly cheaper. Hence, plans were based on crude quantitative planning of "this many cars" or "that many shirts", rather than financial planning that minimized total labor cost. Financial planning is only possible with objective prices.
The suppression of wages ( made possible as no objective measure of value is used) turns the Communist countries into "sweatshop economies" like those in Africa or Asia. Cheap labor provides an incentive to hoard labor for production rather than removing labor through mechanization, which is what would happen if labor is expensive. This removed a major incentive for economic growth.
Lessons learnt :
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Communist countries did not abolish exploitation. DRILL this into the head of every single ML or Tankie. They did NOT end exploitation. This is an objective fact.
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The economic base (exploitation) creates the superstructure ( police state, suppression). There is no practical reason to maintain a police state when exploitation doesn't exist.
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Ideally you must abolish money and commodity-production. Replace with labor-vouchers.
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If step 1 is not yet possible/feasible, at least still ensure that prices are objectively calculated based on labor-time, rather than subjectively set through price controls or subsidies. This can be done either by markets("market socialism"), parecon, Lange model etc.
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The authoritarianism is officially justified through the siege mentality of capitalist oppression and counterrevolution. This is a bad faith argument especially for nuclear armed USSR and NK, who will ever invade a nuclear armed state?
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Communist countries implemented gun control. This is best and clearest sign of the nature of these states. If there was no exploitation and no classes, why was the state afraid of arming the people?
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However, it is still a real fact that capturing and retaining power is not an easy task, and that hierarchical organizations have been more successful at this. Anarchists have not yet proven by practice that they are capable of capturing and holding power.
Yeah, but who makes the decision? If it’s government body - it implies existence of state, if it’s directly democratic - it may leave small minorities by wayside, and completely disconnected from human nature, people wouldn’t vote directly every day on small stuff, and will get annoyed.
They really don’t, but maybe in ideal society where needs are met they will, shrug.
They don’t support it though when material benefits are there, if you ask like whole ass country depending on gas/oil, they’ll happily vote for continuation (look at usa/russia/norway).
But if you can transfer vouchers between two people without destruction (as it by necessity is needed, as if it’s not vouchers, it would be seashells with the wrong clockwise direction or whatever as a currency). You sell food as one on one exchange, also for second currency, if vouchers are destroyed between two people, and hoard them.
But yeah, maybe that scheme is fixable if shortages can be solved extremely quickly logistically, so the potential benefit is very fleeting.
How do you think decisions are made in our present society? It involves a complex process of discussions and negotiations with multiple stakeholders. The exact mechanics of planning is not something I want to go into in detail, but I really don't understand what's the issue here that is specific to planning. A state would definitely still exist in a socialist society, and direct democracy is not incompatible with a state.
"Americans broadly favor government funding for medical and science research" - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/03/americans-broadly-favor-government-funding-for-medical-and-science-research/
Yes, because we still live under capitalism, where people make money from the oil industry. Even then, there are more Norwegians who think the oil industry should be dismantled than those who don't. There is overwhelming evidence that people support environmentalist policies today, despite the massive incentive against it due to capitalism and media manipulation. I'm having a hard time believing that with the elimination of the profit motive and consent manufacturing, people will somehow become more opposed to environmentalism.
If environmental decisions are made through direct democracy, the people working in oil and coal may vote in favor of such industries, but there are vastly more workers in other industries who suffer from its externalities and who who would vote against it.
Black markets can exist if people steal products. That's more of a problem with law and order, rather than voucher system itself. Even in a post-scarcity moneyless communist society, people can steal and hoard goods, and demand something in exchange for it.
The use of objective pricing has benefits. You can clearly tell if someone is unfairly benefiting from exchange if they try to sell something higher than its true-price. Such activity can be reported as it is both illegal and a useful indicator of shortage. If someone is selling for a lower price than true-price then either (a) they stole the product which is an issue of law and order (b) they are reselling something they already bought through official channels, which is something that is perfectly acceptable and does not reintroduce capitalist exchange relations.