Dictatorship

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Dictatorship

The term "dictatorship" has a long history, encompassing a wide array of polities—empires, states, nations, and the like. Used extensively since ancient times, the term is derived from the word "dictate," which means to command expressly; to impose or give orders with or as with authority; to give orders or instructions arbitrarily. The word "dictate" has its root in the Latin word dictatum (plural, dictata), meaning things dictated, lessons, or commands.

In ancient Rome, an official known as a dictator (meaning commander) was appointed as magistrate by the Senate in times of emergency or crisis and invested with absolute authority. This is the historical source for the English word "dictator," meaning a ruler who has absolute power and unlimited authority.

Dictatorship thus refers to the position or office of a dictator; a dictatorial government; a state ruled by a dictator; absolute power or authority. Various synonyms for the words dictator and dictatorship include: autocrat, despot, tyrant, and oligarch for the former; and autocracy, despotism, tyranny, and oligarchy for the latter.

Autocracies, despotisms, tyrannies, and oligarchies are authoritarian systems. These systems are characterized by unquestioning obedience to authority. Their most extreme type is sometimes referred to as "totalitarian." The hallmark of totalitarianism is a government or state in which one political party or group exercises complete control and refuses to recognize, and consequently suppresses, individuals or political parties or groups perceived as actual or potential foes.

ancient and modern dictatorships

Characteristically, dictatorships, whether ancient or modern, operate free of the kind of constitutional limitations that are encountered in democratic societies; that is, their powers are absolute, unchecked either by formal rules or public opinion, or by sensibilities having to do with civil liberties or human rights. Modern dictators are more like ancient tyrants (who ruled by brute force) than ancient dictators (who, as in ancient Rome, often ruled legitimately with Senate approval in times of emergency or crisis). Modern dictators, however, bent on the exercise of despotic power, are apt to rely on outright force or fraud to gain and retain their position. In countries with access to advanced communications technologies, modern dictators often employ strategies of mass propaganda to mobilize popular support.

Modern dictatorship reached its zenith in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, inspired by the decline and eventual disappearance of monarchies that were based on the principle of hereditary descent. The political void created by the eclipse of monarchical rule was filled throughout the world by one of two principal forms of governance: either constitutional democracy (as in the United States and Great Britain) or dictatorship (as in the Soviet Union, dominated for a quarter of a century by Russian leader Joseph Stalin [1879–1953], or in Nazi Germany, ruled by dictator Adolf Hitler [1889–1945] from 1933 to 1945).

dictatorship in fascism and marxism

The word "dictatorship" resonates also in modern political ideology : on the right, in fascism and on the left, in Marxism. In the former, for example, the German word führerprinzip,—meaning leadership principle—was invoked with great ruthlessness and brutality by Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Marxism includes the concept of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," the economic and social class consisting of industrial workers who derive their income solely from their own labor. The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) posited that the proletarian class would rule over society during the transitional phase between the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of communism . Marx expected that in the transitional phase, which he referred to as socialism , the proletariat would suppress the resistance of the previously dominant class, the bourgeoisie , to the socialist revolution; destroy the social relations of production underlying the class system; and usher in a new classless society, which he referred to as communism. In the Soviet Union, which was established after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, Marx's notion of the proletariat as a dictatorial class was displaced by Russian politician Vladimir Lenin's (1870–1924) idea of a single political party, the Bolsheviks, who claimed to represent the proletariat and ruled society dictatorially. The dominance of overlapping state and Communist Party apparatuses in the Soviet Union was promoted by a strict application of Leninist ideological and organizational principles, emphasizing tight control by the political center.

dictatorship in latin america

Over the last two centuries, dictatorships have assumed different forms at different times around the world. In the nineteenth century in Latin America, dictatorships arose in the aftermath of Spanish and Portuguese rule. The collapse of central colonial authority throughout the region and the ensuingproliferation of new independent states lent strong encouragement to dictatorship. The era of rule by caudillos, or self-proclaimed leaders, had begun.

Typically, a caudillo rose to power in a postcolonial state in nineteenth-century Latin America as the leader of a private army or militia. Most of these dictators managed to secure their political base in one region of the country before seizing power from a weak national government.

Twentieth-century Latin American dictators were usually of a different type, however. Unlike their caudillo predecessors, most twentieth-century Latin-American dictators were national leaders from the outset. Moreover, whereas the caudillos began by building their political power around relatively small local private armies or militias, the dictators who followed them were usually military officers aligned with highly nationalistic officer cohorts in the national army. A notable example was Juan Perón, in Argentina. Throughout the twentieth century, many Latin-American dictators drawn from the military establishment forged political alliances with key social classes on the political right or left. Indebted to those classes, the dictators often supported either the conservative, often reactionary, interests of wealthy, privileged elites, or promoted the progressive, sometimes radical, social reforms espoused by trade union interests and the national intelligentsia.

dictatorship in africa and asia

Yet another pattern of dictatorship is discernible in postcolonial Africa and Asia. Following World War II (1939–1945), the European imperialist powers—Great Britain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain—began a retreat from Africa and Asia that was destined to take a half-century to complete. In the vacuum created by decolonization, there emerged new states—many of which were ruled by indigenous dictators and their allies drawn from among members of nationalist political parties and the social and economic elite. The imperialist powers usually attempted to ease the transition to independence of their colonial territories by transplanting the institutionalism of European parliamentary democracy based on constitutional norms. But in most cases, that approach failed. The collapse of constitutional arrangements imposed by the former colonial powers afforded an opportunity for new indigenous dictators to take control.

A strong middle-class foundation for democratic constitutionalism was lacking in postcolonial Africa and Asia. Traditional local autocracies persisted in most of the newly independent states. Elected presidents and prime ministers, many of whom were charismatic, had little difficulty accumulating power from former anticolonial nationalist movements that had been transformed into ruling nationalist political parties. Drawing strength from such parties, ambitious political leaders quickly assumed the role of dictator. They maintained their positions by adopting selfserving ideologies that claimed popular support for frequently dubious national goals, and by suppressing opposition political parties and independent trade unions. One such dictator was Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, formerly the British Gold Coast colony. In more than a few instances, national armies in Africa and Asia seized power from corrupt elected civilian governments and proceeded to establish military dictatorships. Some military dictatorships had short lives; others, as in Nigeria and Pakistan, held power for decades.

comparing dictatorships

Dictatorships emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, in Latin America and postcolonial Africa and Asia in countries marked by low levels of technological and material development. By contrast, during the first half of the twentieth century, communist and fascist dictatorships arose in countries that were far more developed, most notably Russia and Germany.

The dictatorial regimes in communist Russia and fascist Nazi Germany also differed from those in Latin America and postcolonial Africa and Asia in the scope of their authoritarianism. In both communist Russia and fascist Nazi Germany, the state quickly came to be identified with a single mass party and individual; the former with the Lenin and then with Stalin, and the latter with Hitler.

Moreover, a well-developed ideology was employed in both cases to legitimize the regime and suppress all dissent and stifle all opposition to the dictator and his ruling cohort. Both communist Russia and fascist Nazi Germany employed genocide against targeted racial, religious, and ethnic groups in pursuit of ideological, political, and economic goals: Hitler's Third Reich and its supporters throughout Nazi-occupied Europe unleashed the Holocaust against European Jewry and other groups, and the Soviet government executed a large percentage of the relatively prosperous Ukrainian Kulak peasantry. Finally, unlike in nineteenth-century Latin America and postcolonial Africa and Asia in the second half of the twentieth century, in the first half of the twentieth century communist rule in the newly founded Soviet Union and Nazi hegemony in Germany both relentlessly mobilized modern science and technology to wrest control of the nation's economy and work force.

kwame nkrumah (1909–1972)

Ghana's first president was born Francis Nwia-Kofi Ngonloma in Nkroful, in what was then the British-controlled Gold Coast. Educated to be a teacher, Nkrumah traveled to the United States to attend Lincoln University (B.A. 1939) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.S. 1942, M.A. 1943) to study politics and education.

In England in 1945, Nkrumah participated in the organization of the sixth Pan-African Conference, returning to the Gold Coast in 1947 to become general secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention. Political and economic unrest led him to break away to form his own radical new Convention People's Party (CPP) in 1949. After launching a campaign of civil disobedience in 1950 which resulted in some public disorder, he was jailed, but when his party won a huge majority in the colonial legislature in 1951, he was released and became the head of government.

From this position he led the Gold Coast to independence, as Ghana, in 1957, and Nkrumah became prime minister. Despite his prestige and popularity in Africa, he was not successful at governing, and ruled in an increasingly autocratic fashion. In 1964 Nkrumah made Ghana a one-party state and appointed himself president for life. The role was short-lived, however. Nkrumah was deposed in an American-sponsored military coup in 1966 and exiled to Guinea. He died alone in Romania, where he had gone to seek treatment for cancer.

Following World War II, communist dictatorships established in Eastern Europe, China, and other countries emulated the Soviet model. A communist dictatorship ruled over the Soviet Union for seven decades until its collapse in the early 1990s. After four decades in power, by the early 1990s communist dictatorships also had fallen in the Soviet-satellite countries in Eastern Europe. Presently, one-party communist dictatorships survive in only a few countries—Cambodia, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam—testifying to history having delivered a stern rebuke to the legitimacy of authoritarian communist rule.

It should be noted that during times of national crisis, based on domestic or foreign factors or a combination of the two, constitutional governments have also allowed their chief executives to assume emergency quasidictatorial powers. In some cases, this has paved the way for duly elected national leaders to destroy democracy and then replace it with outright dictatorship. Among the most notable cases were those involving Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. In other cases, such as in the United States and Great Britain under the respective leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill during World War II, the utilization of extraordinary powers by the democratically elected national leader was halted when the wartime emergency came to an end.

dictatorship in china

Throughout history dictatorships have usually been renowned more for their negative impact than for their positive influence on the societies in which they ruled. One notable exception involved Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the First Emperor of the Ch'in Dynasty in China. Destined to rule over the Chinese Empire for only a short time (221–206 b.c.e.), Ch'in's was actually the first reign in a long succession of dynasties that held sway over the empire until 1911, when the imperial system was swept away in the tide of revolutionary change.

The origins of the Ch'in state, located in northwest China with its center in contemporary Shensi Province, go back to the fourth century b.c.e., when the rulers of Ch'in adopted a political philosophy of an almost totalitarian type, known as legalism , and militarized their state in a way reminiscent of ancient Sparta. Legalism was a brutally statist philosophy, which held that its subjects, especially the mass of peasants and soldiers, existed only for the benefit of the ruler. Social regimentation was the norm: Discipline was maintained over the subject population with stringent laws and harsh punishments.

Nevertheless, Ch'in proved to be a vibrant leader, keen to innovate along constructive lines. In its brief rule over China, Ch'in achieved a high degree of political unity in the empire; established many of the imperial institutions that were destined to endure for more than two millennia; instituted a uniform writing system for all of China; established a reasonably good communications system for the far-flung empire; and undertook agricultural reforms designed to increase production and improve distribution.

Ch'in established the basis for a nationalist spirit, at once cultural and political, among the Chinese that has persisted to the present day: The Chinese people and their leaders continue to believe that all Chinese—that is, all people of whatever race who are Chinese by culture—ought to be as united politically under a common government as, mostly by their remarkably stable language, they are united culturally.

Many aspects of Ch'in's political authoritarianism have survived into the twenty-first century. More than a half-century after its inception, the People's Republic of China's 1.3 billion residents continue to be led by a one-party communist dictatorship, which presides over an enormous territory that covers half of Asia.

dictatorship and genocide

An especially virulent type of dictatorship may be found in cases where a premium has been placed on genocide—annihilating large populations and their way of life—sometimes using scientific and technological means well suited to the mass killing of people as an organized bureaucratic enterprise. The twentieth century was blackened by many such cases, including: the annihilation of Armenians en masse in Turkey during World War I (1914–1918); the Nazi-directed Holocaust targeting millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma (gypsies), and other peoples in Europe before and during World War II (1939–1945); the slaughter of about a third of the population in Cambodia under the communist Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s and 1980s; the extermination by the Saddam Hussein regime (comprised mostly of Arab Sunni Muslims) of tens of thousands of ethnic Kurds, many of whom were also Sunni Muslims, and of Arab Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; the mass murder of thousands of Muslims by elements of the Serbian population in Bosnia in the 1990s after the dissolution of the multiethnic Yugoslav state; and the massacre by a segment of the majority Hutu of tens of

thousands among the Tutsi minority in Rwanda in the 1990s. In all these cases and others, dictatorship assaulted human rights and individual dignity with the ultimate weapon: death. As a result, pressures have originated in those countries and the international community to apprehend, indict, and punish the perpetrators under a regime of law, in hopes of meting out justice and preventing a recurrence of state-sponsored genocide.

See also: Democracy; Genocide; Hitler, Adolf; Nationalism; Oligarchy; Stalin, Joseph.