Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Part 2)
Remember also that it was the poor who gave Hugo Chavez to acquire his autocracy, not the middle class, as they oppose him vehemently.
Also...
in the latter half of the eleventh century AD, the noble class of the Byzantium Empire was doing all it could to take land from the peasants and combine the lands into large estates, whereby the lower classes would become more like serfs than peasants. Fortunately, the lower classes were protected by Emperor Basil II and other like-minded Macedonian emperors, who passed a series of laws making it difficult to take the peasants' land away. These peasants would have wanted to give Basil II complete and total power, because more power to the emperor meant more power to the peasant. If you asked Byzantium peasants whether they would like a Greek-style democracy, they would have probably said no. If you asked if Basil II should be considered a demi-God with unapproachable control over the empire, they probably would have said yes.
This helps us understand why, today, many would love to give Congress and the President more power, because they believe for every increase in power by politicians there is a concomitant decrease in power by the wealthy (including corporations). This may not be the case in America, as many libertarians would say politicians with more power distribute these benefits to the wealthy, not the working class.
This helps us understand why people like Michael Moore proclaim America needs to become more "democratic", while at the same time making politicians more autocratic.
