Memes

Unless those leaders are capitalists, apparently, in which case you consider stopping them from controlling our lives to be "authoritarian"

If you’re willing to do something about that wish, then you’re an authoritarian too.

And FWIW, casting it in personal terms makes that wish tautological. No one wishes for a system where they have to cater to the whims of someone else. I’m sure you meant to say “no one has to cater to anyone else’s whims,” and that’s all well and good. Still authoritarian if you’re willing to see anything at all done to overcome the desires of the powerful to maintain the status quo (and in case it’s not obvious, that’s a good thing to be authoritarian about).

The CIA, in an internal memo never meant to be released, made it clear that Stalin was not a dictator and that leadership was collective.

The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.