{"id":1682,"date":"2019-04-30T18:37:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T18:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2019-05-01T22:10:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T22:10:29","slug":"the-bullshit-of-autocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/2019\/04\/30\/the-bullshit-of-autocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bullshit of Autocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\nI keep thinking about the phenomenon of &#8220;reinventing the wheel&#8221; in the realm of critical writing, and I understand that the requirement of advancing in  one&#8217;s profession and of making a living, by requiring publishing, pushes one to refrain from doing scholarship or crediting previous work, and simply publishing stuff as if it were original.\n<p>\nSo, let me be up front.  I believe &#8212; regardless of what others have written about this &#8212; that placing political power in the hands of one person (autocrat) is a bad idea.  The only exception is that of past warfare, where quick reactions to quickly changing conditions in battles are required.  And history of full of such military leaders.\n<p>\nBut because a &#8220;leader&#8221; is needed in conducting battles, it does not follow that a leader is needed for &#8220;ruling&#8221; a country.  As a point of illustration, Switzerland has  a 7-member Federal Council, which is the executive office. And the history of Switzerland, by comparison with other nations, has been remarkably peaceful. [I found Gregory A. Fossedal, <a href=\"https:\/\/ditext.com\/fossedal\/democracy.html\"><i>Direct Democracy in Switzerland<\/i><\/a> (2002), very enlightening.]\n<p>My speech at the Haymarket Monument, May 1, 2019, recommending a Swiss style democracy.<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xalGcvSBExM\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>\nGetting back to my main topic. Because of the many labels for one-person political rule, such as monarch, king, emperor, prince, dictator, tyrant, despot, president, chancellor, prime-minister; which carry different connotations and circumscriptions of power, I use the term &#8220;autocrat&#8221; as a generic term to include all such rulers.\n<p>\nUsing &#8220;autocrat&#8221; as a genus, we can dichotomize the species into absolute and limited.  Presidents, chancellors, and prime-ministers are forms of limited autocracy; though, as we know from case histories, that from these and even from councils or juntas, absolute autocrats arise.\n<p>\nGore Vidal discerned such a transformation of the American office of a president to something approaching an absolute autocrat, by talking about an &#8220;imperial Presidency.&#8221; Below is an interview with Gore Vidal on <i>Democracy Now<\/i> in 2004. He talks &#8212; among other things &#8212; about President George W. Bush, and the US attack on Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_CeBfn738ps\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yMrn0XIAV_M\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>\nMy scholarship on autocrats is limited. But recently I came across <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.$b47949;view=1up;seq=1\">&#8220;Juggernaut: The Path to Dictatorship&#8221;<\/a> (1939) by Albert Carr, who studied 17 dictators. Here is his table of contents:\n<p>\nPart I: Dynasts\n<br>1. Richelieu: The Technique of Dictatorship\n<br>2. Louis XIV: The Perversion of Power\n<br>3. Frederick the Great: The Nation Militant\n<br>4. Bismarck: The Diplomacy of Empire\n<br>5. Primo de Rivera: The Forlorn Hope\n<br>6. Alexander, Metaxas, Carol: Ferment in Balkans\n<p>\nPart II: Revolutionaries\n<br>7. Cromwell: The Revolutionary Process\n<br>8. Robespierre: Terrorism and Conscience \n<br>9. Bolivar: Liberator into Dictator \n<br>10. Lenin: The Science of Revolution\n<br>11. Stalin: Toward a Classless Society? \n<p>\nPart III: Crisis-Men\n<br>12. Napoleon: The Empire of the Middle Class \n<br>13. Napoleon III: The &#8220;Idea&#8221; \n<br>14. Gomez: Crisis in Latin America \n<br>15. Mussolini: The &#8220;Idea&#8221; Up to Date \n<br>16. Ataturk, Salazar: Variations on a Theme \n<br>17. Hitler: Toward the Servile State?\n<p>\nCarr was interested in asking &#8220;why, how, and when does dictatorship come about?&#8221;  That is a very interesting set of questions.  But my question is of a different sort: Do we need autocrats at all?\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I keep thinking about the phenomenon of &#8220;reinventing the wheel&#8221; in the realm of critical writing, and I understand that the requirement of advancing in one&#8217;s profession and of making a living, by requiring publishing, pushes one to refrain from doing scholarship or crediting previous work, and simply publishing stuff as if it were original. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/2019\/04\/30\/the-bullshit-of-autocracy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Bullshit of Autocracy&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bullshit-institutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}