So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.

That's a popular view, promoted most by Troskyists and Orwell.

That said, the original bullshit of dissolving the Soviets by the claim the Party was the voice of the people was actually done by . . . Trotsky.

By my understanding, the left seeks to diffuse political power as widely and evenly as possible, while the right seeks to consolidate it.

No, that discounts the Auth-Left, who consolidates power in the form of a Vanguard Party and/or autocrat.

Communism works only if there’s a mechanism to assure that the command economy actually serves the public and not the political class. So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.

It was authoritarian before that, but Stalin was definitely the cherry on top.

The rest of your comment is true; capitalists have an extensive history of installing pro-capitalist dictatorships.

This is why I don’t understand what Tankies are, unless they’re to the left what Christian Nationalists are to Christianity.

To me, a "tankie" is more or less the Auth-Left, more or less a Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist, in the sense that they believe that as long as the goal is ostensibly some form of socialism (or "socialism"), no amount of brutality, cruelty, or immorality can be too far.

On lemmy.world, they hail from @lemmy.ml 99% of the time, and you'll see them doing mental gymnastics to defend Russia's invasion of Ukraine and denying things like the Holodomor and the Uyghur genocide. You'll also see them making moves to take down the USA rather than reform it for the better, no matter how many people suffer and die in the process. There's a lot of overlap with accelerationism in my opinion, as I suspect a lot of the people in this thread and others are trying to convince people the DNC isn't worth voting for because it will help the GOP win, bringing on a second US civil war and/or a massive and bloody world-wide class-war/revolution, killing millions or even billions but possibly resulting in a socialist government faster.

Tankies will claim that any non-tankie slaps "tankie" on any socialist or communist, but that's not true for any reasonable person, hopefully myself included.

Surprising no one, the tankies were very upset by being described here, including one whom I've blocked that replied something below.

Go ahead, ask them if Russia's invasion of Ukraine is imperialist or if China's oppression of the Uyghurs is a genocide, and watch the definition of "imperialism" and "genocide" change before your very eyes.

The common theme is "as long as it somehow opposes western capitalism, nothing can be immoral."