Totalitarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Totalitarian state)
Jump to: navigation, search
Forms of government
Part of the Politics series

List of forms of government

Direct democracy
Representative democracy
Absolute monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Mixed government
Constitutional republic
Parliamentary republic
Socialist republic
Capitalist republic
Politics Portal
This box: view • talk • edit

Totalitarianism is a concept used in political science that describes a state that regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cults, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, single-party states, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.

Many consider the first totalitarian regimes to have begun in the 20th century, which include the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Cuba, as well as totalitarianism of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, as well as others. However some argue that totalitarianism has existed centuries prior, such as in ancient China under the political leadership of Prime Minister Li Si who helped the Qin dynasty unify China. Li Si adopted the political philosophy of Legalism as the ruling philosophical thought of China and restricted political activities and destroyed all literature and killed scholars who did not support Legalism. Totalitarianism was also used by the Spartan state in Ancient Greece. Its “educational system” was part of the totalitarian military society. The oligarchy running the state machine dictated every aspect of life, including the rearing of children.[1]

Some political scientists, especially those in the field of comparative politics, have applied the term "totalitarian" to modern regimes which do this.

There is significant controversy over the terms totalitarian and totalitarianism, as well as the concepts themselves (see below).

Influential scholars such as Lawrence Aronsen, Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, Carl Friedrich, and Juan Linz have each described totalitarianism in a slightly different way. Common to all definitions is the attempt to mobilize entire populations in support of the official state ideology, and the intolerance 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.

Contents

[edit] Etymology

The term Totalitarianismo, employed in the writings of the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, was popularized in the 20th century by the Italian fascists under Benito Mussolini. The original meaning of the word as described by Mussolini and Gentile (G. Gentile & B. Mussolini in "La dottrina del fascismo" 1932) was a society in which the ideology of the state had influence, if not power, over most of its citizens.

[edit] Examples of the term's use

While originally referring to an 'all-embracing, total state,' the label has been applied to a wide variety of regimes and orders of rule in a critical sense. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine (1943) used the term in connection with the collectivist societies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) and The Poverty of Historicism (1961) developed 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 accord with knowable laws. During the Cold War period, the term gained renewed currency, especially following the publication of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Arendt argued that Nazi and Stalinist regimes were completely 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 was their ideology which provided a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present, and future. For Nazism, all history is the history of racial struggle; and, for Marxism, all history is the history of class struggle. Once that premise was accepted by the public, all actions of the regime could be justified by appeal to the Law of History or Nature. [2]

[edit] 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 communist Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as well as fascist regimes. For Friedrich and Brzezinski, the defining elements were intended to be taken as a mutually supportive organic entity comprised of the following: an elaborating guiding ideology; a single mass party, typically led by a dictator; a system of terror; a monopoly of the means of communication and physical force; and central direction and control of the economy through state planning. Such regimes had initial origins in the chaos that followed in the wake of World War I, at which point the sophistication of modern weapons and communications enabled totalitarian movements to consolidate power in Italy, Germany, and Russia.

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, yet imaginary, future to frustrated people, enabling them to find a refuge from the lack of personal accomplishments in their individual existence. Individual is then assimilated into a compact collective body and "fact-proof screens from reality" are established.[3]

[edit] Criticism and recent work with the concept

In the social sciences, the approach of Friedrich and Brzezinski came under criticism from scholars who argued 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). 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. Its proponents do not agree on when the Soviet Union ceased to be describable as totalitarian.

The notion of "post-totalitarianism" was put forward by political scientist Juan Linz . For certain commentators, such as Linz and Alfred Stepan, the Soviet Union entered a new phase after the abandonment of mass terror upon Stalin's death. Discussion of "post-totalitarianism" featured prominently in debates about the reformability and durability of the Soviet system in comparative politics.

As the Soviet system disintegrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, opponents of the concept claimed that the transformation of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, and its subsequent sudden collapse, demonstrated that the totalitarian model had little explanatory value for researchers. Several decades earlier, for example, in 1957, Bertram Wolfe claimed that the Soviet Union faced no challenge or change possible from society at large. He called it a "solid and durable political system dominating a society that has been totally fragmented or atomized," one which will remain "barring explosion from within or battering down from without." Many classic theories of totalitarianism discounted the possibility of such change[citation needed]; however, later theorists not only acknowledged the possibility but in fact encouraged and welcomed it[citation needed]. Any suggestions of the indefinite stability of states labeled totalitarian among proponents of the term were largely discredited when the Soviet Union fell by the wayside.

In recent work, Slovenian philosopher and critic Slavoj Zizek has aimed at the concept of totalitarianism itself, claiming that its political usage is purely ideologically-driven. In his collection of five essays "Did somebody say Totalitarianism?", Zizek rethinks the usage of this notion and suggests that it functions as a "tamer of free radicals". In other words, to those political processes that we cannot explain or understand from within the logic of liberal democracy, we simply disregard by tagging them as totalitarian.

[edit] Political usage

While the term fell into disuse during the 1970s among many Soviet specialists, other commentators found the typology not only useful for the purposes of classification but for guiding official policy. In her 1979 essay for Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Jeane Kirkpatrick argued that a number of foreign policy implications can be drawn by distinguishing "totalitarian" regimes from autocracies in general. According to Kirkpatrick, typical autocracies are primarily interested in their own survival, and as such have allowed for varying degrees of autonomy regarding elements of civil society, religious institutions, court, and the press. On the other hand, under totalitarianism, no individual or institution is autonomous from the state's all-encompassing ideology. Therefore, U.S. policy should distinguish between the two and even grant support, if temporary, to non-totalitarian autocratic governments in order to combat totalitarian movements and promote U.S. interests. Kirkpatrick's influence, particularly as foreign policy adviser and United Nations ambassador, was essential to the formation of the Reagan administration's foreign policy and her ideas came to be known as the "Kirkpatrick Doctrine."[4]

[edit] Communism and Fascism

The term "Totalitarian Twins" was used by François Furet[5] to link Communism [6] and Fascism.[7]

Gary M. Grobman wrote:

  • Totalitarian regimes, in contrast to a dictatorship, establish complete political, social, and cultural control over their subjects, and are usually headed by a charismatic leader. Fascism is a form of right-wing totalitarianism which emphasizes the subordination of the individual to advance the interests of the state. [1]

Michael Parenti both acknowledged and criticized the linkage:

  • Both the Italian fascists and the Nazis consciously tried to imitate the left: youth organizations, mass mobilizations, rallies, parades, banners, symbols, slogans, uniforms. And I think for this reason, too, many mainstream writers treat fascism and communism as totalitarian twins. But most workers and peasants could tell the difference. Industrialists and bankers could tell the difference. And certainly the communists and the fascists could tell the difference. [2]

Daniel Singer wrote:

  • Central to Furet's argument is the belief that in a Europe shaken by World War I, Communism and Fascism were propping each other up. ... The Nazi-Soviet pact is for him perfect proof of complicity between the two systems.
  • While the totalitarian nature of Stalin's Russia is undeniable, I find the thesis of "totalitarian twins" both wrong and unproductive. ("Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir")

[edit] See also

This entry is related to, but not included in the Political ideologies series or one of its sub-series. Other related articles can be found at the Politics Portal.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Learning from the Ancient Greeks | The Foundation for Economic Education: The Freeman, Ideas on Liberty
  2. ^ Dana Richard Villa (2000). The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521645719 p. 2-3
  3. ^ Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2002), ISBN 0060505915, p.61, 163
  4. ^ Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Commentary, October 1979.
  5. ^ "Furet, borrowing from Hannah Arendt, describes Bolsheviks and Nazis as totalitarian twins, conflicting yet united." (Daniel Singer, The Nation - April 17, 1995)
  6. ^ "The totalitarian nature of Stalin's Russia is undeniable." (Daniel Singer)
  7. ^ "The government of Nazi Germany was a fascist, totalitarian state." (Gary M. Grobman)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Look up totalitarianism in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism"
Personal tools