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The Science of Autocracy Suggests the U.S. Is Headed for Dictatorship
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Autocracy does not exist. There is no example in history of a single person holding unilateral control over an entire nation, its people, and its industry. There are plenty of examples of things that look like autocracy on the surface, but power is fundamentally built in collaboration and hierarchy, and each of those cases was simply the captain or figurehead of a larger power structure that pulled all the strings. This is important because a belief in dictatorship of an individual leads to an obsession with the individual rather than the power structure behind them that is ultimately responsible.
If you went back in time and put a bullet between Hitler's eyes in 1920 the Nazis would still rise to power in Germany in the 30s, because the Nazis were simply the face of German nationalists and capitalists who saw the crises of their time and decided to let the monsters off the leash in exchange for a steady supply of slave labor and a complete decimation of labor unionists and socialists. In a similar vein, Trump is merely the chief idiot and Judas goat for American capital scrambling to adapt to a world where their hegemony is rapidly deteriorating and the crises of capitalism are no longer able to simply be outsourced through wanton imperialism. He is simply Foucault's boomerang come home at long last. Concentrating purely on him and the handful of other chief idiots around him does no good, because if you get rid of him he will simply be replaced by the machine that gave rise to him to begin with.
And this leads to my ultimate point here: the American system yearns for a Trump. The US was built from the ground up to serve the interests of capital, to prioritize those who have an iron grip on the engines of economic might, whether those be cotton plantations, steel mills, or data centers. This is not the first time the US has thrown minorities into camps, or stamped its boot on the face of other countries and peoples, or torn off the mask of the rule of law in favor of the rule of force, and so long as the system remains as is it will not be the last time either. If you fixate on Trump, then you will go back to sleep in four years and ignore the countless crimes of his successors, and the outcome will be the same.
I was thinking recently about whether the popular liberal conception of a "dictator" was even feasible, and you've just crystallized my opinion that it was always a childish model of reality.
When do you think it originated? Was it during the Cold War with portrayals of Stalin and Mao?
The modern conception definitely spawned as part of the larger "authoritarianism" propaganda at the start of the Cold War. I'd say the idea that one person rules with an iron fist is the simplistic view of politics stretching back throughout civilization though, so it's not exactly an original idea.
Thanks, Hannah arendt
Sulla maybe? He too was a figurehead for the most reactionary faction of roman elites
I think your thesis is wrong. I think if you looked Hitler there is a chance that the extremists never unified and eventually became irrelevant.
I think the unifying force is a critical component. I don't JD Vance could continue Trump's mission alone.
I have no idea tho.