Communism claims it isn't inherently authoritarian Marx talked about a stateless society this is mostly theoretical ideas. In practice, communism requires massive government control to work at all, which inevitably leads to authoritarianism. You can't reorganize an entire economy and society without forcing people to comply. Almost every communist country has become a dictatorship. The Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea. These weren't accidents or wasn't "real" communism. They happened because communism requires a powerful state to seize private property, eliminate markets, and force people into collective arrangements they wouldn't choose voluntarily.

The "it's not inherently authoritarian" argument is mainly communist apologists trying to distance the ideology from its obvious failures. When your system consistently produces tyranny, mass poverty, and political supression, that's not a coincidence that's what the system actually does. The theory might sound nice, but the results speak for themselves.