196

Look at Indonesia in 1965–66 to see what happens to peaceful communists. Or Chile in 73. They’re rounded up and slaughtered by US-backed fascists. The reason ML theory prescribes a period of authoritarianism is to defend against this.

But power being spread among the people doesn't mean there's no rules or organisation, just because you work in a communist run flour mill doesn't mean you can piss in the flour.

So we get into structure issues, we can all vote on if pissing in the flour should be allowed and what the punishment should be for doing it - this is the difference between communism and anarchy, literally living without a ruler Vs living in commune under shared values.

We dont all want to spend all day voting on what we can piss on so we could theoretically vote for a representative we like to do that for us - if all the local villages did that the representatives could all get together and debate and vote somewhere but to stop everyone talking over each other you'd want a secretary so they could vote for one and if the secretaries all got together for a regional or national meeting they would want a secretary too...

It would be natural to expect these people to act in the best interest of the people without ruining and asking everyone to vote on every little thing but of course they're not going to be acting in the best interests of the flour pissers - from the flour pissers perspective if the top secretary passes a bill to say no flour pissing then they're a big bad authoritarian.

(And don't confuse dictator with authoritarian, they're not synonyms)

That's entirely secondary to whether people get called communists. If everyone calls them communists, including themselves, it's ultimately futile to try to call them anything else.