V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 7

 DOMESTIC POLICY II: RULE AND OBEDIENCE (AUTOCRACY)

After half a century during which the world was safe for democracy, it would seem outdated and superfluous to pay much attention to its conquered enemy. Not so. A careful analysis of autocratic systems, especially their modern versions, and its careful comparison with the present situation will disclose, how much of non-democratic thinking and practices has survived and is waiting for those who consider themselves capable or called to rule over others without their consent. This justifies the extent given to this system of government against which, after all, democracy is a shortlived newcomer in human history.

Autocracy

Autocracy is the form of government in which the formation of the state's will takes place according to the principle of heteronomy, i.e., that those who are subjects of duty of the legal order do not share in the normgiving, legislative power; their will is legally irrelevant in the creation of the state's will, they are subjected to an outside will whose manifestation is declared as valid and binding by the state's constitution. Legal (political) heteronomy determines the nature of the society and the structure of the state. Members of such a state are not its citizens, but its subjects. This does not mean that the subjects have no influence on the constitution. They exert it by their mere existence, because in an autocracy, too, it is true that the constitution is, ultimately, the outcome of the interplay of power relationships in the society, and autocracy, too, must beware of provoking such a resistance of its subjects that would surpass its means of enforcement or weaken it in relation to other states to such an extent that the independence of the state would be lost.

Each autocracy is based on the principle that power belongs to those who possess a certain ontological quality lacking in the rest of the members of society. The types of autocracy are described by designation of the group possessing the legislative power: the hereditary ruler (absolutism), the nobles (aristocracy), the wealthy (plutocracy), the powerful (oligarchy), the priesthood (theocracy), the knowledge class (technocracy).

The legal system is the means through which the state implements its will by imposing duties on its subjects, but on the other hand -- provided it is a lawful state -- by defining their duties it defines also a sphere in which they are "free" (the term "freedom" means in this connection "absence of legal duty"; e.g., "religious freedom" means that the state does not impose any duties on its subjects in the sphere of religion) to pursue their individual purposes of happiness. The autocratic lawful state tolerates a certain scope of freedom either because it expects that its subjects will act in furtherance of its purpose on their own also in the area of freedom because their purposes and the state's purpose are parallel, or else because it realizes that the cost of creation and maintenance of a system of enforcement would from the view of the state's purpose cause more harm than gain. In an autocratic lawful state its subjects may utilize their sphere of freedom no matter how limited to act in a way the state considers harmful, possibly also for efforts to gain a share in the legislative power, i.e., for political purposes. Therefore, only certain lawless forms of autocracy deserve detailed attention.

A Lawless State

The designation "lawless state" is actually a contradictio in adiecto, because the state is the reference point of a legal system, and therefore a state cannot exist in the absence of a legal system. The term "lawless state" is used to designate a status of society where a legal system exists (therefore a state also exists), but does not apply to all: there exists a political organization or group which stands above the law, and therefore also above the state. The state is not sovereign, sovereign is only the ruling political organization: because the state's will expressed by law is systematically violated by the ruling political organization, the state loses, within its territory, its sovereignty and retains it only externally, in its relation to other states.

One typical sign of a lawless state is the abandonment of the requirement of legislative specificity. When imposing duties, i.e., when issuing laws, the state uses expressions allowing for wide interpretations, in order to narrow the sphere of citizens' freedom. For a lawless state it is symptomatic that its executive power punishes not only violations of the law, but also a mere infringement on or threat to the interests of the power holders who, themselves, decide by whom and how their interests have been, could have been or were intended to be violated, and that violation of law is not punished if observance of law would affect the interest of the ruling political organization or of some of its members. The criminalization of "anti-state attitude"  is a typical example of such a legal provision which is sometimes called a "rubber paragraph" due to its flexibility and malleability.

The vagueness of legal formulations is complemented by the arrangement of the judicial power. The attainment of the state's purpose would not be secure if courts, as organs called to determine whether such or such action is or is not in agreement with the law, were to apply laws in a way which follows the letter of the law, but simultaneously interpret legal provision in a manner protecting the legally defined sphere of freedom of the subjects even against the interests of the ruling political organization.  A lawless state prefers over the judiciary, organs of the executive power which act in the interest of the legislator and do not examine whether or not certain actions remain outside the law. Therefore, courts are transformed into parts of the executive power or are replaced by the executive outright. In especially important instances, the legislature reserves for itself the performance of judicial responsibilities or transfers it to specially created judicial organs whose compliance it considers as guaranteed (martial law courts, military courts, people's tribunals). The proceedings of such courts are usually inquisitorial, i.e., the accuser's and judge's functions are merged; the same organ investigates the matter and passes sentence, possibly even without a hearing of the accused; occasionally, it also executes the sentence. Another way of insuring compliance of the judiciary with the wishes of the ruling political organizations, are the so-called proceedings in camera: the proceedings are secret, with the exception of direct participants no one is informed about the process or its outcome. In a lawful state, everything not prohibited is permitted; in a lawless state, everything not specifically permitted, is prohibited, and also things permitted may be punished if considered as against "the interest of the state" or "interest of society."

When the will of the ruling political organization is stronger than the will of the state, the state's constitution is irrelevant. A lawless state may be -- according to its constitution -- democratic, constitutional or autocratic, it can guarantee legally on paper human rights and fundamental freedoms; when constitutional provisions clash with the will of the ruling political organization, they are disregarded.

Types of lawless states are absolutism, dictatorship, managerial state, totalitarianism and decentralized totalitarianism.

Absolutism

In the past, lawless autocracy was represented by absolutism -- an autocratic state in which the legislative, executive and judicial powers were concentrated in the function of the monarch; in this sense, his power was absolute. The nature of absolutism was succintly expressed by French king Louis XIV by the sentence  "L''Etat -- c'est moi" (I am the state).

This state form perished because of the divergence between its normative status (all power concentrated in the person of the monarch) and its ontological status -- in reality the ruler's power was not absolute, because the preventive and repressive means at his disposal were incapable of preventing the formation of independent ideological movements and corresponding political movements, nor to inhibit the resulting political organizations from attaining means sufficient to force their way into sharing the management of public affairs.

Dictatorship

The system of lawless autocracy was more recently perfected by dictatorship. An unsurpassed definition of dictatorship was coined by Lenin: "...a dictatorship is an authority based directly on force, an authority which is absolutely unrestricted by any laws or regulations... The dictatorship means ... power, unlimited power, based on force and not on law..." (9). Dictatorship means the subordination of the state to the will of the ruling political organization. The law becomes a subsidiary means of implementing the political organization's will; the main means is direct power, force.

Although dictatorship is a factual, not legal, situation, the ruling political organizations uses also the legal system for its purposes. Because it has absolute control of the legislative, judicial and executive powers, it utilizes this control for the creation of legal norms which impose a modicum of order in those spheres of the life of society, which are politically neutral, such as traffic regulations, contractual law, or which free the political organization from the necessity to interfere continuously through its own organs with the functioning of society. Force is exerted  either by certain parts of the executive power of the state, which are under direct control of the political organization, such as secret security services of the police and/or the army, or by elements of the political organization directly, such as its militia, storm troupers, or organized mass violence directed against politically undesirable targets.

The duality of enforcement organs -- the state's and the ruling organization's -- introduces a new element in the power equation of a dictatorship: in the state's organization arises a power player capable of challenging the ruling political organization. Here not only the power relationship of the governing political organization to the dominated social complex is important, but also the relationship of that organization to the state apparatus. If the political organization does not wield  sufficient power of its own with which to enforce obedience towards its will independent of the state's machinery, the rule over the society and the state shifts to the most powerful part of the state's apparatus -- usually the army or to the secret police, or to some of their units.

Compared with the complexity and sensitivity of industrialized societies absolutism as well as dictatorship are rather crude and primitive ways of governing and not viable as means of ruling large populations. Only in politically and economically underdeveloped societies survives dictatorship and is yielding to democracy or exists as a transitory stage to more sophisticated forms of autocracy.

Updated Autocracy -- Managerism

The first stage in using modern technology for the creation of a lawless autocratic state is called here a managerial state. Under the term "manager" or "political manager" is understood a person holding a position formally under the control of a superior organizational level and in reality independent and not responsible to anybody. This new system's of control over society is a concentration of factual power in the hands of a permanent power center independent of the state power and superior to it. This center is a non-recallable and noncontrollable group of political managers and is not subordinated to any norms, not even its own. A managerial state is the dictatorship of an internally undemocratic political party, (further simply "the Party") realized by ideological corruption of the masses and scientific utilization of means of social control furnished by contemporary sociological and technological progress.

A. Preconditions

A managerial state can arise only under certain conditions of which the most relevant are:

--   democracy

--      masses living in want, who feel they have nothing to lose (except formal freedom which in practice they can exert  only to a limited extent, or not at all) concentrated in large numbers in the key centers of the state, mostly possessing the right to vote, who, due to their lack of education and political knowledge, are malleable in the hands of trained expert agitators from their own milieu, who appeal to their emotions and immediate needs,

--      a mass movement of dissatisfaction with existing conditions, combined with a strong desire for a fast and thorough change of the social order, whether resulting from direct observation or from propaganda,

--      confusion and impotence of political parties in solving long standing social problems and in effecting radical changes that would bring about quick improvement,

--      possibility of perfect centralization of the state through technical means and sociological and psychological techniques.

Dormant in these and related conditions are forces which, once centrally mobilized for the purpose of achieving and securing the management of public affairs, have explosive power . For their release and utilization there is needed only a relatively small autocratically organized group -- a managerial political party ("the Party").

The structure of a managerial political party corresponds to its central purpose: attaining power. Because of the scope of its final aims, it must be permeated by a uniform will. Its central group uses the following techniques to maintain unity of the party: selectivity in acceptance of members, verticalization of communication processes, complete subordination of lower organizational levels to those immediately above them, and exclusion of factions. In such a party, there can be only one managerial group and changes in its composition can occur only from within it; the Party's members do not influence them. Once achieved, such centralization bolstered by creation of an bureaucratic apparatus, guarantees unity and efficiency of the entire organization.

Attached to this set-up is a propaganda apparatus using a wide variety of means, which acts directly in the name of the Party, or indirectly, without disclosing affiliation with the Party, spreads the ideological movement in which the Party is rooted, by expert, scientific, ethical, philosophical, religious, etc., opinions and demands, always according to directions emanating from the managerial center combining the political and non-political ways of propaganda. Great emphasis is put on publications, among them dailies and weeklies. In addition to its own press, the Party pursues the influencing of the independent, the trade and special interests press by camouflaged ownership  or infiltration. Complementing the periodical publications are brochures, leaflets, books. Part of the propaganda apparatus are mass speakers and individual agitators, and when indicated, mass demonstrations and marches. The general tone of all propaganda is assertive, authoritative, admitting no doubts; the Party's movement and its goals are presented with enthusiasm, opponents are ridiculed and discredited.

Another arm of the managerial center is the Party's intelligence network which collects information on the movement itself (numbers and names of active members, activity and achievements of lower organizational units) and on its opponents, with special attention given to their economic position, connections and personal indiscretions. Obtained information is correlated by special small groups which use also infiltrators and spies in other political parties and in the state's apparatus.

Attached to the Party are organizations pursuing aims attractive to members of the movement the Party endeavors to use: trade unions, women and youth organizations, peace organizations, organizations of minorities, and so forth, called by the Party "mass organizations." Some of them are founded by the Party and are openly its parts, some of them are infiltrated so that Party members rise to leadership positions where they pursue the purposes of the managerial center rather than those of the organization's members. This arrangement allows the managerial center to isolate itself from the influence of these mass organizations while at the same time influencing them and including them in its power sphere.

B. Building its own sphere of power  

During this stage, when the Party does not yet possess a share in the government, its primary goal is to build its own power base. It is not engaged in securing conditions for normgiving within the framework of the current legal order. Though the Party organs may temporarily respect the law, they do so only for opportunity's sake. The managerial center's real aim is to effect  a shift in the power relationships in the society by evolving systematically a power sphere in which the state has no authority and in which the only recognized authority is the will of the center of the Party, until this sphere of power is sufficiently strong to challenge the power of the state. (Trotsky called this process "creation of a dual government.")

The managerial center therefore targets primarily the group which, in spite of being in minority,  has the greatest power potential: numbers, concentration, and militancy (the "progressive forces" of society). In an industrialized state, such a group are the workers: they are daily concentrated in large numbers in key cities of the country, working in the hierarchical organization of enterprises, it is used to discipline, it is relatively easy to organize, and it has the potential to paralyze the life of the entire society by simply stopping work. For this last feature especially, the power of workers approaches or equals the power of the state, and if the Party succeeds in uniting them under its leadership, the main condition for seizing power of the state is achieved. In developed countries, students are next to workers on the ladder of power; what they lack in discipline and impact on economy, they make up by a greater readiness to take  risks and by their long term potential  to ascend to important positions in the life of society. Dissatisfied and radical minorities are another welcome pool of supporters. In countries in the first stages of industrialization, the mass of workers is joined by the destitute masses concentrated in the proximity of large cities, especially the capital. In pre-industrial countries, the potentially most powerful element are peasants and agricultural workers, due to their numbers and importance for the economy; by their dispersion, they are an unfit object of organization, but a fit object of terror; if the state is unable to protect them, they can be cowed into submission by acts of violence, brutality and cruelty.

For a successful progress towards power, the division of society into two antagonistic groups is necessary and the more militant and resolute part (the progressive forces) must be on the side or under the direction of the managerial center. In the already divided and uneasy society such a split is either already existing or easy to provoke. The revolutionary party  starts by promoting dissent, i.e., a radical rejection of the existing order, and a fundamental division between the supporters and critics of the state. Its propaganda, in the political as well as non-political form, steadily increases dissatisfaction with the existing situation and assigns the guilt to the state without regard to the truth or untruth of its assertions (demagoguery) by appealing to feelings and instincts; it justifies its arguments ideologically by theories which demonstrate (or appear to demonstrate) the inevitable collapse of the existing order and the emergence of a new, perfect one in which the revolutionaries and their adherents will attain the fulfillment of their ideals. Once such a split has started, it is deepened: the managerial center aggravates the tensions and increases the dissatisfaction of the militant side by stressing, magnifying and dissecting its wants. The excited and impassioned masses are presented with a simple (i.e., something everyone can understand) and seductive (i.e., something everybody wants) program of immediate and radical change derived from one central idea of the Party's program, a "loaded" idea which responds to the mass movement of discontent and appeals to the needs this movement expresses -- the inflammatory idea. The inflammatory idea conforms with a strong impulse or emotion (envy, chauvinism, xenophobia, hunger, sex) calculated to make critical thought more difficult and to inspire its adherents to extraordinary effort in its realization and in destructions of its true or alleged opponents, and promises to fulfill their purposes of happiness by its realization. Disguised as its byproduct, the  program brings with it also measures undermining democracy. Inherent as well as incidental shortcomings of democratic institutions are used to justify open demands to abolish democratic institutions or to insist on reforms which would destroy significant areas of the democratic structure of the state. (Because the Party presents its revolutionary program with no intention of carrying it out, but merely as a means of capturing the allegiance of the masses, this process is hereafter referred to as the ideological corruption of the masses.)

Such a conviction is necessary to motivate people to accept the hardships and risks which a fight with the state entails. This degree of devotion brings to the resistance exceptionally self-sacrificing and courageous elements disinclined to accept any solution of existing dissatisfaction by a compromise; in their minds, only a revolution -- and seizure of power by its leaders -- can bring about the promised paradise. Therefore the political organization which plans the revolution, must maintain and increase the dissatisfaction motivating its members and adherents, by rejecting all compromising proposals, increasing its demands past the limit of possibility, denouncing the government's attempts to better the situation as fraud, sign of weakness, and concessions to be followed by additional concessions provided the revolutionary movement is not deceived and stands firm.

If changes in accordance with the Party's program are attempted by the state, they are denounced as insufficient or insincere and/or sabotaged by the power sphere under the managerial center's control, until they fail. Then, or if they are not attempted by the government, the masses, after the past preparation, definitely join the camp of the managers breaking with the rest of society in a storm of strikes, accusations and persecutions and when finally they culminate in a bloody clash between the organs of the state and the movement led by the Party, the door to mutual accommodation is definitely closed. Polarization of the population is accelerated and consolidated by intentional provocation. An intentional creation of a clash between both sides is a provocation. This happens as a part of the development of the conflict which typically starts with individual terror, attacks on police stations, grows into mass anti-government and illegal protests, demonstrations, marches, strikes (often combined with occupation of important buildings, vandalism of stores, overturning of vehicles) which make violent confrontation inevitable. Members of the revolutionary movement part ways with the rest of the society in a storm of strikes, blood-letting, mutual incriminations and persecution; the drawing of a bloody line between the two camps closes definitely any road towards mutual understanding and agreement. Because the backbone of the revolutionary movement is its political organization, defeats suffered in such clashes are from its standpoint profitable according to Lenin's slogan "The worse -- the better," providing, of course, that the state does not use its temporary defeat to rectify the sources of discontent. Even if the state wins in a particular conflict, the power base of the managerial center has become strengthened and consolidated, and permits it to continue and renew the struggle from a more favorable position.

The rallying point of the Party is the inflammatory idea. The counterpoint to it is a contradictory idea which is imputed to the opponents and blamed for all life's troubles, including failures of the movement itself. If the opponents have no such contradictory idea, they are even worse off since then the managers are free to impute them anything. The contradictory idea is also an important preparatory psychological step for future policies of the Party: it demonizes its opponents and dehumanizes its adherents.

C. Entering the government

Once it has sufficiently widened its sphere of power, the managerial political party is able to force its way into government. In order to do so it allies itself with reform political parties which, too, endeavor to solve the extant crisis of society. Democratic political parties which, engaged in efforts to ameliorate the situation and unable to achieve it, are ultimately induced by a combination of the pressure of their own membership, public opinion and partisan egoism to make a deal with the Party in the hope that participation in government will change its character of the latter or that the managerial center can be prevented from destroying democracy. Such an inclusion of the Party into democratic government represents, in itself, a deep fracture in the established system: by sharing in the government, the Party does not change its basic strategy: the only, and decisive, change is that now it begins to incorporate into its own sphere of power also sections of the state apparatus.

In pursuing this aim, it must consider all other parties, allied or opposed, as competitors and ultimately enemies. To weaken these competitors, it first of all divides them into two groups. Those of the  weaker group are not only discredited and excluded from participation in the government, but destroyed as organized units. As a rule, this is done by using those parts of the state apparatus entrusted to the Party's representatives in the government, preferably by the instrumentality of secret security services and/or special laws for the protection of State security and special courts (so-called "people's courts," in practice often lynching by a mob) whose institution and/or direction it obtained as a precondition of enabling its coalition partners to form the government. This destruction of the opposition is important for the future progress of the Party because it definitely gives the Party a superiority over its temporary allies. When the Party decides that the time for seizing all power of the state has come, they will no longer have the support they would otherwise have found in the -- now destroyed -- opposition.

Within the coalition, the Party creates a narrower block which forces gradually the outsiders out of the government into opposition, and continues this process until it possesses all power alone, and the remaining coalition partners, if any, are deprived of autonomy and share in formulating the will of the state and are also incorporated into the power sphere of the managerial center. For this purpose the Party must retain the leading position in any block in which it participates so that it can impose its will upon its partners and carry on the process of elimination. Its power base independent of its share in the government, and a sharp awareness of its ultimate goals makes it easier.

Outwardly, this process assumes the appearance of normal democratic horse-trading practices between political parties, with one difference: while the Party willingly grants its partners advantages of narrow personal and partisan character and of economic nature, it obtains concessions of a state-political nature in exchange. By these concessions it gradually accumulates the control of most important sectors of the state apparatus which then cease functioning as organs of the state and act as organs of the Party. By control of the armed units of the executive branch (the military and the police) and organs influencing public opinion (the media and educational institutions) the managerial center controls the physical space and the channels through which new members are introduced in both the physical and sociological "spaces." 

Sooner or later, a conflict between the Party and its coalition partners is unavoidable, and usually arises, or rather is provoked, at a time set by the managerial center when it feels strong enough to absorb the remaining parts of the state administration into its sphere of power and to impose such political changes which are equivalent of depriving all other political organizations of their capability of independent volition. To achieve this aim, the Party must prevent a consolidation of the situation prior to its seizure of power; therefore, it keeps the political process boiling, society guessing and its partners and opponents on the defensive. Because the Party utilizes for the seizure of power its dominion over (parts of) the state apparatus, it implements the overthrow of the system by a putsch rather than a revolution. The conflict provoked at a time when the power superiority is clearly on the Party's side and in which the Party is supported by mass organizations and by its part of the State administration usually ends with a quick liquidation of the opposition. Democracy is pushed aside. The birthday of dictatorship has arrived.

D. In power

Even after usurpation of state power, the managerial power sphere is still a foreign body in a democratically organized society, and the Party must struggle with its resistance. Having reached the stage of dictatorship, the Party uses the combined power of its own and of the State to absorb the entire society in its power sphere whose form is wholly different from a democratic society with its decentralization, diffused communication processes and numerous autonomous subjects of volition. A managerial center creates a hierarchical society with vertical communication processes, in which it aims to be the sole source of will, not only of the state, but also of organizations, groups, and individuals viewed not as subjects of freedom, but rather as means of realization of abstract plans and concepts.

The main tool of such an uprooting of the entire society is the completion of the ideological corruption of the masses still represented as a conflict between the Party's inflammatory (and corrupting) idea and the contradictory idea whose basic characteristics are stressed and made absolute. The Party constantly paints a vivid picture of the state of bliss to be reached through the achievement of the program presented by the managerial center. Regular reports on positive results are to mark the gradual implementation of the inflammatory idea and prove the achievability of its goals. Material advantages rewarding supporters are represented to them as well as to the rest of the society as anticipation of the well-being in which everybody will gradually participate.

The inflammatory idea is complemented by the  contradictory idea whose true importance becomes fully evident only at this stage. The uprooting and moulding of society by the managerial center demands so many sacrifices and so much cruelty that it would be impossible to achieve without a cold and merciless conviction (not hate, because even hate is too human a sentiment for the managers' needs) of its adherents that it is necessary to destroy its opponents regardless of their individual guilt or innocence and personal motivation. This conviction is built up in the movement already from its very inception during the period of oppression and conflict with the state power by propaganda dehumanizing the Party's adherents and demonizing the movement's enemies. Their alleged baseness justifies even the most inhuman measures against them, especially against those who are losers in internal conflicts in the managerial center. 

The contradictory idea fulfills also another need. The discrepancy between the aims of an autocracy and the objectives of its subjects grows with the degree of centralization of power.  In the managerial state which represents the ultimate in centralization, the dissatisfaction of its subjects is correspondingly intense. The state is capable of thwarting its crystallization and organization, but not its existence. It can attempt to canalize and vent it by the use of the contradictory idea which acquires thus a new dimension: it not only centers dissatisfaction on opponents, it also diverts it from the rulers by presenting to the public a target whose responsibility for every failure is absolute. Such a diversion would not be convincing enough in the abstract;  the managers must present to the dissatisfied people concrete persons as bearers and agents of the contradictory idea and to destroy them without mercy. In such a way, the mentality of a besieged camp is created and the existence of an enemy becomes a necessity and a permanent institution of a managerial state; if no enemy exists, it must be invented and produced. And it must be an enemy proportionate, by its magnitude, to the size of the  existing discontent. Therefore a foreign state or group of states is promoted to the role of the main bearer of the contradictory idea; terror against potentially inimical groups is combined with purges of the Party apparatus and liquidations of losers in the intramural political and personal infighting in the managerial center, and such an artificially created united front is presented to the public as an instrument of foreign promoters of the contradictory idea.

At this stage of the development of a managerial state, the monopoly of creating, executing and applying political will, i.e., formulation, proclamation and implementation of a political program, is located in the managerial center and secured by the effectiveness of the ideological corruption of the masses. To overcome inertia or resistance of its subjects, the managerial center proceeds simultaneously in two ways:

1.   The will of the subjects is changed so as to become identical with that of the Party. This is done by (a) persuasion: the managerial center communicates to everyone its ideology, systematically elaborated and psychologically ironed out; (b) suppressing and distorting facts which would cast doubts on its ideology or evoke desires conflicting with its will, (c) creating artificial conflicts between the ideals of its subjects by counter-positioning individual secondary purposes of their goals of happiness and by realizing some of them at the expense of others (for instance, the ideal of material security at the expense of political freedom, or of national independence at the expense of human rights, or a typical example: securing the education of children in exchange for denouncing colleagues -- the so-called breaking of characters).  In this way a part of the opposition can be won over, another part paralyzed in its efforts to strive uncompromisingly for the attainment of all the secondary purposes of their goal of happiness.

2.   Those whose will cannot be changed, are  forced to act in conformity with the will of the Party and in conflict with their own will, because they are threatened by or subjected to harm exceeding the harm caused by subordination of one's own will to the will of the managerial center. Such harm can affect  their property, health or life or other values (property, health or life of family, friends, community).

Because the change of actualized qualities is more difficult than the molding of persons whose qualities are still only potentialities, the Party concentrates efforts at ideological corruption on those whose opinions and will are still undeveloped: youth, especially children, and social strata with a lower education level, especially workers. Groups which cannot be won over or whose convincing is unlikely, are intimidated, suppressed or liquidated on the basis of their profiles without investigating individual attitudes of their members.  

The process of shaping the will of society's members would be undermined if it were carried out or interfered with by a subject of volition other than the managerial center. It must be therefore implemented exclusively, by a system of monopolies which serve to protect the power of the Party and to transform society. They are:

1.   Monopoly of communications. The possession and use of mass communications media is reserved to the Party directly or indirectly (through the state or subordinated organizations); means of communication of private nature (typewriters, computers, printers, mimeographs) are either controlled (registered) or inaccessible. By the use of this monopoly, the Party intrudes in the minds of each subject with its ideology and by its assertions and interpretations and prevents other subjects from spreading different information or opinions. This monopoly insures also that distortion or suppression of facts will not be discovered and that members of the targeted society obtain only such information which is apt to form their will in accordance with the will of the power center.

2.   Monopoly of intellectual leadership. The ruling political organization occupies by its devoted member all positions requiring theoretical knowledge. This is true especially with regard to positions in education. The contents of education are dictated by Party ideology (the inflammatory and contradictory ideas). Higher education is accessible only to those whose loyalty to the ruling political organization and its ideology appears certain. The Party ideology is represented as the official ideology, as the very idea of the state. As a consequence, criticism or doubt of the Party ideology and its interpretation are criminalized as enmity towards the state, possibly treason, and legally punishable.

      Such "state ideology" is proclaimed everywhere and decisions are made in its spirit and intentions, because they are in the hands of people who do not know any other way of thinking. The monopoly of intellectual leadership also guarantees that the state ideology will not be confronted by an intellectually comparable or superior criticism and/or the rise of a new ideology growing out of the reality created by the dictatorship. In conjunction with the monopoly of public communications, the monopoly of intellectual leadership allows the Party to manipulate language. Current (traditional) meanings of terms replaced with new meanings more suitable for the needs of the power holders not only prevent exact and critical thinking, but moreover deprive the subjects of terms as instruments by which they could formulate independent ideas.

3.   Monopoly of organization. The position of the managerial center is endangered and its monopolies disrupted by the existence of any kind of independent organization even within the framework of the Party. Any economic, cultural, youth, religious, labor, or political organization can become a breeding ground of political ideas, produce a political movement and become, in time, a competitor or an opponent. The power center counters these dangers by the following steps:

--   It dissolves organizations whose purpose is achieving a share in the direction of public affairs, i.e., primarily other political organizations, and those left it deprives of any autonomy -- their programs, activities, leadership and representatives are directly and constantly determined by the power center and/or its organs.

--   It unifies organizations difficult to dissolve due to their nature. It creates united labor unions, a united youth organization, a united physical education and sports organization, a united organization of writers, and so forth; associations which do not merge with any of these mammoth organizations, are dissolved. Only the united organizations are officially recognized. Most members of the leadership of these official organizations are members of the Party; a personal union exists between these leaders and functionaries of the Party, the most important ones are members of the power center.

By creating this structure, the managerial center obtains an instrument of domination of society because almost every person is induced or compelled to be a member of one or more of these "transmission belts and levers"  (Lenin's terminology) of the dictatorship. At the same time, the monopoly of organization prevents opponents of the regime to gather in some of the official organizations and to form there a nucleus of resistance, and membership in one of the official organizations functions as a means of control of the behavior and attitude of almost every citizen of the subjugated state.

      The monopoly of organization is not completed by incorporation of all legal organizations. To secure it, the Party must also prevent the formation of illegal organizations. In addition to the control function of the "belts and transmissions," this purpose is served by ubiquitous secret services equipped by the best up-to-date technology. Their networks of undercover agents, denunciators, confidants and provocateurs infiltrate the society and also control each other (to prevent any of them from becoming rivals to the managerial center). With their assistance, illegal organizations with a potential considered dangerous to the managerial center, are liquidated under the pretext that they endanger the state (which is untrue because the managerial center is a subject of volition separate from the state). Intelligence services moreover infiltrate, observe, influence or create illegal organizations they do not consider as immediately dangerous for the regime; these illegal organizations serve to identify and channel discontent and are liquidated when becoming dangerous or unnecessary. (On the other hand, they can take advantage of this temporary tolerance in order to effect maximum damage to the ruling regime prior to their liquidation.)

      By the very existence of secret service networks, the monopoly of organization is insured indirectly; the fear of their agents and confidants deters the dissatisfied from organizing, and unorganized dissatisfaction is not (immediately) dangerous (although in the long run, it is fatal to the best organized autocratic system). Fear and distrust are augmented by mass terror striking groups of probable or potential enemies of the system. If some of their members are really illegally organized, their organizations are damaged, if not destroyed by these measures.

      The monopoly of organization is not really a monopoly of the Party; it is a monopoly of the managerial center. It therefore guards also, and mainly, against the rise of other power centers within the Party. Intelligence services observe connections and actions of its leaders and members of the managerial center and prepare dossiers for use during purges of a losing faction.

4.   Monopoly of means of production. The Party achieves its control of means of production in  two ways. It either organizes their owners into groups to which it assigns obligatory production targets and all other economic relations as well because, as a part of this monopoly, it assumes control and/or ownership of financial institutions, transportation and distribution organizations. Or the ownership and/or disposition of means of production is transferred to the state or to organizations immediately subordinated to the Party. Either way assures the Party the utilization of all resources of the nation's economy and puts it at the service of implementation of its goals. Among others, this monopoly provides it with a means of materially rewarding its followers and materially destroying its enemies, which is of extraordinary importance for the transformation of society. The resistance which the Party evokes by imposing its will against the purposes of the majority is too strong and too complex to be overcome by penal measures. The control over the means of production is an instrument flexible, informal and generally available by which to mete out rewards and punishments: promotions and advancement on one side motivate obedience and productivity, on the others side threats or fear of demotion, transfer to a worse job or loss of employment (there is no other employer than the government run by the Party) will compel almost anyone to submit "voluntarily" to the will of the Party without the necessity of overt punishment.

5.   Monopoly of arms. The control of production, possession and use of weapons, exclusive allocation of the latest and most destructive weaponry to units composed by the most reliable Party members, combined with controls of means of conveyance of information, persons and material, enables an excellently equipped minority to dominate a defenseless majority and to concentrate its resources promptly on any break-out of open resistance with an overwhelming force to isolate it and destroy it before it can spread.  

To maintain these monopolies requires that all key positions, also minor one, be occupied by proven followers of the ideology, the program and the policies of the managerial center. It is the Party where they are organized. The creation of the Party's will is concentrated in the managerial center; the Party is an instrument of its implementation and of control and rule over its members. Already in the preparatory stage, the influence of members on the creation of the Party's will is limited; after the seizure of power it is completely eliminated so that no element of the Party can become the spokesman of the opinions and demands of the population. The managerial center which holds the state apparatus in check by the Party and the mass organizations controls the Party by its bureaucratic apparatus, by an internal Party intelligence network and by the state organs of the state, mainly army and police.

Because all key positions of the society are held by Party members, only Party members can seriously threaten the position of the managerial center. They are therefore subject to the greatest demands; they are carefully observed and cruelly punished if they fail to meet assigned tasks, show insubordination or independence. A preventive measure against the rise of a competing power center in the Party is the purge -- periodical transfer and removal of persons who held an important position for a long time and had an opportunity to build their own cadre of followers and supporters.

Since individual persons of the center are identified with the Party program and ideology, differences in interpretation of the program and ideology become personal differences, and personal differences become differences of opinions on matters of policy. Because the complete unity of will of the power center is the pivotal point of the entire system, it must be preserved at all cost. Therefore personal and political differences which threaten such unity, are safely solved only by the liquidation of the power of one faction. Such power liquidation is usually sealed by the physical liquidation of the losers.

Totalitarianism

Once the reorganization of society reaches this stage, society is no longer only dominated, but its life and the life of its members in all its facets are directly shaped by the managerial center. The dictatorship has become total, the system has turned into totalitarianism.

Its development passes through three stages: that of suppression, of repression and of oppression. Suppression takes place prior, during and immediately after seizure of power and consists in eliminating actual individual political adversaries. It is characterized by the so-called revolutionary justice, savagery and brutal application of force.

Repression follows. It is directed against social groups whose members are silent or likely opponents. This stage is characterized by terror and staged monster-processes, concentration camps, confiscations and expropriations. The unrelenting pressure of the totalitarian machinery isolates and destroys opponents, strips them of hope and courage. Horizontal communications are almost destroyed and replaced by vertical communications culminating at the managerial center.  Even within the family unit parents do not dare to speak openly in front of their children. Critics of the regime do not know each other, do not know of factors working in their favor, each of them faces the whole concentrated power of the Party and the state alone. The system of monopolies forms and transforms the views of the youth and of the formerly ideologically amorphous part of the population and consolidates the mass foundation of the regime.

Oppression is put into place after the actual as well as potential opponents have been crushed: it eliminates the possibility of the crystallization of any opposition. While the first two stages display violence and use repressive means, the last stage relies primarily on preventive means. Intimidation replaces violence. It functions by dissuading its subjects from even claiming, much less exerting their legal and human rights. This "anticipatory adjustment" with its attendant cynicism and passivity of growing strata of the population makes systematic use of force superfluous; the method changes to "silent oppression."  The regime does not find it necessary to go after flies with howitzers; but it keeps the howitzers ready and uses them both as a deterrent and as the means of last resort as soon as stirrings of independence among the population become apparent

In initial stages of totalitarianism, discrimination is directed against actual adversaries and groups of a suspect profile. In a mature totalitarianism discrimination is total and triggered by any nonconformist trait, by deviation from "political correctness"; any subject who deviates from the expected behavior, loses the chance to live a normal (often even a marginal) existence: intellectuals who pursue their profession (science, philosophy, music, literature) in an independent manner, reformers who show concern about social issues (environment, nuclear power, sexual morality, family), persons who choose a different lifestyle, but also persons who attract attention by improving their house, buy new furniture, acquire a luxury car, have unusual supplies of coal and gas, regularly receive the same visitors, belong to a private group practicing music, trips or even regular card games or chess. It applies to individuals who make remarks indicating a nonconformist opinion and to those who become conspicuous by their non-involvement in officially sponsored organizations and/or activities, and finally also those who incurred in their private life the displeasure of some power figure or of an informer. There is less apparent brutality, but the scope of human rights (the sphere of freedom) for the general population is actually narrower that in the two preceding stages of suppression and repression; in fact, it comes close to zero.

The full totalitarian control consists mainly of (1) abolition of privacy, (2) conditioning through education, (3) punishment through social degradation, and (4) administrative harassment.

 (1) Nonconformity (deviation from political correctness) is determined primarily on the basis of records kept by the executive branch of the state (mostly some branch of secret police). In a mature totalitarian state it maintains on everyone his personal file which contains general statistical information plus information on anything extraordinary (overachievement, underachievement), political activity or passivity, independent views, doubtful economic activity (hoarding, using his position for personal gain, diverting public property for personal profit), family life, sexual life, social life (recurring visits by the same circle of people, type of dress, decoration of windows at official celebrations), discrepancy between official income and standard of living. The data are gathered from official sources (court records, police records, employer, local government, Party records), but mainly rely on "unofficial" sources (informers, neighbors, colleagues, anonymous complaints or denunciations) who report matters not accessible to official sources (family quarrels, illicit sexual relations, unusual purchases of goods). The file is used for extortion, discrimination and/or criminal proceedings, as necessary, mostly to pressure for performance of activities which are not obligatory and which the subject is unwilling to perform (most frequently reporting on persons considered politically suspect or unreliable and on instances of politically incorrect attitudes).

(2) Indoctrination by the educational system begins early; it is an important part of the monopoly of intellectual leadership. The totalitarian system shies from bringing up the child in the family; it prefers that both parents be employed and the child be placed in nurseries and later in a state-run child care unit. From there, the child progresses to kindergarten and then to elementary education. Elementary school attendance usually brings into open the conflict of family values and the totalitarian ideology. Elementary schools are used both to inculcate in the children the official values and to check, by questionnaires, questions and discussions, the attitudes of parents. All educators are trained in a variety of "value clarification" techniques used to uncover deviant views (of pupils or of their parents).

At the time of adolescence and the beginnings of independent judgment, the system takes care that the free time available for formation and realization of nonconformist cultural elements is cut back as much as possible. Young people are required to enlist in the united youth organization which is part of the organizational monopoly of the Party and adds another channel of control. Active participation in directed cultural or recreational events is demanded and pupils and students are advised officially that their advancement on the educational ladder and later in their profession depends directly on the intensity and direction of their participation in such organizations. As members, they are under constant supervision by the appointed organization leaders whose observations are entered into their personal file.

Besides serving as a medium of indoctrination, the educational system serves as a medium of informal discrimination. From elementary schools on up to universities, teachers and professors not only impart information, but also investigate their pupils' opinions in study circles and seminars during discussions of public affairs and important events. Pupils and students learn early that certain opinions result in lower grades, denial of higher education, sometimes scolding or ridicule in front of their classmates. They also observe that this occurs mostly when they reproduce opinions they learned at home. As a result, parents avoid disclosing some of their opinions to their children, and vice versa; and children learn to dissimulate their parents' opinions from teachers, counsellors and colleagues. A schizophrenic division of societal life takes place since childhood. On one side stands the official culture, the formal public life carried on by the entire educational establishment, by mass media and by the entire propaganda machinery; on the other side exists the alternative (sub)culture of the private life sphere.

At the time of leaving elementary school, children are guided to a career; this "guidance" is as "voluntary" as any other activity in a totalitarian state. The selection depends on a profile of the applicant collected during his elementary school years; it contains not only abilities, it stresses primarily opinions and attitudes. A critical moment in the admission process is the interview in which the applicant tries to convince his interviewer of his positive attitude towards the regime and his sincere belief in the tenets of the inflammatory and contradictory ideas. The split in his personality is thus reinforced, especially if he is required to spy and inform on his colleagues as proof of his sincerity. The need for conformity and submissiveness is forcefully impressed on his character already prior to his adolescence and maturity.

The control function of the educational system extends to the educators as well. Only persons considered to be loyal to the regime are entrusted with the role of educators, and reliable Party members among students report on the contents of their lectures and their general attitude. School administrators examine whether lower grades are assigned to students of politically correct profiles and higher grades to those of nonconformist attitudes; if this is so, the teacher or professor is reprimanded or dismissed. Grading is supposed to be adjusted on basis of political correctness; during individual examinations, easier questions are put to students known for their loyalty to the regime, and more difficult ones to those suspect of a critical or independent attitude. (This leads to grotesque situations in which the examiner goads the student towards the right answers, respectively supplies them himself in form of comments, or tries to confuse the student through interruptions and unfriendly comments -- according to the predestined outcome of the exam.) In view of this filtering out very few individuals suspected of nonconformity gain access to higher education and, consequently, to more important positions in society, on the other hand, incompetents graduate successfully and assume leadership positions. The same control applies to leaders of the official youth and other organizations; if they are reported as exhibiting politically incorrect attitudes, the consequences are more harmful for them than they are for nonconformist rank-and-file.

(3) The primary disincentive to nonconformity is the threat of status (job) demotion. Assignment of status is entirely under the Party's control exercised through state organs. Status demotion is the ordinary and most effective way of deterring the population from politically incorrect behavior, because it causes threefold harm. The affected person is deprived of the opportunity to hold a job which he finds interesting, for which he is qualified by his education or his abilities. With the demotion, there is financial loss. In view of the low productivity of this system, wages, salaries and pensions are low, barely covering the necessities of life. Therefore, even a moderate deterioration can push the victim and his family over the poverty level.

Low productivity causes scarcity of goods which in turn creates an entire economic subsystem of a "parallel" or "gray" economy based on bribes, pilfering of public property and a black market in goods and services. The parallel economy, although illegal or extra-legal, is tolerated because it enables the economy to function. By tolerating it, the "mature totalitarian regime" turns it into an additional vehicle of control. In the first place, the widespread participation in the parallel economy absorbs the energy of the subjects and redirects it from questions of politics, economics and ideology to the immediate non-ideological issues of individual and material improvement. In the second place, the participant in the parallel economy must have something to offer: influence, goods or services. The access to any of them  is contingent upon the official status of the supplier in the official economic system.  Thus the removal from a higher level status position diminishes not only one's legitimate income, but also his possibility to provide favors for which he is able to demand return favors and he often loses quite substantial income from the parallel economy (a doctor who is denied practicing medicine, is unable to bolster his income by obtaining "under the table" payments for better care; a dismissed bureaucrat is unable to provide more favorable treatment, a sales lady who lost her job loses also the option of putting aside scarce goods for her preferred customers, a worker dismissed from a factory is deprived of the possibility of "diverting" materials from the publicly owned factory where he works, and barter it for other, similarly "diverted" goods for use it in his moonlighting job). To be excluded from the networks of mutual services and counter-services is equal to loss of purchasing power in a market economy.  Thus, the effects of status demotion are multiplied.

This applies mutatis mutandis also to the better situated strata of society where the loss of social prestige and economic means is psychologically felt stronger and has thus a stronger deterrent impact.  The effects are multiplied, if the affected person is officially or unofficially blacklisted. This is tantamount to excommunication from society; the blacklisted person is not allowed to be granted adequate employment, there is a limit to the compensation he or his family may obtain, and he is forced to seek and accept the most unpleasant and least remunerated jobs because unemployment is considered parasitism on society -- who does not work and in spite of that eats, is assumed to do so at the expense and to the detriment of society, which is punishable under the law.

In addition, participation in the parallel economy is usually illegal, yet practically everybody is forced to do it by the incompetence of the official economy. But the tolerance by the regime does not apply to nonconformists. While the transgressions are reported and entered into a personal file, they are used only when politically convenient -- for demotion or prosecution. Thus every citizen lives under the threat of criminal prosecution for his "underground" economic activities and is well aware that this threat will be activated if he should show signs of nonconformity.

4. Administrative harassment. Under administrative harassment fall actions by authorities, mainly the police, which fall short of identifiable violation of laws, but nevertheless cause discomfort and economic loss to their targets and imply possible more serious measures in the future. Such harassment is applied at random to all citizens to keep them in line, and is intensified when there is indication of nonconformity. There are several common types of harassment: summons to appear at a police station for verification of identity documents (possibly several times in a week); or because of alleged presence at a car accident;  searches: police are authorized to enter and search one's apartment for any "due cause," even faked; reviews of income tax reports, demand of proof of legitimate provenience of funds on the occasion of more expensive purchases, interrogation of friends, request for documents proving that purchases were effected on the official market. 

Besides being a general means of intimidation, these measures are used more frequently against citizens who behave in a nonconformist way without breaking any law (for instance, failure to display a flag on days of official celebrations, refusal to sign required petitions or to contribute voluntarily to politically correct charities). It is maintained until the deviant behavior is abandoned.

For recalcitrant nonconformists, there are stronger measures. The target may be driven to a faraway location at night and released there to find his way home. He may be followed ostensibly by plainclothes men, persons he meets may be requested to produce identity papers or may be retained. He may be stopped by the police when leaving a grocery store, his purchases checked and stolen merchandise or drugs "found" among them, illegal publications or arms are "discovered" in his home.  If he implies the police might have framed him, he may be guilty of "defamation of a public official"  which is a punishable violation of the law. "Dissidents" are attacked and beaten by "unknown perpetrators" whom the police cannot uncover, and the victim is advised that his attitude provokes anger and disgust on the part of law abiding citizens against whose manifestations the police is unable to provide protection.

The most serious manner of administrative harassment is submitting the deviants to psychiatric examination and "cure" of their inability to adjust to the environment, fixed illusions of persecution mania (paranoia querulans), harassment of authorities, and other mental illnesses. Such patients are subject to mind changing treatments by drugs, and their official designation as mentally ill undercuts their credibility.

In spite of all efforts to the contrary, information about all inhabitants of the state cannot be complete: they are too many and the maintenance of a perfect system is financially too onerous. The ruling political organization compensates for this shortcoming by terror. For invisible oppression to succeed it is necessary not to be limited only to those whose nonconformist thinking or acting became obvious. The methods of administrative harassment must be applied randomly and daily to ordinary citizens who gave no cause for punishment -- the Party demonstrates to them and their environment what would be the consequences if they dared to voice demands, no matter how legally justified. Therefore citizens do not complain or protest because they either do not dare to do so or are already conditioned to accept injustice as a part of the daily life. Since everybody violates the law in some way, they are mostly content to have gotten away so cheaply. The citizen is aware of his helplessness and adjusts his behavior to the demands of political correctness although he considers them senseless and harmful.

The cumulative effect of the infringements on privacy, of the educational system, the economic pressures and administrative harassment and fear from denunciations from private persons ("the thought police") moulds the individual into a subservient being who does not even consider claiming his legal rights; he prefers to resort to lying, cheating, pretending and hypocrisy; his anticipatory adjustment constitutes the goal and success of the "invisible oppression."  The population is dissuaded from resisting and yields to the demands and even tacit expectations of the Party. Society reaches the state of anomie -- it has not accepted the value system of the rulers and has been prevented from creating or preserving a different one. Practical materialism forms the contents of the purpose of happiness; material well-being of the individual and of his family is equated with "the good."  Therefore, open violence is rarely necessary: it suffices to threaten this content of one's primary purpose in order to obtain submission. Oppression exists, but it is invisible.

Regardless of this achievement, the system cannot stop its degeneration. The fastest consequence of the transformation of society into a hierarchical pyramid with the managerial center at its apex, is the loss of control of the rulers by the subjects. Absolute power leads inevitably to abuse if for no other reason than because the power holders lack an objective view of their actions and lose contact with their subjects affected by their decisions. This results in alienation between the normgivers and the subjects of duty -- arrogance on the side of the rulers and distrust on the side of the subjects. The necessity to keep the population in a state of continuous enthusiasm causes exaggeration of official optimism to an extent which is counterproductive: its glaring discrepancy with reality destroys its credibility. The need to maintain pressure on the population produces an extensive police apparatus and a strong army and devours society's limited resources.

Lack of control of the rulers by their subjects engenders a high number of faulty decisions and arbitrariness which find expression in corruption, favoritism and rapacity at public expense and intensifies the decline of work ethics and of productivity. In spite of technology allowing instant communications with the entire territory of  the state, the centralization inevitable for prevention of the rise of a competing power center, brings with it laggardness, confusion and inefficiency of the apparatus of the Party and of the state. The consequences of bureaucratization appear: the bureaucracy grows numerically and declines qualitatively. Absence of freedom stifles creativity. Unconditional, literally mindless conformity to the power center required from each citizen combined with suspiciousness and brutality towards anything nonconformist  creates stagnation of social and technological progress visible primarily in the apparatus of the totalitarian state. Members of the managerial center as well as other holders of key positions turn from support of the power center towards augmenting personal power and wealth. Resulting purges remove from the apparatus potential and actual adversaries, emerged power centers and inefficient elements as bearers of the contradictory idea.

None of these measures can heal the basic weakness of this system of governing: the government's purpose inevitably interferes with the purposes of happiness of its subjects, and the concentration of exclusive power increases this divergence to the level of conflict and incompatibility. The system of power monopolies enables the Party to prevent manifestations of dissatisfaction, and the endeavor to channel it against the bearers of the contradictory idea only depresses further the credibility of the government. The accumulated frustration of the population, because unable to vent itself on its true source: the regime, turns against secondary targets: the immediate surroundings. People become egoistic, suspicious, distrustful, intolerant, envious and contentious, informing on and denouncing their fellow citizens out of envy becomes widespread.

After society has been subjected for a certain period of time to the effects of the system of power monopolies and sees no hope for a change from abroad, the totalitarian regime is internally consolidated. It is a society saturated with cynicism, hypocrisy and distrust whose members release their frustration and the nervous tension by irritability and envy towards their neighbors. The repercussions on the productivity of society are tremendous. For the system which violates and deforms them mentally and morally, people have only contempt and subvert it by apathy and reluctance because other, even legally permissible ways of venting disagreement are closed. The dissatisfaction remains, but is no longer dangerous; it cannot change from an amorphous feeling into a political movement with a clear political program which would react to the situation and solve its problems. Dynamism takes place only inside the ruling political organization, and even there it is impotent without the existence of disagreements in the managerial center. No matter how rotten inside, the managerial state is vulnerable only from the outside -- through the penetration of its monopolies; but then its vulnerability is extreme, exactly because of its internal weakness. This fact dictates its relations with other states: as long as any state remain outside of its sphere of power, it feels threatened and is threatened.

Totalitarianism prevents differentiation as well as selection, and therefore does not evolve; it stagnates. The maintenance of an enormous preventive and repressive apparatus consumes an ever growing share of its economy which is inefficient, anyway. Therefore, it lags behind societies with a more appropriate structure and the managerial center faces an insoluble dilemma: either to completely isolate the state under its domination from the rest of the world, or to conquer the rest of the world. If it chooses the first opinion, it is vulnerable to technological development of the "free" world it cannot match: radio, television, computers subvert its monopolies of information and intellectual leadership; if it chooses the second option, it finds out that its lagging economy is incapable of producing the resources needed for an undertaking of such size.

The hopelessness of this dilemma induces the managerial center to attempt a revival of the creative forces of society by controlled admission of differentiation and selection. Such attempts undercut the very root of a mature totalitarian system, because its structure has become so fragile that it lacks the strength to keep the evolutionary elements within limits in which they would revive it to the necessary degree and avoid its disruption and collapse.

It is, therefore, safe to assume that like its predecessors, even this form of autocracy is a thing of the past. It has, nevertheless, been subjected here to detailed dissection because numerous of its elements are capable of reappearing in a new connection and under improved forms.

Decentralized Totalitarianism

It  can be considered as proven that centralized totalitarianism is not viable. The question remains whether this applies also to a system which would divest itself of the burden of centralization and yet share most of the other features of a managerial and totalitarian state. Such a system is taking and in part already has taken shape distinct enough to be analyzed.

A decentralized totalitarian system is a state in which members of a science-derived ideological movement of an authoritarian minority occupy in society so many key positions that they are able to (1) impose the goals of the movement on society primarily by extra-legal means, and (2) deny access to power to members of any other ideological movement by using elements of a totalitarian state in its mature stage. The similarities of this new form of a lawless state to totalitarianism are such that its complete description would repeat the preceding chapter; it is therefore preferable and shorter to point out the differences.

The main difference is that this system is not anchored in a political managerial center; it is anchored in  an ideological movement whose members react to challenges in basically identical ways without directions from a central body. Therefore they have earned, in polemics, the designations of "heard of independent minds" or "the hive" which aim to capture adequately the spontaneous uniformity of these protagonists of an improved humanity.

The other basic difference stems from the recognition that, in order to dominate society, it is not necessary to destroy all opponents or adversaries; it is sufficient to ensure that they remain powerless. In this respect, decentralized totalitarianism resembles the mature stage of totalitarianism where the rulers do not deem it necessary any more to annihilate each samizdat, to punish every ever so small nonconformist trait, to execute or incarcerate each dissident -- because they are not dangerous any more. As a consequence, the decentralized totalitarianism's power monopolies are not total -- they are near-monopolies limited in their extent by their sufficiency in accordance with the curve of declining utility.

A. Preconditions

A decentralized totalitarian system arises under the following conditions:

--   A developed democracy of an industrialized or post-industrialized society with widely established managerism, with a public opinion generally considering science as final arbiter also in matters of social and moral norms so that the most recent scientific discoveries and conclusions are accepted as the highest authority for the arrangement of society, in other words: create the contents of what is a betterment of the conditions of society. The object of care of such purposes is usually the entire humanity, if not the whole of nature or the entire planet. The discoveries of scientific research from which such purposes are derived, form the ideology of the movement and they survive even if the scientific conclusions from which they are derived, are controversial, overtaken by research or disproved by experience. (During the latest past, the most influential of such ideologies are: overpopulation of the world, relative value of human life, reduction of the relation between sexes to the genitals, feminism and some ecological theories.) 

      Expert knowledge of the various sectors of the life of modern society is indispensable for an efficient implementation of technical purposes that arise from its development. The indispensable owners of this expertise can and often do arrive at the certainty that they know better than other members of society how life should be arranged in the area of their particular expertise, and strive to reach ways and means to do so. The proponents of a better society, better humanity or a better world do not derive their authority from the consent of society, but from their objective qualities, their expertise which lifts them above those who lack similar knowledge ("ratiocentrism" in the term of Czech author and president Vaclav Havel).

--   A well developed knowledge class in possession of power nuclei of society, some members of which are convinced of their intellectual superiority over less educated strata and derives from this superiority its right/duty to lead them to a better life even against their will. Ideological movements arising within the knowledge class then become autocratic. The logical basis of their action is their self-assurance that the results of their scientific research are certain and true, and therefore cannot be subjected to decisions of those lacking their expertise. Such ideological movements (further on designated as the "Movement" for the sake of brevity) turn autocratic insofar as their adherents are convinced about the correctness of their ideas on the betterment of society to such an extent, that they proceed to their implementation regardless of the opinion of those whom they affect, even if the proposed and implemented changes bring about the disruption of existing morals and institutions (international relations, economic systems, cultures built on non-scientific premises and social, moral, religious and traditional norms),  replace them by new ones  and entail liquidation of "harmful" (under the objectives of the Movement) parts of society (members of a lower or subhuman race, superfluous children, subnormal  individuals: the handicapped, incurables, mentally ill, over-aged). The changes affect deeply almost everybody and are therefore impossible to realize without compulsion and force. The ideological movements advocating such deep changes turn into interest and pressure groups which pursue their maximum objective (pedagogues voice unlimited demands for the improvement of the educational system, ecologists demand arresting industrial development, eugenicist demand the right to control procreation, and so on).

      As any nonconformist, hemmed in and yet aggressive minority, the Movement is characterized by an above average solidarity of its members: they know each other and naturally assist each other in attaining authority and power. This process must have reached a certain degree before a Movement endeavors to impose their conclusions on society without its consent. Being a minority, in spite of its power, it does so either by manipulation (managerism) or compulsion (through bureaucracy) to the detriment of democracy.

--   A widespread dissatisfaction with the situation of public affairs based on the political and economic corruption of the state apparatus which leads to the demand that decisions should be left to experts rather than "politicians", i.e., political professionals and managers. This attitude strengthens the position of the knowledge class and causes experts to share in all three branches of the government. The result is that the public as well as normgiving organs are excluded from debates among experts and appointed, unelected committees of experts make decision in political questions, decisions considered as improper for the public to question because they were made by qualified experts on a scientific basis.

--   A new scientific discovery (in any field: biology, ecology, sociology, anthropology, medicine, technology, even physics and astronomy) made by a prestigious representative or institution (university) of the knowledge class, whose application would have far-reaching (and in the opinion of its author and his adherents) beneficial effects for the life of society and/or whose disregard would have catastrophic consequences. Individuals of this conviction form a scientific movement which shades over into an ideological movement, and demands derived from this discovery represent a program whose implementation would radically improve the situation of the object of care of the movement.

-     Dominant position of members of the Movement in mass communications media (see Appendix 1) and other popular channels of forming the society's habits mainly in entertainment.

--  Awareness that the application of this vitally important discovery and the implementation of the resulting program will meet with resistance of people who do not belong to the knowledge class (and, in the eyes of its members, disagreement with the Movement disqualifies automatically from membership in the knowledge class), but who are in the majority; this resistance is diagnosed as lack of intelligence or knowledge, influence of ingrained biases and irrational prejudices (especially of religious nature) or corruption by selfish interest groups. From this situation flows the moral obligation (a) to educate or re-educate the unenlightened majority and to "heighten its awareness"; (b) not to wait for the results of this re-education process and apply the discovery and the movement's program immediately in practice before irreversible harm is done, and (c) to impose it on the recalcitrant majority by force if necessary.

B. Building Own Sphere of Power

The creation of a power sphere begins when this conviction is internalized by that part of the knowledge class whose members do make important decisions affecting the life of society thanks to their exclusive ownership of the most important "means of production," i.e., information and expertise, and who are therefore practically beyond control of "the people", cannot be replaced or dismissed. The goal is to replace the existing "civil religion" by a new "civil religion" based on the ideology of the Movement.  The innovators and reformers become autocratic and authoritarian. By "civil religion" is understood the system of values which society considers as self-evident and which are beyond any criticism; to criticize them "is not done" and is rejected as lapse of decency and proper manners. A civil religion is thus protected by society through proscribing its detractors and deviants.

Modern applied psychology furnishes knowledge which makes it possible to prepare a systematic plan for the manipulation of public opinion in order to weaken and discredit the existing value system without the manipulated majority becoming aware of the process. Psychologists and sociologists as well as experts in marketing, advertising and propaganda know that people do not act on the basis of rational deliberations, but can be more easily moved and convinced, when their rationality is circumvented.

1. Near-monopoly of information is needed to implement such a process as the Movement's adherents secure their hold on important positions in the mass media: television, radio, videos, newspapers, magazines, books and movies. They are the main source of information and important actors in politics because by selecting news they also determine the sequence, contents and limits of cultural and political discussions and mold public opinion at least to the extent to which they publish or not publish reports on events. The near-monopoly of information includes also the editorship of giant publishing houses; they ensure that politically incorrect books are not accepted for publication, and decide also what kind of books will be accepted for sale by the large distribution networks of booksellers and outlets; they prevent politically incorrect books and magazines published by small local publishing houses from reaching a wide audience.

2.   Near-monopoly of intellectual leadership. The strategy of gaining the monopoly of intellectual leadership in a communist state has been described (by an anti-communist underground organization) as follows: "In the first place, they strive to make Marxist ideology the basis of everyone's thinking. ... Therefore, Marxism is taught to children as a main subject; therefore the press, radio, literature, theater, movies, art deal only with subjects that relate, positively or negatively, both in proper manner, with Marxism and communism. Other problems are non-existent." By replacing, in this quotation, the word "Marxism" by the ideology of the Movement, the above description very closely mirrors campaigns which create a near-monopoly of information and intellectual leadership for the latest science-derived program in a democratic society. The pattern of such a successful campaign of building a near-monopoly of intellectual leadership is then repeated over and over:

      Step 1. For the discussion of the new ideology create a new terminology, usually with a scientific flavor, with a twofold objective. The primary objective is to  disguise and de-emphasize the difference between the new thinking and demands and the traditional values.The manipulation of language, the creation of buzzwords that inhibit rational thinking, has reached the level of science (see Appendix 2), and although the public has become aware of these manipulations, repeated and consistent use by the media brings the new terms into common usage and replaces the former, more realistic ones. The secondary objective is to dehumanize the victims of measures deduced from the ideological principle of the Movement.

      Step 2. Select or manufacture an exceptional, even isolated, hard case and give it wide publicity (see Appendix 3) justifying remedies contrary to the prevailing ethics by recourse to its other values, mostly "compassion." The manipulators are aware of the principle that the greatest vulnerability of democracy lies not in its violation for reprehensible purposes, but for purposes which are morally attractive and good.

Step 3. By using the selected hard case make an unthinkable and unacceptable opinion or recommendation the subject of a public discussion in which its defense is presented as an example of intellectual courage and integrity attacking established unfounded taboos. The debate is dragged out until the terminology shifts as follows: first, the new opinion is presented as innovative, then as controversial, then the majority opinion is also dubbed as controversial, then the majority opinion is represented as outdated, oppressive and insensitive. Sympathy is diverted from those who are victims of the new ideology to those who victimize them by stressing the latters' "hard and painful choice", "difficult decisions," and by branding the defenders of the victims as "lacking compassion."

Step 4. In this climate, defenders of traditional values are excluded from prestigious positions in society prevailingly held by the members of the Movement (in universities, mass communications media), their arguments are either omitted or mentioned only critically or with ridicule. During publicized (televised) panels and discussions they are invited so that they are in a minority and discussions are directed so as to keep them on the defensive. This is true also about the composition of sundry government commission of experts. Because the Movement holds key positions in the institutions of intellectual life, its representatives have the reputation of most prestigious experts and therefore have a majority on commissions of experts; their opponents are included only as window dressing so as to provide a minority report documenting impartiality of the commission, and filed away without any relevance. (See Appendix 4)

Step 5. Shift the controversy from the intellectual to the sentimental by publishing novels, video-cassettes, movies and televised "docudramas"  in which defenders of the traditional values are depicted as the bad guys (the greedy entrepreneur, fraudulent evangelical preacher, adulterous priest or nun, cynical member of the CIA) and the protagonists of the new morality as the good guys: unselfish, courageous, intelligent, persecuted and in the end against unbelievable odds victorious. In this process of breaking tradition, songs and music directed at the youth have great impact (see Appendix 1).

The near-monopoly of intellectual leadership includes the power to decide about the contents of education in elementary and higher schools. Although by law and international treaties the final word on education belongs to parents, the Movement shifts the decision making to educational experts and professionals as well as their organizations and eliminates the public's influence to such an extent that pupils and students are forbidden to reveal the contents of lectures or school books to parents; children entrusted to the educators are led to consider their parents' opinions as outdated, if not outright stupid, and parental authority is undermined in many ways (value clarification, questionnaires, encouragement of children's "independence" which is actually disobedience, by school counselors, librarians or health professionals).

3.   Near-monopoly of organization. The Movement is not organized as such, it is not a conspiracy, but includes formal and informal nuclei in institutions which are occupied or controlled by its adherents: universities, learned societies, clubs, important organizations such as labor unions, associations of industrialists and clubs of financial power brokers, social organizations and social events, visits, receptions, private meetings. A preferred mode of association is the creation of outwardly independent organizations pursuing each its own distinct goals which, nevertheless, complement each other within the ranges of the the movement, support each other and often are linked by the leadership of the same persons (10). These groupings exhibit solidarity and participate in politics as pressure groups or act within political parties where their mutual solidarity gives them influence beyond their numbers. The spontaneous uniformity of their reactions represents an effective parallel of the monopoly of organization.

      This power of networking is augmented by infringement on or disruption of organized activities of others, especially organs of the state if they defend the traditional values still expressed by the laws. Such methods are: civil disobedience, impeding undesirable activities (logging of forests, building atomic plants) by forming human chains, sit-ins, occupation of buildings or disruption of traffic, marches, manifestations and demonstrations of nonviolent or violent nature, upscaled to the degree of mass vandalism or local uprising. These methods are facilitated by leniency and sympathy of the Movement's members located in important positions of the judicial, legislative and executive powers of the state; attempts to use the same methods in the interest of values contrary to the Movement's ideology are punished much more severely and have no hope of succeeding.

4.   Monopoly of the means of production.  The centralized type of control over the means production exercised by totalitarianism is not appropriate for the Movement due to its diffuse structure. Rather than concentrating ownership of means of production in their own hands, members of the Movement use their expertise to manage means of production owned by others, and to direct economy through financial operations. By gaining control of many other subjects' resources through banking, investment counselling, trusts and stock market operations, they dispose with amounts equalling or exceeding resources of some states and their power.

      In securing its superiority,  the Movement uses the method of social degradation similar to that of a totalitarian state, with the difference that it is mostly limited to the exclusion of the nonconformist person or institution from power and does not pursue his or its economic ruin, like a totalitarian Party does. By securing a near-monopoly on acquisition and application of knowledge and expertise, the most valuable "means of production" in post-industrialized economies, the Movement realizes an equivalent of the monopoly of material means of production.

5.   Monopoly of arms. Because its unity and uniformity is spontaneous and decentralized, the Movement can attain a monopoly on arms only by proxy; such a proxy is the state. It is, therefore, averse to possession of arms by individuals or their organizations and favors their restriction to organs of the executive branch. This leaves the Movement vulnerable to the use of this monopoly for seizure of power by armed elements of the state apparatus either through lawless utilization of authority (by the police) or through institution of a dictatorship (by the military). The Movement is therefore wary also of a monopoly of arms in the hands of the state, especially because its control of the society bypasses the state and the state is not under its legal, official control. Because decentralized totalitarianism is only in the early stages of its development, it is impossible to predict how it will solve this dilemma; there are indications that creation of private security forces protecting their employers or of armed forces outside of the control of the state and under control of supranational organizations could be the way.

C. Penetrating the State

Decentralized totalitarianism relies much more heavily on preventive, rather than repressive means of societal control. An important part of it is the ideological corruption of the masses facilitated by the three above described near-monopolies and based on the antithesis of the inflammatory idea (for instance the vision of a perfect humanity whose carefully selected and numerically limited members live in the midst of unblemished nature in material ease and without pain) and the contradictory idea (nature destroyed by pollution peopled by overcrowded homeless masses dying of famine and thirst and suffering painful illnesses which could have been compassionately terminated). It is bolstered by social degradation with economic consequences, and enforcement through organs of the state is not preferred. In realization of its aims, the Movement relies primarily on the pervasive managerization of society: on possession of power "knots" in all spheres of society's life, especially in economy, rather than on the organs of the state. The conclusions and values of the Movement are not implemented democratically, i.e., by spreading the movement's ideas, having them incorporated into political programs and then transformed into the will of the state through the legislative process. Rather, adherents of the Movement implement their ideas without the awareness or even against the will of the citizenry. Nevertheless, without sharing in the legitimate means of enforcement the Movement cannot implement the radical changes it plans; the inertia of the majority and deliberate resistance of a minority of the population would not allow it.

Because it is unable to attain a share in the direction of public affairs through democratic political processes (obtain a majority of votes for its program in elections), it acquires a share in the state's coercive power by circumventing democracy. In incorporating parts of the state organs into its sphere of power, the Movement has at its disposal its adherents within the state structure mainly in the non-legislative branches, i.e., in the executive and the judiciary.  It utilizes their authority in several ways.

1.   Usurpation of norm-giving in the name of expertise, as illustrated by following examples: In the system of obligatory public education, teachers and professors individually or through their organizations deny parents the authority of determining their children's education through changes in the programs, methods and courses by educationists. Librarians refuse to remove from public libraries books offensive to the community (pornography and advocacy of violent behavior), although directed to do so by the relevant authorities which pay their salaries. Doctors in hospitals refuse to comply with regulations restricting the practice of allowing children born with defects to die by withholding medical care. Artists render ineffective a law prohibiting funding of obscene art from public funds, as unacceptable censorship. 

2.   Usurping legislative power by utilization of the judicial branch. In remolding society and its morals, the judiciary plays a decisive role by redefinition of constitutional provisions and by interpretations of law which expand certain fundamental liberties and restrict others.

      Being independent of the legislative branch, the Movement's adherents in the judiciary can transform the part of the culture, which represents the society's civil religion, i.e., values and concepts whose violation is generally considered "unthinkable" and  "self-evident", and/or enact by judicial fiat measures rejected by the political process or invalidate laws enacted democratically ("judicial activism"). By accepting and dragging out spurious litigations the judiciary can also obstruct legitimate private or governmental activities contrary to the Movements ideology (production of armaments, construction of atomic power plants, building of dams, cutting lumber in privately or publicly owned forests, drilling for oil in the ocean or in areas inhabited by wildlife, etc.). The judiciary also restricts and punishes use of force by the police when used against segments of the population which are an object of special care of the Movement.

3. Utilization of sectors of the executive branch which are not directly under the control of legislative organs and are in hands of adherents of the Movement. By appropriate wording of regulations or implementing instructions, bureaucracy can obtain results not allowed by or prohibited by the law by enforcing "voluntary" compliance with its provisions contrary to to the intent of the lawgivers (example: racial quotas explicitly prohibited by the law, introduced as "voluntary" under threat of financial discrimination, and subsequently sanctioned by the courts).

      The judiciary can serve the purpose of enrolling parts of the executive branch into obedience of the Movement. Where courts are occupied by judges graduated by the prestigious schools dominated by the Movement's ideology and ideologues, the Movement uses them systematically to circumvent the legislatures in matters in which it  could not obtain a legislative majority or succeed only with difficulty. The procedure is as follows: An organization belonging to the Movement or created by its members for that purpose, searches for or manufactures an event fulfilling the requirements of a hard case as described above under the paragraph dealing with the near-monopoly of intellectual leadership, and makes the case an object of litigation before a court or courts whose judges are known in advance to be adherents or sympathizers of the Movement. The litigation accompanied by unisono comments of the media under the Movement's influence is pursued all the way up to the highest appropriate judicial authority which decides in favor of the plaintiff. Laws and regulations of self-governing bodies issued in accordance with the democratic process in defense of the prevailing moral and social values and which are the object of the complaint, are then annulled by the judicial decision and the state's executive power is put in the position of enforcing them against the evident will of the citizenry (see Appendix 5).

D) In Power.

Decentralized totalitarianism can be considered as established, when "political correctness" or  "cultural correctness" has become for the population the guiding norm whose violations entails extralegal punishment, i.e., harm of otherwise protected values. The contents of the norm of "correctness" are nowhere defined, much less legalized; nevertheless, everybody knows what "political/cultural correctness" means. Everybody is also aware that violations of that norm entail punishment, even if the law does not prohibit such incorrect behavior or protects it. Indictment can be raised by anyone even on the basis of private conversation or an overheard joke; no protection of privacy applies against this ubiquitous "thought police" nor is there any appeal. Nor is the punishment anywhere specified and subject to any fixed procedure; nevertheless, it is predictable: according to the deviation, for a student it may mean expulsion or postponement of examinations, for a professor refusal of tenure, for a bureaucrat no more promotions, for an employee dismissal, for anybody denial of otherwise available assistance from public or charitable funds, for a press reporter or TV commentator loss of a job, for a cabinet member a resignation.

The methods of a decentralized totalitarian state are similar to the methods of a mature totalitarian state. They consist mainly in unrelenting economic and social pressure whose extent is invisible, but omnipresent. The law may protect freedom of expression, but expressing certain opinions known as politically or culturally incorrect, has disagreeable consequences. A book not using politically correct terminology has problems finding a publisher, and if published, will not be distributed by the large bookselling companies. Articles written in an incorrect style will be published only by newspapers and publishing houses considered as non-prestigious..

The Movement subjects also the past to revision. New editions of books of old authors and translations are adjusted to the new norms of correctness (cf. frequent new translations, actually rewrites, of the bible or of Catholic rituals). Even fairy tales are rewritten. The language, clothing, social conventions are changed. Over custom, language and social habits decentralized totalitarianism achieves a degree of control of which totalitarian regimes could not even dream.

Decentralized totalitarianism has several advantages over other forms of autocracy. One of them is anonymity. Its leaders seek primarily power and affluence, not glory; they often shun publicity and prefer anonymity. The public does not know who makes the decisions of moving entire industries from the United States to Mexico or from Japan to Canada. The public does not know who negotiates the extra-political global concentration of industry, finance, communications. The public does not know who holds the power to ruin currencies and bankrupt national economies. The public does not know who decides which life-styles and value systems the mass media will extol and spread and which ones they will treat with silence or ridicule. The public does not know who sits on the committees of the sundry international, regional and global organizations and prepares action programs subsequently implemented by international bureaucracies although never subjected and/or approved by any democratic process. The public does not know who diverts international institutions from their role of integrating nations and states to the objective of abolishing states' independence and national diversity. Anonymity guarantees immunity, frees from accountability and responsibility.

The appropriation of power by the Movement is not marked by any date, any visible event, revolution or putsch, it is therefore invisible to the majority of the population and protesting groups lack, in the presence of the Movements near-monopoly of information, the means to evoke, spread and crystallize dissatisfaction. Their pathetic attempts at printing and distributing limited edition bulletins, semi-samizdat publications and at sustaining small local radio stations are ignored or ridiculed by the mass media. The fact that the ruling Movement has no identifiable center, means that disagreement and dissatisfaction have no identifiable and vulnerable target. This elusiveness of the responsible subjects of volition deludes critics to suspect conspiracies and secret societies which they cannot prove because they are non-existent. Members and adherents of the Movement are of course in touch with each other and communicate at meetings, conventions and congresses of institutions they control and at private visits and gatherings, and they discuss plans and arrive at decisions. But the assertion of secret and mysterious activities misses the target, damages credibility of its authors and is easily rendered ridiculous. Anonymity protects those who are responsible for the formulation and enforcement of sundry measures advocated by the Movement. But who knows and can generate interest in the names of members of various expert commissions, managers of charitable funds and boards of prestigious universities whose resolutions are put into practice by non-public and extra-legal means whether the state approves them or not?

The choice of not stamping out all opposition brings about a considerable savings of energy of the Movement. In this regard, the law of diminishing returns applies. The last expended means bring the least results and are the most expensive ones. The harm to the objective of the Movement which would be caused by its attempt to eliminate all opposition, would be greater than the harm which can be caused by an impotent opposition. Non-existence of drastic repressive and preventive measures effectively masks the autocratic structure of society.

It is still impossible to gauge the full potential of a better totalitarian system superior to its predecessor in that it does not require sacrifices, but in exchange for freedom pretends to give people candy in the form of "rights."