a Field Guide to Political “-isms”

No, I do not have training, either formal or informal, in political philosophy, and not really qualified to the write this article. However, after a while, one gets just a wee-bit tired of people misusing terms like: fascist, Socialism, and Communist. So, this is my attempt to untangle the mess. Yes, the descriptions are rather elementary, but this is how I think about it so I can keep them straight.

Fascism

A nationalistic political system that tightly integrates foreign policy, military, culture, economy, values, religion, and citizens using corporate principles into an organic, obedient whole.

The economic policies can be left or right wing. Individuality and liberty are strongly discouraged in favor of conformity. An aggressive, militaristic foreign policy is a key aspect.

Nazism

A variety of Fascism that employs the principles of racial superiority, eugenics, and anti-Semitism as a source of strength.

Socialism

This political system envisions the common or public ownership, use and allocation of economic resources for the common good. It frowns upon bureaucracy, hierarchy, and power structures in favor of collective or dispersed decision making. This rather broad philosophy encompasses many different flavors, differing mainly in the relative balance of power between collective decision making and the free market; European Social Democracies lean towards the latter. The hallmarks of this flavor are workers’ rights, welfare, and social justice.

Communism

A political philosophy envisioning an endless class struggle between the rich (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat) for control over wealth, culminating in the victory, eventually, of the latter. It comes in several different flavors, including: Leninism (which adds a one party political system to catalyze the process), Stalinism (which adds central economic planning and 5 year plans), and Maoism (ah ain’t quite sure about this one, since ‘The Little Red Book’ is an incoherent mess, but has something to do with empowering peasant villages; in the end, it is hard to distinguish between this and the central party statism of Stalinism, even though Maoists hated Stalinism even more than capitalism, probably for something about betraying the cause or something).

It is a serious mistake to equate or confuse Communism with Socialism. Although Communism is a single party political system, it also a mistake to assume that all single party systems are Communist.

Totalitarianism

Absolute, total, unlimited control of all aspects of life, public and private, by either one person or a group of people.

Dictatorship, Autocracy

These are not exactly the same from a historical viewpoint, but as a modern gloss they can be thought of as identical. A variety of Totalitarianism where power is exercised by a single person.

Oligarchy

Where a small group of people exercises effective control.

Plutocracy

An Oligarchy where the controlling group are the rich and the wealthy.

Monarchy

The head of state is the husband (king) and/or wife (queen) of a royal family. It is hereditary, but can also be usurped. Often, monarchs are politically weaker than the head of state of other political systems. There are several varieties of monarchy depending on the relative balance of power between the monarch and other political institutions, including Constitutional Monarchy.

American Representative Republic

Strictly speaking, the government of the United States is not a democracy. The problem is that the Founding Fathers, when they wrote the Constitution, redefined several political concepts. In the original, pre-Christian, Hellenistic sense, democracy meant every citizen voting on every issue, and the majority rules absolutely (hence, ‘tyranny of the majority’); this is emphatically NOT how US politics operates. The US is a Republic, because it does not employ a monarch as the head-of-state. It is representative because all politicians exercising power are elected (directly or indirectly) by the citizens. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they invented a whole new system of governance unknown to political science that specifically limited the power of the central government; unlike Karl Marx, their system persisted.

Theocracy

A rare political system where the religious leaders are also the political leaders that rule the country. The existence of strong influence by the Catholic Church in Medieval Spain or Sharia law are not indications of theocracy (e.g. Saudi Arabia has Sharia law, but it is a monarchy). Current example is Iran.

Meritocracy

Those who are most capable and successful therefore accumulate political power and economic resources. Most Capitalistic countries are Meritocracies. It is not enough for a country to simply declare that the most talented and most able will have the most power and influence: this must be true in practice.

Final Word

As you can tell, some of these terms overlap, and it sometimes becomes difficult to classify a nation’s governance with certainty. Is Cuba autocratic, fascist, or Stalinist? Probably a little of all of them. Is Red China with its embrace of Capitalism actually now Socialism? Nope: still Leninist as far as I can see. Totalitarianism can be properly thought of as Oligarchy on steroids. See how hard it is to pigeon-hole political philosophy?

Yes, I know, there are probably many mistakes, and I encourage you blog when find them.