How well would a liberal tyranny/regime perform?

Great Debates
1

In nearly every discussion about what progressives want to achieve, the discussion always gets bogged down in the “Well, we don’t have the votes or power to achieve what we want” - be it climate-change action, LGBT, taxes, single-payer healthcare or whatnot.

So I wanted to have a thought-experiment thread to explore what progressives might achieve if lack of power weren’t an issue. Assume that there is a tyranny, an authoritarian regime, that has progressive goals in mind and has 100% full unchecked power to do whatever it wants - I’m thinking of the United States, but it doesn’t have to be America in this scenario. No checks, no balances, just total power.

On the surface, the outcomes would most likely look quite good. Vaccination? No problem, the regime can force everyone to vax up (except for maybe some individuals who have legit medical reasons to not get a vaccine, such as severe adverse reactions.) Climate change and environmentalism? No problem, the regime can force everyone to ditch fossil fuels, drive electric, conserve water, etc. Single-payer universal healthcare? Done. Bigots, racists, sexists, homophobes - not a problem, they’d face prison time or other penalties for expressing their views. Gun violence? The regime confiscates all or nearly all private guns. High taxes on the rich? Done. Education would be taught solely by the standards of the regime, no young-earth creationism, no conservative viewpoints, etc. Abortion? Fully and readily available everywhere. Feminism and LGBT? Fully supported. Universal basic income? Done.

So, on the whole, you’d end up with a clean environment, bigots who either don’t exist or are scared to talk, affordable and accessible healthcare for all, a much better environment for women, LGBT, minorities, much less income inequality, etc. The downside, of course, would be loss of civil liberty and various freedoms, but that comes with the hypothetical since it’s a tyranny. The main problem for the regime would be combating internal corruption; you could still easily end up with people near the top or at the top who begin to care more about their personal interest than what’s good for the country, but there could be measures taken to prevent this.

What downsides or unforeseen problems might happen? What other benefits might there be?

2

I think the problem is that authoritarian regimes are not as progressive as you seem to imagine; instead the risk is that authoritarians might subvert and hijack progressive revolutions early on.

All the stuff you mention (I mean health care and so on, not political repression) does not seem like it requires dictatorial powers, just a sufficiently popular left-wing government, in which case you have to worry about CIA-backed coups, but that is hardly unforeseen.

Re. corruption: that is a universal problem/risk even for small, powerless political parties

Happy Labor Day!

3

I guess my initial question is regarding your definitions.

Firstly, the common definition of “liberal” as “relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise” is sort of the anthesis of “tyranny”, a “cruel and oppressive government or rule”. The concepts seem mutually exclusive to me.

I think what you are really asking is what if the government enacted a series of liberal, progressive, or leftist policies without the democratic approval of the people?

So really the questions are:

  1. Would these policies be effective based on their own merit?
  2. Would the lack of public support for these policies create a worse situation than if they had never been enacted in the first place.

The thing is, we have historical precedents for leftist regimes trying to force their policies and social engineering on the population and it often ends in economic and humanitarian disaster. But a lot of it depends on the policices.

Guns - Presuming you don’t trigger some sort of militia-driven violent reaction, countries like Australia and the UK have effectively banned or severely limited firearm ownership.

Same thing with single-payer healthcare. Presumably that is something that could be implemented much in the same way other countries do it

Putting bigots in camps seems like a recipe for disaster. That seems like an easy thing to spiral out of control as people weaponize “wokeness” to revenge every petty grevience.

I think the main thing is when you start dictating sweeping economic and social changes around healthcare, energy, environment, wealth distribution, and infrastructure without taking into account people’s wants and needs, actual market forces, and practical considerations, that’s what leads to disaster.

Like great, you ban fossil fuels. But then you find out that alternative energy sources isn’t enough to run all civilizations manufacturing and transportation needs and everyone is fucked.

Or you redistribute all the wealth evenly so everyone has a lot more money to buy all the products and services no one is making.

4

I agree with @msmith537 - a “liberal tyranny” is a contradiction in terms.

If you mean a economically left-wing tyranny, we have seen that in places like the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Cuba.

If you mean a representative democracy backed by overwhelming numbers of left-of-center voters, then I guess you would look to some European states for examples.

What you would likely get is what seems to always come with power unchecked - corruption and decay, the stifling of dissent, and a police state.

5

Your terminology is very confusing. Is this a Liberal regime? Or is it a “Left wing on the American left-right scale which is sometimes colloquially referred to as Liberal” regime?

I take it you mean the latter, because some of the examples you give are distinctly illiberal:

For this reason I don’t think you can have a tyranny dedicated to imposing Liberal values. Once you’re taking tyrannical steps, the values you’re imposing are no longer liberal.

6

What we have now (in US at least) is a stifling of dissent through media management and freedom of speech. The volume of the dialog is so great that it becomes easy for media controllers to highlight the pieces that they want to and just let the rest get lost in the noise. And they promote the most ridiculous assertions ostensibly to point out their absurdity but in reality to normalize the ridiculous, nudging Overton toward the sewer. Repressing dissent with truncheons is overt, but repressing dissent through calculated manipulation of freedom of speech is more effective in its subtlety.

7

“Media Controllers”? Who are these mysterious people? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

8

To me (and I’m hoping not to sidetrack the thread,) whether something is liberal or not depends entirely on intended objectives. A brutal regime can still be liberal if it pursues goals aligned with progressivism, such as clean environment, universal healthcare, high taxes on rich, pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, science, gun control, etc. None of those things require giving citizenry the right to free speech, right to vote, right of free press, anything of that sort.

9

No argument there.

Progressivism and Liberalism are two different things, which is why I asked:

It sounds like you explicitly mean the latter, in which case, the question is quite easy to answer - you can look at the various left wing totalitarian dictatorships that have marred our planet’s history.

Those are known as “liberal values”, so a “tyrannical Liberal government” is a bit oxymoronic if you meant “a government tyrannically pursuing liberal values”. But that’s not what you meant - understood.

10

“Enlightened Despotism”, I believe was the old school term for what y’all are talking about.

11

Well, traditionally we have had the broadcasters and the publishers. The internets seem wild, but most of the traffic seems to accumulate on a few sites (social media) and those sites a curated. We are told that the fediverse (mastodon, et al) is not very popular, but some of the constituent gateway things are curated (by the likes of Meta and others). When you get wind of a thing on the 'net, it is usually because the content has been promoted by some corporate source.

12

The thing is, tyranny always trumps good intentions.

I envision politics as a circle. The bottom, or ‘6’ position, is apolitical anarchy. If you advance toward the left, or clockwise, you’re becoming more organizationally and authoritatively liberal. If you advance toward the right, or counter-clockwise, you’re becoming more organizationally and authoritatively conservative. The closer you get toward the 12 on either side, the less liberal or conservative beliefs matter at all, and the more it becomes plain tyranny: a power elite taking most of the spoils and suppressing any challenge to their power.

The bottom line is, creating a system where you try to make people do what you consider the right thing, no matter how good your intentions are to begin with, will always fail. Because your best intentions will get corrupted with power, the people you’re manipulating will eventually stop cooperating, and the whole house of cards will fall.

13

A “liberal tyranny” would look much like any other tyranny, as authoritarianism requires the adoption of the relevant authoritarian practices to achieve its goals of strictly controlling the populace. Saner than a right wing tyranny, as it would be more reality-based, but still unpleasant to live under. The necessities of achieving authoritarian control tend to largely overwrite the ideology that the authoritarian state is officially being imposed in the name of.

The wealthy people who own and therefore control the great majority of the media; not all that mysterious. Mostly right wingers.

14

If you want to see what a progressive government with power would look like, then its probably best to look at the scandanavian nations. Thats basically what progressives would implement if they had the power, and if politicians were willing to stand up to big business.

However I think one thing even Scandanavia can’t do is tackle wealth inequality. They’ve reduced income inequality, but wealth inequality is severe the entire world over. So I’m wondering if in a truly progressive regime there would be attempts at wealth redistribution by doing things like forcing companies to transfer stock to the public, or transitioning companies to co-ops, etc.

Perfect wealth inequality (1 person owns everything, everyone else owns nothing) is a 1.0. Perfect equality is a 0.0.

Even scandanavian nations are a 0.75-0.9. The world is 0.889. US is 0.85. Considering that the ~100 richest people on earth have as much wealth as the bottom 4 billion, its not surprising the world GINI wealth coefficient is almost 0.9.

So wealth inequality (not just income inequality) is something a progressive regime would need to tackle.

But I don’t think progressives would make it illegal to express hate speech or bigotry. They would just make it so that people couldn’t enforce those views.

Also I don’t think a progressive regime would mandate vaccinations above and beyond what we currently have. Schools already require a ton of vaccines. I don’t think progressives would mandate the covid vaccine and boosters for people.

I’m not sure what gun control would look like in a progressive regime. The issue is I don’t think you can confiscate all the guns. Most are unregistered, and theres like 300 million civilian guns. I’m sure there would be gun control, I just don’t know what kinds. I have no idea if there has ever been a working model where a nation was filled with unregistered guns, and somehow they confiscated all the guns (maybe Australia or South Korea).

Also I feel you are confusing liberals with leftists.

15

We still do; however, both traditionally and today, “broadcasters and publishers” are not a monolithic class in universal agreement. There are “broadcasters and publishers” on all sides of any issue you can think of.

Sure, but again, on any of those platforms, there are people arguing for any side of any argument.

Ok… But those corporate sources are, in one place or another, pushing every side of every issue.

That is, in fact, the big difference between a free society like ours and one that isn’t free. You say:

But the difference is that in the sort of totalitarian dictatorship which suppresses dissent with a truncheon, there is a single unified actor, the state, which decides what is dissent that needs to be suppressed, while in our society it’s a bunch of independent agents that are acting in opposition to one another.

That’s not a difference without distinction, it’s critical.

16

This, only I’d refer to the necessities of maintaining authoritarian control. Revolutionary governments tend to turn tyrannical after an initial honeymoon of popular support is over and the pendulum of public opinion swings back.

17

The Japanese extremist terrorist group Japan Red Army was formed around 1970 and committed a number of acts of terror.

However, they wound up torturing and killing a number of their own group for not having the right thoughts. In totalitarian states or groups, extremism tends to override moderation.

Who decides what is bigoted? How much is allowed? How is the government going to keep tabs on the entire population?

18

Also callled enlightened absolutism. Was about time someone mentioned this! Gee, does anybody really think we are the first and only ones who have thought about political theory?

And how well did it perform? Not so bad, but people wanted more, and the bourgeoisie was not satisfied for long. It seems this regime is not capitalistic enough.
I find it funny that two modern day examples of an enlightened absolutist monarch in the quoted wikiarticle are the Shah Reza Palehvi and Mohammad Bin Salman. And then they link to “benevolent dictatorship”. Does not sound so bad, as long as you are the dictator.
The biggest unsolved problem in all non democratic regimes remains the question of succession. Even if the idea worked (which it does not, or not for long), the next dictator is probably not so enlightened anymore.