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The Authoritarian Handbook–III.

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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? 

The Authoritarian Handbook–II.

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Editor’s Note: The pamphlet “The Authoritarian Handbook” survives only in scraps. I first learned of it while in graduate school in the 1980s. It was not to be found in major libraries or research collections. After much desultory searching, I found a package containing parts of the pamphlet in a barn/used book-store south of Cambridge, MD, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake.

Editor’s Note: It has been impossible to identify the authors whose names appear on the title-page. This leads me to think that they are pseudonyms. They appear to have read a great deal in various areas of knowledge. As will be clear from other sections, they seem to know the life of soldiers, fugitives, and prisoners. They lived in troubled times of war, revolution, and social and economic upheaval.

Authoritarianism Past. 

If one seeks an “authoritarian handbook,” one has only to open a history book to any page.  Virtually all governments of the past were “authoritarian.”  There were kingdoms and empires.  Yes, the “Classical” Greeks invented, “Democracy,” but they also invented Oligarchy and Tyranny.[1]  The Roman Republic died in the bloody strife of men avid for personal power.  Then the Many gave way to the One, the “first among equals,” the Emperor. 

Later in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, there were kings who were “despotic” and kings who were “benevolent” or “enlightened.”  There were emperors in China, and Japan, and Inca Peru.  All were supreme rulers who were determined to defend their prerogatives.  There were “republics,” again.  In Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Venice, the term “republic” really signified an oligarchy that had escaped royal control.  All ruled with an iron fist. 

What were the parts of this “iron fist”?  There were aristocrats and bureaucrats; soldiers, priests, and informers. 

There were “subjects”—how expressive of the reality!—rather than “citizens.”  Subjects have duties; citizens have rights. 

This a key part of Authoritarianism.  Men need food and shelter.  They need safety, both of the economic sort and the law-and-order sort.  These are the material even animal, essentials of human life.  They may aspire to other, basically emotional, things once these essentials are achieved: community, a higher place in that community, and even a quest for a larger purpose in life.  But the animal, material needs are essential and primary.[2]  Without them, nothing else is possible.  Hence, these will always lie at the heart of any politics, whether it be “liberal” or “illiberal” or “authoritarian.”    

You will notice that we say nothing about Freedom.  Rarely do men crave actual Freedom.  History tells us of great revolts from below against the ruling classes.  The list always includes the “Servile Wars” of the Roman Republic, the peasant uprisings of the Late Middle Ages in England and France,[3] and the revolts of urban workers such as the “Ciompi” in Florence.  Then there are the many slave revolts in the Caribbean, with Haiti taking pride of place.  All of these revolts sprang from intense human misery that had finally been pushed beyond the point of tolerance.  Rents or labor requirements had been raised significantly by Medieval land owners, or piece-work wages reduced by urban employers.  Mere survival appeared threatened for many people.  Under these conditions, they revolted.  Aspirations to something like what political theorists of the present-day label “individual rights” or “freedom” had little to nothing to do with the revolts. 

[1] The Athenians put to death the suicidally melancholy public nuisance Socrates.  No one grieved, outside of his small group of followers. 

[2] Editor’s Note.  The authors here seem to anticipate the theories of Abraham Maslow by twenty to thirty years.  See: Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (1954). 

[3] Editor’s Note: The “Jacquerie” (1358) and “Wat Tyler’s Rebellion” 91381).    

The Authoritarian Handbook–I.

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           Excerpt from “The Authoritarian Handbook,” by Lewis Galleani and Irwin Kern (1922). 

            What are some hallmarks of an Authoritarian regime? 

First, a “President for Life.”

Second, a cowed judiciary.

Third, a legislature with a pro-government majority engineered by a combination of the disfranchisement of a part of the population and urban political “machines” based on government patronage.

Fourth, a government bureaucracy eating away at the prerogatives of the legislature and the courts.

Fifth, an idealization of the simple and honest life found in rural populations, in contrast to the depravity of the big cities.

Sixth, the justification of radical departures from traditional policies by the invocation of “crisis” and “necessity knows no law.”

Seventh, in a severe crisis, the imprisonment without trial of alleged “enemies of the nation.”