From Xi Jinping to Putin, strong-man leaders who rule with an iron hand appear to be becoming more common. How do such leaders arise? What is the nature of their regimes? And what does that tell us about where they are going?
Demagogues and dictators are not a new phenomenon, however. From Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte, to Stalin and Hitler, history is littered with dictatorships. Marxists have often characterised these regimes as ‘Bonapartist’.
In this episode of Marxist Voice, Ben Gliniecki explains what Marxists mean when they use the term ‘Bonapartism’, and discusses the relevance of this concept in understanding political regimes in the modern world.
