Dictators Left and Right

 I just had one of those reminders about FB memories, where I’d posted a sequence of my life experiences, including “dictatorship, revolution, dictatorship.”  That set me to thinking, for the umpteenth time, of what exactly is the difference between the first dictatorship, a run-of-the-mill right wing one, and the second dictatorship, a run-of-the-mill “communist” one.

I want to say here that the “communist” is in quotation marks because the actual form of government was/is state capitalism.  But I digress.

 

In the first version of the dictatorship, the head of government and his lackeys made out like bandits.  In the second version of the dictatorship, the head of government and his lackeys make out like bandits.

 

In the first version of the dictatorship, the lackeys were all the big-money owners of enterprises, industrial and commercial.  In the second version of the dictatorship, the lackeys include all the government flunkeys who are the ones who control all the enterprises, industrial and commercial.

 

In the first version of the dictatorship everyone besides the head of government and the lackeys end up screwed to the wall.  In the second version of the dictatorship everyone besides the head of government and the lackeys end up screwed to the wall.

 

In the first version of the dictatorship the dictator and his minions controlled the media.  In the second version of the dictatorship the dictator and his minions control the media.

 

In both dictatorships the strength of military and police gives the dictator the power to stay in control of everything.  A Hobbesian Leviathan in both cases.

 

The only effective difference?  In the first version of the dictatorship the lackeys were more or less independent agents. In the second version of the dictatorship the lackeys are more or less state agents.

 

One result of that difference is that in the first version of the dictatorship the independent agents, interested in maximizing their wealth, were relatively competent directors of their enterprises in order to accomplish their desire for more and more wealth; whereas in the second version of the dictatorship the state agents, interested in maximizing their power, are relatively incompetent directors of their enterprises because the less competent the more they can demonstrate their power in controlling a restless citizenry.