We have looked at Authoritarianism Past. Let us consider Authoritarianism Present.
The last century appeared to witness a rising tide of “liberal” governments. The United States, France, and Great Britain (in that order) all created representative and “responsible” governments with regular elections, guarantees of civil rights, and a free press.[1] Even here, however, universal manhood suffrage has been slow in coming. It came soonest in the United States—for White men—by the 1830s. It came to France after the Revolution of 1848, then became the basis for the “Second Empire” of Napoleon III. It came to Britain by stages until 1884. For a hopeless Optimist, these countries formed the vanguard of a world movement, or at least a Western movement.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Other places moved in that direction, but stopped short at “false-front” parliamentary systems. These were mere bones thrown to dogs. In Europe, Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire exemplify the “false front” approach. The right to vote was restricted and manipulated; the governments answered to the emperor, rather than the parliament; and other freedoms were restricted. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece have all reached only a primitive stage of even these repressive systems.
Many other places remained fully “illiberal.” Look at a map. Where DON’T you want to go? The farther East and South you move from London, the more backward and illiberal the economy, the society, and the government become. Before the War, a novice British journalist asked the Prime Minister of Serbia about the state of industrialization his country. The Prime Minister replied that “In my country, a match is a machine.” (And lentil mush, served twice a day, is the only food in Serbian prisons.) Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Manchu China were hulking giants of tradition and oppression. Whips, hangman’s rope, and massacres—done either by government forces or at the behest of government agents—were and are common tools of “stable” government. Good for foreign corporations, perhaps, but highly unpleasant for the people who eke out a living there. Now they are all collapsed into revolution and civil war.
Anywhere one looks in Latin America, such a false-front parliamentary system is the best that can be hoped for. Everywhere there are long-serving “Presidentes” and be-medaled “caudillos.” There are national police forces, but no national school systems. In the Caribbean islands, government oppresses the poor on behalf of the rich until the poor descend into savagery themselves.
There are gigantic cattle ranches, supplying beef and mutton to Europe. There are huge cotton plantations, crowding out the subsistence farms of humble peons. There are mines carving up mountains in search of every sort of metal. There are national railroad systems to carry all these commodities to seaports for export to “advanced” countries. All are financed by British capital. The rich few keep their wealth in foreign banks, rather than investing in their own countries. Why? Because they know that they live on the edge of a volcano that might explode beneath them at any moment.
The only hope for an ordinary person in any of these places is emigration to somewhere not good, but less bad. It is a flight without end.[2]
So, schools without teachers, hospitals without doctors, and elections without voters. This reality is prettied up by Western diplomats and Western journalists and Western travelers who consort with their own types in such countries. But, if one “rides the rails” or lives in rural villages for a time, one comes away with a more accurate understanding of “modern times.”
[1] Eventually, offshoots of Britain introduced the same systems for their own domestic management: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
[2] Editor’s Note. Curiously, this is the title of a 1927 novel by Joseph Roth. This may be pure coincidence. It may also indicate that at least one of the authors knew Roth. From 1916 to 1918, Roth served in the Austro-Hungarian army; from 1918 to 1920, he was a journalist in Vienna; and from 1920, he worked in Berlin. Perhaps they picked up the phrase from Roth before he put it into use as a book title?
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