BobKKKindle$
18th August 2009, 16:57
I think that Marxists and the radical left in general need to problematize and critique the problem of dictatorship as it is understood in mainstream political discourse - a political system under which power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual or family to the extent that the individual who holds the position of dictator is able to make decisions and change the functioning of the society over which they rule without encountering viable opposition from other political actors or groups outside the formal confines of the political system, insofar as those groups are allowed to exist. This concept is closely linked to the broader concept of totalitarianism, closely associated with Arendt's work, which is used to describe societies in which the state exercises hegemonic control over all aspects of life, including the dissemination of ideology, with no meaningful limits to state authority. This is not merely an interesting subject from the viewpoint of political analysis but is also important for practical reasons, two in particular - firstly imperialist states are increasingly resorting to the concept of a historic and global clash between democratic governments and dictators in order to justify their interventions in countries that contain economic interests, and secondly the notion that a country being a dictatorship makes it fundamentally different from a country that is also capitalist but involves elements of democracy is a notion that is visible even amongst left-wing activists, who have traditionally questioned the compatibility of class division and democracy, and asserted that capitalist democracies merely obscure the reality of bourgeois class rule. This notion is what can only be described as a liberal argument that needs to be exposed and eradicated if the left is to maintain its materialist analysis of how capitalism operates and impacts the political sphere.
I would argue that the concept of a dictatorship is at odds with political reality because even when it appears that a single individual is in a position of hegemony that individual's autonomy as a political leader will always be structurally constrained by the imperatives of the economic system on which they depend. "Depend" is the right word to use here because that leader's ability to maintain their own material privileges as well as to ensure that the state has sufficient resources to maintain control of the working population requires that the economy is producing a basic level of output and has not suffered total collapse, and this in turn requires that the demands of that economic system, i.e. the demands of those who hold economic power by owning and controlling the means of production, be acknowledged and addressed. For this reason it is wrong to assume that a leader is capable of defying the interests of the whole or a large section of the ruling class for any extended period of time regardless of whether that leader's subjective views and preferences are the same as those of the ruling class. This is true not merely of regimes where there is a formal separation of politics and economics, that is, where the means of production are owned privately, but also of state-capitalist regimes, as even in these cases where one might expect political leaders to exercise greater control, those responsible for managing the economy at a local level - managers and technocrats - are capable of calling on those responsible for carrying out state violence (i.e. the military, who constitute a further group whose interests must be acknowledged if the center is to retain power, of special importance in societies where the military is given great importance both in terms of the allocation of material resources and its apparent role as a source of virtue and protector of the nation's sovereignty, as in the DPRK - if anything addressing the demands of the military is more important in state-capitalist societies than market-capitalist societies due to the greater convergence of the state and the economy exhibited in the former) and jointly opposing the decisions of the center. In addition to the role of economic constraints, it could also be argued that a further form of dependence that undermines the utility of the concept of dictatorship is dependence in terms of information flows, as any leader will always depend on being given information by their immediate colleagues and subordinates in order to formulate policy and safeguard against potential rivalry, thereby giving these colleagues and subordinates the ability to regulate what information is given and how it is presented in a way that allows their own interests to be furthered. A useful example to demonstrate this might be the functioning of Chinese politics (China being a society that many liberals would regard as a dictatorship) during the Great Leap Forward when the manipulation of data concerning agricultural yields that was being given to the center by regional bodies had an impact on Mao's handling of the execution of that policy.
It's worth pointing out that criticism of the concept of dictatorship and the totalitarianism model is by no means the exclusive preserve of Marxists. There have been criticisms of this concept even in relation to a regime that might seem to be a classic example of a dictatorship - Nazi Germany, through the "weak dictator" thesis, as oppossed to the view that characterizes Hitler as "master of the Third Reich". Mommsen has argued that the one thing that Hitler did not like was administration, and making difficult decisions – this has led historians and political scientists to see Hitler as an example of a weak dictator. He preferred to set up different groups against each other and see which one would emerge as the strongest. For example, the problem of steel allocation was never solved, and this generated a pressure for escalation and expansion, with war becoming the solution to the problem that preparation for war has created. These weaknesses in the Nazi regime has led to attacks on the totalitarian model, and the rise of the polycratic model, which sees non-democratic societies as having multiple nodes and centers of power, and structuralist historians such as Mommsen and Broszat have suggested that Hitler was actually just a propagandist. I however would go further than this in arguing that the weakness of the concept of dictatorship depends not on how particular leaders act but on the fundamental nature of the relationship between politics and economics, in terms of the constraints the latter imposes on the former.
In conclusion it's important that Marxists do not accept the bourgeois concept of a dictatorship. We recognize that dictatorships do exist but only in the form of class dictatorships that do not depend on single individuals but operate through the distribution of ownership and control over economic resources. If you are going to criticize a country like Cuba don't do so on the grounds that you think it's a dictatorship - do so on the grounds that its a country where the ruling class is not the proletariat but a bureaucracy, of which Raul Castro is merely the foremost representative.
I would argue that the concept of a dictatorship is at odds with political reality because even when it appears that a single individual is in a position of hegemony that individual's autonomy as a political leader will always be structurally constrained by the imperatives of the economic system on which they depend. "Depend" is the right word to use here because that leader's ability to maintain their own material privileges as well as to ensure that the state has sufficient resources to maintain control of the working population requires that the economy is producing a basic level of output and has not suffered total collapse, and this in turn requires that the demands of that economic system, i.e. the demands of those who hold economic power by owning and controlling the means of production, be acknowledged and addressed. For this reason it is wrong to assume that a leader is capable of defying the interests of the whole or a large section of the ruling class for any extended period of time regardless of whether that leader's subjective views and preferences are the same as those of the ruling class. This is true not merely of regimes where there is a formal separation of politics and economics, that is, where the means of production are owned privately, but also of state-capitalist regimes, as even in these cases where one might expect political leaders to exercise greater control, those responsible for managing the economy at a local level - managers and technocrats - are capable of calling on those responsible for carrying out state violence (i.e. the military, who constitute a further group whose interests must be acknowledged if the center is to retain power, of special importance in societies where the military is given great importance both in terms of the allocation of material resources and its apparent role as a source of virtue and protector of the nation's sovereignty, as in the DPRK - if anything addressing the demands of the military is more important in state-capitalist societies than market-capitalist societies due to the greater convergence of the state and the economy exhibited in the former) and jointly opposing the decisions of the center. In addition to the role of economic constraints, it could also be argued that a further form of dependence that undermines the utility of the concept of dictatorship is dependence in terms of information flows, as any leader will always depend on being given information by their immediate colleagues and subordinates in order to formulate policy and safeguard against potential rivalry, thereby giving these colleagues and subordinates the ability to regulate what information is given and how it is presented in a way that allows their own interests to be furthered. A useful example to demonstrate this might be the functioning of Chinese politics (China being a society that many liberals would regard as a dictatorship) during the Great Leap Forward when the manipulation of data concerning agricultural yields that was being given to the center by regional bodies had an impact on Mao's handling of the execution of that policy.
It's worth pointing out that criticism of the concept of dictatorship and the totalitarianism model is by no means the exclusive preserve of Marxists. There have been criticisms of this concept even in relation to a regime that might seem to be a classic example of a dictatorship - Nazi Germany, through the "weak dictator" thesis, as oppossed to the view that characterizes Hitler as "master of the Third Reich". Mommsen has argued that the one thing that Hitler did not like was administration, and making difficult decisions – this has led historians and political scientists to see Hitler as an example of a weak dictator. He preferred to set up different groups against each other and see which one would emerge as the strongest. For example, the problem of steel allocation was never solved, and this generated a pressure for escalation and expansion, with war becoming the solution to the problem that preparation for war has created. These weaknesses in the Nazi regime has led to attacks on the totalitarian model, and the rise of the polycratic model, which sees non-democratic societies as having multiple nodes and centers of power, and structuralist historians such as Mommsen and Broszat have suggested that Hitler was actually just a propagandist. I however would go further than this in arguing that the weakness of the concept of dictatorship depends not on how particular leaders act but on the fundamental nature of the relationship between politics and economics, in terms of the constraints the latter imposes on the former.
In conclusion it's important that Marxists do not accept the bourgeois concept of a dictatorship. We recognize that dictatorships do exist but only in the form of class dictatorships that do not depend on single individuals but operate through the distribution of ownership and control over economic resources. If you are going to criticize a country like Cuba don't do so on the grounds that you think it's a dictatorship - do so on the grounds that its a country where the ruling class is not the proletariat but a bureaucracy, of which Raul Castro is merely the foremost representative.