this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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I have a theory that what tends to fuel authoritarianism and hierarchy is power being alloted too much in any one sphere. Like if the state becomes the only power over resources the people who are predatory are drawn to positions within it. If business and private ownership is empowered and left unchecked they end up there. It's easy to forget that predatory expansionism is not simply a feature unique to capitalism. Human greed will adapt to fit whatever system where power is allowed to aggregate making it potentially tip and fall if unbalanced.
That doesn't explain the many many many dictatorships that started out from the power vacuum caused by armed insurrectionists dismantling the former state.
Generally speaking I think that's something seperate - opportunism in the face of disaster. What you are describing occurs after power aggregation and human cupidity has tipped everything too far. What I am describing is more towards the aim of prevention measures long before that point. Power consolidation has it's enemy too which is human misery lowering the barriers to violence. You either rebalance the spinning plate before it destablizes and crashes to the ground or you get stuck with whatever shitty situation ends up as a result. Gluing things back together after the fact rarely is the better solution which is why timing is critical.
If you want a full and complete veiw of my reflectiona on history it's gunna take more than a quippy summary. Not every short post is indicitive of a full and complete veiw of someone's full political theory. It's why people write very chonky books on the subject.
No, it's not separate, you don't just get to say the leading cause of authoritarian states is a separate thing from the causes of authoritatian states.
That would be like claiming heart disease isn't really what kills people, that's just cholesterol finding opportunities for people to die.
They are different authoritarian states. There isn't a one size fits all situation. An authoritarian state that comes before a state failure tends to exist using pre-established powers. Either nobility/premogenitor culture, liquid asset wealth, theocracy, assumption and exploitation of the mechanics of statehood - that kind of thing.
Once one of those crashes due to revolt you start dealing with new powers. Cult of personality militias which offer easy solutions to quelling the chaos. Your Napoleons, Cromwells and Stalins who just slip in and recreate old inequities. Or can become a civil war of factions and warlords fighting over scraps. They work on slightly different dynamics.
To my mind hierarchy to a certain extent is desired by a lot of people. There is a comfort knowing where you fit and an alleviation of anxiety in being told by someone you trust what to do and knowing that you have someone below you. Oftentimes when power is in disarray it congregates around people who just talk a good game. The danger I think of spreading power too thin is that if there isn't some kind of structure people seem to like to default to very basic heirachies based on tribalistic notions and their preconceived notions of what power looks like.
Cope
Good point. Appreciate the insight
This. I want a shift towards socialism not because I think socialism is perfect but because change is good. Our system, whether it's capitalism, crony capitalism or some other term I'm too stupid to know, is stagnant.
I mean what people often get wrong about Socialism is that you have to 100% adopt every kind of publicly held property to be a socialist. It comes in a lot of different forms some of which we take for granted as normal. One has to remember that the guy who coined the phrase was writing from perspective a hundred years before things like socialized medicine, municipal fire and waste services were an idea. Private sector was practically everything and most places were still high on very extreme early versions of assistance like workhouse systems. There's a lot of writing that has been done in the interm regarding socialism but the basics are always to empower the sphere of publicly held wealth. It's easy to get disenchanted with something that's out of control and easy to forget that there are strengths in that system too. What determines the weed in the garden is sometimes just the thing that needs more pruning than other plants.