Authoritarian socialism

Authoritarian socialism refers to a collection of political-economic systems describing themselves as socialist and rejecting the liberal democratic concepts of multi-party politics, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus and freedom of expression.

Several countries, including the Soviet Union and Maoist China have been described by journalists and scholars as Authoritarian Socialist states. However, neither state used the term 'authoritarian socialist' to describe themselves — these states declared themselves to be Proletarian or People's Democracies.

Authoritarian socialism also encompassed ideologies like Arab and African Socialism.

Authoritarian socialism is derived from the concept of "socialism-from-above." Hal Draper defined "socialism-from-above" as the philosophy which employs an elite administration to run the socialist state. The other side of socialism is a more democratic socialism-from-below. Draper viewed socialism-from-below as being the purer, more Marxist, version of socialism.Marx and Engels were devoutly opposed to any socialist institution that was “conducive to superstitious authoritarianism.” Draper makes the argument that this division echoes the division between “reformist or revolutionary, peaceful or violent, democratic or authoritarian, etc."

Draper identifies elitism as being one of the six major varieties of "socialism-from-above."

We have mentioned several cases of this conviction that socialism is the business of a new ruling minority, non-capitalist in nature and therefore guaranteed pure, imposing its own domination either temporarily (for a mere historical era) or even permanently. In either case, this new ruling class is likely to see its goal as an Education Dictatorship over the masses – to Do Them Good, of course – the dictatorship being exercised by an elite party which suppresses all control from below, or by benevolent despots or Savior-Leaders of some kind, or by Shaw's "Supermen," by eugenic manipulators, by Proudhon's "anarchist" managers or Saint-Simon's technocrats or their more modern equivalents -- with up-to-date terms and new verbal screens which can be hailed as fresh social theory as against "nineteenth-century Marxism."

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