democracy vs totalitarianism essay

Why tyranny could be the inevitable outcome of democracy

Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology

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Lawrence Torcello does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Plato, one of the earliest thinkers and writers about democracy, predicted that letting people govern themselves would eventually lead the masses to support the rule of tyrants .

When I tell my college-level philosophy students that in about 380 B.C. he asked “does not tyranny spring from democracy,” they’re sometimes surprised, thinking it’s a shocking connection.

But looking at the modern political world, it seems much less far-fetched to me now. In democratic nations like Turkey, the U.K., Hungary, Brazil and the U.S., anti-elite demagogues are riding a wave of populism fueled by nationalist pride. It is a sign that liberal constraints on democracy are weakening.

To philosophers, the term “liberalism” means something different than it does in partisan U.S. politics. Liberalism as a philosophy prioritizes the protection of individual rights , including freedom of thought, religion and lifestyle, against mass opinion and abuses of government power.

What went wrong in Athens?

In classical Athens, the birthplace of democracy , the democratic assembly was an arena filled with rhetoric unconstrained by any commitment to facts or truth. So far, so familiar.

Aristotle and his students had not yet formalized the basic concepts and principles of logic, so those who sought influence learned from sophists , teachers of rhetoric who focused on controlling the audience’s emotions rather than influencing their logical thinking.

There lay the trap: Power belonged to anyone who could harness the collective will of the citizens directly by appealing to their emotions rather than using evidence and facts to change their minds.

Manipulating people with fear

In his “ History of the Peloponnesian War ,” the Greek historian Thucydides provides an example of how the Athenian statesman Pericles, who was elected democratically and not considered a tyrant, was nonetheless able to manipulate the Athenian citizenry:

“Whenever he sensed that arrogance was making them more confident than the situation merited, he would say something to strike fear into their hearts; and when on the other hand he saw them fearful without good reason, he restored their confidence again. So it came about that what was in name a democracy was in practice government by the foremost man.”

Misleading speech is the essential element of despots, because despots need the support of the people. Demagogues’ manipulation of the Athenian people left a legacy of instability, bloodshed and genocidal warfare, described in Thucydides’ history.

That record is why Socrates – before being sentenced to death by democratic vote – chastised the Athenian democracy for its elevation of popular opinion at the expense of truth. Greece’s bloody history is also why Plato associated democracy with tyranny in Book VIII of “The Republic .” It was a democracy without constraint against the worst impulses of the majority.

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15.3C: Dictatorship and Totalitarianism

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Dictatorships govern without consent of the people and in totalitarian dictatorships the power to govern extends to all aspects of life.

Learning Objectives

• Compare and contrast dictatorships with totalitarian governments
• Dictatorship is a form of government in which the ruler has the power to govern without consent of those being governed.
• Totalitarian governments are those that regulate nearly every aspect of public and private behavior.
• Dictatorship concerns the source of the governing power (where the power comes from, the people or a single leader) and totalitarianism concerns the scope of the governing power (what is the government and how extensive is its power).
• totalitarianism : A system of government in which the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control, for example, a dictatorship.
• dictatorship : A type of government where absolute sovereignty is allotted to an individual or a small clique.

Dictatorship and totalitarianism are often associated, but they are actually two separate phenomena. Dictatorship is a form of government in which the ruler has the power to govern without consent of those being governed. Dictatorship can also be defined simply as “a system that does not adhere to democracy,” where democracy is defined as a form of government where those who govern are selected through contested elections. A dictator’s power can originate in his or her family, political position, or military authority.

Many dictatorships are also totalitarian. Totalitarian governments are those that exert total control over the governed; they regulate nearly every aspect of public and private behavior. Totalitarianism entails a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority, and it strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through all-encompassing propaganda campaigns (disseminated through the state-controlled mass media), a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror.

In other words, dictatorship concerns the source of the governing power (where the power comes from—the people or a single leader) and totalitarianism concerns the scope of the governing power (what is the government and how extensive is its power). In this sense, dictatorship (government without people’s consent) exists in contrast with democracy (government whose power comes from people) and totalitarianism (where government controls every aspect of people’s lives) exists in contrast with pluralism (where government allows multiple lifestyles and opinions).

China: Totalitarianism’s Long Shadow

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Rapid economic growth in China over the last four decades has failed to bring about democratization. Instead of undergoing evolutionary liberalization, the Leninist party-state has in recent years reverted to a form of neo-Stalinist rule. China’s experience may appear to contradict modernization theory, which links economic development with democracy. A closer look at this experience, however, shows that democratizing a post-totalitarian regime is far more difficult than democratizing an authoritarian regime because post-totalitarian regimes, such as the one dominated by the Chinese Communist Party, possess far greater capacity and resources to resist and neutralize the liberalizing effects of modernization. However, the medium-term success of these regimes may only ensure their eventual demise through revolution. The socioeconomic transformation of societies under post-totalitarian rule empowers social forces and greatly increase the odds of revolutionary change when these regimes undergo liberalization, as shown in the former Soviet bloc.

S eymour Martin Lipset’s insight that economic modernization creates favorable conditions for stable democracy is one of the most influential, robust, and time-tested theories in social science. More than six decades after “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy” 1  first appeared in print, Lipset’s work continues to frame scholarly debates and inspire new research. As with any established theory in social science, Lipset’s thesis has also been constantly tested against real-world experience. Today, the case of China, where one-party rule has persisted despite four decades of rapid economic modernization, challenges the validity of the Lipset thesis. In 2007, China’s economic miracle occasioned a forecast that the country could become partly democratic by 2015 and completely free a decade later. 2  Unfortunately, the regime dominated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not merely endured, but grown more repressive at home and aggressive abroad.

The China puzzle—a relatively high level of socioeconomic development coexisting with a persistent dictatorship—is even more striking in the contemporary global context. Consider  Table 1  below. According to World Bank data and the Freedom House ratings, most countries with a higher per capita income than China are either Free (liberal democracies) or Partly Free (either semi-democracies or semi-authoritarian regimes). Nearly all the dictatorships that are richer (per capita) than China today are major oil and gas producers. This indicates that there are in China powerful forces—at least equal in political potency to the “resource curse”—that prevent otherwise favorable socioeconomic factors from promoting a shift toward a more democratic system. 3  [End Page 5]

About the Author

Minxin Pei is Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. In January 2021, he joined the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy.

View all work by Minxin Pei

An even more worrying aspect of the China puzzle is that since Xi Jinping became paramount leader in 2012, the CCP has reverted to a neo-Stalinist path. Xi has revived one-man rule, escalated political repression to its worst level since Mao Zedong died in 1976, reintroduced ideological indoctrination, and launched an aggressive foreign policy that openly challenges the theory and practice of a liberal, rules-governed international order. 4

The Chinese experience since the Mao era forces us to rethink the relationship between economic development and democracy in a post-totalitarian regime. In this intellectual exploration, modernization theory remains relevant and useful because it helps us to ask the right question: What institutional factors unique to the country may have hindered the emergence of democratic institutions despite rapid, sustained economic modernization?

Seymour Martin Lipset was well aware that even when socioeconomic circumstances were favorable, political factors could still mean trouble for democratization. He warned that “unique events may account for  either  the persistence  or  the failure of democracy in any particular society.” 5  One such event he mentioned was the appearance of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. Due to these regimes’ Marxist ideology and ties with the Soviet Union, Lipset warned that “the presence of Communists precludes an easy prediction that economic development will stabilize democracy in these European countries.” 6

Looking back from the vantage of 1993 at his seminal 1959 essay on “the social requisites of democracy,” Lipset referred indirectly to the link between regime type and democratization:

The more resources of power, status and wealth are concentrated in the state, the harder it is to institutionalize democracy. Under such conditions the political struggle tends to approach a zero-sum game in which the defeated lose all. The greater the importance of the central state as a source of prestige and advantage, the less likely it is that those in power—or the forces of opposition—will accept rules of the game that institutionalize party conflict and could result in the turnover of those in office. Hence. … [t]he chances for democracy are greatest where … the interaction between politics and economy is limited and segmented. 7

Although Lipset did not say that every regime with a high concentration of power, status, and wealth is totalitarian, such regimes do inevitably feature that concentration, and so do the post-totalitarian orders that succeed them. The recent history of the old Soviet-bloc countries backs up Lipset’s observation about the negative relationship between the concentration of power in a state and its ability to gain and keep democracy.

A key point to grasp is that the task of democratizing communist dictatorships is fraught with unique challenges. Totalitarianism casts a long, dark shadow and limits possible paths to democratization. In retrospect,  [End Page 6]

The Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World Minxin Pei delivered the seventeenth annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World on 3 December 2020. The title of his lecture was “Totalitarianism’s Long Dark Shadow Over China.” Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006) was one of the most influential social scientists and scholars of democracy of the past six decades. A frequent contributor to the  Journal of Democracy  and a founding member of its Editorial Board, Lipset taught at Columbia, the University of California–Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, and George Mason University. He was the author of numerous important books, including  Political Man, The First New Nation, The Politics of Unreason , and  American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword . He was the only person ever to have served as president of both the American Political Science Association (1979–80) and the American Sociological Association (1992–93). Lipset’s work covered a wide range of topics: the social conditions of democracy, including economic development and political culture; the origins of socialism, fascism, revolution, protest, prejudice, and extremism; class conflict, structure, and mobility; social cleavages, party systems, and voter alignments; and public opinion and public confidence in institutions. Lipset was a pioneer in the study of comparative politics, and no comparison featured as prominently in his work as that between the two great democracies of North America. Thanks to his insightful analysis of Canada in comparison with the United States, most fully elaborated in  Continental Divide  (1990), he has been dubbed the “Tocqueville of Canada.” The Lipset Lecture is cosponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Munk School, and the Embassy of Canada in Washington, with financial support this year from Johns Hopkins University Press, the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and the Embassy of Canada. To view videos of the Lipset Lecture from this and past years, please visit  www.ned.org/seymour-martin-lipset-lecture-on-democracy-in-the-world .

the most promising path to democracy for communist dictatorships is revolution. Although transition costs will be high and long-term prospects for democratic consolidation far from certain, the spectacles of reversion to authoritarianism in Russia and recent episodes of democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe suggest the value of suddenly destroying totalitarian institutions as fully as possible. To burn totalitarianism to the ground is to accomplish the first vital step toward democratization. Communist dictatorships that go for economic reform  [End Page 7]

without political democratization, like those in China and Vietnam, may achieve swift socioeconomic progress. But the legacy institutions of totalitarianism will allow the democratizing effects of development to be blunted and perhaps even neutralized altogether.

A Leninist party, with its insistence that it must rule alone and free of competition, is the heart of the problem. Such a party will maintain a large and able coercive apparatus, an effective even if not quite exclusive sway over information, and control of crucial economic sectors. Development may create democratizing pressures, but the regime will have ways, means, and motives to defy, baffle, sidestep, and delay them. A transition away from communism along this path is also likely to get stuck because entrenched interests, above all the privileged  apparatchiks  of the Leninist party-state, will use the legacy institutions of totalitarianism to block economic reforms (beyond a certain point) and prevent democratization lest it cost them their power and privileges.

Even worse than a stagnating transition is one that turns into a back-slide toward neo-Stalinism, which is centered on the personality cult of a dominant ruler, constant purges within the regime, intense repression, reassertion of the supremacy of the Leninist party-state, and ideological hostility to the West. As China’s experience under Xi shows, the lack of democratic reform and the absence of the rule of law mean that the institutional mechanisms which could forestall the rise of a strongman are missing. Thus the way is open for a leader such as Xi Jinping to impose his will on society and the party-state through fear and ideological reindoctrination.

Among all modern dictatorships, communist totalitarian regimes have cast the longest and darkest shadow on the future. One reason is their greater longevity relative to other types of dictatorships. While fascist totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy were also horribly brutal and repressive, their comparatively quick demise in a global war prevented them from totally transforming  [End Page 8]  their societies and consolidating totalitarian institutions. By contrast, in communist regimes that rose from internal social revolutions (rather than being imposed from without on a country), classic totalitarian rule lasted decades. In the USSR, the totalitarian era stretched from 1917 to 1953, the year Josef Stalin died. In China, the equivalent period was almost thirty years, from 1949 to the beginning of economic reform in 1978. Even in the post-totalitarian period, as terror declined, communist ideology eroded, and one-man rule ended, communist regimes in the USSR, Central and Eastern Europe, China, and Vietnam continued to rely on such core totalitarian institutions as the Leninist party-state, the state-run economy, censors, and secret police to maintain power.

Even when socioeconomic modernization comes to such countries, the legacies of totalitarianism make democratization much harder. In their unmatched brutality, communist totalitarian regimes systematically destroyed alternative centers of power and social capital. 8  In China, Maoist campaigns had since the 1950s decimated religious groups, secret societies, rural elites, the urban middle classes, and the intelligentsia. 9  A well-organized Leninist party-state with mass economic resources, a skilled and ruthless repressive  apparat , and a wrecked civil society—all ubiquitous legacies of totalitarianism—stunt the prospects of democratization in post-totalitarian regimes.

The difficulty of democratization in totalitarian and post-totalitarian regimes has not escaped notice. Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out in 1979 that, unlike conventional dictatorships, no communist regime had ever been democratized. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan argued that, barring defeat in war and external imposition, a transition from totalitarian rule to democracy is all but impossible. Once outright totalitarianism ends, the opening for democracy remains narrow because civil society is weak, “political society” (that is, opposition parties) is nonexistent, the private sector is anemic, and the rule of law is nowhere to be found. 10

The difficulty of democratizing post-totalitarian communist regimes can be highlighted by comparing them to middle-income dictatorships that are  not  communist. While instances are few (and would be even fewer were one to count only communist regimes springing from endogenous revolution rather than Soviet imposition), they do suggest that transitions to democracy tend to occur in middle-income noncommunist autocracies at a lower level of socioeconomic development than historically has been the case in communist autocracies. As  Table 2  shows, the average per capita income at time of transition for communist dictatorships in the former Soviet bloc was 25 percent higher than that same  [End Page 9]

average across a select group of middle-income noncommunist autocracies in Latin America and Asia. If we look only at endogenously created communist cases (Russia, Serbia, Albania, and Croatia), their average per capita income at the time of transition was still slightly higher than the average for noncommunist dictatorships.

The disparity in years of schooling (for adults over 25) at time of  [End Page 10]  transition is even more pronounced. This figure averaged six for non-communist autocracies but 9.2 (or 46 percent higher) for communist dictatorships. The four endogenous communist regimes came in at an average of 8.9 years. Of the three existing communist dictatorships—China, Vietnam, and Cuba—all have an average adult-education level that exceeds six years of schooling, while two (China and Cuba) have significantly higher levels of per capita income than the noncommunist dictatorships could boast at the time of transition. What this simple comparison suggests is that communist dictatorships are more resistant than conventional authoritarian regimes to pressures for democratization arising from socioeconomic modernization.

Moreover, “managed” transitions—the kind based on talks between rulers and opposition—are rare in communist cases. Only in Poland and Hungary did communist dictatorships engage in such negotiations, and even then the dealmaking failed to turn the basic trajectory of regime change from “revolutionary” to “pacted.” In all other communist cases, most importantly that of the USSR, the transition began as reformist but ended as revolutionary.

While we do not yet fully understand how that happened, a tantalizing possibility is that regimes (such as communist dictatorships) which are at first more resistant to democratization by that same token become more vulnerable to revolution. When the ruling elites are forced to liberalize the political system as a response to sinking legitimacy, pent-up social forces that have been both radicalized by the old regime’s resistance to democratization and empowered by high levels of socioeconomic development can turn limited reform into revolution.

In other words, communist autocrats may be better than their non-communist counterparts at resisting and delaying democratization, but eventually such tactics prove not only unsustainable but self-destructive as well, since they make revolution more likely. This hypothesis, which the experience of transition in the former communist regimes appears to validate, complements the Lipset thesis.

Solving the China Puzzle

The experience of democratization in the former Soviet bloc suggests that a decisive democratic breakthrough can come about only when the legacy institutions of totalitarianism, in particular the Leninist party-state and state socialism, are dismantled quickly in a “Big Bang” revolution. But revolution has its own short-term costs, and the emergence and consolidation of democracy on the ruins of communism are by no means guaranteed. The most discouraging case may be that of Russia. Communism’s end ushered in a decade of economic decline, failing governance, and unstable democracy, paving the way for the rise of a new autocrat, Vladimir Putin.  [End Page 11]

The high costs of revolution have maintained the appeal of China’s evolutionary pathway of market-oriented reforms and rapid economic development, at least until recently. Optimists assumed that market-oriented reforms would shift economic resources away from the state to society and initiate a virtuous cycle in which state power would become less concentrated, the economy would grow, and society would achieve more autonomy. These assumptions were not entirely wrong. In the 1980s, when reformers such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang held significant sway, China experienced not only its economic-reform breakthrough but also substantive steps toward political liberalization. Without the changes of that decade, the Tiananmen prodemocracy movement which appeared at its close could never have happened. 11

When the June 1989 crackdown crushed that movement, CCP reformers were purged and the regime rallied behind Deng Xiaoping’s project of rapid modernization under one-party rule. As Linz and Stepan wrote, the post-Tiananmen regime was a form of “frozen post-totalitarianism in which, despite the persistent tolerance of some civil society critics of the regime, almost all the other control mechanisms of the party-state stay[ed] in place for a long period and [did] not evolve.” 12

Despite its “frozen post-totalitarian” political institutions, the post-Tiananmen regime has done more than any communist government in history to achieve rapid and sustained growth through market-based reforms. According to the World Bank’s constant-dollar measurements, the Chinese economy went from $360 billion in 1990 to $14.3 trillion in 2019, a fortyfold increase in real terms. China’s per capita income and average educational attainment, as shown in  Table 2 , are now significantly higher than the average of noncommunist dictatorships at the time of transition. Compared to the average former communist regime at the time of transition, China today has a substantially higher per capita income and a modestly lower level of educational attainment.

To understand the China puzzle of rapid development combined with persistent autocracy, we must focus on how the legacies of totalitarianism critically constrained the democratizing potential of rapid modernization, both during the entire post-Mao period and during the 32 years since the Tiananmen crackdown. Here I offer three propositions:

1) Legacies of totalitarianism blunt and neutralize the democratizing effects of economic modernization . At the outset of China’s transition from Maoist-totalitarian rule in 1979–80, the CCP leadership under Deng Xiaoping made a strategic choice to use economic reform as the means of saving the one-party regime that Mao’s catastrophic rule had devastated. As Deng made plain in 1979, the goal of reform was not to end or change exclusive CCP rule, but to maintain it. 13  Hence the deliberate and painstaking preservation of such key totalitarian institutions as the Leninist party-state, the repressive apparatus, state control  [End Page 12]  of the economy’s “commanding heights,” and information restraints. In economic reform, private-sector growth, and global economic integration, post-Mao China has made strides that the post-Stalin regimes of the old Soviet bloc could never have imagined. Yet the choice to keep the legacy institutions of totalitarianism has blunted the liberalizing and democratizing effects of economic modernization.

As Andrew Nathan explained in his 2015 Lipset Lecture, rapid growth may have created a new middle class in China, but this middle class is less autonomous and more state-dependent than middle classes elsewhere. 14  The reason is evident: Too much of it still works for the state. According to the Chinese government’s online  China Statistical Yearbook 2020 , as of 2019, fully state-owned entities employed more than 54 million people. 15  They included vast numbers of China’s professionals, managers, and skilled workers.

Since the Tiananmen massacre, moreover, strict limits on civil society have stunted the growth of autonomous social organizations that might otherwise be a force for democratization. Independent religious groups, free trade unions, student organizations, and professional associations are banned. Most of China’s so-called civil society groups are in fact, to use Orwellian doublespeak, “government-organized nongovernmental organizations.” They are under effective state control. Only a few private groups are allowed to engage in small-scale activities in nonsensitive sectors such as rural education and environmental protection. 16

With its control over the state and its vast resources, plus the power to determine who gets choice educational and job opportunities, the CCP since Tiananmen has been able to coopt generations of students, professionals, and private entrepreneurs. From 1991 to 2019, the Party’s membership grew from 50 to 92 million, or from 4.3 to 6.7 percent of the populace. Recruiting in student and business ranks has led to slightly more than half of all members holding a college degree. About 11 percent of CCP members are “managers and executives,” while another 16 percent are “skilled professionals.” 17

With rapid growth filling state coffers, the CCP has been able to pay for enhanced repressive capacity, expanded surveillance, and efforts to limit the political effects of progress in areas such as information technology. Between 2002 and 2018, according to the  China Statistical Yearbook , spending on domestic security rose about eightfold in real terms. No expense was spared to build the Great Firewall, censor news and information, and prevent antiregime collective action. 18 Over the last decade, the regime has added yet more resources, spending to build a technologically advanced surveillance state that uses artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and big-data analytics to predict and punish anyone who challenges or criticizes the regime.

Due to security-forces modernization since 1989, China’s post-totalitarian regime now wields as much repressive capacity as a classic totalitarian  [End Page 13]  regime, if not more. As far back as 1999, when the CCP cracked down on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, the regime showed that it could dismantle a nationwide organization with more than a hundred-million followers through mass surveillance, arrests, imprisonment, torture, and political indoctrination. 19  At the moment, Chinese authorities have incarcerated at least a million Muslims in mass-detention facilities that are euphemistically called “vocational training schools,” but which are for all intents and purposes concentration camps recalling the worst human-rights abuses of the last century. 20

2) If the interests entrenched in the Leninist party-state remain in place, economic reform will lose momentum and the CCP regime will grow even more resistant to democratization and hostile to democratic values . A transition away from communism led by economic reform under the rule of a one-party state is highly likely to get stuck. Entrenched interests whose fortunes are intertwined with the Leninist party-state can use totalitarian legacy institutions to defend their privileges against any reform—economic or political—that threatens them. Indeed, the evolution of the post-Tiananmen regime under Jiang Zemin (1989–2002) and Hu Jintao (2002–12) bears out this observation. Economic reforms that began promisingly in the 1990s petered out in the 2000s, while the CCP blocked even the most modest experimental efforts to promote grass-roots democracy and the rule of law. 21

By the time Hu became leader, market-oriented economic reform had already begun to stagnate. With Xi in power, it has gone into reverse despite his vow to accelerate it. 22 A form of state capitalism is now ascendant. We can read the story in data regarding the share of total output produced by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). All through the 1980s, as the private sector expanded, SOEs’ total output share declined by an average of 2.5 percentage points each year. From 1992 through 2017, however, the average annual decline was only 1.3 points. 23 Thus as of 2017, after four decades of reform, Chinese SOEs still accounted for about a quarter of GDP and employed about 16 percent of all workers. 24

The overall growth of China’s economy has made SOEs bigger than ever in absolute terms. In 1992, they contributed about US$175 billion, while in 2017 their output was estimated at $3 trillion (or in real terms, it was about 3.6 times larger). 25 The retention of SOEs has been no accident. As Xi himself told the CCP Central Committee in October 2020, “state-owned enterprises are an important material and political foundation for socialism with Chinese characteristics, and are an important pillar and force for the party to govern and rejuvenate the country. They must be stronger, better, and larger.” 26 In particular, the CCP sees to it that SOEs remain atop the “commanding heights” of the economy in sectors such as finance, energy, and telecommunications. Despite their dismal inefficiency, these enterprises are showered with privileges, receiving  [End Page 14]  for instance about 83 percent of the bank credit that flowed to nonfinancial firms in 2016 while producing only a quarter of GDP. 27

Just as economic reform has stalled, political reform has been meeting with stronger resistance. Anything—even the most limited democratic experiment—that seems as if it could genuinely empower Chinese society looks to the ruling elites like a threat to their power and privileges. Village elections, once touted as a step toward grassroots democracy, gradually degenerated into uncompetitive political rituals manipulated by local CCP officials. Modest legal reforms, meanwhile, had already died a quiet death even before Xi came to power as the Party reasserted its control over the legal system. This effort was then augmented by an all-out CCP propaganda campaign against liberal-democratic values. 28

3) Lack of political reform, including democratization, greatly raises the risks of reversion to neo-Stalinist rule . It is more than a little ironic that the CCP, having been brutalized by a totalitarian leader (Mao), has become a victim of its own success in thwarting political reforms: The lack of such reforms made it possible for Xi to institute neo-Stalinist rule in short order. Had power been less concentrated and harder to abuse, he would not have had such a smooth path to neutralizing all his rivals and consolidating it. Yet the Party resisted anything even hinting at democracy throughout the post-Mao era. Now that resistance has boomeranged, and the Party once again finds itself caught in the grip of a single arbitrary ruler.

Until Xi’s rise, the reforms that Deng Xiaoping and his fellow survivors of Maoist-totalitarian rule put in place seemed to many to have institutionalized elite politics and addressed such well-known flaws of totalitarianism as the uncertainties of succession, the insecurity of being near the top of the hierarchy, and the gathering of a dangerous amount of power into the hands of a single leader. Indeed, the effort that Deng and his colleagues made in the 1980s to establish rules of collective leadership, term limits, and elite security had been a serious one.

Deng’s attempt to preclude the rise of another dominant, Mao-like figure suffered from several weaknesses, however, and any one of them had the potential to prove fatal. The rules regarding top leaders’ age and maximum time in office were either vague or unenforceable. There was no formal limit regarding age or length of tenure for members of the CCP Politburo, or for the CCP general secretary or the chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Deng himself had a taste for working outside formal rules. He never bothered with having himself named president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or CCP general secretary. In 1987, he stepped down as chairman of the CCP Central Advisory Commission (a post that he had created for himself in 1982), yet continued to chair the CCP Central Military Commission (that is, was commander-in-chief of the armed  [End Page 15]  forces) until November 1989. Zhao Ziyang had become CCP general secretary in January 1987 and as such outranked Deng under the CCP charter, but in fact Deng held veto power regarding major policy matters. He also held a veto on personnel: It was Deng who forced out the reformist general secretary Hu Yaobang in early 1987 and then did the same to Zhao Ziyang in May 1989, as the top CCP leaders engaged in a backroom power struggle over what to do about the student protests in Tiananmen Square.

Under Deng’s purported institutionalization, the only term-limited senior position was the PRC presidency. That is largely a ceremonial post, however, and Xi removed the term limit on it in 2018 (he has held the office since 2013). With rules in place that were not genuinely rules, the CCP was fortunate that a fragile balance of power among rival factions held the collective leadership together as long as it did. This power balance ensured the personal and professional security of the ruling elites—until Xi rose from the ranks of the Party leadership and consolidated power. He became CCP general secretary in late 2012 and began systematically purging his rivals, chief among them the Party boss of Chongqing, Bo Xilai (who went to prison for life). Xi now fills all three of the top posts—holding the PRC presidency while running the military and the Party—with no term limits. Deng and his fellow victims of Maoist rule built an elaborate-looking edifice of “institutionalization.” Xi exposed it as nothing but a house of cards.

Looking back, was there a path that might have preserved the rules of collective leadership, term limits, and elite security? If there was, it would have lain in the direction of broader political reforms touching on democratization and the creation of an independent judiciary. Only by these means could credible “third-party enforcers” and autonomous power centers have come onto the scene. But in a “frozen” post-totalitarian regime such as that of post-Mao China, reforms of this sort were seen as anathema because of their potential to undermine one-party rule. Consequently, few real obstacles could block the regime’s regression to neo-Stalinism under Xi.

China’s Democratic Future

Few, including the top CCP leaders who were feuding among themselves in the mid-2000s, foresaw the return to strongman rule under Xi. If they had, they would never have elevated him to the loftiest height of the collective leadership, the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), in 2007. But for those familiar with the rise and fall of Bo Xilai—Xi’s fellow Party “princeling,” colleague on the 25-member Politburo, and archrival—there were ample warning signs that conditions in China were ripe for a strongman’s return. As CCP chief of Chongqing from 2008 to 2012, Bo carried out a nationally publicized campaign that  [End Page 16]  mixed propaganda glorifying Maoism with brazen confiscation of the assets of wealthy entrepreneurs falsely accused of organized crime.

Everyone knew that Bo was staking out a far-left position as part of a play for promotion to the PSC, but no one in the Chinese leadership dared to step forward and publicly criticize his tactics. On the contrary, nearly every top leader, including Xi himself, made the trek southwest to Chongqing to endorse Bo’s revival of Maoism. If the Party could not stop Bo, a mere Politburo member, before an accidental scandal ended his neo-Maoist gambit in March 2012, it is hard to see how it could have barred Xi’s march to sole dominance once he gained the regime’s top post, that of CCP general secretary, later that year.

Even though, as we have seen, the legacy institutions of totalitarianism were decaying too slowly to allow the effects of economic modernization to democratize China, Xi did not and does not see things that way. He is ideologically committed to orthodox communism, and took power believing that the decaying institutions of the Leninist party-state posed an existential threat to regime survival.

As Xi’s speeches reveal, the USSR’s fall weighs heavily on his mind. Shortly after he became general secretary, he warned a closed gathering of CCP officials to heed the lesson of the Soviet collapse. “An important reason” why Mikhail Gorbachev was able to send “a great [communist] party” to oblivion, said Xi, “was that their ideals and convictions wavered. … In the end nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist.” 29

Xi then went about reintroducing Stalinist rule. After eight years in power, he has engineered a neo-Stalinist political revolution that has fundamentally altered the trajectory of post-Mao China. Although Xi is convinced that his neo-Stalinist survival strategy will reinvigorate a decaying post-totalitarian regime, it is far from clear that he drew the right lessons from the Soviet collapse. His neo-Stalinist strategy will almost certainly exacerbate existing tensions, create new challenges, and undermine the CCP’s long-term survival prospects.

The problems with one-man rule are many and widely known: bureaucratic passivity and buck-passing, narrow policy deliberation (no one wants to go against the leader’s preferences), and inability to hold the leader back from taking excessive risks. Signature Xi Jinping policies such as the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, the building of militarized artificial islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, the mass incarceration of Muslims in Xinjiang, and the imposition of a harsh national-security law on Hong Kong, have produced adverse outcomes that will cost the Party dearly in years to come. Xi’s efforts to strengthen the Party through indoctrination are unlikely to make its more than ninety-million members—softened by decades of material comfort—genuine believers in an ideology that is irrelevant to their lived experience.  [End Page 17]

The biggest threat to China’s neo-Stalinist order is a succession struggle. One now looms on the horizon. Having done away with the presidential term limit, the 67-year-old Xi is set for open-ended rule. If he grooms a successor, it will probably be a weak loyalist. As happened after Stalin’s death and Mao’s, once Xi is gone a power struggle will ensue. Xi’s anointed successor will likely lose it, putting the Xi Jinping political legacy at risk. Like Nikita Khrushchev and Deng Xiaoping, the winner of the post-Xi succession struggle will be incentivized to set a new course for a crisis-ridden regime that has labored under decades of strongman rule.

The outlines of a regime-threatening crisis can already be seen in the PRC’s loss of economic momentum. Of all the things that prop up post-totalitarianism in China, the key bulwark has been the fast-growing, export-led economy. Growth gives the CCP a crucial claim to “performance legitimacy” and undergirds its rule. Ominously for the Party, an aging Chinese society will struggle to maintain the torrid pace of economic growth that has come to seem the norm over the last several decades. China’s median age now is what Japan’s was in the early 1990s. The UN estimates that by 2030, about 17 percent of the PRC’s population (roughly a quarter-billion people) will be 65 or older. 30

Even more immediately worrisome to the Party is the economic decoupling that is now going on between the PRC and the West, especially the United States. Even before the covid pandemic, the turn toward neo-Stalinism at home and Xi’s aggressive foreign policy were fueling a split with Washington and (to a lesser extent) U.S. allies. Disengagement is ongoing in trade, technology, and finance. If the established democracies restrict China’s access to technology and markets, the growth potential of the PRC’s economy will suffer further erosion.

How the U.S.-China strategic conflict will unfold—and how intense it may become—are still matters of uncertainty. Already it bears some resemblance to the Cold War, and its implications for the CCP’s hold on power are not likely to be favorable. Driven by the strategic logic of containment, Washington will deploy the considerable tools at its disposal to undermine the CCP’s political monopoly. While the pace may vary under the new Joseph Biden administration, the U.S.-China economic decoupling that began under the presidency of Donald Trump will continue. Rising tensions could set off both an arms race and a contest for diplomatic influence over third-party regimes that will siphon resources away from China’s domestic needs.

Given the self-destructive dynamics of neo-Stalinism and the strategic odds stacked against the Party, the future could see Xi’s nightmare realized as economic, political, and external conditions akin to those that plagued the late-stage Soviet regime begin to beset CCP rule.

By that time, China’s socioeconomic conditions will be even more favorable for a democratic breakthrough than they are today. Even if we  [End Page 18]  assume annual growth averaging 3 percent between now and 2035 (a very modest figure by PRC standards), that will yield a per capita GDP exceeding $25,000 a year in Purchasing Power Parity terms. Meanwhile, another hundred-million people will have graduated from college, raising the share of the populace with a postsecondary degree to just over a fifth. 31

Will this bring a decisive political mobilization against one-party rule by 2035? No one can say, but with a per capita income which will be equal to that of Chile today and about three-hundred million college-educated citizens, Chinese society will by then be abler than ever to press for democratic change. If the fate of post-totalitarian communist dictatorships in the old Soviet bloc is any guide, a bet worth making is that China’s long journey from Maoism to neo-Stalinism via a three-decade trip through post-totalitarianism will be seen as a historical detour that delayed but could not prevent a rendezvous with democratic change. When that meeting happens, Lipset’s modernization thesis shall have its last laugh—and China may finally march out of the long, dark shadow of its totalitarian past.

The author wishes to thank Hilary Appel, Andrew Nathan, Guoguang Wu, and Andrew Walder for their helpful comments.

1.  Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,”  American Political Science Review  53 (March 1959): 69–105.

2. Henry S. Rowen, “When Will the Chinese People Be Free?”  Journal of Democracy  18 (July 2007): 38–52.

3.  Belarus receives major energy subsidies from Russia, so only Turkey truly qualifies as a non–oil-producing autocracy with a higher per capita income than China.

4.  On China’s reversion to neo-Stalinism under Xi, see Elizabeth C. Economy,  The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); and Richard McGregor, “Party Man: Xi Jinping’s Quest to Dominate China,”  Foreign Affairs  98 (September–October 2019): 18–25.

5. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy,” 72. Italics in original.

6.  Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy,” 100.

7.  Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited: 1993 Presidential Address,”  American Sociological Review  59 (February 1994): 4. The dispersion of socioeconomic resources is also noted as a favorable structural precondition for democracy by Robert A. Dahl,  Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 48–61.

8.  Recent research shows that revolutionary regimes, including communist ones, are more durable than other dictatorships thanks to cohesive ruling parties, powerful and loyal security organizations, and the destruction of potential centers of opposition. See Jean Lachapelle et al., “Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability,”  World Politics  72 (October 2020): 557–92.

9.  Frank Dikötter,  The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957  (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).

10.  Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,”  Commentary , November 1979, 34–45; Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan,  Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe  (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

11.  On the 1980s reforms, see Julian Gewirtz,  The Remaking of China: Myth, Modernization, and the Tumult of the 1980s  (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

12.  Linz and Stepan,  Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation , 42.

13.  See  http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64156/64157/4418442.html .

14.  Andrew J. Nathan, “The Puzzle of the Chinese Middle Class,”  Journal of Democracy  27 (April 2016): 5–19.

15.  See  China Statistical Yearbook 2020  [in Chinese],  www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2020/indexch.htm .

16.  Yanzhong Huang, “At the Mercy of the State: Health Philanthropy in China,”  Voluntas  30 (August 2019): 634–46; Carolyn L. Hsu and Yuzhou Jiang, “An Institutional Approach to Chinese NGOs: State Alliance versus State Avoidance Resource Strategies,”  China Quarterly  221 (March 2015): 100–22.

17.  “The Chinese Communist Party Has Grown Steadily: 90.59 Million Party Members and 4.61 Million Grassroots Party Organizations” [in Chinese], Xinhua News Agency, 30 June 2019,  www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2019-06/30/c_1124689887.htm ; for the size of CCP membership between 1921 and 1999, see  http://sports.cctv.com/specials/80zhounian/sanji/bj060807.html .

18.  See Rebecca MacKinnon, “Liberation Technology: China’s ‘Networked Authoritarianism,'”  Journal of Democracy 22  (April 2011): 32–46; and Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,”  American Political Science Review  107 (May 2013): 1–18.

19.  James Tong,  Revenge of the Forbidden City: The Suppression of the Falungong in China, 1999–2005  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

20.  Amnesty International, “Up to One Million Detained in China’s Mass ‘Re-Education’ Drive,” September 2018,  www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/09/china-up-to-one-million-detained .

21.  Joseph Fewsmith,  The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

22.  See Yasheng Huang,  Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Nicholas R. Lardy,  The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?  (Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2019).

23.  Data for the 1980s are from Minxin Pei,  From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union  (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 89; data for 2017 are from Zhang Chunlin, “How Much Do State-Owned Enterprises Contribute to China’s GDP and Employment?” 15 July 2019, World Bank,  http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/449701565248091726/pdf/How-Much-Do-State-Owned-Enterprises-Contribute-to-China-s-GDP-and-Employment.pdf .

24.  Zhang Chunlin, “How Much Do State-Owned Enterprises Contribute to China’s GDP and Employment?”

25.  This is based on Zhang Chunlin, “How Much Do State-Owned Enterprises Contribute to China’s GDP and Employment?” as well as World Bank and  China Statistical Yearbook  data.

26.  Xi Jinping, “Several Major Issues in the National Medium- and Long-Term Economic and Social Development Strategy” [in Chinese], Xinhua News Agency, 31 October 2020,  www.xinhuanet.com/politics/leaders/2020-10/31/c_1126681658.htm .

27.  Nicholas R. Lardy, “China’s Private Firms Continue to Struggle,” 4 June 2019, Peterson Institute for International Economics, China Economic Watch blog,  www.piie.com/blogs/china-economic-watch/chinas-private-firms-continue-struggle .

28.  Carl F. Minzner, “China’s Turn Against Law,”  American Journal of Comparative Law  59 (Fall 2011): 935–84; Suisheng Zhao, “The Ideological Campaign in Xi’s China,”  Asian Survey  56 (November–December 2016): 1168–93.

29.  Chris Buckley, “Vows of Change in China Belie Private Warning,”  New York Times , 14 February 2013.

30. United Nations, World Population Prospects 2019,  https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population .

31.  The  China Statistical Yearbook  says that 7.5 million people graduated from colleges in 2019. If that number merely holds steady as the average annual increase over the next fifteen years, China will add 112.5 million graduates during that time. The college-graduate share of the populace in 2019 was 14.6 percent, so adding a hundred-million more graduates (about 7 percent of the total population) should raise their share to about 21 percent.

Copyright © 2021 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

Image Credit: Maria Passer/Shutterstock.com

Further Reading

Volume 26, Issue 4

Authoritarianism Goes Global (II): China’s Foreign Propaganda Machine

• Anne-Marie Brady

China is aggressively working to reshape its image, touting the “Chinese Dream” and its desire for a peaceful rise to power on the international stage.

Volume 27, Issue 3

Xi Jinping’s Maoist Revival

• Suisheng Zhao

Far from being a reformer, as some had hoped, President Xi Jinping has launched the most sweeping ideological campaign seen in China since Mao. Xi is mixing nationalism, Leninism, and…

Volume 34, Issue 3

The End of Village Democracy in China

• Ben Hillman

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has wound down local elections and reasserted control in the countryside. But putting these burdens on its own shoulders brings new and significant…

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LESSON PLAN:

Hitler’s fatal gamble: comparing totalitarianism and democracy.

When Adolf Hitler set in motion World War II, he was gambling that his Nazi government and society could produce soldiers and citizens tougher than those of Great Britain, France and the United States. Totalitarian fanaticism and discipline, he thought, would always conquer democratic liberalism and softness. He was wrong. What was it about democracy that allowed the Allies to win the war?

Objective: Students gain an understanding of similarities and differences between totalitarianism and democracy as it pertains to WWII.

Grade Level: 9-12

Standards: History Thinking Standard 3—the student compares and contrasts differing sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions by identifying likenesses and differences.

Content Era 8 (1929-1945) Standard 3A—the student understands the international background of World War II. Standard 3B—the student understands World War II and how the Allies prevailed.

Time Requirement: One class to two class periods (depending on how time is organized).

Download a printable pdf version of this lesson plan

Directions:

1. Write this quotation on the board and discuss: "Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” –Winston Churchill, 1947

2. Distribute the handout describing totalitarianism and democracy. Read aloud. Lead the class in a brainstorming activity of possible characteristics of totalitarianism and democracy. Ask a student to record these on the chalkboard. You may also pass out copies of the vocabulary sheet to students or use them as a teacher resource.

3. Lead a class discussion regarding what life might be like living in Germany under a totalitarian regime. Contrast this discussion with life in the United States in a democracy.

4. Divide the students into pairs. Distribute the Venn diagram template and explain how it functions. Each group will use the Venn diagram to list the similarities and differences of these two political systems. Assign one to record the information and one to present its findings. When completed each group should present its findings to the class.

5. Hold a class discussion: Which system of government is strongest and why? The student worksheet may be completed in class after the discussion or may be given as homework.

Assessment:

Components for assessment include the completed Venn diagram, oral presentation, and discussion.

Enrichment:

Have students create Venn diagrams comparing and contrasting candidates and their positions for an upcoming election.

What is Totalitarianism?

Mussolini and Hitler

Totalitarianism is a form of government that exercises complete political, economic, social, cultural, and spiritual control over its subjects. A charismatic leader, or dictator, who controls the one allowable political party, usually heads it. This form of rule requires complete subordination of the individual to advance the interests of the state. People are made dependent on the wishes and whims of the political party and its leader. The government of Nazi Germany was an example of a Fascist, totalitarian state. Its ideology and practice included a racial theory that denigrated, persecuted, and murdered “non-Aryans,” particularly Jews. It also advocated extreme nationalism that called for the unification of all German-speaking peoples and required the centralization of decision-making by, and loyalty to, a single, all-powerful leader. The use of paramilitary secret organizations to stifle dissent and terrorize opposition ensured complete compliance. Information and ideas were effectively disseminated through government-controlled propaganda campaigns using radio, the press, and education at all levels. Writers, speakers, actors, composers, and poets were licensed and controlled by the government. The centrally controlled economy enabled the government to control its workers, making them dependent on the government. All workers were required to possess a work permit, which could be withdrawn for offenses such as objecting to poor working conditions. In a totalitarian dictatorship there is no legal means of effecting a change of government. Civil rights and human rights are not guaranteed.

What is Democracy?

President Roosevelt

Democracy is a system of government in which ultimate political authority is vested in the people. Representatives elected by popular suffrage (voting) exercise the supreme authority. In democracies such as the United States, both the executive head of government (president) and the legislature (Senate and House of Representatives) are elected. The powers of government are based on the consent of the governed. Groups or institutions typically exercise the democratic theory in a complex system of interactions that involve compromises and bargaining in the decision process. The major features of a modern democracy include government only by the consent of the governed, individual freedom guaranteed by a constitution, equality before the law, which maintains that all persons are created equal with minority rights protected, universal suffrage, and education for all. Citizens are free to join any political party, union, or other legal group if they choose. Elected representatives may be supplanted by the electorate according to the legal procedures of recall and referendum, and they are, at least in principle, responsible to the electorate. Citizens retain the right to alter or abolish a government that becomes destructive and form a new government. There are no paramilitary organizations sanctioned by the government to suppress those citizens who voice opposition to the government. The cornerstones of democracy are freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.

Civil liberties : The right of the people to be free from unreasonable interference, especially from the government.

Civil rights : The right to participate in government equally with other citizens and to receive equitable treatment from the institutions of government and society.

Communism : A social, political, and economic system characterized by the revolutionary struggle to create a society which has an absence of classes, the common ownership of the means of production and subsistence, and centralized governmental control over the economy and society. The Soviet Union was a communist country.

Democracy : A political system in which the government rules by consent of the governed.

Dictator : A ruler having absolute authority and supreme jurisdiction over the government of a state, especially one whom is considered tyrannical or oppressive.

Elitism : Philosophy that a narrow clique of the "best" or "most skilled" members of a given social group should have the power.

Equality : The impartiality of law and government in treating all citizens by the same rules and standards.

Fascism : A totalitarian philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism and racism. Nazi Germany was a fascist state.

Federalism : A system of dividing powers territorially, so that there are strong constituent units and a strong central authority, each with powers that the other cannot abolish. The separation of powers between the federal government and state governments in the United States is an example of federalism.

Government : Human institutions designed to afford protection from external and internal threats, and, at best, to establish policies that will provide the most favorable conditions under which citizens may live.

Ideology : The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture.

Liberalism : A political philosophy advocating individual freedom, democratic forms of government, gradual reform in political and social institutions.

Liberty : Right of individuals to act as they choose.

Nationalism : The doctrine that national interests are more important than individual or international considerations; often favors an aggressive, threatening, warlike foreign policy.

Nazism : The ideology and policies of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Worker's Party from 1921 to 1945; a totalitarian Fascist-like system which is strongly anti-Semitic, anti-communist, anti-democratic.

Pluralism : A theory of politics viewing democracy as dominated by competition among different organized interest groups.

Popular sovereignty : The doctrine that the power to make governmental decisions and changes resides in the people.

Propaganda : The systematic, widespread dissemination or promotion of particular ideas, doctrines, or practices to further one’s own cause or to damage an opposing one.

Referendum : A device by which acts passed by a legislature are referred to the people for acceptance or rejection at the polls.

Republic : A form of state based on the concept that sovereignty resides in the people, who delegate the power to rule in their behalf to elected representatives and officials.

Socialism : A social, political, and economic system in which the major industries are nationalized, but which comes to power through the consent of the governed.

Totalitarianism : A form of government in which all societal resources are monopolized by the state in an effort to penetrate and control all aspects of public and private life, through the state's use of propaganda, terror, and technology; the individual exists to serve the state.

Venn Diagram: Totalitarianism vs. Democracy

Discussion questions.

Directions: Answer the following questions after the class discussion. You should use your own knowledge of the topic along with material from the lesson.

1. For both political systems, who makes and carries out the rules? How are these rules created?

2. What does each group believe in?

3. How do these beliefs impact its citizens?

4. What happens to citizens of each government if they disagree with the group in power?

5. How do totalitarian governments threaten world stability?

6. How does this lesson add to your understanding of United States involvement in WWII?

7. Can you think of any current totalitarian/democratic conflicts? What are the different ways this conflict could play out?

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Concepts of Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, Democracy

Authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

The form of the political power exercised in a state can be used to determine the ideology behind such power. In that regard, the analysis of the legal framework of Singapore and the events of 2009 leads to the conclusion that the form of power is authoritarian. In 2009, several events of human rights abuse were published by Human Rights Watch, an independent organization dedicated to “defending and protecting human rights” (Human Rights Watch, 2010a). The analysis of those events indicates an authoritarian form of power in Singapore.

Both authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are derived from an autocratic ideology, i.e. the doctrine that the government is resided in the hands of one individual or a group of individuals with power over the rest of the society (SSC109, 2010). Autocracy in the case of Singapore in that matter is apparent through the fact that the government is led by a single ruling party since 1959, which is the People’s Action Party (PAP) (Human Rights Watch, 2010b, p. 1). The definition of authoritarianism implies that the exercise of the power of the government is limited to the political arena, leaving a measure of choice to individuals, given they do not interfere with the rule of the leader. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, implies total control in every aspect of the live of the society. In that regard, it can be stated that both forms of government systems are similar to a large extent, with the difference being mainly in the degree to which they exercise this power, and whether such control goes beyond political issues.

The range of aspects in which human rights are abused in Singapore includes criminal justice, sexual orientation and gender identity, and migrant domestic workers and trafficking (Human Rights Watch, 2010b). Nevertheless, it can be stated the main control exercised by Singaporeans is related to freedom of assembly, expression, and association. Indeed, the high execution rates for drug-related offenses is one of the major human rights issues in Singapore, but execution is a legislation issue that is not restricted to Singapore. In that regard, in the United States, in which citizens “enjoy a broad range of civil liberties”, there are still 35 states that impose the death penalty (Human Rights Watch, 2011). Thus, the right of assembly, expression, and the association was the main aspect in which the most abuses were reported.

Specifying those abuses, it can be stated that all of them are related to the political arena and criticizing the government, i.e. the ruling party in Singapore. Such reported violations such as procession without a permit, engaging in domestic policies, and speaking in public, are all covers for what the government thinks to be interference of its rule. In other aspects, it can be seen that the government leaves to the courts the right to interpret the laws on issues that touch on other aspects of the society.

Thus, it can be concluded that Singapore is an authoritarian state, in the way exercises its power and control. The government limits the choice of individuals in the society to those aspects that do not compromise the authority of the government and do not interfere with the rule of the leading party. If the state was totalitarian the aspects that the government’s control would have touched upon might have included social, cultural, and other aspects of life.

The Political Concept of Democracy

Referring to Singapore as an authoritarian state, it can be stated that authoritarianism is mainly represented through the way the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP exercises its political power. The relaxation of the government’s curbs on freedom of expression, although lacking, can be seen as a positive move forward. Nevertheless, such a move is still far from the move to democracy in the country. The application of the political concept of democracy will involve several aspects.

Defining democracy, it can be stated that such a concept is based on the ideology that values the individual, with “both the values and the processes of the political system revolve around him or her” (SSC109, 2010, p. 29). In that regard, with the political system revolving around the individual, individuals participate in the decisions that affect one’s life (Harrison & Dye, 2008, p. 199). One of the main characteristics of a classic democracy is the participation in an environment in which diversity and opposition will flourish, and in which conflicts are resolved through political processes (Perry & Perry, 2009, p. 414).

Applying the aforementioned to the case of Singapore will mean that citizens will have the right to express the opinions that oppose or criticize the rule of the government. Citizens swill the right to express their views and promote ideas that critical to the way the government rules. Having their full rights in terms of assembly, expression, and association, other political parties will gain more exposure to people, and they will have the right to elect their representatives. More rooms will be allowed for political themes, and censorship will be removed.

Exercising real, rather than figurative representative democracy, the parliament in Singapore, which as of 2009 has 82 of the 84 parliamentarians from PAP, will be more diverse. Exhibiting views and opinions that clash will lead to that political processes will take place, accepting laws which resemble a democratic society and respects equality of all people, individual dignity, and less government control over individuals. Ensuring “a more diverse set of voices in Parliament” will lead to regulating the laws which violate individual dignities and equality rights, such as the punishment through canning – a form of torture punishment, confinement without trial, death sentences for drug-related offences, and migrant workers laws. The use of political processes in regulating conflicting views on an issue will ensure taking the sides which are closer to the international standards on human rights.

It can be seen that the application of the concept of real democracy will start through giving the full right for freedom of assembly, expression, and association, as those rights will lead to ending the one-party rule in the state, and accordingly will lead to the formation of a real representative democracy. In what concerns the question of whether the state should govern economic aspects – democratic socialism, or not – democratic capitalism, such choice does not touch on human rights standards and thus, there are both arguments for and against in either cases.

It can be concluded that the application of the concept of democracy to the full extent will result in a true political modernizations and compliance with international human rights standards. Accordingly, the application of true democracy will end the restrictions on civil and political rights, which according to the latest Human Rights Watch report are still taking place in Singapore.

Harrison, B. C., & Dye, T. R. (2008). Power and society : an introduction to the social sciences (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.

Human Rights Watch. (2010a). About Us. Human Rights Watch . Web.

Human Rights Watch. (2010b). Singapore . Human Rights Watch .

Human Rights Watch. (2011). WORLD REPORT 2011: The Events of 2010 . Human Rights Watch.

Perry, J. A., & Perry, E. (2009). Contemporary society : an introduction to social science (12th ed.). Boston: Pearson A and B.

SSC109. (2010). Introduction to Social Sciences: Study Unit 3 . Study Notes. SIM University.

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Totalitarianism against Democracy in Lord of the Flies Essay Example

In William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies”, he uses human nature to portray the withdrawal from civilization, and the gradual pull toward savagery. The boys progress from well-mannered kids to complete savage during the duration of the novel. Two boys who go through the most progress during the novel are Ralph and Jack. These two characters act as two opposing influential figures. Ralph represents order and reason, while Jack represents unbridled savagery. As they compete for leadership, the others begin to choose between Ralph or Jack's way of living. Golding clings to his motive for representation of human nature by making Ralph and Jack portray the battle between democracy and totalitarianism throughout the novel. With the boys having loose strings and free will on the island, Jack’s ideals start to overpower Ralph’s. Jack’s way of leading the boys has parallels to totalitarianism in life. It’s shown throughout history, when leaders take power, such as Hitler of Germany, Mussolini of Italy, and Stalin of Russia.

Ralph and Jack are similar in the sense that they are both power-hungry. Throughout the story, we begin to see the difference in their motives. Ralph uses his power to create a democracy within the island. He makes it viable for each person to have the right to voice their opinions and ideas. “If we have a signal going, they'll come and take us off. And another thing. we ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that's a meeting. The same up here as down here” (Golding 42). This quote depicts how Ralph has the ability to hold himself, as well as others, accountable. He focuses on everyone’s stability rather than only his own. Jack becomes a leader of a totalitarian society. He begins to strike fear into the other boys' to achieve and sustain his power as a leader. “Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong – we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat !” (Golding 91). This shows how Jack maneuvers his way around the rules to put a restriction on the other boy's power. Consequently, he likes for himself to be the conductor of his own demise. Ralph instills stability and guidelines for the group to follow. He makes sure there is flexibility for everyone on the island. Jack contradicts this as he instills fear and restriction for the group. He wants flexibility only for himself, so he can be the one with the ability to do as he pleases.

Throughout the novel, there is a gradual turn from a democracy into totalitarianism as the boys on the island are slowly exhibited individuality. In Hannah Arendt’s, “The Origins of Totalitarianism, She accentuates how totalitarianism permits an essence in terror where its purpose is to kill the spontaneity of the human spirit. Hannah puts a spotlight on how countries overcome such pain by learning from mistakes from before. Jack demonstrates the evil in a power-hungry and selfish dictator. The acts of totalitarianism, censorship, and scapegoating are not situations that turn out favorably for anyone who isn't in power. It only provides for its own eccentricity. When totalitarianism is in power, it only fuels itself by neutralizing all those who might question it. Jack builds off of this with his want for power. People of totalitarianism only build a world where they can prosper and base everything on their own desire. Jack's actions continue to reflect themes, events, and people in history. 

In comparison to events in history, Jack reflects characteristics of past leaders. He was young so of course he wouldn’t be put to that standard, but it’s clearly shown as he takes the risk of killing to have power. In the article, “Beware of Another Reichstag Fire”, written by Helene Sinnreich, she describes common attributes of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin as their means to attempt to achieve an obedient nation through their personal visions for Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. She notes beforehand that when they immediately assumed power they did not engage in mass murders and other atrocities that came later. Similarly, Jack exerts his accomplishments to portray himself as a dominant, capable leader. As mentioned, Jack reflects the events of gradually winning people over until he fully overthrows the previously installed government. It’s seen as Jack uses tactics of past leaders such as violence, marches or meetings to reinforce group cohesion, quashing of opponents and democratic institutions, and taking away civil liberties. Jack desires authority and views Ralph as his enemy and competitor because he is in a position of power. Jack shows parallels of totalitarian dictatorships as he takes slow power over the island. 

It is shown in the reading that Jack exhibits parallels and themes of past events and leaders. William Golding shows the descent into a totalitarian society that is reflected through Jack's character. Jack's desire for authority grows as he starts to undermine the other boys on the island. Golding transcends the political struggle to show the true nature of man. Jack and Ralph’s characters expose the existence between the fight for the purity of democracy and the evils that totalitarianism remains violent, unfortunate, and perpetual. Jack’s actions show the destruction of what power-hungry people and institutions can bring.

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