Before Socialism, Totalitarianism, Communism and Dictatorships… in each of these types of governance (and I’m sure I left some out), what was the prevailing party sentiment as it relates to what is known as the Democratic, and Republican parties in the US today? Before these types of governments became dominant?
As an example, before Communism, what were the movements and ideas that allowed those governments to take hold, and how do they correlate to the known political parties in the United States today? Meaning, if communism were to take hold in modern day US, which party would it derive from? Or would it derive from a whole new group of ideas and people?
I can’t actually comprehend most of your question. It simply doesn’t say anything.
Dictactorships are pretty old, but on its most basic level, none of those ideologies or practices have anything to do with Republicans or Democrats, except in the most distant fashion (there are a few fashionably-Communist Dems running around, but they never accomplish anything, thank God) Socialism is so horribly undefeined as to be a useless word.
Are you asking what political conditions were like in those countries that became Communist or totalitarian that led to the Communist or totalitarian movements taking over?
ISTM that in countries that went Marxist-Leninist or Fascist or Nationalist-Militarist autochtonously (leaving aside places where it was imposed by an occupier), it either arose from a revolutionary movement to overthrow the established parties, rather than from within them; or it was imposed from above by those already wielding some instruments of power deciding the people could not be trusted with freedom, and in both cases with the excuse that the preestablished order could no longer serve the people’s interest best. Very often it would start with the totalitarian types ingratiating themselves into otherwise normal national liberation/ labor/ political/ academic/ military institutions and rising to the top thereof with insistence that they must rally together to be the ones who stop the OTHER guy from taking over, and gradually radicalizing the organizations by inserting your followers in key positions. When you’re consolidated enough, you move to take over, either forcibly or by making the legitimate leadership appoint you to be in charge and *then *crushing your opponents. You do that first in the organization then in society at large.
I think what you are looking for is a description of social factors and political movements that led to the rise of totalitarian governments?
There may be too many to list, and countries differ, so none of these are universal. But here’s a short list of factors that I think tend to contribute to such events:
A general feeling of injustice in the population. For example, the people of Germany felt that they were being unduly punished by war reparations levied after WWI.
A feeling of powerlessness - that the problems you face are the fault of others, and are out of your control. Therefore, others are to be blamed for your own condition.
In countries that turn Communist, the sense of injustice fueling class warfare. People come to believe that their condition and lack of control is the fault of people in classes other than their own. In Russia it was the Kulaks and the rich. In Cambodia, it was the educated. These people are often described as ‘looters’ and ‘thieves’, taking away from other people what’s rightfully theirs.
In countries that turn fascist, the sense of injustice targeting specific groups for hatred. The Jews, foreigners, etc. Shadowy forces destroying society in unspecified ways.
The rise of a strong populist leader who fans the anger, emphasizes class divisions or fosters racism and xenophobia, and then promises to fix everything so long as he is given the power to do so.
Propaganda and brainwashing. Flooding the citizenry with messages designed to elevate the leader and feed the hatred that gives the leader power. Feeding propaganda to young people through mandatory classes that teach only the side of history which elevates the leader and his party.
Intimidation and violence. Once the leader has a certain amount of control, dissent is deemed unpatriotic or treasonous, and a threat to the great reforms that will improve the lives of all. The people then look the other way as the leader squashes those who speak out against the ever-increasing levels of injustice and tyranny.
The establishment of secret police and other methods of population control. Once the populace finally realizes that life is not getting better, but worse, it’s too late because the state has built an extensive system of monitoring and control that prevents groups from organizing in any size big enough to be a threat. People learn to keep their heads down and just survive.
Very few dictatorships emerge out of democracies. (Nazi Germany did, but it was an exception.) Most emerge out of absolute monarchy (Soviet Union), or out of colonialism (innumerable third world countries), or out of other dictatorships (Castro succeeding Batista, or Communists replacing fascists in eastern Europe).
Under those conditions, there was no “prevailing party sentiment”. Parties weren’t allowed to function.
A leader has to define an outside threat that only he can protect you from. If he makes you scared enough, he can change laws to get more and more power. People will give away their rights in a second if they can sleep a little better.
Also remember before the invention of radio, most people knew little outside their world, other than stories.
The world for most people is tough. Basically you had a government that “used” it’s people. It makes little difference to common people if a fascist government or a communist government takes their money for taxes. This is why the common people didn’t care much. Nationality didn’t play a lot into it before 1900, because people didn’t care. It didn’t matter who ruled them because they were gonna be oppressed regardless.
Dictatorships arose when people felt they had no choice. They were at the bottom and they had no where else to go. Indifference helps to, six million Jews didn’t die because Hitler wanted them dead. They died because Hitler wanted them dead and “well it’s none of my business, I’m busy looking over here.”
Immigration to the US (and other similar places) gave hope and was seen as the only solution for many as in the old country they were tied to their station in life.
But what most people when they think of questions like this, is before radio information was very limited. Sure you had papers but they cost money and you had to know how to read. Radio was free after the inital investment (for most anyway). Of course radio had the drawback as you could only hear what was put out. The Internet gets around this by being active instead of receptive only.
Now people have the ability to see a more open side to things.
I once asked someone what it was like living in Romania under Ceauşescu and he said “It was like being at work all the time. You felt someone was looking over you. But if you did what you were told, they left you alone.”
We in the west value “things” but if you stop to think about it, half the people of the world have never used a telephone. And most of the rest who have used one, don’t have regular access to one. They are more intested in getting food and being healthy than talking on a gadget.
So if all you need is a full stomach it’s a lot easier to win people to your side
I’d disagree. Italy and Spain were democracies before Mussolini and Franco took over. Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Mexico, Pakistan, Portugal, and Turkey are other examples of democracies where dictators took over.
War helps. Russia was at war when it went Communist. China was just out of WWII and had a lot of infighting between various factions when it went Communist. The US bombing in Cambodia is thought by some historians to have helped recruiting for the Khmer Rouge.
I missed this before but why is Socialism equated with Totalitarianism, Communism and Dictatorships? I realize there are an unfortunate amount of people who think Socialism is The Evil but the reality is that Socialist countries like Sweden and Denmark don’t deserve to get lumped in with countries like Libya and North Korea.
Still, a case of the military or a radical movement taking over a weakened, destabilized “democracy” (e.g. the Spanish Republic existed barely 5 years before Franco rebelled and the Primo dictatorship had just ended 3 years earlier than that) is not dictatorship ***emerging out of * ** democracy. It’s dictatorship overthrowing democracy.
Then of course you have cases of Democracies In Name Only, in many of the Latin American “democracies” what you really had were basically oligarchic republics where once it looked like real democracy would allow the “wrong people” to come to power, the reactionaries would launch a coup (e.g. Guatemala 1954).
Arguably, the definiton of a stable democracy is one that doesn’t get replaced by a non-democratic government and an unstable democracy is one that does. Which make the definitions pretty circular.
For situations where a dictatorship arises from a non dictatorship, it depends the angle the authoritarian ruler is coming from. From the right (though you leave right wing dictatorships out of the OP) I’d argue it requires the economic/religious/social elite to be threatened by loss of position to such a degree that they lose faith in the ability of liberal democracy (of whatever form) to control the working class, and so to be willing to turn to authoritarianism. When it comes bearing gifts (such as the Nazis offering rearmament, or Franco offering a restoration of the privileges of the Church) so much the better. But the rise of the far right seems to require a belief on the established powers that they can use the masses to control the masses - to destroy labor organization, for example.
From the left, it requires the working class to lose faith in liberal democracy, to the extent of being unwilling to defend it. Military or economic castrophe can have that effect.
Essentially democracy requires groups within it to be willing to restrain their power. You remove the benefits that either side of the equation sees that it receives from cooperating with a democracy, you remove the underpinnings of that system.
A poor economy. If people are struggling to feed their families because of the incompetance of their rulers, they can either:
turn to totalitarianism as a way of getting things done without resorting to inefficient or corrupt process;
turn to communism / socialism as a way of making things more egalitarian and more weighted in favour of the people.
Consumer-based capitalism is actually one of the best ways of keeping governments stable. You use your earnings to fuel the economy by buying stuff you don’t really need with the surplus. The fact that there is a surplus is because you have a job in the first place within the capitalist structure. China, as one example, is in the name of communism trying to elevate its lumpen proletariat to the middle class for the sake of stability. The middle class engage in consumerism. The ironic side effect of happy consumers in China is the preservation of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.
One of the causes of the rise of facism in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was:
a. Weimar Republic hyperinflation. Hard to feed your family when you need a wheelbarrow of cash to buy bread.
b. crippling WW1 reparations.
The European Union’s very existence is an ongoing and successful effort to create economic prosperity in order to alleviate the rise of nationalist extremists, as a recent article in The Economist noted.
But totalitarian governments are impossible in extremely poor countries, because totalitarianism requires a certain level of state organization. Most third world country might have authoritarian governments, but the reach of the government is extremely limited simply because the government doesn’t have the resources to oppress the populace.
And the notion that dictatorship is efficient is nonsense. Mussolini certainly didn’t make the trains run on time.