Hist 2c, L 15: Authoritarian Governments
by Prof. H. Marcuse, May 20, 2003

Question: What is the most effective way to quickly modernize a state or society?
Short answer: Tight control in the hands of an authoritarian leader.

• Concepts: violence
• Examples: authoritarian rule over the centuries

Last Time

• Not by reform from above (alone) (Turkey)
• Violence only as counterviolence (suffrage)
• Education (changing ideas) of elite only is not enough
• The affected groups have to fight for it themselves (suffragettes vs. women in Turkey)
• Marx: People are only moved to fight when the economic conditions are right

Pros and cons of violence

• terror (from "above" and "below")
• "structural" (institutional, legal)

• As a tool of those in power
  Examples:
• As a tool of those seeking power
  Examples: (Emmeline: Men understand only…)

Does violence beget violence?

Film clip: Russia 1900-1995

• Military parade of the early 1980s
• World War I: Germans let Lenin back
• Lenin followed by Stalin:
  "socialism in one country"
• WW2: 1940 Russo-Finnish War,
  June '41 Germans
• Khruschev in 1950s-60s (Cuba, JFK)
• 1956 Hungary, 1968 Czech, Poland, …, Afghanistan
• 1989 pulling down Berlin Wall
• Gorbachev, Yeltsin, George Bush I, Saddam Hussein

• subjection to authority vs. individual freedom
• When can individual freedom be guaranteed? Conditions:

1. Economic Security
2. International Security
3. Democratic Institutions

• Exercise of authority depends on the nature of society (customs, "culture"), and the world-historical stage
  (Th. Kuhn's paradigm theory: appropriate match)

• "L'état, c'est moi"
  (The state, that's me)
  state=ruler
• The king is above the law ("legibus solutus")

• Enlightenment: democracy
• French Rev.: nationalism
• new social classes

• "It is with trinkets that mankind is governed"
• supported by rural conservatives AND urban "liberals" (old sense)
  (against industrial "proletariat")
• Inverts absolutism & democracy
  approval by plebiscite; no constr.
• bur. modernization "from above"

• Industrialization: revolutions in transportation, production, communication, administration
• Ideas: Social Darwinism
  (race theory of societies)

• "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" (people=state=leader)
• Leader with MASS PARTY following
• Everything subordinate to goal
• Attempt to control all aspects of life:
  private (what people think) and public

• int'l markets (Great Depr.)
• atomic age
• biological and e-revolutions

• Squadristi: terror squads of the fascio di combattimento (1920) (Roman symbol: bundle of rods)
• March on Rome, Oct. 26, 1922

• Socialists (Sozialisten): Sozis
  (Reichsbanner: National flag)
  National-soc.: Nazis
• SA: Sturm-abteilung: storm division
  party roughneck squads
• SS: Schutz-staffel: protective form.
  Hitler's personal bodyguard (at 1^st)

• "Socialism in one country"
• rapid industrialization