Hey everyone, my name is Justin. Last time we were here we were exploring the
different ways in which democracy can lead to authoritarianism. Democracy takes time
but authoritarian systems move fast because they keep society in a constant state of emergency.
You have always been told that 2 + 2 = 4. We know this is one of the basic facts of math,
but what if your reality was only as real as the society you lived in? What if from day one you
were told that 2 + 2 = 5, or 6, or 7? The point being in an authoritarian system truth in fact are
often made up. In fact in an authoritarian system, truth can and often is presented as the opposite.
Propaganda is information that is intentionally designed to present a viewpoint as truth,
but it more often than not presents a one-sided viewpoint and is more meant to make people
think or feel a particular way. One-sided state or politically sponsored propaganda
often creates a disagreement between what a citizen knows is true and what they're being told
is true. Psychologists call this uncomfortable mental state
cognitive dissonance. Struggling between what they know to be true and what they're told is true.
Many people will just throw their hands up and plead ignorance, claiming that
they're not the experts and giving in to the convenience of following along. Others will
process this new truth, the lie, by rationalizing it with pre-existing truths. This helps establish
what is known as cognitive consistency and that allows people to exit that uncomfortable state
of cognitive dissonance. By keeping their citizens from having honest debates and reasoning,
authoritarian governments can drastically change the way people think, feel, their attitudes,
their beliefs, and all while maintaining the status quo or the current state of affairs.
Of course no form of government, not even an authoritarian form of government, can exist
without an economy. In previous lessons, we discussed the market as a place where goods and
services are exchanged and how humans transform nature into useful things. In our first deep
dive into authoritarian systems of government, we are going to take a look at the importance of the
market as the gateway to human relationships. It's through the creation of goods and services that
human culture is made. It's through humans labor and work that they can discover their creativity.
Socialism as a centralized form of government seizes this truth and manipulates its citizens
experience to create a new reality that maintains its own authority over society.
Imagine if you were told where to work, where to live, and what to consume. What would you know
about yourself or your neighbors that wasn't told to you?
In order to understand this we need to take a close look at how socialism organizes its society.
Socialism is a one-party system in which the controlling party symbolizes the national
proletariat or the workers party. Proletariat just means worker. In Marxism the political theory
that generated socialism, the proletariat is a revolutionary subject. The factory worker that
rebels in order to establish a socialist state. In this form of government there is complete central
planning of the economy by the government. Citizens own very little private property
on a small and personal scale. All factors of production: tools, buildings, resources,
labor, capital, all the things that you need to make a good or service including in industrial
and agricultural production are owned by the state. Forces of supply and demand are centrally
planned through local and state infrastructure and bureaucracies. Bureaucracy is all the institutions
and people that manage and administer a government while infrastructure is all the roads, bridges,
wi-fi towers, and cables, and electrical grids that people use on a day-to-day basis.
According to Marx, capitalism was the necessary step for humanity to unleash its full productive
capabilities through industry. Socialism was then the control of industry by the state in the name
of the worker or the proletariat. Socialism was the next logical step for social evolution that
would eventually lead to communism. Although a lot of people tend to refer to socialism and
communism as the same thing, the communist nations actually identified as socialists. They envisioned
a next revolution in which the state would disappear and a system of communism would emerge.
Communism would be people self-organizing without the need for a nation-state.
As we'll see though, the state instead became a permanent system of authoritarianism and
it ushered in a new form of elitism: the party elite. Remember the invisible hand?
Even though a market may look like a product of humans, they're also a place that can make humans.
They're a place in which humans can see themselves through their labor or others through exchange.
We can almost call a market a force of nature. They have specific characteristics and they ask
specific questions like: What does a society produce? How do they produce? And for whom
do they produce for? Democratic systems that use capitalism allow the market to some extent
to answer those questions. Socialist systems through central planning override these market
forces. A socialist nation determines production quantities, prices, and consumption levels.
In the wake of World War II, many western nations saw the rise of democratic socialism as different
from socialism in the eastern nations. In America this was known as the welfare state.
Social democrats argued for government control of certain industries such as
education and health care. Welfare payments to poorer segments of the population and progressive
tax policies that placed the tax burden on higher incomes and corporations. The idea was to
spur greater levels of demand and more equally distribute the wealth generated by a society.
In contrast to the welfare state, socialism and communism are considered far left on the political
spectrum while democratic socialism is considered left of center. Today the Nordic nations, Sweden
especially, are heavily socialized and have some of the highest standards of living in the world.
They combine free market models of private property and free enterprise with state-owned
control of major industries within the utility, transportation, health, and education sectors.
But what happens when too many of these market forces are controlled? Well, oftentimes
markets are crippled by shortages because prices are set too low and production costs too high
or you'll get surpluses because prices on international markets are too high and goods just
can't be exchanged. This in turn creates budget crises. Meanwhile, the state is constantly having
to spend on its militaries in order to control surrounding nations, compete in global politics,
and maintain a strong national symbol for its people. Over time this becomes unsustainable.
The greatest example of this happening is with the USSR. Joseph Stalin rebuilt Russia into an
industrial powerhouse in a very short amount of time during World War II; however, the USSR could
not compete with capitalism on the global stage. It had planned itself into too many inefficiencies
and over time its military spending became too burdensome. The cold war was a competition between
the two post-World War II powers: the U.S. and the USSR. It was a struggle of systems.
Capitalism and democracy versus socialism and authoritarianism. Although the two countries never
came into direct conflict, a hot war, many places around the world were seen as key battle points.
The soviet Afghan war was one of these conflicts. From 1979 to 1989 the soviet army fought Afghan
insurgents over control of Afghanistan; however, the soviets were never fully able to defeat these
groups and gain control of the country. The U.S. supplied the insurgents with weapons
training and funds. The USSR's planned economy could not sustain a long protracted war, but
war was the only way for the USSR to show the strength of its system
and this contradiction exhausted the USSR's economy and it fell apart.
So as our story shows, socialism is rooted in an idea but does not function on the power of ideas
and the practices that allow ideas to take shape be debated and from that debate create policy.
Instead, it mutes ideas and relies on force in order to prevent ideas
that could challenge its accepted reality. And that reality is ultimately fragile
because it does not tie to the experiences and natural forces that make up humanity.
The weakness of this reality is especially called into the light when we begin to take a look at the
total number of victims to socialist regimes all over the world. Although the total number
of murdered and missing from soviet-era expansions can never truly be known, estimates range as high
as a hundred million people. Many more pushed into poverty, made pawns and cold war games,
and displaced. How weak does your idea have to be if it requires so much destruction to attain it?
In the next video, we're going to be talking about a far right form of authoritarianism:
Fascism and unfortunately, it is also not a pretty story.