2.2 Sociology of Alienation
Dictatorship of Autocracy
By their nature, each individual aspires to a higher power to accomplish more significant benefits. An individual becomes aware of their power by comparing themselves with other individuals. This study shows that this act is alienated from human nature and harmful to oneself and society. But people have always compared themselves to other people, and society has no other choice but to accept such a situation until it finds an orientation that will overcome it.
The alienated individual can easily use their power to achieve superiority over others. Successful individuals exercise greater rights than other individuals, impose their wills upon society or, in short, exercise power in society.
Power brings great-alienated conveniences, which is why people wage a ruthless struggle to accomplish their authority in all fields. In the history of humankind, the most blood was shed in the power struggle. In this struggle, a stronger, more skillful, more cunning or smarter individual wins and rules over society. The power, established by force, is irrefutably autocratic and represents a dictatorship. Dictators demonstrate their power in a particular territory by forming a state. They ensure the implementation of their decisions by using physical force and by the proclamation of ideologies. They independently establish the state order, laws, regulations, and rules for social relations. They have irrefutable legislative, executive and judiciary power in the state. These are enormous privileges that bring them considerable advantages in society. Dictators secure their rights and benefits by proclaiming ideologies.
Ideologies are a system of ideas and ideals that establish the basis of the organization of society. Dictators use ideologies to manipulate society and thus secure power in society. Ideologies mostly form subjective answers to questions that a “society that doesn’t know” can ask. They often relieve people of the painful tension of living in an unknown nature which frees them from unfavourable anxieties. A “society that doesn’t know” accepts any idea that brings benefits and stability to society.
The history of humankind is the history of imposed subjective knowledge by authorities. This manuscript considers authorities as individuals who have power over people. Subjective knowledge is a source of social alienation and problems in society. Thus, ideologies become the foundation of the alienation of society. Alienated knowledge alienates people from their nature and the possibility of escaping from their inferior position and creates long-term problems for society.
Dictators, of course, fundamentally prevent the establishment of equal human rights so that they can oppress, control and exploit people. Throughout history, resistance to dictators often resulted in the death penalty. People, including scientists, had to accept the subjective knowledge imposed by dictators. Once society takes alienated knowledge, it becomes a significant burden that hinders the development of society.
Under the impact of ideologies, followers respect dictators on a lasting basis, with great-alienated respect and awe. Such a society may be highly stable and homogenous. The characteristic of the relationship between the authorities and followers is that of supplements in the impotence, which mutually brings a great alienated power that can accomplish impressive acts, high stability in the society and illusory conveniences. Due to the strong links, the relationship between the authorities and followers may give an impression of love; however, it is not love. Love is the product of the individual’s freedom, knowledge, potency and belief in conveniences. The relationship between authority and followers is precisely the opposite. It is characterized by significant dependence, lack of knowledge and impotence and, therefore, always represents a sort of a sadomasochistic relationship and necessarily develops the same.
On their route toward accomplishing significant benefits, a dictator exploits society. Dictators take from the follower’s freedom of expressing their views, freedom of decision-making and acting. This form of exploitation is markedly inconvenient for the followers, as it penetrates the individual’s essence; into what makes them an individual. Moreover, that form of exploitation allows unrestricted material exploitation of society, depriving people of the benefits of social work products.
Authoritative power is privileged. Privileges provide an artificial confirmation of overcoming the impotence that forms a narcissistic feature of the character. A narcissistic dictator reduces the possibility of reaching the conveniences in the natural relationship between people and tries to accomplish significant benefits in greater exploitation of society. Naturally, greater exploitation cannot result in the satisfaction of the needs since alienated needs are, generally, insatiable. Non-satisfied alienated needs create an inconvenient tension that the individual cannot get rid of naturally. Then, the individual enjoys the perversion of their natural needs. In such circumstances, the authorities find satisfaction in a violent relationship with the followers.
If alienation in society is more significant, the followers find convenience in sacrificing in favour of the dictator, which inevitably develops the disease of the community. In a markedly authoritative society, a productive activity cannot bring benefits. Only illusory benefits can be accomplished; the community lives a biologically inconvenient life.
Autocrats never find the sources of inconvenience in their attitude regarding society. Instead, they transfer them to their subordinates, and even more, it suits them to pass them on to other social groups. False causes of the inconveniences and the impotence of society to accomplish benefits develop a group-narcissistic form of alienation.
Such orientation glorifies one’s social group in relationship with others. As such a presentation is false, it quickly develops intolerance concerning other societies, creating nationalism, chauvinism, racism, fascism, and other inconvenient phenomena. Such phenomena, combined with the sizeable destructive energy of the non-satisfied alienated society, form a programme for aggression and all social conflicts. Non-satisfied society finds illusory liberation from the inconvenient tension and conveniences in the superiority accomplished by destruction. As group narcissism develops subjectivity to the extreme, it overvalues the potency of its group. Thus, it always overlooks the objective powers that surround the group, which finishes catastrophically for one’s social group.
The less social knowledge, the greater the authoritativeness it creates, and alienation is higher; the less satisfied the natural needs in the society, the stronger the need for destruction in society, and thus the destruction of the society and social accomplishments is more significant. Destructiveness in society lasts until the elimination of the protagonists of the destructive needs because it is hard for such a society to comprehend the way of its constructive orientation.
A society with more knowledge seeks greater freedom because it is the only way to accomplish significant benefits. It demands a share in the decision-making about the rules of collective activity. The dictator does not allow such requirements because they represent a loss of their vision of conveniences. Maintaining their power in the alienated consciousness of the dictator equates with the view of survival. Dictators have often claimed that God supported their power over people and people had to accept their opinion. However, according to the Bible, not even God wants power over people because it is fundamentally wrong.
When the requirements of autocrats significantly oppose the nature of society, tension develops that forces it to rebel against the power because there are limits “the society that knows” cannot tolerate. Society then directs its energy toward toppling dictators and their ideologies. On the other hand, suppose new forces sufficiently develop in the community, and the dictator gets lulled into its potency. In that case, new forces take over the control and form new rules of social behaviours that bring more significant benefits to society.
Democracy
Society at a higher level of knowledge, aware of the problems that the autocratic form of power brings along, forms the changes in social relations peacefully through mutual concessions made by both the authorities and the followers. In such a society, the autocratic power accepts to provide significant freedoms and fundamental rights to the subordinate members of society. In turn, the dictatorial regime gets compensatory concessions in some other forms of conveniences that are proportional to the benefits of the ruling.
For example, monarchies that renounced their absolute power in favour of parliamentary democracy have retained their privileged status, titles, and holdings and often impact the creation of state policies. On the other hand, the monarchs who have not voluntarily renounced their power to parliamentary democracy have lost their privileges, holdings and frequently, even their lives.
Since Ancient times, society has become aware of the importance of public participation in decision-making processes regarding issues of common interest. This awareness initiated the development of the roots of democracy. An ideal form of democracy should be carried out by a mutual agreement of all community members on the rules for collective action until a consensus is established. Unfortunately, reaching consensuses is often challenging because of the highly variable interests of people. People can hardly agree on something and can never agree on everything. On top of this, every society brings a vast number of decisions that all people cannot decide on, either due to lack of interest, knowledge, or time. In large social communities such as a state, an equal agreement on joint action cannot be achieved due to a large number of entities with a large number of different needs. Therefore, an ideal form of democracy based on mutual agreement of people at the state level is impossible to achieve.
Society has tried to solve such problems through representative democracy. In such a democracy, the people do not participate directly in decision-making processes but choose a party whose programs reflect their interests most. The freely organized individuals in the parties form the agenda of social relations and proclaim them to society. The voters in elections elect the plan that offers them the most significant benefits. The party that gets the largest number of votes in the polls takes power in society. Such election of power is well known today by the name Liberal democracy.
The governments elected through a multiparty system tries to set and carry out the rules for social activity in the manner that suits the society to the most significant extent possible. The government that fails to meet the needs of the people loses people’s support and, consequently, loses power in the next election. The multiparty form of reaching power ensures a peaceful change of authorities without destructive phenomena in society, which is a significant advantage of the system.
Such a democracy has many shortcomings. An elected government usually has no desire to meet the needs of those who did not vote for them, which leaves them dissatisfied. The significant deficiency of the multiparty system lies in the fact that successful parties mainly follow the interests of influential people. In the capitalism of the developed world, big donors finance significant parties and thus influence their decision-making. Politicians come and go and are therefore highly inclined to corruption. They may be corrupted by an attractive work post, career, earning, or friendship. In an immoral society, corruption can take the form of recognition, and in such circumstances, almost nobody can oppose it. In this way, influential rich people cunningly impose their interests also on traditionally leftist worker parties. As a result, practically no significant party would support the claims of the poor people deprived of their rights.
If some politician tries to oppose the interests of the rich, they encounter obstacles everywhere. The rich control all allegedly free mass media in the developed world and advocate their interests. Such mass media will accuse the disobedient politician of not doing their job well, find some sin, and intrigue. A politician who tries to oppose the rich has to give up or end their career. Regardless of the public interest involved in the programmes of influential parties, they will, in the end, pursue the policy in favour of the rich.
Wealthy owners of capital have created, with the help of political parties, a political system where they have control over society. They try to bring all influential factors into a community under their control, making their best effort not to leave anything to chance. The system is glorified through education, work, culture, mass media, social entertainment, sport, etc. When they do not like something, such as the philosophy presented in this book, it does not have access to the media, politics, science, and, consequently, the people.
Since the “society that does not know” is easily convinced, it accepts the suggested alienated determinations of the capitalist system. Then, the person as an individual does not have any other choice but to accept the alienated rules imposed by wealthy people. Such rules determine the opinion and actions of people. Under the influence of enormous subtle propaganda, an individual accepts that what in society is good, funny, beautiful, tasty, etc. They become what society expects them to be and not what they need to be by their nature. Besides, they often do not have other choices because the alienated society rejects members who do not accept the adopted forms of thinking and acting. The individual passes through studious brainwashing practically throughout their lifetime, and, in the end, they do not critique the correctness of the system in which they live. Such an individual elects, as a rule, the parties that support the programmes of the wealthy owners of capital and the circle of the democratic farce thus close.
There is no need for more proof that liberal democracy is undemocratic because it represents a covert dictatorship. Thus, in the multi-party system, actual decision-making is alienated from the people, contributing to society’s alienation. An individual does not influence forming of the rules of joint action. An individual remains powerless.
Socialism also established a representative democracy. In socialism, the people elect delegates who represent their needs in the assemblies. They are obliged to represent the interests of their electoral base in the formation of the rules of social behaviour in administrative bodies at all levels.
The delegate system of decision-making on joint action of society requires a broad discussion of every problem in every segment of society, where decisions are made and then implemented through delegates to administrative bodies that form the legislative, executive and judicial branches. In that way, a social order should be created that optimally satisfies social needs.
There have been attempts in history to create a democratic delegate system. Still, there have always been problems with the difficulty of reconciling the different interests of many entities with the capabilities of society and, of course, the need for authority to exercise power over society. So, such attempts failed, and the authorities regained power in society. Delegates no longer forwarded the needs of the people to the government but vice versa; they sent directives of the government to the people. Thus, socialism has become nothing but a dictatorship that hides behind democracy.
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The practice has shown that the representative form of democracy is not just. It is rather a fraud than the demonstration of the power of people, by the people, for the people. People can hardly achieve their rights through democracy anywhere in the world. Does this mean that the people’s will cannot be carried out? That democracy cannot be developed? Scholars of social sciences do not see a solution to the problem of democracy and cannot establish any consensus on how a developed democracy should look. Establishing a developed form of democracy requires discovering a new pathway that will effectively implement people’s will. To reach such a way, one needs to think outside the box.
Humankind, throughout its history, has undergone a multitude of authoritarian and democratic revolutions. The interaction has improved society in two systems that exist today. The first is capitalism, which dominates the world, and then socialism, a less successful system, which remains in a few countries. Although capitalism is more successful than socialism, it is still far from a decent economic system. On the other hand, although socialism is a less successful system, one can learn some good from it. The following chapters present the advantages and disadvantages of both systems.
