I reject your stated symmetry between fascists and workers. Fascists are inherently violent, workers are not.
A state which only violently represses the violent is far less authoritarian than a state which violently represses a peaceful political group. This distinction is extremely consequential to the inhabitants of said state.
Maybe I worded it poorly but the fact there is no symmetry was sort of exactly my point. While both acts are definitionally authoritarian in reality they are diametrically opposed thus highlighting the fact that authoritarian doesn’t provide any insight of value.
But one is many orders of magnitude less authoritarian than the other, highlighting the fact that it does provide value.
Again no. Both of these things are equally “authoritarian” what’s changing is not the amount of or honestly even type of authority being wielded but the context surrounding it, more specifically the class content. You are effectively using “authoritarian” as a stand in for bad here, which to be fair is what it effectively amounts to due to lacking any real analytical value.
Isn’t it a bit like saying that adding a pinch of salt and adding a kilo of salt to your soup is a meaningless distinction?
To use your salt analogy in both cases you are using 500g of salt but in one you’re using it to bake a cupcake and in the other you’re seasoning a batch of fries. The issue is not amount of salt in the abstract but the context of it’s use which authoritarian does nothing to address and in many cases obscures.
(Not that food analogies are particularly good as changing the amount of “salt” will have knock on effects to the point of in many cases changing the entire “dish”)
Interesting perspective. So authoritarian is not even a binary state in your mind, i.e. that you’re either 100% or 0% authoritarian, but it’s a completely ambient quality of any state? I.e. all states are equally authoritarian?
Does that mean that e.g. Nazi Germany with it’s outlawing of and violent punishment of any “aberrant” behavior is as authoritarian as e.g. modern Iceland which provides legal protection for many of the personal freedoms of its citizens and doesn’t have an army?
If we can’t distinguish these states through the concept of authoritarianism, what concept should we apply instead?
Yes all states are definitionally authoritarian that’s what makes it a state. I think behind the scenes you’re conflating/mixing the state and the government. The government serves a necessary function of organisation and administration. The state is the organised institutions of class rule. So long as class antagonisms exist so too must the state to enforce one classes supremacy over the others. In the case of a fascist/bourgeois state it’s the bourgeoisie ruling over the proletariat and the peasantry and any other progressive forces, while in the case of a workers state it is the proletariat ruling over the remnants of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry and any other reactionary forces. Both are authoritarian enforcing their class rule over the others however one is objectively progressive and the other is regressive.
all states are equally authoritarian?
Not what I said. What I said was the distinction in level of authority is largely inconsequential in comparison to the context said authority is being exercised within, specifically the class character of it, and that authoritarian does not contend with this fact and in many cases obscures it.
Does that mean that e.g. Nazi Germany with it’s outlawing of and violent punishment of any “aberrant” behavior is as authoritarian as e.g. modern Iceland which provides legal protection for many of the personal freedoms of its citizens and doesn’t have an army?
Again the issue with the Nazis was not that they were “authoritarian” it’s that they were genocidal fascists.
Also Iceland still as far as I’m aware is a bourgeois state with a police force and courts that enforce bourgeois ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the working class and thus is still “authoritarian”. What makes them different to the Nazis is not some nebulous idea of less authority but that they are not currently using said authority to enforce fascism at current (although being a capitalist state as the contradictions of capital sharpen it is absolutely a possibility should a proper proletarian organisation arise to counter it).
If we can’t distinguish these states through the concept of authoritarianism, what concept should we apply instead?
The thing I’ve been saying from the beginning, class analysis. Who is wielding the authority against who for what purpose (this is exactly what authoritarianism as a phrase obscures).
Thanks. I don’t think I’m conflating government and state, rather I distinguish how oppressive the state is measured in part on the laws it is acting within.
The thing I’ve been saying from the beginning, class analysis. Who is wielding the authority against who for what purpose (this is exactly what authoritarianism as a phrase obscures).
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it looks like in your class analysis both Nazi Germany and modern Iceland are bourgeois states, making them indistinguishable. Yet in the latter, workers are at least legally allowed to organize, strike and generally work in the open towards a better future, while also generally enjoying personal freedoms not afforded under Nazi rule.
What concept can we use to distinguish these two types of “authoritarian bourgeois states”? Or do you reject the idea that there is any meaningful difference between them?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it looks like in your class analysis both Nazi Germany and modern Iceland are bourgeois states, making them indistinguishable.
You are. This is not what class analysis means.
Class analysis does not mean reducing every bourgeois state into an undifferentiated blob. It means beginning from the class character of the state, then analysing the concrete form it takes under specific historical conditions.
Nazi Germany and modern Iceland are both bourgeois states in the sense that both preserve capitalist property relations, bourgeois legality, and the rule of capital over labour. But they are obviously not identical political forms. One is a fascist bourgeois state; the other is a liberal-democratic bourgeois state.
That is an important distinction that I have never denied matters. What I’m rejecting is the usefulness of “authoritarian” as the concept that explains the distinction.
The category that actually distinguishes them is not “more authoritarian” versus “less authoritarian”, but the concrete form of bourgeois class rule: liberal-democratic, fascist, colonial, Bonapartist, social-democratic, comprador, etc. Those are historically and materially meaningful distinctions. “Authoritarian” just flattens them into a moral spectrum of “badness”.
Yet in the latter, workers are at least legally allowed to organize, strike and generally work in the open towards a better future, while also generally enjoying personal freedoms not afforded under Nazi rule.
Yes. But again, the reason that difference exists is not because Iceland is somehow less of a state, or because its state power is less “authoritarian” in some abstract sense. It is because the bourgeoisie there currently rules through liberal-democratic methods rather than fascist methods.
Liberal democracy permits certain freedoms when those freedoms do not fundamentally threaten bourgeois rule. Workers may organize, strike, publish, vote, etc., within limits. But when those limits are exceeded, the state still reveals its class character just like the other European liberal democracies (just look at the UK or Germany and their recent crackdowns on Palestinian solidarity for example).
Strikes can be restricted or broken. Communist organisations can be surveilled, banned, infiltrated, or marginalized. Property relations are protected by law, police, courts, and prisons. Anti-capitalist movements are tolerated only so long as they remain manageable. The “freedoms” exist within a framework where capital remains sovereign.
That is obviously not the same as fascism. But it is still bourgeois dictatorship, just mediated through liberal institutions.
Fascism is what happens when the bourgeoisie abandons liberal-democratic management and turns to open terrorist rule against the working class, communists, minorities, and other targeted groups in order to preserve capital under crisis conditions.
There is obviously meaningful difference between Iceland and Nazi Germany. However the difference is not that one has authority and the other does not, or even that one is simply “more authoritarian”. The difference is the mode of class rule.
What concept can we use to distinguish these two types of “authoritarian bourgeois states”?
As I explained above, the forms of bourgeois rule.
Modern Iceland would be a liberal-democratic bourgeois state.
Nazi Germany was a fascist bourgeois state.
Those concepts tell us far more than “authoritarian”. They tell us something about which class rules, how it rules, what institutions it uses, what historical conditions produced that form, which social forces are mobilized, and who is being repressed.
“Authoritarian” does not do that. It describes the presence of coercion while ignoring the class purpose of that coercion.
As has been pointed out previously:
A workers’ state suppressing fascist paramilitaries, landlords and other reactionary currents is “authoritarian”. A fascist state suppressing trade unions, communists, Jews, Roma, disabled people, queer people, Slavs, and other oppressed peoples is also “authoritarian”. A liberal bourgeois state evicting tenants, protecting landlords, imprisoning the poor, and enforcing capitalist property law is also “authoritarian”.
So the label tells you almost nothing. You still have to ask: authority by whom, against whom, in defence of what social order?
In contrast if I talk about a fascist bourgeois state or a liberal democratic bourgeois state all of these questions and more are answered giving it analytical meaning.
Or do you reject the idea that there is any meaningful difference between them?
No, again I reject the idea that “authoritarianism” is the useful way to understand the difference.
There are absolutely meaningful differences between a liberal bourgeois state and a fascist bourgeois state.
But those differences are largely institutional forms within the same broader class structure: bourgeois rule.
A cage with a padded floor is not the same as a cage with spikes. One is clearly preferable to the person inside it. But both remain cages, and the important analysis begins by asking who built the cage, who is locked inside, who holds the key, and what social relation the cage exists to preserve.
Modern Iceland would be a liberal-democratic bourgeois state.
Nazi Germany was a fascist bourgeois state.
Those concepts tell us far more than “authoritarian”. They tell us something about which class rules, how it rules, what institutions it uses, what historical conditions produced that form, which social forces are mobilized, and who is being repressed.
“Authoritarian” does not do that. It describes the presence of coercion while ignoring the class purpose of that coercion.
Absolutely agree. Authoritarian or not authoritarian is one axis we can use to describe a society, which I would claim is useful even if it isn’t the full picture. In the same way that knowing what temperature it is outside is useful even if it doesn’t tell you the full picture of what weather it is.
It’s only a measure of “badness” if you think individual freedom from state oppression is inherently good.
A workers’ state suppressing fascist paramilitaries, landlords and other reactionary currents is “authoritarian”. A fascist state suppressing trade unions, communists, Jews, Roma, disabled people, queer people, Slavs, and other oppressed peoples is also “authoritarian”. A liberal bourgeois state evicting tenants, protecting landlords, imprisoning the poor, and enforcing capitalist property law is also “authoritarian”.
But as I tried to point out earlier, these are definitely different levels of authoritarian. I’m not saying that less authoritarian is inherently always better no matter the context. You could say that it being 30 degress outside and it being 15 degrees outside are both “warm”, but that doesn’t make temperature a useless concept.
I know you said earlier that “it’s the same amount of salt, the question is what dish you put it in”. But no matter the context, there are still basic elements of a society we can use to distinguish how authoritarian things are. In your worker’s paradise / fascist hellhole, is the press free to criticise the state? Are people free to gather and express a broad spectrum of political ideas? These questions can be interrogated (mostly) independent of the context of the society I would claim. And doing that is valuable, but of course not sufficient to mark that state as bad or good.
A cage with a padded floor is not the same as a cage with spikes. One is clearly preferable to the person inside it. But both remain cages, and the important analysis begins by asking who built the cage, who is locked inside, who holds the key, and what social relation the cage exists to preserve.
We should for sure also discuss all those qualities about the cage. But as you say, one is clearly preferable to the person inside it, making it a meaningful quality to discuss. Not the only meaningful quality to discuss, but a meaningful quality to discuss.
Any working class state will need to protect itself with force against capitalist classes and fascists. It’s still a direct use of state authority against a group of people, but this liberates the majority. That’s why Marxists reject the notion of “authoritarianism.”
The working class state is the next natural evolution of the state, the same way the bourgeois state was the next natural evolution of the feudal state. This is basic Marc.
Only violent intervention could make a state regress from working class to bourgeois, or from bourgeois to feudal. A state that prevents violent intervention is not an authoritarian state. Or at least far less authoritarian than a state that violently suppresses peaceful movements of progress.
Class struggle does not end with the implementation of socialism, this is also basic Marx. The capitalist class does not go away over night, and state authority is still used to protect it. Private property is gradually collectivized by force. It is not more or less “authoritarian,” because such a comparison is meaningless. It wields authority in favor of the working classes, rather than capitalists.
I reject your stated symmetry between fascists and workers. Fascists are inherently violent, workers are not.
A state which only violently represses the violent is far less authoritarian than a state which violently represses a peaceful political group. This distinction is extremely consequential to the inhabitants of said state.
Maybe I worded it poorly but the fact there is no symmetry was sort of exactly my point. While both acts are definitionally authoritarian in reality they are diametrically opposed thus highlighting the fact that authoritarian doesn’t provide any insight of value.
But one is many orders of magnitude less authoritarian than the other, highlighting the fact that it does provide value.
Isn’t it a bit like saying that adding a pinch of salt and adding a kilo of salt to your soup is a meaningless distinction?
Again no. Both of these things are equally “authoritarian” what’s changing is not the amount of or honestly even type of authority being wielded but the context surrounding it, more specifically the class content. You are effectively using “authoritarian” as a stand in for bad here, which to be fair is what it effectively amounts to due to lacking any real analytical value.
To use your salt analogy in both cases you are using 500g of salt but in one you’re using it to bake a cupcake and in the other you’re seasoning a batch of fries. The issue is not amount of salt in the abstract but the context of it’s use which authoritarian does nothing to address and in many cases obscures.
(Not that food analogies are particularly good as changing the amount of “salt” will have knock on effects to the point of in many cases changing the entire “dish”)
Interesting perspective. So authoritarian is not even a binary state in your mind, i.e. that you’re either 100% or 0% authoritarian, but it’s a completely ambient quality of any state? I.e. all states are equally authoritarian?
Does that mean that e.g. Nazi Germany with it’s outlawing of and violent punishment of any “aberrant” behavior is as authoritarian as e.g. modern Iceland which provides legal protection for many of the personal freedoms of its citizens and doesn’t have an army?
If we can’t distinguish these states through the concept of authoritarianism, what concept should we apply instead?
Yes all states are definitionally authoritarian that’s what makes it a state. I think behind the scenes you’re conflating/mixing the state and the government. The government serves a necessary function of organisation and administration. The state is the organised institutions of class rule. So long as class antagonisms exist so too must the state to enforce one classes supremacy over the others. In the case of a fascist/bourgeois state it’s the bourgeoisie ruling over the proletariat and the peasantry and any other progressive forces, while in the case of a workers state it is the proletariat ruling over the remnants of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry and any other reactionary forces. Both are authoritarian enforcing their class rule over the others however one is objectively progressive and the other is regressive.
Not what I said. What I said was the distinction in level of authority is largely inconsequential in comparison to the context said authority is being exercised within, specifically the class character of it, and that authoritarian does not contend with this fact and in many cases obscures it.
Again the issue with the Nazis was not that they were “authoritarian” it’s that they were genocidal fascists.
Also Iceland still as far as I’m aware is a bourgeois state with a police force and courts that enforce bourgeois ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the working class and thus is still “authoritarian”. What makes them different to the Nazis is not some nebulous idea of less authority but that they are not currently using said authority to enforce fascism at current (although being a capitalist state as the contradictions of capital sharpen it is absolutely a possibility should a proper proletarian organisation arise to counter it).
The thing I’ve been saying from the beginning, class analysis. Who is wielding the authority against who for what purpose (this is exactly what authoritarianism as a phrase obscures).
Thanks. I don’t think I’m conflating government and state, rather I distinguish how oppressive the state is measured in part on the laws it is acting within.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it looks like in your class analysis both Nazi Germany and modern Iceland are bourgeois states, making them indistinguishable. Yet in the latter, workers are at least legally allowed to organize, strike and generally work in the open towards a better future, while also generally enjoying personal freedoms not afforded under Nazi rule.
What concept can we use to distinguish these two types of “authoritarian bourgeois states”? Or do you reject the idea that there is any meaningful difference between them?
You are. This is not what class analysis means.
Class analysis does not mean reducing every bourgeois state into an undifferentiated blob. It means beginning from the class character of the state, then analysing the concrete form it takes under specific historical conditions.
Nazi Germany and modern Iceland are both bourgeois states in the sense that both preserve capitalist property relations, bourgeois legality, and the rule of capital over labour. But they are obviously not identical political forms. One is a fascist bourgeois state; the other is a liberal-democratic bourgeois state.
That is an important distinction that I have never denied matters. What I’m rejecting is the usefulness of “authoritarian” as the concept that explains the distinction.
The category that actually distinguishes them is not “more authoritarian” versus “less authoritarian”, but the concrete form of bourgeois class rule: liberal-democratic, fascist, colonial, Bonapartist, social-democratic, comprador, etc. Those are historically and materially meaningful distinctions. “Authoritarian” just flattens them into a moral spectrum of “badness”.
Yes. But again, the reason that difference exists is not because Iceland is somehow less of a state, or because its state power is less “authoritarian” in some abstract sense. It is because the bourgeoisie there currently rules through liberal-democratic methods rather than fascist methods.
Liberal democracy permits certain freedoms when those freedoms do not fundamentally threaten bourgeois rule. Workers may organize, strike, publish, vote, etc., within limits. But when those limits are exceeded, the state still reveals its class character just like the other European liberal democracies (just look at the UK or Germany and their recent crackdowns on Palestinian solidarity for example).
Strikes can be restricted or broken. Communist organisations can be surveilled, banned, infiltrated, or marginalized. Property relations are protected by law, police, courts, and prisons. Anti-capitalist movements are tolerated only so long as they remain manageable. The “freedoms” exist within a framework where capital remains sovereign.
That is obviously not the same as fascism. But it is still bourgeois dictatorship, just mediated through liberal institutions.
Fascism is what happens when the bourgeoisie abandons liberal-democratic management and turns to open terrorist rule against the working class, communists, minorities, and other targeted groups in order to preserve capital under crisis conditions.
There is obviously meaningful difference between Iceland and Nazi Germany. However the difference is not that one has authority and the other does not, or even that one is simply “more authoritarian”. The difference is the mode of class rule.
As I explained above, the forms of bourgeois rule.
Modern Iceland would be a liberal-democratic bourgeois state.
Nazi Germany was a fascist bourgeois state.
Those concepts tell us far more than “authoritarian”. They tell us something about which class rules, how it rules, what institutions it uses, what historical conditions produced that form, which social forces are mobilized, and who is being repressed.
“Authoritarian” does not do that. It describes the presence of coercion while ignoring the class purpose of that coercion.
As has been pointed out previously:
A workers’ state suppressing fascist paramilitaries, landlords and other reactionary currents is “authoritarian”. A fascist state suppressing trade unions, communists, Jews, Roma, disabled people, queer people, Slavs, and other oppressed peoples is also “authoritarian”. A liberal bourgeois state evicting tenants, protecting landlords, imprisoning the poor, and enforcing capitalist property law is also “authoritarian”.
So the label tells you almost nothing. You still have to ask: authority by whom, against whom, in defence of what social order?
In contrast if I talk about a fascist bourgeois state or a liberal democratic bourgeois state all of these questions and more are answered giving it analytical meaning.
No, again I reject the idea that “authoritarianism” is the useful way to understand the difference.
There are absolutely meaningful differences between a liberal bourgeois state and a fascist bourgeois state.
But those differences are largely institutional forms within the same broader class structure: bourgeois rule.
A cage with a padded floor is not the same as a cage with spikes. One is clearly preferable to the person inside it. But both remain cages, and the important analysis begins by asking who built the cage, who is locked inside, who holds the key, and what social relation the cage exists to preserve.
Thank you for the extensive answer.
Absolutely agree. Authoritarian or not authoritarian is one axis we can use to describe a society, which I would claim is useful even if it isn’t the full picture. In the same way that knowing what temperature it is outside is useful even if it doesn’t tell you the full picture of what weather it is.
It’s only a measure of “badness” if you think individual freedom from state oppression is inherently good.
But as I tried to point out earlier, these are definitely different levels of authoritarian. I’m not saying that less authoritarian is inherently always better no matter the context. You could say that it being 30 degress outside and it being 15 degrees outside are both “warm”, but that doesn’t make temperature a useless concept.
I know you said earlier that “it’s the same amount of salt, the question is what dish you put it in”. But no matter the context, there are still basic elements of a society we can use to distinguish how authoritarian things are. In your worker’s paradise / fascist hellhole, is the press free to criticise the state? Are people free to gather and express a broad spectrum of political ideas? These questions can be interrogated (mostly) independent of the context of the society I would claim. And doing that is valuable, but of course not sufficient to mark that state as bad or good.
We should for sure also discuss all those qualities about the cage. But as you say, one is clearly preferable to the person inside it, making it a meaningful quality to discuss. Not the only meaningful quality to discuss, but a meaningful quality to discuss.
Any working class state will need to protect itself with force against capitalist classes and fascists. It’s still a direct use of state authority against a group of people, but this liberates the majority. That’s why Marxists reject the notion of “authoritarianism.”
The working class state is the next natural evolution of the state, the same way the bourgeois state was the next natural evolution of the feudal state. This is basic Marc.
Only violent intervention could make a state regress from working class to bourgeois, or from bourgeois to feudal. A state that prevents violent intervention is not an authoritarian state. Or at least far less authoritarian than a state that violently suppresses peaceful movements of progress.
Class struggle does not end with the implementation of socialism, this is also basic Marx. The capitalist class does not go away over night, and state authority is still used to protect it. Private property is gradually collectivized by force. It is not more or less “authoritarian,” because such a comparison is meaningless. It wields authority in favor of the working classes, rather than capitalists.