 |
| Revolution and Dictatorship by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way is a fascinating book with a lot of detail, but important omissions |
Levitsky and Way argue in Revolution and Dictatorship that the most durable authoritarian regimes arise under the following conditions:
- the regime was created by people completely outside of the pre-existing regime and its apparatus
- the regime came to power as a result of a violent revolution
- the regime carried out or attempted to carry out a complete social transformation
- the regime completely eliminated the pre-existing state structures and built up or attempted ot build up its own state of a different kind (e.g. “workers’ state” in Russia)
Levitsky and Way did a thorough study of authoritarian regimes since 1900 and found just twenty that satisfied all the three criteria above out of something like four hundred.
The fundamental argument of Revolution and Dictatorship is that a combination of:
- attempted or achieved radical social change, and
- strong domestic and external opposition that produces extreme counter-revolutionary conflict
serves to tightly unify the leaders of social revolutions from below. This unity eliminates the possibility of elite defections or coups d‘etat — the typical causes of breakdown of authoritarian regimes. Elite unity is achieved by — invariably violently — eliminating alternative centres of power in militaries, religious institutions or academia. Levistky and Way also illustrate how this process played out in cases that either severely compromised or collapsed very early in the revolutionary process.
The authors also illustrate clearly how “society-centred” explanations cannot explain the durability of revolutionary authoritarianism because many of the most durable authoritarian regimes have experienced many periods of extreme public discontent, yet still survived these fully intact.
The authors also illustrate clearly how “society-centred” explanations cannot explain the durability of revolutionary authoritarianism because many of the most durable authoritarian regimes have experienced many periods of extreme public discontent, yet still survived these fully intact.
The Issue of International Support:
Being as familiar as I am with the theories of Tony Cliff — whom my brother many years ago called satirically “Tony Should Be Thrown Off a Cliff” — and with other writers who argue or merely imply from a variety of angles that democracy and capitalism are fundamentally opposed, one might think revolution and democracy are fundamentally incompatible after reading this book. However, as I see it a fault in Revolution and Dictatorship is that it does not provide a detailed study of international support for these revolutions, although:
- the book heavily and extremely logically emphasises the role of international opposition to these revolutions
- many — though not all — of the revolutions discussed in the book were supposed to be international rather than national, yet this is inadequately discussed
- international support — of extremely varied degree and power — did exist for most revolutions discussed in the book
- In Vietnam, China and Cuba there was massive support from other Stalinist nations
- In turn, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea–Bissau also had massive support from Cuba and Moscow
- Vietnam also had large-scale support from US blacks during the Civil Rights era and from the new generation of college students after World War I
- In Russia, there was major support from Western working classes via strikes designed to prevent ships sending trips to the Whites
- there is no doubt that this was critical in preventing the overthrow — and likely division into colonies — of the former Tsarist Empire
- Even less obvious cases like Iran had support [from Shica seminaries in neighbouring Iraq], Algeria had substantial support from protesters in France, and Zimbabwe (incorrectly excluded) had large-scale support from countries like Cuba
The exceedingly familiar argument of Trotskyists is that if the Russian Revolution had spread internationally (as Lenin expected) then it would have developed radically democratic elements of rule by recallable soviets elected from workplaces, rather that rule by a small oligarchy — which as Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page have demonstrated, is the actual system of rule in the purportedly “democratic” United States. A major problem with the Trotskyist argument is the scarcity or absence of attempts to quantify how rapidly or how far the revolution would have had to spread to avoid turning into a totalitarian dictatorship. Certain other Marxist groups argue that this spread had to be very rapid indeed, but there exist absolutely zero attempts known to me at quantifying how widely the revolution needed to spread to avoid degeneration.
Levitsky and Way’s thesis, however, does fit well with Tony Cliff. If a social revolution had spread internationally, this would turn at least part of the powerful international opposition into powerful international support. Such international support would block the trajectory which has produced durable authoritarianism by preventing the reactive conflict sequences of civil war and dictatorial consolidation, and make it much easier for revolutions to carry out radical social policies. In fact, one of the key hypotheses of the book is that:
“Counterrevolutionary reaction brings early death or development of three pillars of durable authoritarianism; cases without counterrevolutionary reaction do not develop such pillars” [table 9.3]
which implies that had the revolution spread sufficiently, it would have developed the soviet democracy outlined in the writings of Marx and Lenin — a democracy where policy is genuinely dependent upon mass preferences rather than those of the rich. This implication is not discussed at any point in the book, unfortunately.
The Question of Why No Social Revolution Has Spread Internationally:
The discussion above points to another question unanswered in Revolution and Dictatorship: why no social revolution has ever spread internationally? This question is not one I will claim to have sufficient expertise to answer. Trotskyists who emphasise the critical importance of internationalism repeatedly say that it was all about the lack of the correct type of party to spread the revolution, but never go into further details as to why things evolved thus. Ron Rogowski’s book Commerce and Coalitions hints at the need for certain economic conditions, but even here there is the issue that Rogowski says that multiple countries had the conditions needed for the sort of social revolutions discussed here. Not considering the failure of any revolution to spread internationally is a significant omission, if only because mass support for the policies of many revolutions was at least as great outside the countries where revolutions actually occurred. Internationalist elements were most extreme in the Russian Revolution which was explicitly conceived as a global revolt, but existed also in Cuba, Vietnam and Iran.One highly plausible explanation for the lack of spread is that it is naturally too rare for states to collapse for there to be any realistic chance that a sufficient number of states will simultaneously weaken. Such a simultaneous weakening is what Levitsky and Way demonstrate as necessary for any large-scale social revolution. Still, if it is correct, more dicussion of this point would have been highly desirable.
Is “From Outside” More Accurate than “From Below”?
In Trotskyist discourse, “from below” refers explicitly and exclusively to movements of the lower classes — in fact solely to industrial workers. Thus, Tony Cliff and his disciples have always viewed what Revolution and Dictatorship views as “revolutions from below” in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Albania as in fact revolutions from above. This is much more applicable still to the Muslim revolutions in Iran and Afghanistan, which were led by upper-class clerics who became isolated from the state. It is also applicable to significant pre-1900 revolutions that may have important features in common with the revolutions discussed in the book.Logically, if even an upper-class group outside a regime wants to challenge, that group will experience much more problems with loyalty than an insider seeking radical social changes like Atatürk or Colonel Gaddhafi. In a regime like Atatürk’s or Gaddhafi’s, the existing military or government does not have the loyalty created by a revolutionary military in genuinely revolutionary states. This is why Turkey had numerous military coups after 1950, and why no cohesive means to support the system established by Gaddhafi existed when opposition grew during the 2000s.
Conclusion:
Revolution and Dictatorship is a highly valuable summary and analysis of why revolutionary dictatorships have tended to be extremely durable even under stresses that would destroy most governments. It is flawed in insufficiently looking at international perspectives — which if studied carefully show the book does not refute the familiar arguments of the radical left about how crucial international revolution is.
