Is Socialism a Dictatorship?

What’s with this new notion of “democratic socialism?” Doesn’t socialism require some sort of authoritarian control to redistribute people’s stuff? Conservative Review’s Matt Kibbe looks at the foundations of socialist thought to explain whether socialism can be truly democratic.

Source: Conservative Review YouTube channel.

Transcript:

I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea of democratic socialism. I'm not trying to make fun of it, I'm trying to understand the difference between the old socialism, the "government controls the means of production" socialism, and this new democratic version. So of course I went back to the original doctrine: Socialism, as conceived of by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

They had this phrase called: "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." And in their world, there was going to be power, there was going to be authoritarian control. And they were fighting against the bourgeoisie, the moneyed class, the capitalists, the people that were producing all sorts of wealth and keeping it to themselves.

So what did they replace that with? A new dictatorship. Notice the word, 'dictatorship.' Because under any form of socialism, democratic or otherwise, you are going to be redistributing a lot of people's stuff, from some people to other people. If it's democratic, if it's a dictatorship of the proletariat, that means that 50.1% of the population is free to do whatever it wants as long as it has a majority. Does that mean taking stuff from 49.9% of the population? Does it mean imposing your will on other people through the monopoly power of government?

We have to assume that even democratic socialism is a form of dictatorship.