Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a concept largely found in liberal political science. Authoritarian is said to include governments which do not afford their citizens civil or political freedoms, maintain free and fair elections, and where political power is concentrated in the hands of a single person (autocrat) or small grouping of people (oligarchy).[1]
Usage
While the term "authoritarianism" is most often used to conflate socialist and fascist states and contrast them with bourgeois democracies, all class societies maintain some form of authoritarianism; it is simply a matter of which class it is directed against.
In capitalist states, the ruling class is authoritarian towards the proletariat. Political and economic freedoms supposedly given to the entire population are most often only able to be fully enjoyed by a small ruling class and therefore are of little practical meaning to the majority of the population.
Related terms
Totalitarianism
Bourgeois academics commonly use the term "totaltarianism" to attack socialist states such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and People's Republic of China under Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong respectively.[2][3] In this way, they seek to conflate socialism with fascism. However, this label is erroneous; socialist democracy offered much greater and more meaningful freedoms in comparison to their capitalist counter-parts. This is in addition to the fact that totalitarianism is a capitalist concept.[4]
The foreign reactionaries who accuse us of practicing 'dictatorship' or 'totalitarianism' are the very persons who practice it. They practice the dictatorship or totalitarianism of one class, the bourgeoisie, over the proletariat and the rest of the people. They are the very persons Sun Yat-sen spoke of as the bourgeoisie of modern states who oppress the common people. And it is from these reactionary scoundrels that Chiang Kai-shek learned his counter-revolutionary dictatorship. —Mao Zedong, On the People's Democratic Dictatorship
Authority in general
Authority in a broader sense is used by all societies in some way. For instance, authority is used to maintain all relationships of subordinated and subordinator which is needed for basic socioeconomic tasks, such as production.
"Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear."
—Friedrich Engels, On Authority
See also
References
- ↑ "authoritarianism". britannica.com.
- ↑ "Totalitarianism". Wikipedia. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
- ↑ "Totalitarianism". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved August 5, 2025.
"Other modern examples of totalitarian states include the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and North Korea under the Kim dynasty."
- ↑ Saula Wenger (January 2023) "Is Socialism Totalitarian?". Wisconsin Communist. Retrieved August 5, 2025.