Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a
concept used by some political scientists
in which the state holds total authority over
the society and seeks to control all aspects
of public and private life wherever possible.
The concept of totalitarianism was first developed
in a positive sense 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 became prominent in Western anti-communist
political discourse during the Cold War era,
in order to highlight perceived similarities
between Nazi Germany and other Fascist states
on the one hand, and Soviet Communist Party
states on the other.
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."
Etymology
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. 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.” He described totalitarianism
as a society in which the ideology of the
state had influence, if not power, over most
of its citizens. According to Benito Mussolini,
this system politicizes everything spiritual
and human: "Everything within the state, nothing
outside the state, nothing against the state.
He stated that "We must finish once and for
all with the neutrality of chess. We must
condemn once and for all the formula 'chess
for the sake of chess', like the formula 'art
for art's sake'. We must organize shockbrigades
of chess-players, and begin immediate realization
of a Five-Year Plan for chess."
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 more united the Soviet and German dictatorships
than divided them. Syngman Rhee who would
later become the first President of South
Korea, used the term "totalitarianism" in
his book Japan Inside Out 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,
used the term in connection with the Soviet
Union and Nazi Germany.
F.A. Hayek helped develop the idea of totalitarianism
in his classic defense of economic competition
The Road to Serfdom. In his Introduction,
Hayek contrasts Western Anglo values with
Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, stating that
"the conflict between the National-Socialist
"Right" and the "Left" in Germany is the kind
of conflict that will always arise between
rival socialist factions". He later conflates
"Germany, Italy and Russia" going on to say
that "the history of these countries in the
years before the rise of the totalitarian
system showed few features with which we are
not familiar".
During a 1945 lecture series entitled The
Soviet Impact on the Western World, 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.
Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies
and The Poverty of Historicism, 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.
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.
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
The term 'an 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 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 ."
Totalitarianism is an extreme version of authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism primarily differs from totalitarianism
in that social and economic institutions exist
that are not under governmental control. Building
on the work of Yale political scientist Juan
Linz, Paul C. Sondrol of the University of
Colorado at Colorado Springs has examined
the characteristics of authoritarian and totalitarian
dictators and organized them in a chart:
Sondrol argues that while both authoritarianism
and totalitarianism are forms of autocracy,
they differ in "key dichotomies":
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cold War-era research
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:
Elaborate guiding ideology.
Single mass party, typically led by a dictator.
System of terror, using such instruments as
violence and secret police.
Monopoly on weapons.
Monopoly on the means of communication.
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.
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.
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.
Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer,
argues that mass movements like communism,
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.
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. 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.
In the field of Soviet history, the totalitarian
concept has been disparaged by the "revisionist"
school, a group of mostly American left-wing
historians, some of whose more prominent members
are Sheila Fitzpatrick, Jerry F. Hough, William
McCagg, Robert W. Thurston, and J. Arch Getty.
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. 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.
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.
Laqueur argued that the revisionists' arguments
with regard to Soviet history were highly
similar to the arguments made by Ernst Nolte
regarding German history. Laqueur asserted
that concepts such as modernization were inadequate
tools for explaining Soviet history while
totalitarianism was not.
François Furet used the term "totalitarian
twins" in an attempt to link Stalinism and
Nazism.
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. In 1984, author George Orwell
described the Ministry of Truth 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 has stated that that was "a prescient
description of the sort of totalitarian architecture
that would soon dominate the Communist bloc".
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 all 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
Autocracy
Authoritarianism
Carceral state
Dictatorship
Inverted totalitarianism
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Police state
Single-party state
Total institution
Totalitarian democracy
Constitutional liberalism
References
Further reading
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
John A. Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism
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, ISBN 0-8046-9268-8.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics
Carl Friedrich and Z. K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian
Dictatorship and Autocracy
Zheliu Zhelev, The Fascism, 1982
Guy Hermet with Pierre Hassner and Jacques
Rupnik, Totalitarismes
Abbott Gleason Totalitarianism : The Inner
History Of The Cold War, New York: Oxford
University Press,, ISBN 0-19-505017-7
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double
Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics
Walter Laqueur The Fate of the Revolution
Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917
to the Present, London: Collier Books, 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,,
ISBN 0-8018-5157-2.
Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The
Rise of the Total State and Total War
Ewan Murray, Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism
Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism
Pipes, Richard, Russia Under the Bolshevik
Regime, New York: Vintage Books, Random House
Inc., ISBN 0-394-50242-6 .* Robert Jaulin
L'Univers des totalitarismes
Rudolf Rocker. Nationalism and Culture. 1937
Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy
Revisited
Wolfgang Sauer, "National Socialism: totalitarianism
or fascism?" pages 404-424 from The American
Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December
1967.
Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism
J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian
Democracy,
Slavoj Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?
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
Totalitarianism - Article on the origin and
meaning of the term; gives many 20th century
examples and contrasts with authoritarianism.
