this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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I agree that there are a lot of revolutions ending up way more totalitarian than planned.
I'm not sure there are hundreds of them that had communism or a stateless society as a goal though. Many military dictatorships had a military dictatorship as a goal after all. But of course there were also many who had that goal, and failed on a huge scale.
There were more revolutions than just the Zapatistas that seemed to be promising though, like the Spanish Revolution and the the Makhnovshchina.
You are right, of course, that most revolutions don't have communism as their goal.
But all successful ones lead to totalitarian states.
I find it difficult to judge the Zapatistas, same as the Spanish Revolution and the Makhovshchina, since they all nevever matured (or in the chase of the Zapatistas haven't matured yet).
Generally speaking, during a revolution, the revolutionists (is that a word?) promise the people everything, because they need to gather support. Once they have driven out the old power/government and actually control the area, they usually tend to shift. This pattern occurs not only for communist revolutions, but for all types of revolution.
Generally speaking "Support me becoming a totalitarian dictator" isn't really a good rallying call.
I'm not saying it can't happen, only that it consistently hasn't happened so far.