In recent months I have published several essays arguing that the fundamental political struggle is not, in fact, between “democracy” and “authoritarianism,” but between a potential sovereign—call him a king, a ruler, even a dictator—and an oligarchic structure. There may be several aspirants to supreme power, and several competing oligarchies. They may form shifting alliances and temporary coalitions. But the underlying principle remains the same.
For the sake of completeness, one additional point must be made. A would-be ruler is never truly alone. He is always surrounded by a small, clearly delineated circle of aides, guards, advisers, and enforcers. Personal rule is never purely personal; it is concentrated, not solitary.
If we accept this framework, then the endless warnings about the dangers of dictatorship take on a different meaning. They are best understood as oligarchic propaganda directed against rival claimants to power. In a country ruled by a single sovereign, the lives, liberties, and property of ordinary working people are not, as a rule, any more endangered than in a country governed by an oligarchy. Quite the contrary. Historically, when a ruler succeeded in bringing an oligarchy under control—that is, when he curtailed its freedom of action—the result was often a significant improvement in the material and social conditions of the popular classes.
There is, of course, a terrifying counterexample: Adolf Hitler. No serious analysis can ignore that fact.
Yet over the past fifty years there are at least three strong reasons to regard rule by an individual as the lesser risk—reasons that also help explain why many of the most catastrophic political decisions of recent decades, from the encouragement of mass migration into Western societies, through reckless flirtations with nuclear confrontation, to the Green Deal and its economic consequences, have been advanced by oligarchic regimes rather than by personal dictatorships.
First, responsibility. In a vast oligarchic structure encompassing tens of thousands of individuals, where power is diffuse and ambiguously distributed, everyone is capable of defending his own interests—and, intuitively, the interests of his faction. What is missing is anyone who feels responsible for the overall condition of the country. A ruler, by contrast, cannot evade that burden. The success or failure of the whole is visibly and personally his.
Second, crowd psychology. Oligarchic systems are prone to herd behavior, which is arguably the most destructive form of collective irrationality. Groupthink, moral panics, and escalating radicalism flourish precisely where responsibility is diluted and no single actor bears the consequences.
Third, isolation. An oligarchy is large enough to generate its own culture, its own moral code, its own worldview, and its own habitual practices. In doing so, it can create a social universe that is entirely detached from—and often hostile to—the world of ordinary people. A single ruler, or a small ruling circle, cannot sustain such an enclosed universe. If that ruler is hostile to the oligarchy, he almost inevitably draws his cultural instincts from the popular classes.
This dynamic is easy to observe. Whenever a figure with clear ambitions to rule emerges, he is immediately accused of vulgarity, boorishness, or lack of refinement—code words for fraternizing with the masses. Along with that cultural proximity come political positions derived from popular sentiment: skepticism toward mass migration, resistance to gender ideology, and similar issues.
None of this should be read as a timeless argument that rule by an individual and his close entourage is inherently superior to oligarchic or estate-based governance. The claim is narrower and more contingent. Under present conditions—given today’s technologies, the current distribution of economic power, and the scale of modern bureaucratic systems—personal rule may simply represent the lesser danger.
History offers no permanent solutions. It offers only trade-offs, shaped by circumstance.