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.
I really feel like we are retreading ground here.
Again, there is no meaningful “authoritarian versus not authoritarian” when we are talking about states. All states, by virtue of being states, are authoritarian. The state is the organised machinery of class rule and coercion.
What changes is the context in which authority is exercised: class content, historical conditions, social function, institutional form, and how openly or indirectly that authority is applied.
I also do not think “authoritarian” functions like temperature here. Temperature is a definite measurable quantity. “Authoritarian” is a vague liberal abstraction that generally ends up meaning “state power I disapprove of”, while leaving untouched the actually important question: authority of which class, wielded against which class, and for what purpose?
This is a very silly framing, to put it mildly.
“Individual freedom from state oppression” in the abstract means very little. Freedom for whom? Freedom to do what? Freedom under what class relations?
Repression of fascists, landlords, imperialist proxies, comprador elements and other reactionary forces is good. Repression of workers, peasants, oppressed nations, communists, labour organisations and progressive forces is bad.
Socialism is good and fascism is bad despite both being “authoritarian” according to this broad liberal usage. That is precisely my point. The word does not explain the real distinction. It obscures it.
And again, I am saying they simply are not different levels of “authoritarian” in the way you are presenting it. They are different forms of class rule.
A fascist state violently repressing trade unions and communists, and a workers’ state violently repressing fascists and bourgeois restorationists, both involve censorship, police action, imprisonment, bans, and organised force.
The decisive question is not the amount of authority in the abstract. It is the social content of that authority.
You can believe that if you like, but you would be wrong.
These questions absolutely cannot be detached from the social, economic and political base they arise from.
“Is the press free?” is not a neutral question. Which press? Owned by whom? Funded by whom? Serving which class interests? Free to do what? Free to organise fascists? Free to call for imperialist intervention? Free to defend landlordism? Free to undermine socialist construction? Free to spread bourgeois restorationist politics?
Under socialism, the press should be controlled in the interests of the working people. Bourgeois, fascist and reactionary viewpoints should be censored. Same with gathering to “express political ideas”. If the ideas are reactionary, fascist, imperialist-backed, or aimed at restoring bourgeois rule, then no, people should not be free to platform and spread them.
This is not some unfortunate contradiction. It is the basic reality of class struggle. No ruling class allows hostile class forces unlimited freedom to overthrow it. The bourgeoisie certainly does not. It only pretends to when the threat is weak or manageable.
Again they really cannot.
For example under capitalism, formal freedoms are shaped by property relations. A billionaire media owner and a rural worker may formally possess the same “freedom of speech”, but materially they do not possess the same power to speak, organise, publish, influence, or set political agendas.
Likewise, a “free press” under bourgeois rule is usually the freedom of capital to dominate public consciousness. A “free political sphere” under bourgeois rule is usually freedom within boundaries set by private property, imperial ideology, police power, courts, prisons, employment discipline and the market.
Treating these questions independently of class context leads to bad analysis. It turns historically specific class relations into abstract moral categories.
Again sure, but only in a subordinate sense.
The quality of the inside of the cage is not completely irrelevant (just like how I said talking about authority isn’t completely irrelevant). A padded cage is obviously preferable to a cage with spikes if the workers are the ones in the cage. Liberal bourgeois rule is generally preferable to fascist bourgeois rule. Legal trade unions are preferable to banned trade unions. Being able to organise openly is preferable to having to organise underground. I have not once denied that.
But the quality of the cage is entirely secondary and inconsequential to the actual important questions: who is in the cage, why are they there, who built it, who controls it, and what social relations does it exist to preserve?
“Authoritarian” tells me a state uses authority. I already know that. It is a state.