Different Types of Dictator
Neumann distinguishes different types of dictatorship according to the
scope of the power that they monopolize. The three types that he
distinguishes on this scale are: simple, caesaristic and totalitarian.
Simple Dictatorships use the traditional means of coercion: the army,
police, bureaucracy and judiciary.
Caesaristic Dictatorships need a popular base.
Caesar is obviously one
example, he assumed power as a dictator with the support of the Roman
populace. Another example would be
Napoleon 3rd of France.
A
Totalitarian Dictatorship is total in its control. In
particular it
controls education, communication and economic institutions. The whole of
society and the private life of the citizen is integrated into a system of
domination which, allegedly, has popular support.
Dicatorship and Democracy
"modern totalitarian dictatorships arise, almost without exception,
within and against democracies" p. 244
They use "terror" (non-calculable violence) to get into power and to remain
in power, but they also secure a "considerable identification of the
oppressed people" with its rulers. p. 245
Caesaristic or totalitarian dictatorship has become the necessary form of
dictatorship now that "democracy" has become universally the legitimating
factor of a regime.
Reasons for Dictatorship
According to Neumann a dictatorship may be instituted by a democracy, as in
Roman constitutional dictatorships - but he prefers to call this crisis
government rather than dictatorship - or it may be educational in that it
is preparative to a democracy, or it can be the negation of democracy -
pure repression. p. 248
The "dictatorship of the proletariate" was supposed to be an
educational dictatorship. Another example given by Neumann is the rule of
Pisitratus in Athens. Here a dictatorship prepared the way for Athenian
democracy by suppressing the aristocratic class. In Russia, however,
democracy had not developed from the dictatorship of the proletariate. Why
not?
In terms of class relations the functions of dictatorship are related to
three recurring situations:
- An insurgent class has been denied political power and the
dictatorship secures power for it. Two examples are Cromwell and
Lenin.
-
A declining class is trying to preserve its power. An example would
be Franco.
- It may be "the attempt of what one might call doomed classes to
change radically the socio-economic situation, to reverse it, and to
install a political system that would restore them to their old pre-
eminence". The examples here are Hitler and Mussolini - the doomed
classes being the old middle classes (?)
Industrial Society
A dictatorship is a form of government that may be adopted in certain
configurations of class conflict. Here Neumann's argument is very similar
to what Marx and Engels said about Napoleon 3rd. [The "Bonapartist"
argument].
But the totalitarian aspect of modern dictatorships is not due to the
configuration of classes, but to the needs of an industrial order, whatever
its class composition.
"A fully developed totalitarian dictatorship is the form an
industrial society may adopt if it should become necessary to
maximize its repressive elements and eliminate its liberal ones." p.
246
[Totalitarian regimes were created before industrialization, however - in
Sparta, for example]
An industrial society has highly complex hierarchical structures (people
have to follow complex rules), but this goes along with self-activation -
People have their own internal motivation for following the rules.[p. 251]
So, if the liberal elements are to be eliminated from that kind of society
a functional substitute has to be found for this complex rule-following
combined with self motivation. The answer is totalitarianism. In this
there is a synchronization of social organisation combined with the
conversion of culture into ideology to motivate people. Examples of this
ideology are the "fake" solidarity of corporatism under Mussolini, the
"folk community" under Hitler and Stalin's alleged "classless socialist
state".
Psychology has to be brought into the argument to explain why people accept
these fake communities.