"If communism isn't inherently authoritarian then why are all the existing communist countries so authoritarian?"
Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism:
The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The country with over 20% of the world's prison population and a highly militarised police force that routinely carries out extrajudicial killings of ethnic minorities is not ever described as "authoritarian". Somehow.
The US runs a system of 40+ slave labor camps, and have over 30k ppl in immigrant prison camps most of whom haven't committed a crime, but it's not authoritarian!!!
Whataboutism is itself a thought-terminating cliché.
From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin 'you too', term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument.
Perhaps because they take exception to characterizing all of the Actually Existing Socialisms as “authoritarian” in the first place, and I’d agree with them. It leans into “horseshoe theory” and the anticommunist Western Left’s conceptualization of “totalitarianism.”
They address this consistently and in their original texts. They start authoritarian to ensure a smooth transition as capitalism can take advantage of smaller communes. Once everyone is converted they then decentralize. Trust me bro, it'll work this time. /S
Bro please lets try communism one more time bro please I promise it will be different this time bro no I wont camp all lgbtq and genocide an entire ethnic minority bro I've changed
Ackshually there is a more peaceful communism that will totally work once everyone universally adopts it and never changes their mind or exploits its multiple inherent flaws.
the TLDR version; in WWII the Americans would look at bombers that returned to base after doing flight missions, and decided based on their damage where to add armour to future bombers. I.E. they looked at surviving planes to decide how to better protect planes, instead of looking at crashed ones.