Is dictatorship the default government of the human species?

Great Debates
1

Some coworkers and I were discussing the “most successful” form of government. They maintained that it was democracy. I agreed that democracy is the form of government most able to provide those things we like- freedom, prosperity and safety in the greatest possible balance; but I had to differ on the definition of “successful”. If by successful you mean the form of government most common, with the longest history, and the greatest tendancy to revert to, I would have to say dictatorship. In one form or another, it’s been THE pattern of government for nearly every human society that’s ever existed. Tribal chiefs, warlords, tyrants, kings, emperors, to the modern version: the president-for-life of the one-party state, in it’s fascist, communist and authoritarian versions.

Now as a qualifier, I would hasten to add that this does NOT mean that dictatorship always means an absolute despot ruling as a god on earth (although there’s always that trend). More commonly, you have “the Boss”, who rules but who has to make sure he has the backing of a group of “important” people. In tribal societies this would be the tribal elders or the the shamen. In a monarchy, the nobility. In a totalitarian state, the Party. In an out-and-out junta, the military commanders.

Compared to the number of societies that meet this broad definition, the number of true democracies and republics seems tiny. Is this then, the natural default state of human society, perhaps inherited from our primate ancestors? Or would you dispute this? The floor is open.

2

Dictatorships have generally been rather unsuccessful in history. The successful autocratic systems were rarely, if ever true dictatorships. The OP brushes up on changing dictatorship into autocracy; I think we need to have an even more clear definition.

Would the OP care to elaborate with some more examples? It’s an interesting question; I just feel that some further qualification to the term dictatorship is needed.

Was for instance England under the Tudors a dictatorship? In my view it was mostly not, but YMMV.

As a matter of fact I would posit that England’s rise to power in the world took off for real with the increased power of parliament and subsequent slow, but significant democratic reforms.

Rome is another interesting case that obviously fluctuated between true dicatatorship and partial democracy. The real advances of Roman society and dominance in Europe were largely made during the periods of relative democracy. Much of the expansion of the Roman Empire was on the other hand made under dictatorial rule.

As I said, the question needs some more nuances to be answered properly.

I’ll plant my position already now however. Democracy is far more efficient as well as being better out of the humane perspective. I’ll be happy to try to prove that in this debate, if the OP likes.

Sparc

3

Democracy is the best political system.

Capitalism is the best economic system.

You cannot have one without the other.

Over time, democracies outcompete dictatorships, which means that over time they simply displace them. I suspect there will be no true dictatorships left, other than temporary military control during crisis, within 100 years or so.

4

Well, you can have democracy without capitalism and vice versa. Both ancient Athens the antebellum American south were democracies (although limited ones, neither extending the franchise to slaves or women) and weren’t capitalist, and on the other hand, China and Vietnam are moving towards capitalist economies, and aren’t democratic.

5

Unfortunatly democriacies (well representative ones) are inneficient. We take our time thinking things over methodically, politicians do their best not to step on toes, etc. A dictator says “I want national health care reform NOW!” and he gets it. Too bad a dictator is unlikely to ask about that.

Now here’s an interesting question: How different would an autocratic King treat his subjects than a dictator? Would a King be held to higher standards than a dictator? Does legitimacy influence anything at all? Does a King take more responsibility? Or are they just the same?

6

Dictatorships are horribly inefficient. We’ve gone over this before, but central command of a complex economy just can’t work. There’s too much information, and too big of a bottleneck. Central planners make BAD decisions. Sure, your benevolent dictator can say, “Health Care for Everyone!” but if there’s no money to provide it, then it’s nothing more than a hollow gesture. But man, would it be wasteful to find out.

7

I would beg to differ. The republic has proved to be the most deadly form of governance, resulting in unimaginable powers. Even Britain only rose to its true might after the monarchy was put in check by a parliament.

Pure democracy is clearly inferior. But a look at the toll of the republic! After Junius Brutus overthrew the Tarquin monarchy and the Republic was established, Rome began its assent to unprecedented power. And then we have the infamous United States of America, its economic and military might unrivaled by any great power before it.

So even if you measure success in terms of international power and influence, the republic is clearly the winner, not the dictatorship.

8

But Rome continued its rise after the formation of the Empire, and before the Romans, the Persian Empire was extremely powerful.

9

Sam, I’m not sure I entirely agree with you on dictatorships being inherently inefficient, though perhaps our definitions of “dictatorship” are different. I would think a dictator could hire a large number of experts in various fields and get their input, and have different people govern different areas, much like a large corporation. The dictator could spread his vision, and yay or nay general ideas, or, if need be, dictate very specific orders in certain cases. He would have ultimate authority, but would deligate resources in an efficient manner to avoid having to micromanage. Would this not be a dictatorship? And if so, how would this be inefficient? Assume for the sake of this argument that the dictator is someone intelligent and informed, and knows the correct solution for any problem (where what is “correct” is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion).
Jeff

10

A dictator is efficient in any situation where there is no more information than a single dictator can handle. By the time the nation is large enough to start doing (ambiguously defined) significant things, a dictator’s control over information is inefficient, which is to say, it doesn’t get to him in time (technology) or there is too much of it (the technology made great growth possible). The latter case is the bottleneck.

Specialization is the political and or economic version of distributed computing: you have enough information processing to process all the information. A single dictator cannot do this, and so cannot control everything.

But this just means a dictator can’t have continuous and absolute control, but he could have one or the other without significant problems, I would think. A modern dictator does not make every decision, he pawns decisions off on his cronies same as every other nation; a dictator just has the ability, like a monarch, to intervene on any decision-making process and force a conclusion at any cost.

As things stand in the thread now, I would tenatively agree with the OP if we define “dictatorship” to not specifically mean rule by a dictator, but rather a state in which a person or group of persons has absolute authority. The tendency for power to concentrate does seem to be a common theme among the history of civilizations, right up until that concentrated power crumbles in some form or another.

Which, by Merriam Webster, is the definition of a dicatorship.

But I think it is just as easy to say that democracy has also been a tendency in civilizations’ organization by the same evidence, as the dictatorships regularly are toppled. (yes, many times only to reform again)

If the only way a society of any appreciable size can exist is by distributed ruling (a democracy or republic of some kind) then the only societies of appreciable size will be, of course, democracies.

But, to backtrack again, I think the tendency to concetrate power is pretty ubiquitous, which will make dictatorships common until we have essentially one-world governments.

To the OP: is your standard-issue corporation a dictatorship? A republic? Plutocracy? (assuming we can make an analogy here from corporations to forms of government… not too much of a stretch IMO)

11

How about we use ‘oligarchy’?

12

I read the OP as asking not which form of government is superior – i.e., successful in terms of effectiveness – but which is most numerous – i.e., successful in terms of volume.

From that perspective, I agree that dictatorship – or, more broadly, autocracy or oligarchy, which is to say power concentrated in the hands of from one to a few individuals – is by far the most common arrangement, and indeed the default choice of a group that hasn’t thought much about the alternatives.

Maybe this is just my atheist/evolutionist bent showing through, but social animals always revolve around a single strong leader, whether it’s a queen ant, a strong female hyena, a male silverback gorilla, or whatever. The continuation of this pattern is obvious when looking at human organization, whether it’s a tribe with a chief, or a corporation with a CEO.

Humans orient themselves according to status. It explains why we obsess about celebrities, for example; it makes absolutely no logical sense why Sting’s opinion on rain forests, for example, gets any more weight than anybody else’s, unless you take into account the irrational human habit of elevating individuals according to ephemeral criteria like fame. We extend this pattern of thought into other areas as well; when people find out I’m a film geek, they invariably ask, “So what’s your favorite movie?” And I have to explain that it’s a meaningless question, based more on automatic (and unexamined) analytical habit than any reasonableness of the inquiry.

Think about how many cliches betray our expectation of power being centralized into a single individual: “Who’s in charge here?” or “Take me to your leader.”

I agree with the OP.

13

The Roman dominion of the Mediterranean world was well, and I mean well established by the time of the Triumverate. The expansion of Rome can’t be accredited to the will of successive dictators. Rather it was the citizenry’s desire for security that lead to conquest. Romanization was used for the purpose of appeasing threats to the Republic.

I contest that dictatoship is the default form of governance in human society. Our tribal structure is more often based on a coucil of elders headed by a respected member of the community. The tribal leader rarely has unfettered authority. Most often her or his leadership is subject to the consent of the council.

erislover uses information theory (the higher efficiency of distributed resources) to indicate why dictatorships are inferior. But if you’ve ever designed systems, you will know that centralizing some aspects of management is necessary. However, if any part of the system can take on coordination functions at any given time, you’re system will be considerably more robust.

The republic is efficient and stable because it combines “authority form above” with “authority from below”. Even if their haven’t been a plethora of republics proper through out history, similar forms of governance have been practised since time imemmorial. For example, norse communities (vikings) were oganized around a “ting” (a coucil) and a “konungr” (king). The konungr could only hold power with the consent of the ting. The position of konungrwas not a inherited. Rather, the community chose their king as they saw fit. Again, “authority frome below” combined with “authority from above”…

14

I’m not even going to touch your first three lines, as the logical flaws have already been noted. On to the second half of your post.

Democracies often times need overseas dictatorships in order to have a ‘friendly’ nation to sell stuff to, and buy cheap shit from. Why do you think the US funds counterrevolutionaries as to instate military dicatorships all around the world? We need them.
Of course, I vastly prefer a democracy to a dictatorship, but I think that as long as there is democracy (at least democracies like the world powers), there will also be dictatorships.

If you would like a list of countries the US has instated dictators in, and the economic reasons why, I would be happy to provide you with that information.

colin

15

I would indeed like a list of countries where the U.S. has “instated” dictatoships AND it hasn’t back-fired. The benefits of such a policy are short lived. That dictatorships will be history in 100 years is viewing the future with pink shades. But please, Colinito, prove to me that dictatoships are in any shape or form good for the well being of powerful democractic republics like the US in the long run.

16

Oh, this is rich. a lesson in ‘logic’ from someone who thinks that capitalism depends on having dictatorships to ‘sell stuff to’.

And yes, my statement is incorrect in this sense: It’s possible to have democracy without capitalism. Absolutely. But you cannot have capitalism without democracy. Dictatorships and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. For capitalism to function correctly, the people doing the transactions must be free. This is the same argument that is used to defend anti-trust laws: capitalism is incompatible with coercion.

As for propping up dictatorships so we can sell things to them - this is a ridiculous notion, as I would think even a few minutes of thought would tell anyone.

First of all, the U.S. has no trouble selling things to and buying things from dictatorships. You might want to look up how much trade the U.S. does with China to prove that.

Second, the countries where the U.S. actively supported dictators are invariably tiny banana republics with no economy to speak of in the first place. Even if the U.S. managed to expropriate everything they own for free, it wouldn’t make a blip in the economy.

In fact, the opposite of your assertion is true - The U.S. supports democracies, in part because democratic governments add to world stability and are good citizens, but also because they are better trading partners.

So why did the U.S. prop up dictators? It’s called ‘containment’, and it was a cold war doctrine. The U.S. didn’t prop up just any dictators - only the ones who were strategically valuable in opposing the Soviet Union. But that’s a topic for another thread.

17

Well, the people doing the transactions must be free to exchange goods. They don’t neccesarily have to be free to say what they want, or elect their governments. That was one of the things PJ O’Rourke said he noticed when he went to Vietnam recently. (well, recently as of when he wrote the book “All the Troubles in the World”. It’s been a few years since.) He notes that the Vietnamese still don’t have much political freedom, and they don’t discuss or are interested in politics, but a visit to a Vietnamese market showed free exchange of all sorts of things, and he noted that the Vietnamese were adopting capitalism and would try to sell you anything.

18

I also could mention Singapore, which, while nominally a democracy, is very much a one party state. The President was elected unopposed, and the majority party holds 80 seats in the 83 seat parliament. However, Singapore is very much a capitalist country. It’s adopted the capitalist ethos very strongly.

19

If you could plot an “efficiency curve” mapping degree of individual freedom against social efficiency over time, you’d find that dictatorship gives you really good short-term efficiency (decisions are made by the dictator. individuals obey) which flattens out quickly and collapses over time because of lack of observational feedback from the other individuals. Hierarchical organizations of various sorts take longer to set up but become more efficient in time because the supreme leader doesn’t have to micromanage every little decision and specialists can make decisions in areas that the supreme leader doesn’t even have to understand. Representative democracies in which no supreme leader or subleader can occupy that position for long without the consent of those below take yet longer to get set up and to become sufficient, but eventually outstrip more rigid top-down hierarchical orgs because they intrinsically leave more room for fresher ideas, and for the clearing out of deadwood from the ranks of leadership, and because more initiative is concentrated at a lower level (individuals retaining all freedoms of observation and action not specifically reserved for their superiors).

By extension, the reason we anarchists (yes, I am) believe in anarchy, aside from the notion that we shouldn’t be bossed around, period, is the notion that this “efficiency curve” would continue to bear true if extended farther to its conclusion–that an anarchy would take even yet longer to set up and become effective, but that ultimately it would be more efficient and address many of the bad-decision / idiots-in-charge aspects of representative democracy.

There are situations in which short-term efficiency is more necessary. In any immediate crisis, a dictator may be exactly what is needed; an army at war may be a lousy place to implement a loosely managed democracy with rotating temporary leaders taking turns; and it is always possible that opponents to anarchy are right when they say that the day-to-day needs of society at large would require too many short-term rapid decisions for anarchy to be preferable to representative democracy. (We won’t know until we experiment a bit with it, though).