Totalitarianism

"Totalistic" redirects here. For other uses, see totalism.

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.[1] Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign, which is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror. A distinctive feature of totalitarian governments is an "elaborate ideology, a set of ideas that gives meaning and direction to the whole society."[2]

The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s by the Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt and Italian fascists. Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat in his influential work on the legal basis of an all-powerful state, The Concept of the Political (1927).[3] The concept became prominent in Western anti-communist political discourse during the Cold War era as an effort to highlight perceived similarities between Fascist and Soviet Communist Party states in a way that would justify Cold War political divisions.[4][5][6][7][8]

Other movements and governments have also been described as totalitarian. The leader of the historic Spanish reactionary conservative movement called the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity..." and went on to say "Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it."[9]

Etymology

Benito Mussolini

The notion of totalitarianism as a "total" political power by state was formulated in 1923 by Giovanni Amendola, who described Italian Fascism as a system fundamentally different from conventional dictatorships.[10] The term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state, which was to provide the “total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals.”[11] He described totalitarianism as a society in which the ideology of the state had influence, if not power, over most of its citizens.[12] According to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."[10]

Early concepts and use

One of the first to use the term "totalitarianism" in the English language was the Austrian writer Franz Borkenau in his 1938 book The Communist International, in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them.[13] The label "totalitarian" was twice affixed to the Hitler regime during Winston Churchill's speech of October 5, 1938[14] before the House of Commons in opposition to the Munich Agreement, by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency. In a radio address two weeks later Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny."[15]

The British author George Orwell made frequent use of word totalitarian and its cognates in multiple essays published in 1940, 1941 and 1942, seeing fit to insert the expression into essays whose principal subject was Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Henry Miller or twopenny color postcards. It should come as no surprise that by the time he published the famous essay Why I Write in mid-1946, opposition to totalitarian thought and government had come to play such a prominent role in Orwell's political identity that he was able to say:

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.[16]
Adolf Hitler

During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World (published as a book in 1946), the pro-Soviet British historian E. H. Carr claimed that "The trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable", and that Marxism–Leninism was much the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by Soviet industrial growth and the Red Army's role in defeating Germany. Only the "blind and incurable" could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr.[17]

Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) and The Poverty of Historicism (1961), articulated an influential critique of totalitarianism: in both works, he contrasted the "open society" of liberal democracy with totalitarianism, and argued that the latter is grounded in the belief that history moves toward an immutable future in accordance with knowable laws.

Syngman Rhee who would later become the first President of South Korea, used the term "totalitarianism" in his book Japan Inside Out (1941) to categorize the Japanese rule over many Asian nations against the democratic world, where individuals are of greater importance than the society itself. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine (1943), used the term in connection with the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that Nazi and State communist regimes were new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the mass appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology, which provides a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present, and future. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle; and, for Marxism, all history is the history of class struggle. Once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to Nature or the Law of History, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus.[18]

In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds and ideological positions have closely examined totalitarianism. Among the most noted commentators on totalitarianism are Raymond Aron, Lawrence Aronsen, Franz Borkenau, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Conquest, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Eckhard Jesse, Leopold Labedz, Walter Laqueur, Claude Lefort, Juan Linz, Richard Löwenthal, Karl Popper, Richard Pipes, Leonard Schapiro, and Adam Ulam. Each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways. They all agree, however, that totalitarianism seeks to mobilize entire populations in support of an official state ideology, and is intolerant of activities which are not directed towards the goals of the state, entailing repression or state control of business, labour unions, churches or political parties.

Differences between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes

Authoritarianism primarily differs from totalitarianism in that social and economic institutions exist that are not under governmental control. Here are some of the differences:[19]

Totalitarianism Authoritarianism
Charisma High Low
Role conception Leader as function Leader as individual
Ends of power Public Private
Corruption Very Low High
Official ideology Yes No
Limited pluralism No Yes
Legitimacy Yes No

Sondrol argues that while both authoritarianism and totalitarianism are forms of autocracy, they differ in "key dichotomies":

(1) Unlike their bland and generally unpopular authoritarian brethren, totalitarian dictators develop a charismatic 'mystique' and a mass-based, pseudo-democratic interdependence with their followers via the conscious manipulation of a prophetic image.

(2) Concomitant role conceptions differentiate totalitarians from authoritarians. Authoritarians view themselves as individual beings largely content to control, and often maintain, the status quo. Totalitarian self-conceptions are largely teleological. The tyrant is less a person than an indispensable 'function' to guide and reshape the universe.

(3) Consequently, the utilisation of power for personal aggrandizement is more evident among authoritarians than totalitarians. Lacking the binding appeal of ideology, authoritarians support their rule by a mixture of instilling fear and granting rewards to loyal collaborators, engendering a kleptocracy.[19]

The term "authoritarian regime" denotes a state in which the single power holder – an individual "dictator", a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite – monopolizes political power. However, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens. "The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and the totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens."[10]

Compared to totalitarianism, "the authoritarian state still maintains a certain distinction between state and society. It is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, invades private life and asphyxiates it."[20] Another distinction is that "authoritarianism is not animated by utopian ideals in the way totalitarianism is. It does not attempt to change the world and human nature."[20] Carl Joachim Friedrich writes that "a totalist ideology, a party reinforced by a secret police, and monopoly control of ... industrial mass society" are the three features of totalitarian regimes that distinguish them from other autocracies.[20]

Thus, compared to totalitarian systems, authoritarian systems may also leave a larger sphere for private life, lack a guiding ideology, tolerate some pluralism in social organization, lack the power to mobilize the whole population in pursuit of national goals, and exercise their power within relatively predictable limits. According to Soviet writer Fazil Iskander,[21] "Under the totalitarian regime, it was as if you were forced to live in the same room with an insanely violent man."

Cold War-era research

Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin in Moscow, December 1949
A number of thinkers, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, have argued that Nazi and Soviet regimes were equally totalitarian.

The political scientists Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski were primarily responsible for expanding the usage of the term in university social science and professional research, reformulating it as a paradigm for the Soviet Union as well as fascist regimes. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a totalitarian system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics:

  1. Elaborate guiding ideology.
  2. Single mass party, typically led by a dictator.
  3. System of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police.
  4. Monopoly on weapons.
  5. Monopoly on the means of communication.
  6. Central direction and control of the economy through state planning.

Totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union had initial origins in the chaos that followed in the wake of World War I and allowed totalitarian movements to seize control of the government, while the sophistication of modern weapons and communications enabled them to effectively establish what Friedrich and Brzezinski called a totalitarian dictatorship.

The German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher, whose work is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany, argues that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski is an excessively inflexible model, and failed to consider the “revolutionary dynamic” that Bracher asserts is at the heart of totalitarianism.[22] Bracher maintains that the essence of totalitarianism is the total claim to control and remake all aspects of society combined with an all-embracing ideology, the value on authoritarian leadership, and the pretence of the common identity of state and society, which distinguished the totalitarian "closed" understanding of politics from the "open" democratic understanding.[22] Unlike the Friedrich-Brzezinski definition Bracher argued that totalitarian regimes did not require a single leader and could function with a collective leadership, which led the American historian Walter Laqueur to argue that Bracher's definition seemed to fit reality better than the Friedrich-Brzezinski definition.[23]

Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer, argues that mass movements like Stalinism, fascism, and Nazism had a common trait in picturing Western democracies and their values as decadent, with people "too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish" to sacrifice for a higher cause, which for them implies an inner moral and biological decay. He further claims that those movements offered the prospect of a glorious future to frustrated people, enabling them to find a refuge from the lack of personal accomplishments in their individual existence. The individual is then assimilated into a compact collective body and "fact-proof screens from reality" are established.[24]

Criticism and recent work with the concept

Some social scientists have criticized the approach of Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, arguing that the Soviet system, both as a political and as a social entity, was in fact better understood in terms of interest groups, competing elites, or even in class terms (using the concept of the nomenklatura as a vehicle for a new ruling class).[25] These critics pointed to evidence of popular support for the regime and widespread dispersion of power, at least in the implementation of policy, among sectoral and regional authorities. For some followers of this 'pluralist' approach, this was evidence of the ability of the regime to adapt to include new demands. However, proponents of the totalitarian model claimed that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt but the mere formality of supposed popular participation.

Historians of the Nazi period who are inclined towards a functionalist interpretation of the Third Reich, such as Martin Broszat, Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw, have been hostile or lukewarm towards the totalitarianism concept, arguing that the Nazi regime was too disorganized to be considered totalitarian.[26]

In the field of Soviet history, the totalitarian concept has been disparaged by the "revisionist" school, some of whose more prominent members are Sheila Fitzpatrick, Jerry F. Hough, William McCagg, Robert W. Thurston, and J. Arch Getty.[27] Though their individual interpretations differ, the revisionists have argued that the Soviet state under Joseph Stalin was institutionally weak, that the level of terror was much exaggerated, and that — to the extent it occurred — it reflected the weaknesses rather the strengths of the Soviet state.[27] Fitzpatrick argued that since to the extent that there was terror in the Soviet Union, it provided for increased social mobility, and therefore most people in the Soviet Union supported Stalin's purges as a chance for a better life rather than feeling that they were trapped in a terrorized society.[28][29]

Writing in 1987, Walter Laqueur said that the revisionists in the field of Soviet history were guilty of confusing popularity with morality, and of making highly embarrassing and not very convincing arguments against the concept of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state.[30] Laqueur argued that the revisionists' arguments with regard to Soviet history were highly similar to the arguments made by Ernst Nolte regarding German history.[30] Laqueur asserted that concepts such as modernization were inadequate tools for explaining Soviet history while totalitarianism was not.[31]

François Furet used the term "totalitarian twins"[32] in an attempt to link Stalinism[33] and Nazism.[34]

Totalitarianism in architecture

Non-political aspects of the culture and motifs of totalitarian countries have themselves often been labeled innately "totalitarian". For example, Theodore Dalrymple, a British author, physician, and political commentator, has written for City Journal that brutalist structures are an expression of totalitarianism given that their grand, concrete-based design involves destroying gentler, more-human places such as gardens.[35] In 1949, author George Orwell described the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four as an "enormous, pyramidal structure of white concrete, soaring up terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the air". Columnist Ben Macintyre of The Times wrote that it was "a prescient description of the sort of totalitarian architecture that would soon dominate the Communist bloc".[36]

Another example of totalitarianism in architecture is the Panopticon, a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. It was invoked by Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, as metaphor for "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Conquest, Robert (1999). Reflections on a Ravaged Century. p. 74. ISBN 0-393-04818-7.
  2. ↑ "Government and Law". Volume Library 1. The Southwestern Company. 2009. p. 11.
  3. ↑ Schmitt, Carl (1927). The Concept of the Political (German: Der Begriff des Politischen) (1996 University of Chicago Press ed.). Rutgers University Press. p. 22. ISBN 0-226-73886-8.
  4. ↑ Defty, Brook (2007). Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945-1953. Chapters 2-5. The Information Research Department.
  5. ↑ Achim Siegel, The totalitarian paradigm after the end of Communism: towards a theoretical reassessment, 1998, page 200 "Concepts of totalitarianism became most widespread at the height of the Cold War. Since the late 1940s, especially since the Korean War, they were condensed into a far-reaching, even hegemonic, ideology, by which the political elites of the Western world tried to explain and even to justify the Cold War constellation"
  6. ↑ Nicholas Guilhot, The democracy makers: human rights and international order, 2005, page 33 "The opposition between the West and Soviet totalitarianism was often presented as an opposition both moral and epistemological between truth and falsehood. The democratic, social, and economic credentials of the Soviet Union were typically seen as "lies" and as the product of a deliberate and multiform propaganda...In this context, the concept of totalitarianism was itself an asset. As it made possible the conversion of prewar anti-fascism into postwar anti-communism
  7. ↑ David Caute, Politics and the novel during the Cold War, 2009, pages 95-99
  8. ↑ George A Reisch, How the Cold War transformed philosophy of science: to the icy slopes of logic, 2005, pages 153-154
  9. ↑ Paul Preston. The Spanish Civil War: reaction, revolution and revenge. 3rd edition. W. W. New York, New York, USA: Norton & Company, Inc, 2007. 2006 Pp. 64.
  10. 1 2 3 Pipes 1995, pp. 240–281
  11. ↑ Payne, Stanley G., Fascism: Comparison and Definition (UW Press, 1980), p. 73
  12. ↑ Gentile, Giovanni and Benito Mussolini in "La dottrina del fascismo" (1932)
  13. ↑ Nemoianu, Virgil, Review of End and Beginnings pages 1235-1238 from MLN, Volume 97, Issue #5, December 1982, p.1235.
  14. ↑ Churchill, Winston, Speech to the House of Commons, October 5, 1938: "We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian states who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds."
    "Many of those countries, in fear of the rise of the Nazi power, ... loathed the idea of having this arbitrary rule of the totalitarian system thrust upon them, and hoped that a stand would be made."
  15. ↑ Churchill, Winston, Radio Broadcast to the United States and to London, October 16, 1938
  16. ↑ Orwell, George, Why I Write, Gangrel (Summer) 1946.
  17. ↑ Laqueur, Walter, The Fate of the Revolution, New York: Scribner, 1987, p.131.
  18. ↑ Dana Richard Villa (2000), The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge University Press, p.2-3. ISBN 0-521-64571-9
  19. 1 2 Sondrol, P. C. (2009). "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner". Journal of Latin American Studies 23 (3): 599. doi:10.1017/S0022216X00015868.
  20. 1 2 3 Radu Cinpoes, Nationalism and Identity in Romania: A History of Extreme Politics from the Birth of the State to EU Accession, p. 70.
  21. ↑ Robert Conquest Reflections on a Ravaged Century (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 189
  22. 1 2 Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold; New York page 25.
  23. ↑ Laqueur, Walter The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet history from 1917 to the Present, New York: Scribner's, 1987 page 241
  24. ↑ Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2002), ISBN 0-06-050591-5, p.61, 163
  25. ↑ Laqueur, Walter, The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet history from 1917 to the Present (New York: Scribner's, 1987) pp. 186-189 & 233-234
  26. ↑ Lorenz, Chris, "Broszat, Martin" in Boyd, Kelly, ed., The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol. 1 (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999) pp. 143-144; Kerhsaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Arnold Press, 2000) pp. 45-46; Menke, Martin, "Mommsen, Hans" in Boyd, Kelly, ed., The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol. 2, (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1999) pp. 826-827
  27. 1 2 Laqueur, Walter The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet history from 1917 to the Present (New York: Scribner's, 1987) pp. 225-227
  28. ↑ Laqueur, Walter, The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet history from 1917 to the Present (New York: Scribner's, 1987) pp. 225 & 228
  29. ↑ Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
  30. 1 2 Laqueur, Walter The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet history from 1917 to the Present (New York: Scribner's, 1987) p. 228
  31. ↑ Laqueur, Walter The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet history from 1917 to the Present (New York: Scribner's, 1987) p. 233
  32. ↑ "Furet, borrowing from Hannah Arendt, describes Bolsheviks and Nazis as totalitarian twins, conflicting yet united." Singer, Daniel, The Nation (April 17, 1995)
  33. ↑ "The totalitarian nature of Stalin's Russia is undeniable." Singer, Singer,The Nation
  34. ↑ "The government of Nazi Germany was a fascist, totalitarian state." Grobman, Gary M.
  35. ↑ Theodore Dalrymple (Autumn 2009). "The Architect as Totalitarian". City Journal. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  36. ↑ Ben Macintyre (March 30, 2007). "Look on those monuments to megalomania, and despair". The Times. Retrieved January 5, 2010.

Further reading

  • Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1958, new ed. 1966)
  • John A. Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism (New York: Random House, 1961)
  • Peter Bernholz, "Ideocracy and totalitarianism: A formal analysis incorporating ideology." Public Choice 108, 33-75, 2001
  • Peter Bernholz, Ideology, sects, state and totalitarianism. A general theory. In: H. Maier and M. Schaefer (eds.): Totalitarianism and Political Religions",Vol. II (Routledge, Abingdon Oxon and New York, 2007), 246 -270
  • Franz Borkenau The Totalitarian Enemy, London, Faber and Faber 1940
  • Karl Dietrich Bracher “The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism,” pages 11–33 from Totalitarianism Reconsidered edited by Ernest A. Menze (Port Washington, N.Y. / London: Kennikat Press, 1981), ISBN 0-8046-9268-8.
  • Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (in particular March 7, 1979 course)
  • Carl Friedrich and Z. K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (2nd edn 1967)
  • Zhelyu Zhelev, The Fascism, 1982
  • Guy Hermet with Pierre Hassner and Jacques Rupnik, Totalitarismes (Paris: Éditions Economica, 1984)
  • Abbott Gleason Totalitarianism : The Inner History Of The Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press, (1995), ISBN 0-19-505017-7
  • Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics (1982)
  • Walter Laqueur The Fate of the Revolution Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917 to the Present, London: Collier Books, (1987) ISBN 0-02-034080-X.
  • Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems Of Democratic Transition And Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, And Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, (1996), ISBN 0-8018-5157-2.
  • Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944)
  • Ewan Murray, Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism (2005)
  • Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism (Routledge, 1996)
  • Pipes, Richard (1995), Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc., ISBN 0-394-50242-6 .*Robert Jaulin L'Univers des totalitarismes (Paris : Loris Talmart, 1995)
  • Rudolf Rocker. Nationalism and Culture. 1937
  • Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J: Chatham House, 1987)
  • Wolfgang Sauer, "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404-424 from The American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967.
  • Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism (London: The Pall Mall Press, 1972)
  • J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, (1952)
  • Slavoj Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (London: Verso, 2001)
  • Marcello Sorce Keller, “Why is Music so Ideological, Why Do Totalitarian States Take It So Seriously: A Personal View from History, and the Social Sciences”, Journal of Musicological Research, XXVI(2007), no. 2-3, pp. 91–122

External links

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