Then let's look at some of these systems by name across the planet in the world political spectrum Because not everybody is on the extremes. As is typically the case most things are somewhere in between the two edges But we'll start by defining the edges first always good to put the bookends in Then we'll fill it out from left to right to look at how these things change in different systems across the planet On the extreme left there would be little to no government control at all Power would be in the hands of the individuals in the hands of everybody That's where you'd have full-on anarchy on that side. No rules, no laws. No nothing. Everybody possesses all the power to do whatever they want On the opposite end of the spectrum, we've now referenced Extreme right would be complete government control, power in the hands of very few increasingly fewer until it was in the hands of one, like a dictatorship or fascism. Now we're going to go from the left from anarchy back all the way to the right and talk about how these systems change as power becomes consolidated little by little to get back to Hitler from an anarchic state. And we'll point out some things about each of these systems along the way starting with Anarchy. First thing to know there is no anarchic state anywhere in the world. I know I know I know it's confusing because when you think of anarchy you think of the general generic term Which means Chaos! Ah! And all that means if there's an earthquake if Godzilla struck, and so the whole state is crumbled it's in a state of anarchy Yes, that's the generic term, but we're talking about political systems. Anarchy is actually a chosen system. There are people on the extreme left who identify themselves as anarchist who say we don't want any government. We don't want it messing with us. I don't wanna have to pay taxes. I don't wanna have to do laws. I'm an individual. I want to do what I want to do. I want to live .out in a shack in the woods That's an anarchist and those are people who are fighting for a state of anarchy, which means no government Which is kind of an oxymoron if you think about it--established political party, Anarchist party who is fighting to get rid of itself and the government anyway. There are no anarchist states in the world. You could look at a place like Somalia and say well It's in a state of anarchy Yeah, it's all crumbling chaos But they didn't choose it, right? When we talk about this we're talking anarchists choosing to have no government And it is a state of complete liberation for the individual the individual has the rights to do everything They possess the power But one of the reasons why it doesn't exist anywhere on planet Earth is this will quickly deteriorate into people beating the living hell out of each other for cigarettes. It would be a dog-eat-dog world with no law and no order no establishment. No nothing. That would devolve into real chaos even though it was chosen anarchy. Does that make sense? So anarchy doesn't exist anywhere. Let's get away from that extreme that doesn't really exist to a little bit to the left. We're gonna keep a lot of the same ideals of a lot of political power to the individuals in this society, but move just a little bit to the right to communism. Now communism is wildly confusing to people because like...what do you mean it's over there on the left? How can the communism be on the liberal left? 'Cause we do you think of it the first thing that pops in your head when you think of communism is all these horrible dictators Right? You think of oh, communism like Lenin and Stalin and Mao in China or Castro in Cuba or crazy cuckoo Kim Jong-Il in North Korea communist, North Korea, yeah That's what's tricky it. Tricky point number one about communism is that we associate it with dictatorship But it's not. Dictatorship's way over there on the right. It's a consolidation of power in the hands of one But communism on paper is the exact opposite. It's supposed to be power distributed to all the people Here's why you associate communism with dictatorship, though Every time it's been tried it gets so screwed up it ends up being a dictatorship, okay, so How does it keep getting screwed up? Well that's actually true point number two about communism Communism is not just a political system It's a political and economic system rolled into one and actually makes it quite unique among all these political systems we're going to talk about It's the only one that says no we're gonna take the whole economy over and the whole politics over we're gonna do it all ourselves. The government is going to run everything. Now why would they want to do that? In a communist state, the state wants to control everything for the people. That is for all of the individuals. And they say we're going to do it, not just politically everybody has an equal voice here but What is an equal political voice if you're broke? So what we want to do is redistribute all the wealth equally too. That's why the government and economy system takes over everything to redistribute both political and economic power, that is money and resources, to all of the people. A communist government would say hey We're ultra-left and ultra-liberal we're ultra about the people. We run everything, and you may look at that and say that kind of looks like a dictatorship, But they would say no no no We're running everything for you, the people We're running all the factories, and all the land, and all the farms, were growing all the food, and then we're gonna give it to you. That is the essence of communism. Now, How do I connect that with this concept of it always turns into a dictatorship? Because every time every time this has been attempted it in the twentieth century Every time a group of people get together and say hey communism looks awesome. Let's try that it it fails horribly, and here's why. In the transition from something else, some other type of system to a pure utopian communist state the state says okay, here's the deal We've got to fix all this. We were something else, we're gonna become this beautiful communist state So we the government, a handful of people in the government, we're going to assume all power over everything just temporarily Just while we get everything fixed and everything on track and then we'll redistribute all of the wealth and all of the power back to all of the people. Great! Except it's failed every single time because Every time this has happened and people get all the power to a small group of them They find it impossible to give it back. That's why you associate Stalin, a dictator in charge of communist Russia or Castro, a communist dictator in charge of communist Cuba. See how that plays out? It's very very confusing Ideologically though communism is way over there on the left and dictatorships over on the right Ideologically they're opposed, but in your head and in most people's heads they put the two together because the systems just always failed All right, so it's failed all the time. Where is it at right now? Nowhere. As I suggested there ain't no communist states And that's tricky point number three. Everybody says what about communist Cuba, communist North Korea, and communist China? We'll get to them in a minute. They may have tried to be communist but nobody on planet Earth no government anywhere is still attempting to control all aspects of their economy and their politics to redistribute wealth to everybody It is simply not happening They are communists in name only, particularly communist China. There ain't nothing communist economically about China. Come back to that though. So if communism is not anywhere And it's always failed and the world is kind of giving up on it What political system would keep some of the essence of the spirit of the power to the people, the political power with the people, but a little bit better? And we're gonna move it a little bit to the right of communism over there on the left And that would be direct democracy. Oh, yeah, we'll get all familiar ground so democracy Yeah, we live in one of those! Everybody knows what that is! Hold on, I said direct democracy. Direct democracy is slightly different than the flava flav of what you have here in the United States Direct democracy means that every person votes on everything. You actually hardly even need a government. The government's there, the actual government workers are there just to kind of organize stuff But the people vote on every single thing on every budget, on every dog leash law, on every car tax, whatever. The people. And you think about that That's a lot of power to the people just like in communism. The Communists--all the people were supposed to decide on everything in their little Soviet blocks from city to city that then would go up the chain and the government would just do what the people wanted and Direct democracy is very similar to that. The people vote on everything the people have the ultimate voice in everything. That's what's tricky about direct democracy and maybe tricky point number four about communism is while we associate communism and democracy as opposite ends of the spectrum because we had the Cold War, us versus the Russkies, democracy versus the Soviet communists They're actually right beside each other Both ideological systems want to give power to the people The Communists had their way which has never really worked. The direct democracy is essentially the same thing, but without the economic crapola. That makes sense? Direct democracy actually is not in action and hardly any place on planet earth too because it's just too much Switzerland maybe your best-case scenario here and Even there it's not perfect direct democracy. The people in Switzerland actually do vote on virtually everything and it's mandatory and you got to go do it Public service is very big. Everybody rotates in and out of the government So it's the closest example you got to direct democracy, but Switzerland is a small state and with a small population comparatively speaking Direct democracy--it's just too tough to pull off worldwide especially in very big countries Who the hell's got time in a country of 300 million people to vote on every damn dog leash law? I don't got time for that. People in America ain't gonna do that. So what we have is actually something just a little to the right of direct democracy and that is multi-party states or multi-party representative democracy. Ah there you go. This is the one that's all the rage for planet Earth right now Representative democracy. Yes, the power still resides with the people, us individuals. We're liberated. We have the political power We have rights and all that other stuff, but what we do is we're not gonna go to Washington DC and vote on every damn thing. We ain't got time for it. It's gonna take too many resources. I don't care about taxes and laws I'm going to let someone represent my interest. I'm going to elect a dude to go up and take care of that for me Yeah, now you know what I'm talking about Representative democracy, and it is a little further to the right than direct democracy because in direct democracy Yeah, you physically have the power, you're voting on everything well where we're gonna give some of that power We're gonna let some of that power consolidate with our representatives and a structured more structured government. That's going to take care more of that stuff for us. Now, It's still democracy But it's not as liberated leftist as direct democracy. Does that make sense? We just don't have time or the care to do all of that individual day-to-day stuff But we still do retain power in the sense that we vote in the chumps that go make those decisions And if they piss us off then we un-vote their asses So in a sense, in representative democracy the people still hold the power Albeit through different mechanisms, where power is kind of a little bit more consolidated than it is two systems to the left. Again, this one is all over the world. The United States maybe is your best case scenario, but don't forget India. Talk about a multi-party representative democracy. The US has two different political parties the Republicans and Democrats. Go to India, they've got like a hundred. Go to Great Britain. They got two. But go to another place like Turkey. That's got like four so representative multi-party states are all the rage for most of the planet. Let's proceed. Rightward though. We got to get over and visit Hitler on the extreme We're starting across the center line, okay. We're in the political center now with this multi-party representative democracy stuff. We're going to start to cross over into the conservative right territory of political systems when we get to one party states. Yes, this one is pretty confusing a lot of folks too Because one party states, many of them, have the trappings of democracy They look like they hold elections. People go and vote on stuff They may go vote on a president or some sort of like senator or congressman But here is the difference between a one-party state and a representative democracy multi-party state In a one-party state there's only one political party. That's it. Okay? It would be like in the United States if they just got rid of the Democrats and we'd say hey we're a democracy, but you can only vote Republican for every election for everything and There are many very good examples of one-party states in the world and they like to call themselves democracy But they're really not Because you see what's happening, we're starting to consolidate power now. Yeah, it's not right-wing They're they're having elections, and it looks like there's choice But you only have a choice of one group of people to rule you So you have started to consolidate more and more Egypt is an excellent example of a one-party state President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is the main man. He's been in power for 30 years. His political party wins every election. Surprise! I mean he goes out and lets people vote for him every so often, but there's no one else on the ballot It's a one-party state 2016 update Remember that whole Arab Spring uprisings of 2010-2011 that I referenced in a previous lecture? Well that came to Egypt with a fury and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 culminated in February of 2011 when President Hosni Mubarak was forced from office and arrested and then democracy flourished in Egypt for a whole two years Ha, ha, ha, ha In July of 2013 the elected president, democratically elected president in a multi-party election was deposed by yet another coup d'etat That was led by the then Minister of Defense General Abdel Fattah el-sisi You just need to know him as "el Sisi" who became Egypt's de facto strongman and was eventually himself elected president in 2014 Ah ha right... Elected president in a one-party state He was the only one on the ballot. So Egypt still a one-party state after a two-year hiatus Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And do know this. Even a better example than Egypt is China There you go. I know you think China's communist. Forget it, they're not communists. They've given up on that. what they do have though is a Communist party and it's a communist political party, and it's China's one political party So you they have a government and the government is semi-representative because it pulls people from around the country But they're all part of the Communist Party. Is that starting to make sense? It would be like saying well, yeah there's the Republican Party in China and there are people who kind of put up local candidates to go represent them, kind of, but they're all in one party They're all of the kind of the same mind you have to kind of be in the club to get into the government of China And the same things true in Egypt and lots of places in Central Asia. So a one-party state may look like a democracy and it has elements of it, but the choices have become limited, the power has become more concentrated in a group of people, a political party. Let's concentrate the power further though, shall we? Let's take another step further to the right. Now we get to theocracy This one you do need to pay attention to It's affecting a whole bunch of stuff that I'll go into great detail about we get to the Middle East Theocracy is rule by religion Theo, religion. Theocracy, rule by. These are religious folks who are in charge of the state. The easiest one to point out is Vatican City It's always the easiest to pick on and point out It's the size of a postage stamp for pete's sake and the Pope is in charge of it He's the head of the state So if you have the head of the state who's a religious figure and it's essentially a religious state then that is a theocracy. So you concentrate a power again into a certain group of folks who are religious, of a single religion type. And the best example of this actually is not Vatican City It's the easiest, but it's not the best the one you definitely need to know is Iran. And I know you're probably heard reference to this They've got this dude in charge called the Ayatollah, right? It's very tricky because you may have heard of democratic elections being held in Iran and a president who was elected and people are protesting because he got elected and that kind of looks like a democracy. But here's the real deal Iran has the trappings of democracy, they have representative government, they elect their president They do a lot of things that other democracies do but ultimately it's the Ayatollah Ayatollah Khamenei in this case who's in ultimate control of the country him and a small cadre of other priests, religious type people. They are the ones who make ultimate decisions in the country Yeah, you got this whole government and this president that got elected and a Congress and all this stuff But anything that group does, the Ayatollah and his small group of people can undo. Like that. The Ayatollah would be the one who actually would take Iran into war into a nuclear war let's say. The president could say, hey I wanna do this and I'm gonna declare war but the Ayatollah could say no actually that's my power. I have the power, concentrated power, in a small group of people, group of religious people. Theocracy. Remember this we're gonna come back to this specifically in the Middle East we talk about Iranian issues further. Now, Let's concentrate power more. Let's take one further step to the right to monarchy monarchy of course I know you have to be familiar with and there's good reason you're familiar with it. Do know this. Monarchy has been the most popular political system throughout most of human history all over planet Earth. If you go back 500 years ago, almost everything is a monarchy. What is a monarchy? Rule by a single family line. Ah! You've concentrated power further into just a family line. I'm not going to get all the gritty details of how this has transpired and gone down throughout history But just kind of know this. That a family line--and this has happened in China Great Britain, and France, almost everywhere--that somehow a God has blessed me Ding! He touched my forehead and therefore I have now given the power to rule over the commoners scum in this country simply by birthright. And then because I've been touched and blessed and recognized as the true ruler, maybe I pulled Excalibur from the Stone And so I get to rule these people and I'm now blessed so everything that springs forth from my loin They're blessed too, obviously. They were born to rule just like I was and Then those kids begot other kids who get the rule who begot other kids and everybody's begotting each other And that's why half the people in the royal families are half-crazy anyway. If you haven't picked this up yet I despise the system I think it's the worst But I want you really to understand its concentrated power into a single family line Now, the family lineages across history have been reinforced usually by religious leaders like a pope who comes and crowns the king and says yes actually, I talked to God and he's, Charlemagne, said that you were the good guy and therefore your great great great great great grandkid gets to rule. This such a mess. To me, it's so counter to human intuition about how things should be run, but hey these are modern day So I can look back and laugh at it now. There is a lot of tradition though. Most traditionalists, and when you get to really conservative people, they would say yeah, those were the good old days That's how the world was run for 1000, 2000, 5000 years, so Aristocracy, the royalty, the small group of pompous asses, a lot of people really dig it and old habits die hard Which is why you still see kings and queens floating around in some parts of the world. A lot of active true monarchies are mostly in the Middle East in today's world, but you see like Queen of England And there's a king of Spain who's still hanging around There's the king of Italy, or even a Emperor of Japan. There are these people but mostly their figureheads. They're just kind of hanging around because old habits die hard, people like the traditional stuff So there's not a whole lot of monarchies left in the world True monarchies But there's one important one you do need to know. And that's Saudi Arabia. Well, yeah absolutely with no reservations That is a royal family line. They've been touched or blessed 100, 200, 500 years ago, whatever it is. It's the same family lineage has been going on and they do have the political power in Saudi Arabia yes Saudi Arabia has a Senate and the Congress and passes laws and all that nice stuff But ultimately the royal family can stop or start anything they want. They have the political power Let's continue to the right Military governments Now it's starting to get real easy to identify who's got the power In a military government, it's the dudes with guns. Now just about every country has a military But in most countries the military is subservient to the government The government, in this case of the United States, a president is the Commander in Chief. He controls the Armed Services, which is the case for most parts of the world When we're talking about a military government, though we're talking about where the military has risen up and taken over and pushed out the civilian leadership, taken over the state by force. Power of guns and tanks. Now this is possible. This could happen anywhere on planet Earth because guess what? The dudes with the guns and tanks and missiles... They've got real raw power But it's usually contained and ruled by civilians in most parts of the planet In a true military dictatorship or a military government, they have risen up and taken over the government, and they are running it full-on, full-out. Best-case example of this is Burma aka Myanmar over in Southeast Asia The military in a military coup took over decades ago, and has refused to cede power back to any other administration. They call all the shots They have all the political power Wait a minute. The best example of military government used to be Burma, aka Myanmar that had for decades a full-on military junta that controlled the country with an iron fist but that actually changed just recently. In 2011 the military junta was officially dissolved Following a 2010 general election. Yeah a democratic election. and a nominally civilian government was installed Now make no bones about it The military still is a strong presence in government affairs, but every year since 2010 Burma has become a little bit more democratic . Welcome to the club Burma! Good on ya! Now the best example of a military government in today's world is believe it or not, Thailand. What? Thailand? That's a place that's been doing fairly well. It's a well established democracy for decades. Well it was. So what happened in Thailand? Well, it's too complicated to explain the whole affair here, but suffice to say that extreme political gridlock and corruption basically became so bad that the country was dissolving into chaos So on May 20th of 2014 the Thai army established martial law in the state, began to deploy troops into the capital and suspended country's constitution. It now controls all aspects of the Thai state a situation still in effect right now in 2016 So Yikes! Thailand is a military government If a strong single military ruler rises to the top of the scumbag bucket, they typically then turn it into a military dictatorship where they would kill off all the people who might compete with them within the military structure And then they would be the military dictator in charge of everything and that leads us to the next step to the right Dictatorship. And this is where we now have all power residing in an individual Oftentimes they come into power via the military But not always not always Some tricky people have gotten in on their own accord which kind of leads us to the last step which is fascism What's the difference between dictatorship and fascism? I don't know it's a very very fine line. In both cases, it's a single individual who holds all the cards. They control everything. All decisions must go through them They hold all power of the state They are the state, like Napoleon said, like Hitler said. I am the state so. What's the difference between a dictatorship and fascist? Usually my definition is Dictatorships are people that have come to power by force usually the military not always Fascism is a little trickier because they're usually people who have come to power not really by force. Hitler's your best example here. Mussolini Italy is a good one, too And what do I mean by they came to power not necessarily by force? Both of them were in control the military. Both of them were military men But in true fascism the people actually like them And liked them so much they give them the power I mean Hitler did not go into Germany and say "I'm going to crush everyone you give me the power" He just gave passionate speeches and said I hate France and I hate the UK and we should do this we should get our land back, and people say Ah! This is great! And they gave him all the power. So fascism, I guess I would say is kind of a popular Elected popular dictator who then has all the power to do anything he wants Fascist Nazi Germany is the best case scenario on that one or I guess I should say the absolute worst case scenario. So now do you understand the great spectrum from extreme left to extreme right and how that affects things on the ground in terms of who has not just political power, maybe human rights and human ,liberties how strong the government is intervening into people's lives and controlling things or liberating and not controlling so much Now you getting the sense? This makes for very different lives for people from around the planet who are under these different systems. To kind of wrap up the spectrum thing I do what you know this other fact as well When we're looking over at the left side of the political spectrum communism, direct democracy, a representative democracy, These are actually all quite new. Yeah, yeah I know Socrates and a few of the cool Greek dudes were sitting around talking about it back in Athens a couple thousand, few thousand years ago, but they're kind of new in the modern era They've been enacted only in the modern era in the last couple hundred years, and yeah We can look to America to have kind of kicked off the whole democracy revolution But communism was not attempted until the 20th century till Russia tried it Direct democracy pretty much the same thing. these are new systems And I want you to know why they are so new. What happened that made people move away from the old systems? The answer is that they evolved in response to mostly monarchy. As I suggested, that has been the system for almost all of human history almost in all parts of the planet and that consolidation of power over on the ultra-conservative, right it started to bug people as they got more and more into the modern era and people started to question it and say God blessed whose loin? What's up with that who the hell put a sword in the stone Why in the hell is that guy in charge? People started to get bugged about this and write about it more and think about it more and you had great writers and thinkers of the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries who came up with these alternatives We should try something called democracy Oh, we should try this communist thing It's marks and angles or the whole Marxist thing which evolved into the communist thing. That was just in the last 200 years So these are newer systems on planet Earth that evolved in response to the consolidated power of monarchy Think about this in future lectures consolidated power forcing a response from people to equalize things more. We'll come back to that. But to finish off this little section Let's look at the where.