The Terrible Beauty of Dictatorship

By Colm Gillis

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected US President. Many across the globe are concerned he plans to institute a dictatorship, which is supposedly contrary to liberal–democratic values. Yet, despite current public opinion, republics like the US regularly resort to dictatorship, while a need for dictatorship has been recognized by prominent republican thinkers. This study presents the ‘hidden history’ of dictatorship, analyzes justifications for dictatorship, and proposes a theory of the institution. You will read a paradoxical tale, describing how the quest for absolute freedom is also bound up with bouts of tyranny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colm Gillis
• Release date: Sep 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370966998

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THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF DICTATORSHIP

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THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF DICTATORSHIP

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected US President. Many across the globe are concerned he plans to institute a dictatorship, which is supposedly contrary to liberal–democratic values. Yet, despite current public opinion, republics like the US regularly resort to dictatorship, while a need for dictatorship has been recognized by prominent republican thinkers. This study presents the ‘hidden history’ of dictatorship, analyzes justifications for dictatorship, and proposes a theory of the institution. You will read a paradoxical tale, describing how the quest for absolute freedom is also bound up with bouts of tyranny.

Dr. Colm Gillis is an independent researcher from Ireland who received his doctorate from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, in 2016. The focus of his books are matters of political import, as well as poetry. Previous works are Mysteries of State in the Renaissance, the e–book Political Animals and the Godfather, and an e–book of poems titled Embroidery of the Eternal.

Text Copyright © 2017 Colm Gillis

All Rights Reserved

First published 2016

A documentary, Dictatorship: A Forbidden History, which accompanies this book is available online at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhe15r_6Ijbpx21TLeR2seRKYsaW-T5fI

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ISBN: 9781370966998 (Smashwords)

Cover art by BookTips (Twitter: @Booktips_tweet)

The general principle and the particular institutions of constitutional dictatorship are political and social dynamite. No democracy ever went through a period of thoroughgoing constitutional dictatorship without some permanent and often unfavorable alteration in its governmental scheme, and in more than one instance an institution of constitutional dictatorship has been turned against the order it was established to defend.

Clinton L. Rossiter: Constitutional Dictatorship, p. 13.

Acknowledgements

I owe a debt of gratitude to T. E. Taylor (author of Revolution Day), Dr. Oleg Konovalov (author of Organisational Anatomy: A Manager's Guide to a Healthy Organisation (Towards the Twenty-First Century Organization)), Mo Ameen, and Gordon Warren, for their comments on the original book I published in 2016. Their suggestions have been taken on board and the book appears a lot different now than when it appeared last year. Thanks also to my family for being patient during yet another arduous publishing journey. Thanks to the Most High for giving me the ability to read and research. And thank you for joining me on this journey!

Preface Second Edition (2017)

This is a heavily edited and re–written version of a book published in early 2016. Since the initial publication, I have evaluated the first edition and found much therein amiss. I wasn’t happy with the structure, thought it was too unwieldy, and felt the writing needed vast improvement. Another aspect of the last edition which displeased me was the use of symbolism and metaphor to explain concepts relevant to dictatorship. On the other hand, much of the raw material in the first edition was valuable and I also found that certain arguments developed therein could be further fine–tuned to form a unified and coherent theory of dictatorship. As a consequence of the evaluation process, the structure of this book is far simpler, the study is more compact, much of the opaque language is dropped, and the thesis can be more readily traced. Use of symbolism and metaphor won’t be reverted to as frequently in this edition. But the theory which appeared in the last edition, i.e. that dictatorship is to a rightfully held authority (e.g. a traditional monarch) what a leader is to a ruler, or what a brother/friend is to a father, is the line adopted in this edition, but with additional emphasis. In a nutshell, I will argue that a dictator is like a sheepdog gathering sheep, but he/they must always appear to serve the ‘shepherd,’ and this concept of authority is crucial for distinguishing a dictatorship from a sovereign or from other types of arbitrary governance. In sum, a dictator has his unlimited power because he acts under the aegis of the highest, legitimate authority. Nevertheless, despite his power, he can’t commandeer certain attributes which form the essence of the rightful authority, at least if he wants to remain a dictator. The other two constitutive elements of a dictatorship are the committing of illegal acts and the prosecution of a particular mission directed at a well–defined target.

What has also motivated me to publish a new edition are global events which have placed dictatorship to the forefront of the public consciousness. When I published the first edition, the UK was still in the EU and the US looked like it would elect the usual compromise candidate from either of the two major parties, allowing for a brief flirtation with more radical candidates on either the left or right. After the UK public decided they wanted to leave the EU in mid–2016, newly installed prime minister Theresa May sought to apply the royal prerogative, a move found by both the British High Court and Supreme Court to be an illegal act (or should we say an intended one, because the act was not consummated). Historically, the royal prerogative was only used in emergency situations and was essentially an instrument of dictatorship. Then, there was the election of Donald Trump in the US. Trump’s pointed anti–liberalism, his ‘hands–on’ approach to questions of immigration, ‘America First’ declarations, attempts to discredit the media, and general appeals to populism over legality, have combined to give birth to a slew of articles where the words ‘Trump’ and ‘dictator’ appear together; "Without Democrats, Trump would have room to be a dictator, Hitler, Mussolini … Trump? No, the Donald isn’t a dictator, John McCain on Trump: suppressing free press is 'how dictators get started.'"[1] Numerous other articles which have considered the basic question ‘Does Donald Trump aspire to dictatorship?’ have been published over the last year or so. As of time of writing, to the best of my knowledge, President Trump has not done anything which is de facto dictatorial. For example, he hasn’t effaced the separation of powers. But Americans are thinking about the possibility of home–grown dictatorship now more than ever. Sales of books like 1984 and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism are sky–rocketing. The post Cold War assumption that dictatorship was a thing of the past, or in the process of being phased out, is no longer considered a fait accompli. In addition to the concerns of much of the US public, there is the global picture. Leaders who either are dictators, or who are considered by much of the world to be dictators, are enjoying success. President Putin of Russia is growing increasingly confident, the wave of uprisings in the Arab world have only consolidated, or given birth to new, military dictatorships, President Erdogan of Turkey is moving that country to a regime reminiscent of an Eastern autocracy, in the Philippines President Duterte is openly governing as a dictator, Hungary is turning its back on liberal–democracy, and France has had a state of emergency in place since November 2015. Dictatorships in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Belarus, North Korea, and other parts of the globe, previously thought to be aberrations living on borrowed time, now appear more like the norm. Overall, the emergence or cementing of autocratic–type leaders has greatly shaken confidence in an international order governed by a combination of regulated populism, universal laws, and a general respect for human rights and dignity.

Those are the primary motivations for publishing a new edition. This second edition was written in the same spirit as the earlier book. Dictatorship is ‘taken seriously,’ so to speak. It is defined, and I analyze both the literature on dictatorship and its historical realization so as to forward an argument. No idealistic, moral judgements are passed. Instead the book describes dictatorship, formulates a coherent narrative, and advances a thesis based on assessment of the facts concerning exceptional powers. In the following re–working which I now present, I still hold to two judgements made in the earlier edition; (1) the dictator is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and (2) an imperfect order is better than a perfect disorder.

Colm Gillis

Norwich, 07/03/2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

1 Plato and Aristotle on Tyranny, Democracy, Law, Violence

2 The Roman Dictatorship

3 Theories of Dictatorship in the Early Modern Era

4 Constitutional Dictatorships in France, US, UK

5 Donoso Cortés, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Carl Schmitt

Conclusion

Thank you

Endnotes

Bibliography

Introduction

Dictatorship, tyranny, absolute power … these are really just problems of human freedom, liberty, and justice, turned upside–down and inside–out. Dictatorship is an issue because we take our freedoms and dignity seriously. Not only do we value the right to be free from power breathing down our necks; we also, to a great extent, love predictability. We like to know that things will be roughly the same tomorrow as they were today, and that we can plan with reasonable confidence for the future. So, not only does dictatorship violate our dignity, it is arbitrary. We don’t know its rationale or sense any pattern that can guide us to behave consistently. In opposition to dictatorship, we have ‘freedom,’ but this latter word is really a catch–all for the enjoyment of a structured society which we feel assists our personal development. By contrast with freedom, the word ‘surreal’ is often bandied about when discussing dictatorships. ‘Surreal’ means that things don’t function like clockwork, and that one’s ‘exterior’ world has an unacceptable level of unpredictability which stifles our growth, and that ‘exterior’ world is something we have little control over.

However, that desire for order (predictability) as a valid part of the human experience brings us to the other side of the coin when discussing dictatorship. Where can human liberty only be realized? Nowhere on Earth as such, but anywhere. People are free to do things in one place that they wouldn’t be able to do in another place, they have freedoms considered sacred in one place, but not necessarily so in another place, and even certain physical features they possess mean that they will never be fully accepted in particular societies, but will blend in easily in other places. So, although human dignity at the individual level is a problem, there is also the matter of securing a political community as a sovereign entity because both personal growth and a functioning social matrix are inextricably linked.

Yet, just as human dignity is precarious, so is the orderly functioning of any society. History teaches us that, for mostly reasons of either war, civil strife, or financial crises, law and order can dissolve quickly. In emergency situations, personal liberties are typically traded for the ‘greater good.’ This then means that a strongman will be supported as a popular or effective leader to keep the peace, or he may act as a lightning rod who will unify disparate elements by his presence.

Now, one could merely adopt this balanced view of the relation between personal liberty, on the one hand, and law and order, on the other, and leave it there, were it not for a clear historical trend. Individual rights are not only considered sacrosanct; the codes of many legal systems, along with the stated policy of international organizations, most notably the UN, is to vindicate the human rights of individuals. In the West especially, the protection of human rights is largely an unquestioned doctrine, the possible exception being when someone is considered an ‘enemy of humanity.’ This largely explains why dictatorship is a ‘dirty word.’ Dictatorship is then contrasted with the other ‘d.’ That other ‘d,’ democracy, enables individual voices to be heard and prevents the abuse of power. Democracy is in an apocalyptic clash with dictatorship, we are often told, or, alternatively, has won its historic conflict with dictatorship, arbitrary power merely a dying animal.

Yet, despite the antipathy towards dictatorship, everyone – especially over the last ten years or so – knows that democracies resort to crisis instruments, emergency powers, and illegal acts at times. In a nutshell, democracies do things that only dictatorships are meant to do. Nonetheless, such desperate measures appear as blemishes in the life of ‘free’ nations and, perhaps, desperate acts are excused because democracies dwell amongst dictatorial regimes in the global neighbourhood. Regrettably, terror must be met with anti–terror, brutality with anti–brutality, repression with anti–repression. Existence of dictatorial regimes should even spur us on to greater efforts to eliminate dictatorships because then every country will be ‘free’ and the world will be at peace.

The paradox thickens when we come to discuss constitutions, those documents whose purpose is to delineate exactly the relations between government and the individual, and which are thus gateways to individual freedom because they allow current law to be constantly changed and shaped in a predictable manner; this ongoing process invariably rebounding to the balance sheet of individual freedom. Any country adopting a constitution will gradually foster a more individualistic culture, although the parallel development of a stronger, more centralized, bureaucracy occurs in tandem, a seemingly contradictory tendency we won’t delve into. And, when we discuss individual freedom, we are again invoking the idea that government cannot behave in an arbitrary manner and that the citizen can predict with relative certainty the functioning of their relationship with the State. Furthermore, constitutional nations basically state that under all circumstances governments must be approved of by the people and that democratic methods of approval ensure that those who dissent are neither prejudiced against nor suffer repression. There is a sharp division made between a person’s political outlook and their adherence to sets of legal standards. Someone can express hatred and loathing for their country, they could make a point out of insulting the powerful, and condemn the majority as wicked. They could even work at undermining the State and openly declare their intentions to do so. Political opposition occurs and has occurred in non–liberal democratic countries but dissension would likely meet with open opposition that would be intolerant in nature, if not vicious and violent. By contrast, voluntary consent, with respect to the very governmental institutions that nurture the individual, is seen as being critical to both personal development and political legitimacy in the West. So, the best of both worlds – the ability to express oneself, forging a populist political path based on a consensus that is freely given, on the one hand a positive assertion of freedom, and the right to live as one pleases without repression, on the other hand a negative assertion of freedom– are promoted by constitutional nations.

What distinguishes nation-states like the US, the UK, France, and indeed any other nation–state subscribing to the liberal-democratic ideal – whether it is technologically advanced or backward – from other nations is this: citizens or subjects are to have their rights promulgated to them in a constitution and they, because they participate in this political community whose existence is framed by the constitution, are then protected from the arbitrary whims of those who legislate, execute, or administer laws, or who make judicial decisions on laws. All laws, administrative decrees, etc …, are derived from norms emanating from the constitution – or in some other legally understandable and acceptable manner – with the purpose of the constitution that of preventing a ‘government of men’ and facilitating a ‘government of laws.’ Another way of saying this is that the constitution ‘speaks’ while men’s personal opinions are silent. This also means that groups, such as religious or business organizations, enjoy freedom of association but they cannot monopolize the political arena. Separation of church and State makes sense when we bear this in mind. As much as possible, the constitution must tend to being as ‘empty’ as possible of all human, subjective, opinions. Objective standards are to be upheld to the fullest extent. Elections are a prime example of this objectivity. While there may be some limits on who can compete for power, it is still generally the case that left – or right–wing groups with extreme policies are allowed to participate in elections and, if they win the election, can impose contents of their manifesto to the degree their mandate allows. The ground of obedience to democratic norms is that of adherence to objectively articulated standards in the constitution or interpretation of these standards by political and/or legal institutions. There is a quid pro quo: in return for adherence to