The constant clash throughout the history of society between freedom and authoritarianism is a dynamic that persists in human nature, both under the ancien régime and in the world that emerged after the liberal revolutions. At different moments in history, it has been believed that the dominant authoritarian regime of the era would prevail over other nations.
One way or another, all autocratic systems have collapsed both internally and externally, while free nations have managed to prevail economically, culturally, and politically over ideologies that promote totalitarianism. The question, then, is: what are the elements that cause them to fail? This is the question I attempt to answer, explaining why authoritarian regimes ultimately fail, even when they appear successful.
Economic Interventionism
Authoritarianism shares a common characteristic across all its manifestations: economic interventionism. This may take the form of direct control through the nationalization of the economy, as seen in twentieth-century Marxist socialism, where the state becomes the owner of the means of production. It can also appear as economic dirigisme, both in the fascist movements of the twentieth century and in present-day China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), where the state determines the productive and strategic direction of the economy.
The dynamics of this interventionism may vary. We are familiar with the reasons behind the failure of Marxist socialism: the problems associated with economic calculation and price formation, which limit innovation and the allocation of resources according to the real demands of an economy.
But what about the directed economy? It possesses one advantage: the existence of market mechanisms such as price formation, trade, and private property. However, it still suffers from a crucial flaw: the allocation of economic resources to sectors that respond primarily to political interests.
We can observe that autocratic systems often achieve positive results in sectors where the state redirects resources from the broader economy, such as the military, space exploration, or technology, in pursuit of control and dominance, as can be seen today in the competition between China and the United States.
Why Innovation Cannot Be Planned
The failure of these policies lies in their inability to generate the phenomenon known as "unicorns" that is, the breakthroughs in innovation necessary to propel productive markets to the next stage of development.
While the machinery of war encouraged the diversion of resources toward technological developments that eventually gave rise to computing and the internet, the tools we know today that make global information exchange possible did not emerge from that logic. Rather, they arose spontaneously within the framework of a freer and more private economy capable of responding to society’s real demands. This difference is also evident in the current state of the space race among major powers, particularly in SpaceX’s capabilities and its advantage over China’s state-run competitors.
The ability to generate the exchanges and economic incentives that give rise to unicorns is what causes autocratic systems to fail in comparison to freer economies. Even when state direction may appear advantageous, it does not respond to the future realities of innovation because it is incapable of creating the conditions necessary for innovation to emerge, even within the sectors it directly intervenes in.
The Cost of Control
Dictatorships and systems whose ultimate goal is totalitarianism seek partial or total control over the societies they govern. However, as history and the inherently predatory nature of the state have demonstrated, such control is not achieved through persuasion or through the voluntary surrender of freedoms by the population. Instead, it is maintained through violence and terror. Autocratic states incur both economic and political costs in sustaining their regimes, unlike democratic systems, where the costs of governance are generally lower.
Freedom is not limited to commerce or politics; it also encompasses language, culture, religion, and all forms of individual and collective human expression. These domains are likewise subject to the principles of spontaneous order. Totalitarianism seeks to reshape human beings themselves, which is why both the visual and mental dimensions of individual life become targets.
The entire state apparatus is mobilized toward uniformity, communication control, and the suppression of any possibility that critical thought might emerge. State control of education, the aesthetic regulation of cities and architecture, and even the alteration of language are mechanisms employed by the state to impose submission upon society.
History shows how all such attempts ultimately fail: Soviet atheism against Orthodox Christianity, brutalist urban planning, Maoism’s Cultural Revolution, Nazi social Darwinism, attempts to control money, and efforts to regulate information on the internet. All are examples of failed social engineering.
Every attempt at social engineering to alter the social fabric is accompanied by resistance at every level, a reaction that, in one form or another, creates the cracks through which a system eventually fails in unexpected ways. Faced with its inability to respond, such a system has two options: rupture or doubling down. The latter path can ultimately lead to war.
Open Societies and Closed Societies
The problems of closed societies are evident to anyone who studies their history. But if that is the case, why do these systems not change in order to achieve "success"? The truth is that authoritarian systems suffer from a problem even more serious than economic interventionism or the costs of maintaining the state: the destruction of an internal ecosystem of self-criticism.
It is well known that regimes of this kind use terror not only against their opponents and the general population but also against members of their own ranks. As a result, officials cautiously feed leaders with pleasing or false information. To better understand this, let us consider several examples:
Stalin’s Great Purge: Accusations of treason and espionage against party members and military officers served as a pretext for purging the political structure, leaving only the most compliant supporters of the Stalinist regime during the 1930s.
Internally, the consequence of this policy was the inability to obtain accurate information about the country’s real situation, creating even greater economic and political problems. The full extent of this weakness became evident during the Second World War. Intelligence reports warning of a German invasion were altered or ignored.
Battle reports were manipulated, figures were falsified, and combat experience was distorted, contributing significantly to the Soviet Union’s major failures during the early years of the war.
China’s GDP: In the case of today’s dominant authoritarian regime, economic data managed by the CCP, as well as the information presented to the rest of the world, are deliberately manipulated by local party authorities. This is a problem that the regime itself acknowledges internally, revealing the extent to which information distortion functions as a systemic practice rather than an isolated phenomenon.
This situation is merely one manifestation of a permanent problem within authoritarian systems: the inability to correct mistakes due to the lack of critical information flows.
The idea of a successful authoritarian society may seem attractive today because of what many perceive as instability within liberal democracies, instability that can sometimes give rise to authoritarian tendencies. Yet the success that is periodically attributed to dictatorships over democracies never truly materializes, because authoritarianism ignores the unpredictable nature of the individual.
