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Careful. Soon you'll be arguing for the dictatorship of the proletariat. "Dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that

Careful. Soon you'll be arguing for the dictatorship of the proletariat. "Dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition of democracy (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised." -- Lenin. I'm not being completely serious, but I do find it extremely interesting that this whole idea of high-coercion at the start followed by a gradual easing off as people accept the new culture is one that has been tried explicitly. Or... at least claimed to have been tried ;-). Marx and Engels split no hairs about the authoritarian nature of revolution and when Lenin and Stalin later tried (presumably) to manage the situation they found it necessary to maintain that dictatorship in order to combat the ever present trend toward bourgeoisie and capitalism. But it was all supposed to end eventually. For me, I see parallels between that and the current air of "It's a scary world out there. Trust your government to take care of you. Give us more powers so that we can make our communities whole." No authoritarian revolution, but a very real reach towards cracking down on bad people in the name of the community. And once utopia (though not a communist one) is reached, the power will simply not be necessary. Having said all that, it was Confucius who said that if you are lax at the beginning and then become more strict, you will be seen as a tyrant. However, if you are very strict at the beginning and become more liberal over time, people will see you as magnanimous. When I used to teach at a high school, I used that idea and it did, indeed, work very well.

prewett 7y ago
Reminds me of The Republic, where Plato describes an ideal government of selfless, enlightened rulers that would over time devolve down into democracy, which then would end up in tyranny, because the people would choose a tyrant to get rid of the chaos. Unrelated, I was unaware of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but that explains to me why communism ends up as a system of control: because it started out as a system of control in the first place. And why it's liberal (at least in the 1910s) intellectuals that were attracted to it: they were the ones ruling society in that system, which, as every intellectual knows, is The Way It Ought To Be. Of course, it got co-opted by the political sorts because control in the real world requires weapons not ideas.

prewett 7y ago

Reminds me of The Republic, where Plato describes an ideal government of selfless, enlightened rulers that would over time devolve down into democracy, which then would end up in tyranny, because the people would choose a tyrant to get rid of the chaos. Unrelated, I was unaware of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but that explains to me why communism ends up as a system of control: because it started out as a system of control in the first place. And why it's liberal (at least in the 1910s) intellectuals that were attracted to it: they were the ones ruling society in that system, which, as every intellectual knows, is The Way It Ought To Be. Of course, it got co-opted by the political sorts because control in the real world requires weapons not ideas.