Just as capitalist states are "authoritarian" against working class interests, socialist states are "authoritarian" against capitalist interests.

The state is a tool for one class to oppress another. The goal of (most) communists is to transition from capitalism — where the capitalist class is in power — to a stateless, classless communist society via socialism — where the working class is in power.

Public perception of which is more "authoritarian" therefore depends on which class is currently in power and is able to manufacture consent, and that is the capitalist class in the vast majority of the world right now since the USSR's overthrow.

• What is "Authoritarianism"?

With the USSR overthrown, virtually all mainstream media now is capitalist propaganda. And the capitalist class obviously would not want the working class to prefer a system where workers are in power.

Because we live in a capitalist society where capitalists control our media and education. Back in the fifties, you’d be jailed or even killed for being a communist (or gay) in the United States of America. Why do we view this as any less authoritarian than the USSR? Because it’s our past.

When slaves rise up and throw the master out of the house they built, the master's first instinct is to gather his friends and and crush the uprising before it's example can inspire others. If the former slaves want to keep their freedom, and if they don't want their sacrifices to have been for nothing, they need to secure the house, and quickly.

In 1917, the people of Russia cast off their feudal monarch. In 1918, America and nine other countries invaded Russia to fight for the czar, to crush the worker's uprising and restore the monarch to the throne. They don't teach us about it in school.

Here's a 2 minute bop set to a Parenti lecture that covers this. The basic fact is that a capitalist empire will never willingly surrender control of an exploitable land where labor and resources can be had for cheap or free, not without a fight. The lecture is at least 30 years old now, but has only gotten more prescient with the genocidal crackdown in Palestine against a liberation movement that threatens America's ability to control the region's trade through it's military outpost of Isreal. To make it even more relevant, there are communist groups like the PFLP fighting the IOF in Palestine at this very moment-this is all very much one struggle against economic imperialism, and against colonialism.

Just as an aside, we here in the capitalist west are authoritarian as fuck lol, we've just structured our systems of exploitation in such a way that it looks like a million separate companies fucking you over instead of an entire economic model fucking everyone over (and enforced at gunpoint), which is what it is.

one of my favorite takes on this subject is from This Soviet World by Anna Louise Strong:

Isn't that generally said by countries that oppose them?

The land of the less authoritarian had race discrimination until half a century ago, right? Seeing the BLM, it seems to have a prominent role even now. So are they any better?

They aren't?

Americans live in an authoritarian plutocracy, but refuse to believe it

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Because of who controls the presses in capitalist countries.

Because authority carried out under the pretenses of private property is whitewashed in liberal states, who are the ones in your question doing the "considering".

because capitalists have to lie about reality to preserve their ill gotten gains.

From Losurdo - A critique of the category of totalitarianism:

Nowadays we constantly hear denunciations, directed toward Islam, of ‘religious totalitarianism’ or of the ‘new totalitarian enemy that is terrorism’. The language of the Cold War has reappeared with renewed vitality, as confirmed by the warning that American Senator Joseph Lieberman has issued to Saudi Arabia: beware the seduction of Islamic totalitarianism, and do not let a ‘theological iron curtain’ separate you from the Western world.

Even though the target has changed, the denunciation of totalitarianism continues to function with perfect efficiency as an ideology of war against the enemies of the Western world. And this ideology justifies the violation of the Geneva Convention, the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the embargo and collective punishment inflicted upon the Iraqis and other peoples, and the further torment perpetrated against the Palestinians. The struggle against totalitarianism serves to legitimate and transfigure the total war against the ‘barbarians’ who are alien to the Western world.

It's simple to label a government as "authoritarian" just because they have things called "laws" that prevent you from exploiting their people. Likewise, it's convenient to repeatedly tell your citizens that distant, non-English-speaking countries are "authoritarian." The truth is, for every Westerner who can afford to travel and verify these claims, a million others will just accept what the media tells them. They'll even go on to reinforce these narratives, despite having no firsthand experience or direct connection to these places.

Projection of the contradiction of capital, capitalists states only allow freedom to those that can pay and has the illusion of free choice only when it comes to consumption.

Exclusively based on vibes and lies/media presentation. It's just manufactured concensus, we teach 9 year Olds that it's freedom VS authoritarian capitalism VS communism

It's just bullshit, capitalist countries are authoritarian as fuck

Authoritarian is usually code for when white people don't rule a country

Because propaganda works

Because mass media, manufactured consent, and regulatory capture are the “good” kind of coercion.

Because our bourgeois state propaganda and corporate media tell us that they are, because it’s in their best interest that we believe it.

I see a lot of comments saying they aren't. I'd disagree, but I agree they don't have to be. The issue is most of the major powers in the world have opposed leftist governments anytime they show up. The ones that didn't have a strong central power and cultural hegymony collapsed under the pressure. Any nation that had a weaker central power was either destroyed, couped, or undermined by the west.

There is nothing intrinsically authoritarian about leftism (really, I'd say it's less authoritarian in it's ideals), but authoritarianism is easier to hold together when outside pressures are trying to destroy you.

I could say that bourgeois ownership of media and academia and the state means that those institutions will represent the biases and interests of the bourgeoisie, and so people in first-world capitalist countries end up living in a sort of self-propagating anti-communist media bubble; but the thing about propaganda is that people are rarely ever truly "tricked" by it, propaganda is always most effective when it reinforces something that someone already believes on some level.

This is why the second part to building anti-communist sentiment has to do with super-exploitation, imperialism, and the labor aristocracy. This is to say, workers in first-world capitalist countries are materially invested in capitalism, through various perks and "treats" that workers of "poorer" countries are deprived of. By being materially invested in capitalism, workers of the first world are primed to take on a sort of "bourgeois mindset", as it were.

There's more that can be said, too, I'd strongly recommend listening to this speech by the leader of Revolutionary Grenada, Maurice Bishop, but I think that's a good start...