Strange Bedfellows

Do the capitalist power elites always control their governments? Karl Marx and his fellow travelers strongly asserted they did?

In the Dickensian England of Marx’s day, the productive factory owners clearly did have strong influences in the British Parliament.  But that was a time when England was deeply enthralled with The First Industrial Revolution and the titans of British industry could do no wrong.

However, Victorian England was a special case that made Marx’s statement true in Victorian England. The important factor that made the England of Marx’s time special was the publication of an influential book on economics which occurred in 1817, just before Marx moved to from Paris to London. The influential book was written by David Ricardo. It was entitled The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.

The important idea advocated in that book was support for the non-interventionalist economic view of the French Physiocrat, Vincent de Gournay. His viewpoint was that governments should not be involved in or try to regulate commerce. In his words the government should “let the people do as they choose” which spoken in French was the familiar phase laissez faire. The rise of laissez faire economics in the England of Marx’s day made it seem as if the English capitalists had Parliament in their pockets.

So Marx was correct about the overreach of the Victorian era capitalist in the England of his day. But was Marx’s assertion right always and everywhere?  Was he right on the grand scale of all times and places?

Plainly stated: No, he was not correct on a larger scale. Marx was only correct locally. As time went by and history played out more of the possibilities, it became clear that he was repeatedly wrong on the grander scale.

Dictatorial Governments Can and Do Control Their Power Elites

In fact most of the dictators of the last hundred years have controlled and manipulated the capitalists and their commercial enterprises within their states.

The world that unfolded after Marx had left its stage showed that his view was far too small a view of the far more complex real world. This is why Marx’s writings are sadly out of date, and no longer applicable in the modern world. Marxism was a crude first pass that had several deep truths embedded in it, yet it failed to be the universally true everywhere in the way Marx’s thoughts are often believed to be.  His assertions were a start, but not a finished definitive conclusion.

The clearest example of dictators controlling their capitalists was the Soviet Union itself.  While that is obviously not a contradiction to Marx, what will follow after that is.

Why Do Some Dictators Seem to Break All The Rules Yet Succeed?

This series of posts aims to look at the often-overlooked successful examples of authoritarian governments. Despite their overall socially repressive natures, some repressive dictatorships actually succeed in benefiting the general good of the common people and thereby make their nations succeed socially.

Much has been said about how the capitalism of First and Second Industrial Revolutions generated “a rising tide which lifted all boats.” Hence about how it made the living conditions of all in those societies better. About how even the arguably exploited working classes and the forgotten poorer classes were living much better than their forebearers had in centuries past.

That story is not this one.

Simple narratives have good guys and bad guys. The real world is not that way. During The Cold War, we in the West were told: democracy: good!, capitalism: good!, communism: bad!, fascism: bad!, the instability caused by all insurgencies: bad!

While all of that reassuring simplicity was being fed to us, the makers of the narrative did not notice the successes of countries that didn’t fit their simplistic models.  In their minds good guy authoritarian dictators would have clouded the clarity of their storyline.

Benevolent dictators are not new in history, especially if one counts monarchs as proto-dictators. The ancient Greek word for a king is the root of the modern word tyrant.  So the democracy-loving ancient Greeks were on a similar wave length.

During the Cold War many small, developing nations were ruled by local dictators.  The two first world powers competed for the allegiance of these third world nations.  Hidden agents of the communist countries often worked quietly within already disgruntled local populations to develop and empower local insurgencies which could oppose or even overthrow these dictatorships.  Western intelligence services almost certainly did similar things in countries whose leaders were leaning away from the west.

In the west, the national narrative makers often ignored those dictators of the developing nations because that story didn’t fit the all-American baseball and apple pie story of democratic perfection and global post-war benevolence.

Newsflash:  It Is Possible for a Dictator to be Both Oppressive and Benevolent to the People.

The fact that oppressive dictators could be both repressing their populations and could also be improving the lives of the common people just seems to weird to be true.  The West could continue to claim them as capitalist allies fighting with us against the “evil empires” of communism, but the west held those countries at arms length. It even pressured them to change their systems of government.

Western Aligned Dictatorships Struggled with Insurgencies

Early in the Cold War Communist insurgencies seemed to be occurring everywhere in the underdeveloped world. There were also many other local issues which gave birth to non-communist based regional insurgencies.

Many of the strongmen ruling these fragile, underdeveloped governments naturally responded with increased repression and oppression of their populations, especially the already marginalized factions. Many of those third world societies were pragmatically tribal in their politics. The portion of the population that was not part of the ruler’s tribe or group became fertile ground for recruitment by the insurgents.

Increasing strongman oppression of these already disenfranchised portions of the population made them all the more receptive to the rhetoric and the declared goals of the insurgents.

Sometimes the Counterintuitive Is the Right Thing to Do

In the early portions of the Cold War the west was holding friendly but repressive authoritarian states at arms length. Such states included South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and eventually even Communist China.

Here’s The Thing: Those states combined wise counterinsurgency programs with highly government-regulated capitalist systems and structures. They then used the proceeds of their highly regulated and subsidized capitalist enterprises to develop the infrastructure of a modern nation which, importantly, aided the common people. While freedom of speech was ignored, personal safety, and basic needs like food, housing and health care were provided to the people. The living standards of the common people were clearly improving. This state enfranchisement vastly decreased the opportunity for the insurgency to recruit the disenfranchised.

These semi-benevolent dictators did not just allow their power elites to prosper; rather they arranged for every man to prosper.

There is a common western truism that basic constitutional freedoms like freedom of speech are fundamental to the social satisfaction which underlies western democracy.  However these wise and semi-benevolent dictators increased the social satisfaction of the common people raising their living standard well above subsistence living conditions.  Freedom is not fundamental to social satisfaction.

None of the democratic principles western nations so vigorously promote are required to have stable, productive and prosperous societies.  One size clearly does not fit all.

These repressive authoritarianism states found roads that led to the general good of their societies. The common people were served by the choices made and actions taken by their dictators. Their people prospered.

This Thread’s Plan

The posts linked below will document the success of these national stories.

The first topic covered will be an explanation of the basic but critical truths of successful counterinsurgency programs.  These principles were learned by the British and the Malaysians working together in the 1950s.

The rest of the posts will document the specific roads traveled by each individual nation which charted its own particular paths to success.