Under capitalism, political power tends to become concentrated in the executive branch of government, along with a corresponding decline in the effectiveness of parliamentary institutions. As Paul Sweezy points out, parliaments grew out of the struggle of capitalists against the power of centralised monarchies during the early modern period, and hence the function of parliaments has always been to check and control the exercise of executive power. For this reason, "parliaments flourished and reached the peak of their prestige in the period of competitive capitalism when the functions of the state, particularly in the economic sphere, were reduced to a minimum." [Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 310]

As capitalism develops, however, the ruling class must seek to expand its capital through foreign investments, which leads to imperialism, which in turn leads to a tightening of class lines and increasingly severe social conflict, as we have seen earlier (see D.5.2). As this happens, legislatures become battlegrounds of contending parties, divided by divergent class and group interests, which reduces their capacity for positive action. And at the same time, the ruling class increasingly needs a strong centralised state that can protect its interests in foreign countries as well as solve difficult and complex economic problems. "Under the circumstances, parliament is forced to give up one after another of its cherished prerogatives and to see built up under its very eyes the kind of centralised and uncontrolled authority against which, in its youth, it had fought so hard and so well." [Ibid., p. 319]

This process can be seen clearly in the history of the United States. Since World War II, power has become centralised in the hands of the president to such an extent that scholars now refer to an "imperial presidency," following Arthur Schlesinger's 1973 book of that title.

Contemporary US presidents' appropriation of congressional authority, especially in matters relating to national security, has paralleled the rise of the United States as the world's strongest and most imperialistic military power. In the increasingly dangerous and interdependent world of the 20th century, the perceived need for a leader who can act quickly and decisively, without possibly disastrous obstruction by Congress, has provided an impetus for ever greater concentration of power in the White House.

This concentration has taken place in both foreign and domestic policy, but it has been catalysed above all by a series of foreign policy decisions in which modern US presidents have seized the most vital of all government powers, the power to make war. And as they have continued to commit troops to war without congressional authorisation or public debate, their unilateral policy-making has spilled over into domestic affairs as well.

In the atmosphere of omnipresent crisis that developed in the fifties, the United States appointed itself guardian of the "free world" against the Red Menace. This placed unprecedented military resources under the control of the President. At the same time, the Eisenhower Administration established a system of pacts and treaties with nations all over the globe, making it difficult for Congress to limit the President's deployment of troops according to the requirements of treaty obligations and national security, both of which were left to presidential judgement. The CIA, a secretive agency accountable to Congress only after the fact, was made the primary instrument of US intervention in the internal affairs of other nations for national security reasons.

With President Johnson's massive deployment of troops to Vietnam, the scope of presidential war-making power took a giant leap forward. Unlike Truman's earlier decision to commit troops in Korea without prior congressional approval, the UN had not issued any resolutions to legitimate US involvement in Vietnam. In justifying the President's decision, the State Department implied that in the interdependent world of the twentieth century, warfare anywhere on the globe could constitute an attack on the United States which might require immediate response, and hence that the Commander-in-Chief was authorised to take "defensive" war measures without congressional approval or UN authorisation.

Following Vietnam, the presidency was further strengthened by the creation of an all-volunteer military, which is less subject to rebellions in the face of popular opposition to a foreign war than a conscripted force. With their control over the armed forces more secure, presidents since Nixon have been liberated for a much wider range of foreign adventures. The collapse of the Soviet military threat now makes it easier than ever for the President to pursue military options in striving to achieve foreign policy objectives, as the Persian Gulf conflict clearly showed. United States involvement there would have been much more difficult during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union supporting Iraq.

It is sometimes argued that Watergate fatally weakened the power of the US presidency, but this is not actually the case. Michael Lind lists several reasons why [in "The Case for Congressional Power: the Out-of-Control Presidency," The New Republic, Aug. 14, 1995]. First, the President can still wage war at will, without consulting Congress. Second, thanks to precedents set by Bush and Clinton, important economic treaties (like GATT and NAFTA) can be rammed through Congress as "fast-track" legislation, which limits the time allowed for debate and forbids amendments. Third, thanks to Jimmy Carter, who reformed the Senior Executive Service to give the White House more control over career bureaucrats, and Ronald Reagan, who politicised the upper levels of the executive branch to an unprecedented degree, presidents can now pack government with their spoilsmen and reward partisan bureaucrats. Fourth, thanks to George Bush, presidents now have a powerful new technique to enhance presidential prerogatives and erode the intent of Congress even further -- namely, signing laws while announcing that they will not obey them. Fifth, thanks also to Bush, yet another new instrument of arbitrary presidential power has been created: the "tsar," a presidential appointee with vague, sweeping charges that overlap with or supersede the powers of department heads.

A large prison population is another characteristic of authoritarian regimes. Hence the burgeoning US incarceration rate during the past decade, coupled with the recent rapid growth of the prison "industry" must be regarded as further evidence of a drift toward authoritarian government, as one would expect given the phenomenon of "Third-Worldisation."

Prison inmates in the US are predominantly poor, and the sentences handed out to people without social prestige or the resources to defend themselves are much harsher than those received by people with higher incomes who are charged with the same crimes. Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics show that the median incomes of male prisoners before sentencing is about one-third that of the general population. Median incomes of inmates are even lower if the relatively few (and more-affluent) white-collar criminals are not included in the calculations.

Since the poor are disproportionately from minorities, the prison population is also disproportionately minority. By 1992, the American authorities were imprisoning black men at a rate five times higher than the old apartheid regime had done at its worst in South Africa, and there were more prisoners of Mexican descent in the US than in all of Mexico [Phil Wilayto, "Prisons and Capitalist Restructuring," Workers' World, January 15, 1995].

Michael Specter reports that more than 90 percent of all the offences committed by prison inmates are crimes against property ["Community Corrections," The Nation, March 13, 1982]. In an era where the richest one percent of the population owns more property than the bottom 90 percent combined, it's hardly a surprise that those at the very bottom should try to recoup illegally some of the maldistributed wealth they are unable to obtain legally.

In the 1980s the United States created mandatory sentences for dozens of drug offences, expanded capital punishment, and greatly increased the powers of police and prosecutors. The result was a doubling of the prison population from 1985 to 1994, according to a report recently issued by the US Department of Justice. Yet the overall crime rate in the U.S. has remained almost constant during the past twenty years, according to the same report. Indeed, the rate dropped 15 percent from 1980 to 1984, yet the number of prisoners increased 43 percent during that same period. The crime rate then increased by 14 percent from 1985 to 1989, while the number of prisoners grew by 52 percent.

Although the growth of the US prison population has been swollen out of proportion to the crime rate by new drug sentencing laws, drug use has not decreased. Repressive measures are clearly not working, as anyone can see, yet they're still favoured over social programmes, which continue to be scaled back. For example, a recently passed crime law in the US commits billions of dollars for more police and prisons, while at the same time the new Republican Congress eliminates family planning clinics, school lunch programmes, summer youth jobs programmes, etc. Prison construction has become a high-growth industry, one of the few "bright" spots in the American economy, attracting much investment by Wall Street vultures.

Authoritarian governments are characterised by fully developed secret police forces, extensive government surveillance of civilians, a high level of official secrecy and censorship, and an elaborate system of state coercion to intimidate and silence dissenters. All of these phenomena have existed in the US for at least eighty years, but since World War II they have taken more extreme forms, especially during the 1980s. In this section we will examine the operations of the secret police.

The creation of an elaborate US "national security" apparatus has come about gradually since 1945 through congressional enactments, numerous executive orders and national security directives, and a series of Supreme Court decisions that have eroded First Amendment rights. The policies of the Reagan administration, however, reflected radical departures from the past, as revealed not only by their comprehensive scope but by their institutionalisation of secrecy, censorship, and repression in ways that will be difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. As Richard Curry points out, the Reagan administration's success stems "from major structural and technological changes that have occurred in American society during the twentieth century -- especially the emergence of the modern bureaucratic State and the invention of sophisticated electronic devices that make surveillance possible in new and insidious ways." [Curry, Op. Cit., p. 4]

The FBI has used "countersubversive" surveillance techniques and kept lists of people and groups judged to be potential national security threats since the days of the Red Scare in the 1920s. Such activities were expanded in the late 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt instructed the FBI to gather information about Fascist and Communist activities in the US and to conduct investigations into possible espionage and sabotage. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover interpreted these directives as authorising open-ended inquiries into a very broad category of potential "subversives"; and by repeatedly misinforming a succession of careless or indifferent presidents and attorneys general about the precise scope of Roosevelt's directives, Hoover managed for more than 30 years to elicit tacit executive approval for continuous FBI investigations into an ever-expanding class of political dissidents [Geoffrey R. Stone, "The Reagan Administration, the First Amendment, and FBI Domestic Security Investigations," in Curry, Ibid.].

The advent of the Cold War, ongoing conflicts with the Soviet Union, and fears of the "international Communist conspiracy" provided justification not only for covert CIA operations and American military intervention in countries all over the globe, but also contributed to the FBI's rationale for expanding its domestic surveillance activities.

Thus in 1957, without authorisation from Congress or any president, Hoover launched a highly secret operation called COINTELPRO:

"From 1957 to 1974, the bureau opened investigative files on more than half a million 'subversive' Americans. In the course of these investigations, the bureau, in the name of 'national security,' engaged in widespread wire-tapping, bugging, mail-openings, and break-ins. Even more insidious was the bureau's extensive use of informers and undercover operative to infiltrate and report on the activities and membership of 'subversive' political associations ranging from the Socialist Workers Party to the NAACP to the Medical Committee for Human Rights to a Milwaukee Boy Scout troop." [Stone, Ibid., p. 274].

But COINTELPRO involved much more than just investigation and surveillance. It was used to discredit, weaken, and ultimately destroy the New Left and Black radical movements of the sixties and early seventies, i.e. to silence the major sources of political dissent and opposition.

The FBI fomented violence through the use of agents provocateurs and destroyed the credibility of movement leaders by framing them, bringing false charges against them, distributing offensive materials published in their name, spreading false rumours, sabotaging equipment, stealing money, and other dirty tricks. By such means the Bureau exacerbated internal frictions within movements, turning members against each other as well as other groups.

Government documents show the FBI and police involved in creating acrimonious disputes which ultimately led to the break-up of such groups as Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party, and the Liberation News Service. The Bureau also played a part in the failure of such groups to form alliances across racial, class, and regional lines. The FBI is implicated in the assassination of Malcolm X, who was killed in a "factional dispute" that the Bureau bragged of having "developed" in the Nation of Islam, and of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was the target of an elaborate FBI plot to drive him to suicide before he was conveniently killed by a sniper. Other radicals were portrayed as criminals, adulterers, or government agents, while still others were murdered in phoney "shoot-outs" where the only shooting was done by the police.

These activities finally came to public attention because of the Watergate investigations, congressional hearings, and information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In response to the revelations of FBI abuse, Attorney General Edward Levi in 1976 set forth a set of public guidelines governing the initiation and scope of the bureau's domestic security investigations, severely restricting its ability to investigate political dissidents.

The Levi guidelines, however, proved to be only a temporary reversal of the trend. Although throughout his presidency Ronald Reagan professed to be against the increase of state power in regard to domestic policy, he in fact expanded the power of the national bureaucracy for "national security" purposes in systematic and unprecedented ways. One of the most significant of these was his immediate elimination of the safeguards against FBI abuse that the Levi guidelines had been designed to prevent. This was accomplished through two interrelated executive branch initiatives: Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981, and Attorney General William French Smith's guidelines, which replaced Levi's in 1983.

The Smith guidelines permitted the FBI to launch domestic security investigations if the facts "reasonably indicated" that groups or individuals were involved in criminal activity. More importantly, however, the new guidelines also authorised the FBI to "anticipate or prevent crime." As a result, the FBI could now investigate groups or individuals whose statements "advocated" criminal activity or indicated an apparent intent to engage in crime, particularly crimes of violence.

As Curry notes, the language of the Smith guidelines provided FBI officials with sufficient interpretative latitude to investigate virtually any group or individual it chose to target, including political activists who opposed the administration's foreign policy. Not surprisingly, under the new guidelines the Bureau immediately began investigating a wide variety of political dissidents, quickly making up for the time it had lost since 1976. Congressional sources show that in 1985 alone the FBI conducted 96 investigations of groups and individuals opposed to the Reagan Administration's Central American policies, including religious organisations who expressed solidarity with Central American refugees.

The Smith guidelines only allowed the Bureau to investigate dissidents. Now, however, there is a far greater threat to the US Bill of Rights waiting in the wings: the so-called Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Bill. If passed, this bill would allow the President, on his own initiative and by his own definition, to declare any person or organisation "terrorist."

Section 301(c)6 states that these presidential rulings will be considered as conclusive and cannot be appealed in court. The Attorney General would also be handed new enforcement powers, e.g. suspects would be considered guilty unless proven innocent, and the source or nature of the evidence brought against suspects would not have to be revealed if the Justice Department claimed a "national security" interest in suppressing such facts, as of course it would. Suspects could also be held without bail and deported for any reason if they were visiting aliens. Resident aliens would be entitled to a hearing, but could nevertheless be deported even if no crime were proven! US citizens could be put in jail for up to ten years and pay a $250,000 fine if declared guilty.

An equally scary provision of the Counter-Terrorism Bill is Section 603, which subsumes all "terrorist" crimes under the RICO (Racketeer-Influenced Criminal Organisation) civil asset forfeiture statutes. Thus anyone merely accused of "interfering" or "impeding" or "threatening" a current or former federal employee could have all their property seized under "conspiracy to commit terrorism" charges. Some in Congress now want to designate all local gun-related charges as federal terrorist crimes. Obviously the Counter-Terrorism Bill would simply add to the abuses that are already widespread in drug cases under the seizure and forfeiture laws. This is hardly surprising, since Federal and state agencies and local police are encouraged to make seizures and get to keep the property for their own use, and since anonymous informants who make charges leading to seizures are entitled to part of the property seized.

If this bill passes, it is certain to be used against the Left, as COINTELPRO was in the past. For it will greatly increase the size and funding of the FBI and give it the power to engage in "anti-terrorist" activities all over the country, without judicial oversight. The mind reels at the ability this bill would give the government to suppress dissidents or critics of capitalism, who have historically been the favourite targets of FBI abuses. For example, if an agent provocateur were to bring an illegal stick of dynamite to a peaceful meeting of philosophical anarchists, he could later report everyone at the meeting to the government on charges of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. The agent could even blow something up with the dynamite and claim that other members knew of the plan. Everyone in the group could then have all their property seized and be jailed for up to ten years!

Even if the Counter-Terrorism Bill doesn't pass in its present form, the fact that a draconian measure like this is even being considered says volumes about the direction in which the US -- and by implication the other "advanced" capitalist states -- are headed.

In his book Post-Conservative America Kevin Phillips, one of the most knowledgeable and serious conservative ideologues, discusses the possibility of fundamental alterations that he regards as desirable in the US government. His proposals leave no doubt about the direction in which the Right wishes to proceed. "Governmental power is too diffused to make difficult and necessary economic and technical decisions," Phillips maintains. "[A]ccordingly, the nature of that power must be re-thought. Power at the federal level must be augmented, and lodged for the most part in the executive branch" [p. 218].

In the model state Phillips describes, Congress would be reduced to a mere tool of a presidency grown even more "imperial" than it already is, with congressional leaders serving in the Cabinet and the two-party system merged into a single-party coalition. Before we dismiss this idea as impossible to implement, let's remember that the distinction between the two major parties has already been virtually obliterated, as each is controlled by the corporate elite, albeit by different factions within it.

Despite many tactical disagreements, virtually all members of this elite share a basic set of principles, attitudes, ideals, and values. Whether Democrat or Republican, most of them have graduated from the same Ivy League schools, belong to the same exclusive social clubs, serve on the same interlocking boards of directors of the same major corporations, and send their children to the same private boarding schools [See G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America Now? 1983; C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956]. Perhaps most importantly, they share the same psychology, which means that they have the same priorities and interests: namely, those of corporate America.

Hence there's actually only one party already -- the Business Party -- which wears two different masks to hide its real face from the public. Similar remarks apply to the liberal democratic regimes in the rest of the advanced capitalist states. The absence of a true opposition party, which itself is a main characteristic of authoritarian regimes, is thus an accomplished fact already, and has been so for many years.

Besides the merging of the major political parties, other forces are leading inexorably toward the scenario described by Phillips. For instance, the power of the executive branch continues to grow because the authority of Congress has been progressively weakened by scandals, partisan bickering, gridlock, and ongoing revelations of legislative corruption. Indeed, bribe-taking, influence-peddling, check-bouncing, conflicts of interest, shady deals, sex scandals, and general incompetence now seem almost routine on Capitol Hill. Unless something is done to restore congressional respectability, the climate will remain conducive to a further consolidation of power in the presidency.

Phillips assures us that all the changes he envisions can be accomplished without altering the Constitution. Such marvels are indeed possible. The Emperor Augustus centralised all real power in his own hands without disbanding the Roman Senate or the Roman Republic; Hitler implemented his Nazi programmes while leaving the Weimar constitution intact; Stalin ruled under the revolutionary constitution which was theoretically democratic.

The facts cited here as evidence for the gradual authoritarianisation of the United States have been canvassed before by others, sometimes accompanied by warnings of impending dictatorship. So far such warnings have proven to be premature. What is especially alarming today, however, is that the many signs of growing authoritarianism examined above are now coinciding with the symptoms of a social breakdown -- a "coincidence" which in the past has heralded the approach of tyranny.

Fully authoritarian regimes in the US and other First World nations would represent far more than a mere threat to citizens' civil liberties and their hopes for a better society. For authoritarian regimes tend to be associated with reckless military adventurism led by autocratic heads of state. Thus, in a nuclear world in which Europe and Japan followed the US lead toward authoritarian government, the likelihood of nuclear aggression by irresponsible politicians would continue to grow. In that case, the former anxieties of the Cold War would seem mild by comparison. Hence the urgency of the anarchist programme of anti-authoritarianism, political decentralisation, and grassroots democracy -- the only real antidotes to the disturbing trends described above.

As an aside we should note that many naysayers and ruling class apologists often deny the growing authoritarianism as "paranoia" or "conspiracy theorising." The common retort is "but if things are as bad as you say, how come the government lets you write this seditious FAQ?"

The reason we can write this work unmolested is testimony to the lack of power possessed by the public at large, in the existing political culture--that is, countercultural movements needn't be a concern to the government until they become broader-based and capable of challenging the existing economic order--only then is it "necessary" for the repressive, authoritarian forces to work on undermining the movement.

So long as there is no effective organising and no threat to the interests of the ruling elite, people are permitted to say whatever they want. This creates the illusion that the society is open to all ideas, when, in fact, it isn't. But, as the decimation of the Wobblies and anarchist movement after the First World War first illustrated, the government will seek to eradicate any movement that poses a significant threat.

The proper application of spin to dissident ideology can make it seem that any alternatives to the present system "just wouldn't work" or "are utopian", even when such alternatives are in the self-interest of the population at large. This ideological pruning creates the misperception in people's minds that radical theories haven't been successfully implemented because they are inherently flawed--and naturally, the current authoritarian ideology is portrayed as the only "sane" course of action for people to follow.

For example, most Americans reject socialism outright, without any understanding or even willingness to understand what socialism is really about. This isn't because (libertarian) socialism is wrong; it's a direct result of capitalist propagandising of the past 70 years (and its assertion that "socialism" equals Stalinism).

Extending this attitude to the people themselves, authoritarians (with generous help from the corporate press) paint dissidents as "crackpots" and "extremists," while representing themselves as reasonable "moderates", regardless of the relative positions they are advocating. In this way, a community opposing a toxic waste incinerator in their area can be lambasted in the press as the bad guys, when what is really happening is a local community is practising democracy, daring to challenge the corporate/government authoritarians!

In the Third World, dissenters are typically violently murdered and tossed into unmarked mass graves; here, in the First World, more subtle subversion must take place. The "invisible hand" of advanced capitalist authoritarian societies is no less effective; the end result is the same, if the methodology differs--the elimination of alternatives to the present socio-economic order.