While I don't particularly agree with the example you've given, the idea is correct. In order to have any kind of system (especially at its inception), you need to have authoritarianism of some sort, and in the modern liberal democratic countries, this authoritarianism is in the form of the law and police, who protect private property so capitalists can do their thing.

When it comes to socialism, in almost every case it was done via a military dictatorship, and it's rather hard to tell if this was done because everyone was copying the big 'socialist' countries like soviet union or china, or if dictatorships are the most practical way to do so. With dictatorships there's a substantial risk of putting someone in power who's just an opportunist and wants all the power above all else like Stalin, or having a party that doesn't really care to bring on communism and it turns into oligarchy.

However, it's not all dictators - Paris Commune was a revolution that had the dictatorship of proletariat, as in the dictator was the working class, and while it failed, it definitely was on the right track, at least in my opinion. You minimize the risks of having a singular dictator, but to succeed you need to have the majority of people on board with the idea, which is a tall order especially today where any talk of socialism is met by misinformed skepticism and years of anti-communist propaganda by the liberal democracy world.