Authoritarian Socialism

Authoritarian Socialism or State Socialism refers to an effort to build a socialist society that differs from libertarian socialists on four main areas:

• The state's role in history is viewed completely differently. For authoritarian socialists, the state was a product of class divisions which emerged alongside the development of agriculture and cannot be gotten rid of in the short run without having huge side effects which would destroy socialism. Whereas libertarian socialists view the state as an independent entity that accumulates power on its own will and predates class.
• Decisions are not to be made via popular assemblies and regional confederations, but instead through a one-party dictatorship with little to no input from the general public. According to authoritarian socialists, this is necessary to maintain the organizational efficiency necessary to defend socialism from counter-revolutionaries and warmongering capitalists.
• Industry is to be nationalized and operated according to the will of the state. Industry may have some degree of workers' self-management, as in Yugoslavia. This is done in order to ensure the most effective use of resources towards building socialism.
• Dissent is to be harshly punished in order to create a stable and harmonious society and to protect the gains made for workers.

Applications

It is no secrete that authoritarian socialism has been tried many more times and on much larger scales than libertarian socialism, these are the results of those experiments.

China

China became the largest experiment in authoritarian socialism after their revolution in 1949.

Cuba

Cuba became one of the most famous and successful examples of authoritarian socialism in 1959, after the Cuban Revolution against US and Mafia-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Cuba's socialism is ongoing, and has since implemented a degree of direct democracy and is beginning to see the creation of worker cooperatives across the country.

Iraq

See Also: Ba'athist Iraq

Zambia

In 1964, Zambia was granted independence from the British Empire as part of decolonisation. The ideology of African Socialism was adopted, building an economy based around central planning and nationalisation modeled of Julius Nyerere's policies in Tanzania as well as building relations with China and Yugoslavia. In 1972 Zambia became a dictatorship, banning all political parties and firing dissidents in the government. The policies of import substitution worked until 1975, where the economy contracted by 30% between 1975 and 1990. This was because copper prices fell due to the USSR flooding the market, leading Zambia to take on loans from the IMF and World Bank, leading to the imposition of Structural Adjustments.

Zambia also allied itself with anti-colonial movements in Africa, allowing ANC members from South Africa to take shelter in the country, leading to occasional raids by South African special forces. The Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army had a military base in the country, and shot down two civilian airlines with USSR supplied heat-seeking missiles. This led to the closing of Zambia's borders, leading to electricity and food shortages as refugees poured into the country from Angola. Zambia abandoned its leftist outlook following an economic crisis in the 1980s and democratised in 1990.

Criticism

The main criticism of authoritarian socialism advanced by libertarian socialists are:

• The authoritarian socialist conception of the state is based on outdated or misleading historical data. More recent evidence shows that the state emerged long before class divisions, and is usually based on factors such as religious worship.
• If decision-making power is not distributed among the population, it will create a small elite isolated from the consequences of their actions who will quickly become consumed by greed and paranoia, violently maintaining their control over the population and ultimately reinstating capitalism to ensure their own wealth and power.
• The belief that hierarchical organizations are more efficient that non-hierarchical ones is conflicting with existing evidence, especially within the military, where decentralized forces frequently defeat centralized ones despite having access to inferior equipment, knowledge and army size.
• Nationalization of industry or limited workers' self-management only creates a bitter and alienated workforce, who may begin to sympathize strongly with far-right anti-communist ideas.