Advantages to Totalitarianism?

[unmerged(75409)]

This thread is about Totalitarianism in general, so I would like to ask: What would be the advantages of maintaining an unlimited absolute autocracy such as the one in the Russian Empire? I have tried to do so in Vic Rev for the Russian Empire, but the only thing I get is are endless revolts, no matter how low are taxes, how much goods the pop gets (in general, no matter how "good" the country is).

Unlimited autocracy would be your preferred mode of government if you don't want elections and political reforms, don't have a fascist party that could do the job, and don't want to go through the upheaval of installing a communist dictatorship.

My idea would be that autocracy, much like presidential or liberal-bourgeois dictatorship, would only have access to a few of the "evil" totalitarian techs that keep plurality and militancy and consciousness down... secret police yes, one-party state yes, modern propaganda no, mass mobilization no, rule of terror no.

Depending on how easy it will be to make a profit, autocracy could be a cheap way maintain political stability if you have an anemic economy. Lots of clergy = low consciousness, lots of low-CON conservatives and reactionaries = little demand for expensive social reforms. However if you want to industrialize and modernize then autocracy would (should) be a suboptimal choice, those tasks should be easier with a (totalitarian) fascist or communist dictatorship in place since have other means than clergy to keep down CON and MIL.

 

[Sid Meier]

Stalinist Russia didn't happen overnight and the post revolution period from 1917 to 1930 included the Russian Civil war, a war with Poland, and some major uprisings in the Ukraine.

I mean, Finland, Poland, and the Baltics did successfully break away from Russia. The Soviets did get the Ukraine under their thumb, but it was quite a bloody ordeal.



Explain modern day China then.

Actually, there was debate on this during the time when Trotsky and crew still had weight in the Soviet Union. On like how much a farmer gets to keep etc etc.

There are always varying forms of this concept throughout Communism's history.

Not overnight sure, but in game terms the revolt risk NEVER goes away.

 

[keynes2.0]

I think the most plausible explanation for China is that they are communist in nothing but name. Corporatist would be a more apt description.

The argument that authoritarianism shouldn't work in a developed state is ignoring the totalitarian elephant in the room. Nazi Germany was quite the economic powerhouse for a while. They weren't a backwater by any stretch of the imagination but Totalitarianism worked quite well at diverting resources from the good of the people into increasing economic growth.

I think it would be quite plausible in the 20th century for an advanced nation that had suffered major setbacks to undergo a reactionary or communist revolution and have a similar short term boom. Heck, just look at the good ole USA, one bad recession an now people everywhere are calling for a reactionary coup to avert the communist one! [/tongue in cheek]

 

[unmerged(75409)]

The argument that authoritarianism shouldn't work in a developed state is ignoring the totalitarian elephant in the room. Nazi Germany was quite the economic powerhouse for a while. They weren't a backwater by any stretch of the imagination but Totalitarianism worked quite well at diverting resources from the good of the people into increasing economic growth.

I don't think anyone argued that all forms of authoritarianism should never work in a developed country.

However, the Russian variant (auhoritarian rule, no liberal reforms, but also no totalitarianism) should be a road to failure for any socially and industrially advanced state. The politically conscious educated classes (craftsmen, clerks) would demand a say in politics, and shut your country down with revolts until you either grant them the reforms they demand -- or until you make the step to full blown totalitarian rule, either by communist revolution or by turning your reactionary monarchy into a modernist fascist dictatorship (with the Czar maybe as a figurehead).

Either way the idea is that some forms of government should not be sustainable all the way into the end phase of the game (Enlightened despotism and absolute monarchy). Others would be bad (unstable) for the early game but work well once you are a developed society (democracy, communism) or at least a society with a powerful state apparatus and modern technology (fascist totalitarianism). Some are good all around (con-mon) provided you're not forced into life-or-death crises and you don't screw your people over too badly.

 

[cwg9]

I think Kaiserreich's French and British Syndicalists would be socialists, not communists.

As for Trotsky's comments:


"The science of adfvertising"... :wacko: I dare say I do not share his view on the willingness of the common American worker to submit himself to conveyor-belt-style rationalization, and I am even less sceptical that the common American farmer of the 1920s would have submitted himself so voluntarily to Collectivization. After the failure of the first "voluntary" collectivization effort, Trotsky would have the Red Army roam the American midwest and you would soon have the same sort of massive rebellion and starvation that you had in Russia. o

Wacko you say? But both of these predictions came true! The only part he got wrong is that these changes weren't brought about directly by the state, but rather was led directly by private industry in the quest for ever higher profits, with strong support from state polices.

Virtually every method of production, certainly in the area of manufacturing, has undergone Rationalization of this sort to increase productivity and efficiency. I'm sure you're right that most of the workers weren't thrilled with these changes, but they ultimately submitted to them because the alternative was to look for a new, possibly worse paying job.

Similarly, I would argue that the long-term and ongoing trend towards the disapearance of the small-scale farmer/landowner, to be replace with the the giant agri-businesses like Monsanto buying up most of the farm land, counts as a form of Collectivization of agriculture. Certainly not quite what Trotsky had in mind, and I don't think traditional farmers are too happy with this trend. But they've ultimately submitted to them because the big multi-nationals have all the money, while your average traditional farmer can't really afford to compete with those companies and make ends meet.

Sorry, I know I should stick to commenting about gameplay instead of socio-economic analysis, I just couldn't resist getting a word in.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

I didn't realise Communism was all for the small private landholder for basically sentimental reasons and at the expense of output.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I didn't realise Communism was all for the small private landholder for basically sentimental reasons and at the expense of output.

One of the first things the bolsheviks did was disown the large estates and "allow" (encourage) their redistribution to the small peasants. Bread, peace and land, wasn't that the slogan?

The redistribution of land in Russia was a social egalitarian move of unprecedented proportions. It was well in line with Communist principles and made the Bolsheviks popular with the rural masses. However the Bolsheviks came to dislike the very results of their own policies when they started running into shortages in the cities, and found that the new owners of the land were every bit as market-savvy as the land owners of old had been. So as the cities starved, the Bolshevists (being urban intellectuals with a bias against "unenlightened" rural people) came up with phoney reasons why the land should be taken away from the successful peasants again and their harvests confiscated at the point of a bayonet :wacko:

Essentially had Russia not gone into a huge hunger crisis, maybe they would not have f*cked over the farmers as badly as they did... in-game you could have some events that let you make a choice about how you want to define the role of the State in its relations with the farmers. Tolerate some market based activity as long as it's from small landowners? Encourage formation of market-oriented cooperatives? Collectivize to enforce full state control over every aspect of agricultural production?

 

[Grosshaus]

I didn't realise Communism was all for the small private landholder for basically sentimental reasons and at the expense of output.

There are so many different aspects of Communism. Finnish communist revolution was even less than the Russian one about urban factory workers' demands, but about redistribution of estate and wealthy peasant land to private farms for the rural poor. Perhaps state farms was in the minds of some of the communist leaders, but speaking it out loud would have meant alienating much of the revolutionary army.