Unfortunately, a corrupt autocracy with a strategy seems more likely to win the capitalist arms race than a wealthy but feckless democracy. It’s only slightly ironic that said autocracy calls itself communist.

Functioning democracies are inherently authoritarian. The simplistic, textbook definition of dictatorship, which in the West is generally used to define the foreign other, has no basis in reality.

This vision holds because it presupposes that the only thing people care about is political freedom, when in reality there can only ever be one political class and political freedom is largely about some other political class trying to take control because the current system doesn't favour them in some way.

Western democracies, at their worst, have a largely permanent political class who is elected every year under the pretext of democratic legitimacy. Eastern dictatorshpis, at their best, have a government that is continuously rotated to ensure competent implementation gaining legitimacy from delivery.

Both are contextual and the position along the autocracy axis largely depends on implementation. Whether people can actually vote is irrelevant (Europe is generally one of the worst examples of this, elections constantly, most election produce governments that polls under 20% within months...it is very strange that people call this democracy).