The book, to be fair, is somewhat more complicated. It's more or less Heinlein musing on how fascism could be appealing; ie what sort of conditions ultimately lead to people finding it preferable. A lot of the book was inspired by his time in the navy, and how he felt that a strictly controlled and disciplined environment made him a happier person (my personal suspicion is that Heinlein was the kind of autistic person for whom a strict routine and a carefully spelled out set of rules for social interaction were highly beneficial, and simply assumed that everyone else was the same and just didn't know it).