How does a leader convert a free country with a high standard of living into a totalitarian slave state?

1) Leader should continually identify external threats to the nation that require a military response and an ever growing military industrial complex

2) Leader should continually identify domestic threats to the nation that require increased surveillance of society and imprisonment of political opponents and other critics. Creation of a Committee for Public Safety is essential to success of this policy.

3) Leader should promote a fractional reserve banking system that allows leader's friends to print free money for themselves.

4) Leader should require federal government to borrow money from private banks owned by friends even though treasury department controls printing of paper money.

5) Leader should allow citizenry access to an abundant supply of crystal methamphetamine, pornography, video games, cable television, NASCAR, WWF, prescription drugs, and corn syrup to keep citizens retarded.

6) Leader should amend the tax code to replace a progressive tax rate with a flat tax. Tax code should allow for special interests legislation to benefit specific favored industries. Tax credits, tax deductions, and tax legislation should be enacted to subsidize otherwise competitive industries such as real estate and insurance. Estate tax and gift tax should be repealed to allow hereditary wealth class.

7) Leader should pay lip service to public education for the masses while promoting and subsidizing charter schools, parochial schools, and private schools for leader's friends' children

8) Leader should allow citizenry access to easy credit for personal consumption while curtailing access to diminishing bankruptcy protections

9) Leader should allow federal and local governments to go deeply into debt

10) Leader should encourage illegal immigration through lax enforcement of immigration laws to keep labor costs low.

Various reasons. However often revolutions understood as socialist by the outside world are not from the start. An example where a genuine socialist revolution degenerated into totalitarianism was the USSR but other examples such as China or Cuba people like to give were basically wrong from the start. A lot can be said about what happened in the USSR but no one can deny Stalin was an exceptionally ruthless individual, not just some bad person, and the way Lenin's illness prevented him from removing Stalin all together is just really bad luck Socialism is a very pure idea but also difficult. A lot of people who like the idea or the goals, those who are sympathetic, let idealism get in the way of concrete knowledge and insight. A revolution built on a lack of revolutionary theory is doomed to fail. Socialism is not established in a day and there are hostile class forces that undermine it from the start. Again this is why only the masses can guarantee the good outcome of the revolution in my view. A good leader can not establish socialism if the population does not understand the goal. Even if they support him and he's popular, decent, if people don't understand the dynamics of the class struggle the door to counter revolution remains wide open Venezuela is an example of this but also of why it is so hard to go from capitalism to socialism. Who can deny all the good Chavez has done? Venezuelans have no interest now in anyone telling them this is not socialism and Chavez is clearly a Democrat and good guy. Yet after him, his successor can take this system and turn it totalitarian. So my answer is lack of education, specially Marxist theory, and broad conscious mass support and involvement from the beginning which is different than just broad support

its because no one person should be given power.. Democracy were created for this purpose.. Democracy divides power among many officials and lessen the risk of a totalitarianism. But, some democracy is just an organization of a few men with divided power but with common interest which is more power.. So power too much to one person is the reason i think for those african leaders who promise so much before election and end up being a total screw up..

Read George Orwell's 1984.

Are you serious. There are only about fifty examples of this in recent history let alone, medieval or ancient history. do your own homework

That is an answer, not a question.

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