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(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding here. I think the delineation between authoritarian regimes and non-authoritarian governments is pretty clear - are you implying that all socialist and communist influenced governments are necessarily authoritarian?
No, I'm suggesting that authoritarian is a meaningless term unless defined specifically and was asking what theories of power and authority they had for making the delineation they are.
The derogatory term authoritarian is always leveled at socialist or communist countries, and never capitalist ones even though capitalist countries restrict rights for the majority of their populations by the very nature of the inherent power structure in capitalism. Even though communist countries usually enjoy far more decentralised authority, better voting rights, and higher political involvement in the populace, they are labeled as "authoritarian," the implication being that they need "freedom" aka capitalism
What? The term authoritarian is thrown at non-communist/capitalist nations all the time. Syria, Nazi Germany, Libya, Franco's Spain, Modern Russia, and a million other instances. Authoritarian is a clearly defined term and is in no way exclusively applied to communist nations in almost any circles. It also happens to have been applied to most "communist" countries because most of them have been authoritarian
Notice you didn't name the United States which is just as authoritarian as modern Russia by any definition we choose (voting rights? participation in political process? allowed dissent? access to clean water? basic access to healthcare? food desserts? policies meant to keep people in poverty?). That's my point. It's an ethereal term unless properly defined.
We'll have to set Libya aside since after given "freedom," there are now literal slave traders everywhere.
It's not clearly defined at all; try to give a definition of authoritarianism that applies to all of the countries frequently described as authoritarian, but not to any of the ones that aren't, and you'll see how vague a term it is.
Countries frequently have authoritarian tendencies without being overwhelmingly described as an authoritarian nation. When a nations primary mode of function is in authoritarian action it ceases to be a country I would consider something anyone should aim to emulate, which is why most people have problems with tankies and their support of the USSR or the CCP. It is fine to point at those countries and say "hey for all of their faults they managed to do X pretty well" but an entirely different thing to look at them and say "if only they came out on top, the world would be a much better place today".
I hope you can appreciate that you just said absolutely nothing concrete whatsoever.
spoiler
ALL nations and ALL governments' 'primary mode of function' is 'authoritarian action'. You can't run a water main without using 'authoritarian action' to secure right of way.
The terms you're using are vapor.
All nations primary mode of function is authoritarian action, and all revolutions too.
It really isn't, I can tell you from personal experience that this will absolutely get you labelled a tankie.
I don't know if there is such a thing as a perfectly free, truly democratic society wherein everyone is capable of existing free of oppression lol, but I think there's definitely a spectrum of authoritarian policy and sentiment, often correlated with nationalist and fascist fervor.
I may, as a person of color, experience more oppression in a country where I do not fit the standard vision of what a citizen looks like, and less in a country wherein which I do meet that criteria. That's usually more an issue with nationalist rhetoric than systems of governance - unless that nationalism is codified and enforced by the government, which is the case in many governments that I would consider "more authoritarian." America is one that has tended towards that, historically. Certainly, though, there are others that have also instituted systems explicitly designed to oppress.
I'd say, in general, I have many rights and privileges in current-day America that a truly authoritarian government wouldn't allow. And that's not to say that I think America is the greatest, or even good lmao. We're constantly on the verge of disenfranchisement, and the fact that we're constantly fighting for things that should be just baseline isn't exactly a good look. But, in all, I'm allowed to openly state my thoughts in the court of public opinion, I'm able to vote to elect a representative, able to practice religion as I'd like, etc.
For sure, the validity of all of that is affected deeply by the corruption of capital in those arenas, but there's something to be said about the power to openly share ideas and influence fellow citizens without active censorship. Keeping in mind things like COINTELPRO and Fred Hampton, etc, I obviously can't say in good conscience that the government has never censored it's citizens, but the purported adherence to the first amendment and being "the land of the free" at least makes them work for it.
Sorry for the novel lol. It's a complicated subject and there's a lot of nuance to try and tease out
All governments are inherently authoritarian by their nature, but there's a scale and I think in most people's minds there's a line.
The line is probably drawn where people are prosecuted or even killed when they publicly criticise the ruling regime, where you have to "escape" to simply leave, where there's a culture of fear that your neighbour or friends or even family could report you for disagreeing with the government. More often than not there's no way for the public to change the government through democratic means.
Ok, but if that's the case, why are we drawing a line at a nation's internal population and disregarding their external policies? The USA killed three million people in the War in Iraq, including Iraqis who were very critical of the American presence. The USA has assassinated Latin American presidents for speaking out against the USA and replaced them with more America-friendly dictators. And yet everyone who talks about authoritarianism doesn't include western nations in their discussion, they instead make up a cartoon idea of what countries outside the west are like. Your definition of what is or isn't tankie/authoritarian has some kind of nationalist bias built into it.
Every time someone describes what authoritarianism is, it makes me think that America and the EU are the worst perpetrators of this behavior, but they mainly export all their violence rather than use the worst of it domestically. Domestically they use private sector means to distribute violence, such as poverty, prisons, and the facilitation of ambient racism.
This reminds me of the dividing line that liberals use, which is when they say things like "that dictator killed HIS OWN PEOPLE." As if killing people externally is more excusable crime?
And even with lib logic, the US kills its own people who speak out against the government.
See Fred Hampton, the suspicious number of Ferguson protest leaders who have since died in strange ways, etc.
Unless there’s a certain criteria which determines who are your own people…
Why are you unable to explain it then?
I believe they are suggesting that, if "authoritarian" means anything, that every large state that has ever existed was "authoritarian," though some diffuse the authority through things like enclosure of the commons combined with strict property laws or other, older methods like religious law.