Totalitarianism is a
form of government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
and a
political system
In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state.
It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the govern ...
that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of
authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political '' status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic vot ...
. In totalitarian states,
political power
In social science and politics, power is the social production of an effect that determines the capacities, actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force (coercion) by one actor against ...
is often held by
autocrats
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perh ...
, such as
dictator
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times ...
s (totalitarian dictatorship) and
absolute monarchs
Absolute monarchy (or Absolutism as a doctrine) is a form of monarchy in which the monarch rules in their own right or power. In an absolute monarchy, the king or queen is by no means limited and has absolute power, though a limited constitut ...
, who employ all-encompassing campaigns in which
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
is broadcast by state-controlled
mass media
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information ...
in order to control the citizenry.
By 1950, the term and concept of totalitarianism entered mainstream Western political discourse. Furthermore this era also saw anti-communist and
McCarthyist
McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner.
The term origina ...
political movements intensify and use the concept of totalitarianism as a tool to convert pre-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were ...
into
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
anti-communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
.
As a
political ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
in itself, totalitarianism is a distinctly
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
phenomenon, and it has very complex historical roots. Philosopher
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
traced its roots to
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
's conception of the
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
, and the political philosophy of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
, although Popper's conception of totalitarianism has been criticized in academia, and remains highly controversial. Other philosophers and historians such as
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
and
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...
trace the origin of totalitarian doctrines to the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, especially to the
anthropocentrist idea that "Man has become the master of the world, a master unbound by any links to nature, society, and history." In the 20th century, the idea of absolute state power was first developed by
Italian Fascists, and concurrently in Germany by a jurist and
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
academic named
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt (; 11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. A conservative theorist, he is noted as a ...
during the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
in the 1920s.
Scholars and historians have considered
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
, founder of the Soviet Union,
to be one of the first to attempt to establish a totalitarian state.
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
, the founder of Italian Fascism, called his regime the "Totalitarian State": "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Schmitt used the term ''Totalstaat'' () in his influential 1927 work titled ''
The Concept of the Political
''The Concept of the Political'' (German: ''Der Begriff des Politischen'') is a 1932 book by the German philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt, in which the author examines the fundamental nature of the "political" and its place in the modern worl ...
'', which described the legal basis of an all-powerful state.
Totalitarian regimes are different from other
authoritarian
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic votin ...
regimes, as the latter denotes a state in which the single power holder, usually an individual dictator, a committee, a
military junta
A military junta () is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in ...
, or an otherwise small group of political elites, monopolizes political power.
A totalitarian regime may attempt to control virtually all aspects of social life, including the economy, the education system, arts, science, and the private lives and morals of citizens through the use of an elaborate
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
.
It can also mobilize the whole population in pursuit of its goals.
Definition
According to
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
professor
Juan José Linz
Juan José Linz Storch de Gracia (24 December 1926 – 1 October 2013) was a Spanish sociologist and political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was Sterling Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Yale Univers ...
there are three main types of political regimes today:
democracies
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two,
authoritarian regimes
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic votin ...
(with
hybrid regimes
A hybrid regime is a mixed type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete Democratic transition, transition from an authoritarian regime to a Democracy, democratic one (or vice versa). Hybrid regimes are categorized as combin ...
).
Totalitarian regimes are often characterized by extreme
political repression
Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereb ...
and
human rights violation
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hum ...
s to a greater extent than those of authoritarian regimes, an absolute lack of
democratic ideals, widespread
personality cultism around the person or the group which is in power, absolute
control over the economy, large-scale
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
and
mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
systems, limited or non-existent
freedom of movement
Freedom of movement, mobility rights, or the right to travel is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country,Jérémiee Gilbert, ''Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights' ...
(notably the freedom to leave the country), and the widespread usage of
state terrorism
State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism which a state conducts against another state or against its own citizens.Martin, 2006: p. 111.
Definition
There is neither an academic nor an international legal consensus regarding the proper def ...
. Other aspects of a totalitarian regime include the extensive use of
violent prison camps, repressive
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...
, practices of
religious persecution
Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religion, religious beliefs or affiliations or their irreligion, lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within soc ...
or
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
, the imposition of either
theocratic
Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs.
Etymology
The word theocracy originates fro ...
rule or
state atheism
State atheism is the incorporation of positive atheism or non-theism into political regimes. It may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. It is a form of religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically li ...
, the common use of
death penalties and
show trials
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...
, fraudulent elections (if elections are held), the possible possession of
weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natura ...
, a potential for state-sponsored
mass murders
Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...
and
genocides
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
, and the possibility of engaging in a
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
or
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
against other countries. Historian
Robert Conquest
George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) was a British historian and poet.
A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books ...
describes a totalitarian state as a state which recognizes no limit on its authority in any sphere of public or private life and extends that authority to whatever length it considers feasible.
Totalitarianism is contrasted with authoritarianism. According to Radu Cinpoes, an authoritarian state is "only concerned with political power, and as long as it is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty."
Cinpoes writes that authoritarianism "does not attempt to change the world and human nature."
In contrast,
Richard Pipes
Richard Edgar Pipes ( yi, ריכארד פּיִפּעץ ''Rikhard Pipets'', the surname literally means 'beak'; pl, Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He publish ...
stated that the officially proclaimed
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
"penetrating into the deepest reaches of societal structure, and the totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens."
Carl Joachim Friedrich
Carl Joachim Friedrich (; ; June 5, 1901 – September 19, 1984) was a German-American professor and political theorist. He taught alternately at Harvard and Heidelberg until his retirement in 1971. His writings on state and constitutional theory ...
wrote that "
totalist ideology, a party reinforced by a
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...
, and monopolistic control of industrial mass society are the three features of totalitarian regimes that distinguish them from other autocracies."
Academia and historiography
The academic field of
Sovietology
Kremlinology is the study and analysis of the politics and policies of the Soviet Union while Sovietology is the study of politics and policies of both the Soviet Union and former communist states more generally. These two terms were synonymous unt ...
after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
was dominated by the "totalitarian model" of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, stressing the absolute nature of
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
's power. The "totalitarian model" was first outlined in the 1950s by
Carl Joachim Friedrich
Carl Joachim Friedrich (; ; June 5, 1901 – September 19, 1984) was a German-American professor and political theorist. He taught alternately at Harvard and Heidelberg until his retirement in 1971. His writings on state and constitutional theory ...
, who posited that the Soviet Union and other
Communist state
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comint ...
s were "totalitarian" systems, with the
personality cult
A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create an id ...
and almost unlimited powers of the "great leader" such as Stalin. The "revisionist school" beginning in the 1960s focused on relatively autonomous institutions which might influence policy at the higher level.
Matt Lenoe described the "revisionist school" as representing those who "insisted that the old image of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state bent on world domination was oversimplified or just plain wrong. They tended to be interested in social history and to argue that the Communist Party leadership had had to adjust to social forces." These of "revisionist school" such as
J. Arch Getty
John Archibald Getty III (born November 30, 1950) is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who specializes in the history of Russia and the history of the Soviet Union.
Life and career
Getty was ...
and
Lynne Viola
Lynne Viola is a scholar on the Soviet Union. She is a professor at the University of Toronto and has written four books and 30 articles.
Early life
Raised in Nutley, New Jersey, she graduated from Nutley High School in 1973.
Viola graduated f ...
challenged the "totalitarian model" approach to Communist history, which was considered to be outdated by the 1980s and for the post-Stalinist era in particular,
and were most active in the former Communist states' archives, especially the
State Archive of the Russian Federation
The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) (russian: Государственный архив Российской Федерации (ГАРФ)) is a large Russian state archive managed by Rosarkhiv (the Federal Archival Agency of R ...
related to the Soviet Union.
According to
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes (born 1944) is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti- ...
and
Harvey Klehr
Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly with ...
, the historiography is characterized by a split between "traditionalists" and "revisionists." "Traditionalists" characterize themselves as objective reporters of an alleged totalitarian nature of
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
and Communist states. They are criticized by their opponents as being
anti-communist
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
, even fascist, in their eagerness on continuing to focus on the issues of the Cold War. Alternative characterizations for traditionalists include "anti-communist", "conservative", "Draperite" (after
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. Draper (September 11, 1912 – February 21, 2006) was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the Ame ...
), "orthodox", and "right-wing."
Norman Markowitz, a prominent "revisionist", referred to them as "reactionaries", "right-wing romantics", and "triumphalist" who belong to the "
HUAC
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
school of
CPUSA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
scholarship."
"Revisionists", characterized by Haynes and Klehr as
historical revisionists
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or times ...
, are more numerous and dominate academic institutions and learned journals.
A suggested alternative formulation is "new historians of American communism", but that has not caught on because these historians describe themselves as unbiased and scholarly, contrasting their work to the work of anti-communist "traditionalists", whom they term biased and unscholarly.
According to William Zimmerman in 1980, "the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm no longer satisfies, despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without terror, the mobilization system) to articulate an acceptable variant. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post-Stalinist reality."
According to Michael Scott Christofferson in 2019, "Arendt's reading of the post-Stalin USSR can be seen as an attempt to distance her work from 'the Cold War misuse of the concept.'"
Historian
John Connelly wrote that ''totalitarianism'' is a useful word but that the old 1950s theory about it is defunct among scholars. Connelly wrote: "The word is as functional now as it was 50 years ago. It means the kind of regime that existed in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Soviet satellites, Communist China, and maybe Fascist Italy, where the word originated. ... Who are we to tell Václav Havel or Adam Michnik that they were fooling themselves when they perceived their rulers as totalitarian? Or for that matter any of the millions of former subjects of Soviet-type rule who use the local equivalents of the Czech ''totalita'' to describe the systems they lived under before 1989? It is a useful word and everyone knows what it means as a general referent. Problems arise when people confuse the useful descriptive term with the old 'theory' from the 1950s."
Politics
Early usage
The notion that totalitarianism is total political power which is exercised by the state was formulated in 1923 by
Giovanni Amendola
Giovanni Amendola (15 April 1882 – 7 April 1926) was an Italian journalist, professor and politician, noted as an opponent of Italian Fascism.
Biography
Early life and education
Amendola was born in Naples on 15 April 1882. He moved to Rome, ...
, who described
Italian Fascism as a system which was fundamentally different from conventional
dictatorship
A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. The leader of a dictatorship is called a dictator. Politics in a dictatorship are ...
s.
The term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of
Giovanni Gentile
Giovanni Gentile (; 30 May 1875 – 15 April 1944) was an Italian neo-Hegelian idealist philosopher, educator, and fascist politician. The self-styled "philosopher of Fascism", he was influential in providing an intellectual foundation for I ...
, Italy's most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
. 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
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
One of the first people to use the term ''totalitarianism'' in the English language was the Austrian writer
Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau (December 15, 1900 – May 22, 1957) was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in Leipzig, his main interests were Marxism and psychoanalysis. Borkenau is kno ...
in his 1938 book ''The Communist International'', in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them. The label ''totalitarian'' was twice affixed to
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
during
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
's speech of 5 October 1938, before the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
in opposition to the
Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Germany, the United Kingdom, French Third Republic, France, and Fa ...
, by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the
Sudetenland
The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...
. Churchill was then a
backbencher
In Westminster and other parliamentary systems, a backbencher is a member of parliament (MP) or a legislator who occupies no governmental office and is not a frontbench spokesperson in the Opposition, being instead simply a member of the " ...
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."
José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones
José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones de León (Salamanca, 27 November 1898 – Madrid, 13 September 1980) was a Spanish politician, leader of the CEDA and a prominent figure in the period leading up to the Spanish Civil War. He served as Mi ...
, the leader of the historic Spanish
reactionary
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the ''status quo ante'', the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics abse ...
party called the
Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right
The Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (, CEDA), was a Spanish political party in the Second Spanish Republic. A Catholic conservative force, it was the political heir to Ángel Herrera Oria's Acción Popular and defined itself in te ...
(CEDA), 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
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
submits or we will eliminate it." General
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...
was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and CEDA was dissolved in April 1937. Later, Gil-Robles went into exile.
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
made frequent use of the word ''totalitarian'' and its cognates in multiple essays published in 1940, 1941 and 1942. In his essay "
Why I Write
"Why I Write" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell detailing his personal journey to becoming a writer. It was first published in the Summer 1946 edition of ''Gangrel''. The editors of this magazine, J.B.Pick and Charles Neil, had asked a selection ...
", Orwell wrote: "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
Democratic socialism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self- ...
, as I understand it." He feared that future totalitarian regimes could exploit technological advances in surveillance and mass media in order to establish a permanent and worldwide dictatorship which would be incapable of ever being overthrown, writing: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
During a 1945 lecture series entitled "The Soviet Impact on the Western World" and published as a book in 1946, the British historian
E. H. Carr
Edward Hallett Carr (28 June 1892 – 3 November 1982) was a British historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known for '' A History of Soviet Rus ...
wrote: "The trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable" and that
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various co ...
was by far the most successful type of totalitarianism as proved by Soviet industrial growth and the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
's role in defeating Germany. According to Carr, only the "blind and incurable" could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism.
In ''
The Open Society and Its Enemies
''The Open Society and Its Enemies'' is a work on political philosophy by the philosopher Karl Popper, in which the author presents a "defence of the open society against its enemies", and offers a critique of theories of teleological historicism ...
'' (1945) and ''
The Poverty of Historicism
''The Poverty of Historicism'' is a 1944 book by the philosopher Karl Popper (revised in 1957), in which the author argues that the idea of historicism is dangerous and bankrupt.
Publication
''The Poverty of Historicism'' was first written as a ...
'' (1961),
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
articulated an influential critique of totalitarianism. In both works, Popper contrasted the "
open society
Open society (french: société ouverte) is a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1932, and describes a dynamic system inclined to moral universalism.Thomas Mautner (2005), 2nd ed. ''The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy'' Open so ...
" of
liberal democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...
with totalitarianism and posited that the latter is grounded in the belief that history moves toward an immutable future in accordance with knowable laws.
Cold War
In ''
The Origins of Totalitarianism
''The Origins of Totalitarianism'', published in 1951, was Hannah Arendt's first major work, wherein she describes and analyzes Nazism and Stalinism as the major totalitarian political movements of the first half of the 20th century.
History
...
'',
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
posited that
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
and
Communist regime
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Cominte ...
s 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
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
which provides a comforting and single answer to the mysteries of the past, present and future. For Nazism, all history is the history of
race struggle and for
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various co ...
all history is the history of
class struggle
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor.
The forms ...
. Once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by
appeal to nature
An appeal to nature is an argument or rhetorical tactic in which it is proposed that "a thing is good ''because'' it is 'natural', or bad ''because'' it is 'unnatural. It is generally considered to be a bad argument because the implicit (unstate ...
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
Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century.
Aron is best known for his 19 ...
, Lawrence Aronsen,
Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau (December 15, 1900 – May 22, 1957) was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in Leipzig, his main interests were Marxism and psychoanalysis. Borkenau is kno ...
,
Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher (13 March 1922 – 19 September 2016) was a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the classics by the University of Tübingen in ...
,
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński ( , ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), or Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter's ...
,
Robert Conquest
George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) was a British historian and poet.
A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books ...
,
Carl Joachim Friedrich
Carl Joachim Friedrich (; ; June 5, 1901 – September 19, 1984) was a German-American professor and political theorist. He taught alternately at Harvard and Heidelberg until his retirement in 1971. His writings on state and constitutional theory ...
,
Eckhard Jesse
Eckhard Jesse (born 16 July 1948 in Wurzen, Saxony) is a German political scientist. He held the chair for "political systems and political institutions" at the Technical University of Chemnitz from 1993 to 2014. Jesse is one of the best known G ...
,
Leopold Labedz,
Walter Laqueur
Walter Ze'ev Laqueur (26 May 1921 – 30 September 2018) was a German-born American historian, journalist and political commentator. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence.
Biography
Walter Laqueur was ...
,
Claude Lefort
Claude Lefort (; ; 21 April 1924 – 3 October 2010) was a French philosopher and activist.
He was politically active by 1942 under the influence of his tutor, the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (whose posthumous publications Lefort late ...
,
Juan Linz
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, t ...
,
Richard Löwenthal
Richard Löwenthal (April 15, 1908 – August 9, 1991) was a German journalist and professor who wrote mostly on the problems of democracy, communism, and world politics.
Life
Löwenthal was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Ernst and Anna L ...
,
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
,
Richard Pipes
Richard Edgar Pipes ( yi, ריכארד פּיִפּעץ ''Rikhard Pipets'', the surname literally means 'beak'; pl, Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He publish ...
,
Leonard Schapiro
Leonard Bertram Naman Schapiro (22 April 1908 in Glasgow – 2 November 1983 in London) was the leading British scholar of the origins and development of the Soviet political system. He taught for many years at the London School of Economics ...
and
Adam Ulam
Adam Bruno Ulam (8 April 1922 – 28 March 2000) was a Polish-American historian of Jewish descent and political scientist at Harvard University. Ulam was one of the world's foremost authorities and top experts in Sovietology and Kremlinology ...
. Each one of these described totalitarianism in slightly different ways, but they all agreed that totalitarianism seeks to mobilize entire populations in support of an official party ideology and is intolerant of activities that are not directed towards the goals of the party, entailing repression or state control of the business, labour unions,
non-profit organizations
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
, religious organizations and minor political parties. At the same time, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds and ideological positions criticized the theorists of totalitarianism. Among the most noted were
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser ...
,
Benjamin Barber
Benjamin R. Barber (August 2, 1939 – April 24, 2017) was an American political theorist and author, perhaps best known for his 1995 bestseller, ''Jihad vs. McWorld'', and for 2013's ''If Mayors Ruled the World''. His 1984 book of political t ...
,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
and
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...
. They thought that totalitarianism was connected to Western ideologies and associated with evaluation rather than analysis. The concept became prominent in the
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and state (polity), states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. 's
anti-communist
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
political discourse during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
era as a tool to convert pre-war
anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were ...
into postwar anti-communism.
![Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1977](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Zbigniew_Brzezinski%2C_1977.jpg)
In 1956, the political scientists
Carl Joachim Friedrich
Carl Joachim Friedrich (; ; June 5, 1901 – September 19, 1984) was a German-American professor and political theorist. He taught alternately at Harvard and Heidelberg until his retirement in 1971. His writings on state and constitutional theory ...
and
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński ( , ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), or Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter's ...
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
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
as well as
fascist
Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
regimes.
Friedrich and Brzezinski wrote that a totalitarian system has the following six mutually supportive and defining characteristics:
# Elaborate guiding
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
.
#
Single mass party, typically led by a
dictator
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times ...
.
#
System of terror, using such instruments as violence and
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...
.
# Monopoly on weapons.
# Monopoly on the
means of communication.
# Central direction and control of the economy through
state planning.
In the book titled ''
Democracy and Totalitarianism'' (1968), French analyst
Raymond Aron
Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century.
Aron is best known for his 19 ...
outlined five criteria for a regime to be considered as totalitarian:
# A one-party state where one party has a monopoly on all political activity.
# A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given status as the only authority.
# State information monopoly that controls mass media for distribution of official truth.
# State controlled economy with major economic entities under the control of the state.
# Ideological terror that turns economic or professional actions into crimes. Violators are exposed to prosecution and to ideological persecution.
According to this view, totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union had initial origins in the chaos that followed in the wake of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
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."
Some
social scientists
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
have criticized Friedrich and Brzezinski's totalitarian approach, commenting that the Soviet system, both as a political and as a social entity, was in fact better understood in terms of
interest group
Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the developm ...
s, competing elites, or even in
class
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
terms, using the concept of the ''
nomenklatura
The ''nomenklatura'' ( rus, номенклату́ра, p=nəmʲɪnklɐˈturə, a=ru-номенклатура.ogg; from la, nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key admi ...
'' as a vehicle for a new
ruling class
In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the capitalist social class who own the means of production and by exten ...
(
new class
New class is used as a polemic term by critics of countries that followed the Soviet-type Communism to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist party functionaries which arose in these states. Generally, the group known in ...
). These critics posit that there is evidence of the 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 stated that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt but the mere formality of supposed popular participation.
German historian
Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher (13 March 1922 – 19 September 2016) was a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the classics by the University of Tübingen in ...
, whose work is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany, posited that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski is an excessively inflexible model and failed to consider the "revolutionary dynamic" that for Bracher is at the heart of totalitarianism.
Bracher posited 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 and Brzezinski definition, Bracher said that totalitarian regimes did not require a single leader and could function with a
collective leadership
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...
which led the American historian
Walter Laqueur
Walter Ze'ev Laqueur (26 May 1921 – 30 September 2018) was a German-born American historian, journalist and political commentator. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence.
Biography
Walter Laqueur was ...
to posit that Bracher's definition seemed to fit reality better than the Friedrich–Brzezinski definition. Bracher's typologies came under attack from
Werner Conze Werner may refer to:
People
* Werner (name), origin of the name and people with this name as surname and given name
Fictional characters
* Werner (comics), a German comic book character
* Werner Von Croy, a fictional character in the ''Tomb Rai ...
and other historians, who felt that Bracher "lost sight of the historical material" and used "universal, ahistorical concepts."
In his 1951 book ''
The True Believer
''The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements'' is a non-fiction book authored by the American social philosopher Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951, it depicts a variety of arguments in terms of applied world history and social psy ...
'',
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, '' The True Believer'' (1951), was wide ...
posited that mass movements such as fascism, Nazism and Stalinism had a common trait in picturing Western democracies and their values as
decadent
The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...
, 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. Hoffer added 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. This stance may be connected to a religious fear for Communists. Paul Hanebrink has posited that many European Christians started to fear Communist regimes after the rise of Hitler, commenting: "For many European Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, the new postwar 'culture war' crystallized as a struggle against communism. Across interwar Europe, Christians demonized the Communist regime in Russia as the apotheosis of secular materialism and a militarized threat to Christian social and moral order." For Hanebrink, Christians saw Communist regimes as a threat to their moral order and hoped to lead European nations back to their Christian roots by creating an anti-totalitarian census, which defined Europe in the early Cold War.
Post–Cold War
Laure Neumayer posited that "despite the disputes over its heuristic value and its normative assumptions, the concept of totalitarianism made a vigorous return to the political and academic fields at the end of the Cold War." In the 1990s,
François Furet
François Furet (; 27 March 1927 – 12 July 1997) was a French historian and president of the Saint-Simon Foundation, best known for his books on the French Revolution. From 1985 to 1997, Furet was a professor of French history at the University ...
made a comparative analysis and used the term ''
totalitarian twins
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regul ...
'' to link
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
and
Stalinism
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...
.
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. H ...
criticized Furet for his temptation to stress the existence of a common ground between two systems with different ideological roots.
In ''Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion'', Žižek wrote that "
e liberating effect" of General
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...
's arrest "was exceptional", as "the fear of Pinochet dissipated, the spell was broken, the taboo subjects of torture and disappearances became the daily grist of the news media; the people no longer just whispered, but openly spoke about prosecuting him in Chile itself." Saladdin Ahmed cited
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
as stating that "the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term after
Stalin's death", writing that "this was the case in General August Pinochet's Chile, yet it would be absurd to exempt it from the class of totalitarian regimes for that reason alone." Saladdin posited that while
Chile under Pinochet
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
had no "official ideology", there was one man who ruled Chile from "behind the scenes", "none other than
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
, the godfather of
neoliberalism
Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent fa ...
and the most influential teacher of the
Chicago Boys
The Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists prominent around the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of whom were educated at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, or at its affiliat ...
, was Pinochet's adviser." In this sense, Saladdin criticized the totalitarian concept because it was only being applied to "opposing ideologies" and it was not being applied to liberalism.
In the early 2010s, Richard Shorten, Vladimir Tismăneanu, and Aviezer Tucker posited that totalitarian ideologies can take different forms in different political systems but all of them focus on utopianism, scientism, or political violence. They posit that Nazism and Stalinism both emphasized the role of specialization in modern societies and they also saw polymathy as a thing of the past, and they also stated that their claims were supported by statistics and science, which led them to impose strict ethical regulations on culture, use psychological violence, and persecute entire groups. Their arguments have been criticized by other scholars due to their partiality and anachronism. Juan Francisco Fuentes treats totalitarianism as an "invented tradition" and he believes that the notion of "modern despotism" is a "reverse anachronism"; for Fuentes, "the anachronistic use of totalitarian/totalitarianism involves the will to reshape the past in the image and likeness of the present."
Other studies try to link modern technological changes to totalitarianism. According to Shoshana Zuboff, the economic pressures of modern surveillance capitalism are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action. Toby Ord believed that Orwell's fears of totalitarianism constituted a notable early precursor to modern notions of anthropogenic existential risk, the concept that a future catastrophe could permanently destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life due in part to technological changes, creating a permanent technological dystopia. Ord said that Orwell's writings show that his concern was genuine rather than just a throwaway part of the fictional plot of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. In 1949, Orwell wrote that "
ruling class which could guard against (four previously enumerated sources of risk) would remain in power permanently." That same year, Bertrand Russell wrote that "modern techniques have made possible a new intensity of governmental control, and this possibility has been exploited very fully in totalitarian states."
In the late 2010s, ''The Economist'' has described China's developed Social Credit System under Chinese Communist Party General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, general secretary Xi Jinping's Xi Jinping Administration, administration, to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, as ''totalitarian''. Opponents of China's ranking system say that it is intrusive and it is just another tool which a one-party state can use to control the population. ''The New York Times'' compared Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping's cult of personality and his ideology Xi Jinping Thought to that of Mao Zedong during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. Supporters say that it will transform China into a more civilized and law-abiding society. Shoshana Zuboff considers it instrumentarian rather than totalitarian. Other emerging technologies that could empower future totalitarian regimes include brain-reading, contact tracing and various applications of artificial intelligence.
[ (also published in )] Philosopher Nick Bostrom said that there is a possible trade-off, namely that some existential risks might be mitigated by the establishment of a powerful and permanent world government, and in turn the establishment of such a government could enhance the existential risks which are associated with the rule of a permanent dictatorship.
Views on totalitarianism by historians of the Soviet Union since the 1970s
Most modern Western historians of the Soviet Union now consider the concept of totalitarianism to be an oversimplification that does not accurately reflect the reality of life in the Soviet Union. The idea was first challenged by a generation of historians who came to prominence in the 1970s, and whose perspectives came to be known as the "revisionist school". Some of whose more prominent members were Sheila Fitzpatrick,
J. Arch Getty
John Archibald Getty III (born November 30, 1950) is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who specializes in the history of Russia and the history of the Soviet Union.
Life and career
Getty was ...
, Jerry F. Hough, William McCagg, and Robert W. Thurston.
Although their individual interpretations differ, the revisionists say that the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was in many ways institutionally weak, and that terror reflected the weaknesses rather than the strengths of the Soviet state.
They argue that Soviet citizens were not totally devoid of agency or resources and atomised by ideology as the totalitarian perspective implies. Rather, they successfully developed practices that helped them to navigate everyday life at a time of considerable danger and multiple shortages. For example, Arch Getty claims that "the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin’s leadership consisted to a considerable extent in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose.". In addition, scholars such as Fitzpatrick have stressed that the regime relied on the popular support for legitimation as much as it did on terror. By purging society of groups deemed 'anti-Soviet', new job opportunities opened up for an entire cohort of young, working class citizens, who saw dramatic, upward social mobility that they could scarcely have dreamed of before the revolution. These "beneficiaries" of the violence became fiercely loyal to Stalin and the Soviet regime. To them, it appeared the promise of the revolution had been fulfilled. They became willing to defend and support Stalin not in spite of terror, but because of it.
In the case of East Germany, Eli Rubin posited that East Germany was not a totalitarian state but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens.
Writing in 1987,
Walter Laqueur
Walter Ze'ev Laqueur (26 May 1921 – 30 September 2018) was a German-born American historian, journalist and political commentator. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence.
Biography
Walter Laqueur was ...
posited 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 stated that the revisionists' arguments with regard to Soviet history were highly similar to the arguments made by Ernst Nolte regarding German history.
For Laqueur, concepts such as modernization were inadequate tools for explaining Soviet history while totalitarianism was not. Laqueur's argument has been criticized by modern "revisionist school" historians such as Paul Buhle, who said that Laqueur wrongly equates Cold War revisionism with the German revisionism; the latter reflected a "revanchist, military-minded conservative nationalism." Moreover, Michael Parenti and James Petras have suggested that the totalitarianism concept has been politically employed and used for anti-communist purposes. Parenti has also analysed how "left anti-communism" attacked the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For Petras, the CIA funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom in order to attack "Stalinist anti-totalitarianism." Into the 21st century, Enzo Traverso has attacked the creators of the concept of totalitarianism as having invented it to designate the enemies of the West.
According to some scholars, calling
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
''totalitarian'' instead of ''authoritarian'' has been asserted to be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Western self-interest, just as surely as the counterclaim that allegedly debunking the totalitarian concept may be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Russian self-interest. For Domenico Losurdo, totalitarianism is a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology and applying it to the political sphere requires an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place
fascist
Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
regimes and the Soviet Union in the dock together, serving the
anti-communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
of
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research. Other scholars, among them F. William Engdahl, Sheldon Wolin, and Slavoj Žižek, have linked totalitarianism to capitalism and liberalism, and used concepts such as inverted totalitarianism, totalitarian capitalism, and totalitarian democracy.
See also
* Totalitarian democracy
* Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism
* Criticism of communist party rule
* Criticism of Marxism
* List of authoritarian states
* List of cults of personality
* List of totalitarian regimes
* Totalitarian architecture
References
Further reading
* Hannah Arendt, Arendt, Hannah, ''
The Origins of Totalitarianism
''The Origins of Totalitarianism'', published in 1951, was Hannah Arendt's first major work, wherein she describes and analyzes Nazism and Stalinism as the major totalitarian political movements of the first half of the 20th century.
History
...
'' (New York: Schocken Books, 1958, new ed. 1966)
online* Armstrong, John A. ''The Politics of Totalitarianism'' (New York: Random House, 1961).
*
* Bernholz, Peter. "Ideocracy and totalitarianism: A formal analysis incorporating ideology", ''Public Choice'' 108, 2001, pp. 33–75.
* Bernholz, Peter. "Ideology, sects, state and totalitarianism. A general theory". In: H. Maier and M. Schaefer (eds.): ''Totalitarianism and Political Religions'', Vol. II (Routledge, 2007), pp. 246–270.
* Franz Borkenau, Borkenau, Franz, ''The Totalitarian Enemy'' (London: Faber and Faber 1940).
* Karl Dietrich Bracher, Bracher, Karl Dietrich, "The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism," pp. 11–33 from ''Totalitarianism Reconsidered'' edited by Ernest A. Menze (Kennikat Press, 1981) .
* Congleton, Roger D. "Governance by true believers: Supreme duties with and without totalitarianism." ''Constitutional Political Economy'' 31.1 (2020): 111–141
online* Connelly, John. "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word" ''Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History'' 11#4 (2010) 819–835
online
* Curtis, Michael. ''Totalitarianism'' (1979
online* Devlin, Nicholas. "Hannah Arendt and Marxist Theories of Totalitarianism." ''Modern Intellectual History'' (2021): 1–2
online
* Diamond, Larry. "The road to digital unfreedom: The threat of postmodern totalitarianism." ''Journal of Democracy'' 30.1 (2019): 20–24
excerpt* Fitzpatrick, Sheila, and Michael Geyer, eds. ''Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
* Carl Friedrich, Friedrich, Carl and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Z. K. Brzezinski, ''Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy'' (Harvard University Press, 1st ed. 1956, 2nd ed. 1967).
* Gach, Nataliia. "From totalitarianism to democracy: Building learner autonomy in Ukrainian higher education." ''Issues in Educational Research'' 30.2 (2020): 532–554
online* Gleason, Abbott. ''Totalitarianism: The Inner History Of The Cold War'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), .
* Gregor, A. ''Totalitarianism and political religion'' (Stanford University Press, 2020).
* Hanebrink, Paul. "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" ''Journal of Contemporary History'' (July 2018) Vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 622–643
* Hermet, Guy, with Pierre Hassner and Jacques Rupnik, ''Totalitarismes'' (Paris: Éditions Economica, 1984).
* Jainchill, Andrew, and Samuel Moyn. "French democracy between totalitarianism and solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and revisionist historiography." ''Journal of Modern History'' 76.1 (2004): 107–154
online* Joscelyne, Sophie. "Norman Mailer and American Totalitarianism in the 1960s." ''Modern Intellectual History'' 19.1 (2022): 241–26
online
* Keller, Marcello Sorce. "Why is Music so Ideological, Why Do Totalitarian States Take It So Seriously", ''Journal of Musicological Research'', XXVI (2007), no. 2–3, pp. 91–122.
* Jeane Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick, Jeane, ''Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics'' (London: Simon & Schuster, 1982).
* Walter Laqueur, Laqueur, Walter, ''The Fate of the Revolution Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917 to the Present'' (London: Collier Books, 1987) .
* Menze, Ernest, ed. ''Totalitarianism reconsidered'' (1981
onlineessays by experts
* Ludwig von Mises, ''Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War'' (Yale University Press, 1944).
* Murray, Ewan. ''Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism'' (2005).
* Nicholls, A.J. "Historians and Totalitarianism: The Impact of German Unification." ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 36.4 (2001): 653–661.
* Patrikeeff, Felix. "Stalinism, Totalitarian Society and the Politics of 'Perfect Control'", ''Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions'', (Summer 2003), Vol. 4 Issue 1, pp. 23–46.
* Stanley G. Payne, Payne, Stanley G., ''A History of Fascism'' (London: Routledge, 1996).
* Rak, Joanna, and Roman Bäcker. "Theory behind Russian Quest for Totalitarianism. Analysis of Discursive Swing in Putin's Speeches." ''Communist and Post-Communist Studies'' 53.1 (2020): 13–2
online
* Roberts, David D. ''Totalitarianism'' (John Wiley & Sons, 2020).
* Rudolf Rocker, Rocker, Rudolf, ''Nationalism and Culture'' (Covici-Friede, 1937).
* Giovanni Sartori, Sartori, Giovanni, ''The Theory of Democracy Revisited'' (Chatham, N.J: Chatham House, 1987).
* Sauer, Wolfgang. "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" ''American Historical Review'', Volume 73, Issue #2 (December 1967): 404–424
online
* Saxonberg, Steven. ''Pre-modernity, totalitarianism and the non-banality of evil: A comparison of Germany, Spain, Sweden and France'' (Springer Nature, 2019).
* Leonard Schapiro, Schapiro, Leonard. ''Totalitarianism'' (London: The Pall Mall Press, 1972).
* Selinger, William. "The politics of Arendtian historiography: European federation and the origins of totalitarianism." ''Modern Intellectual History'' 13.2 (2016): 417–446.
* Skotheim, Robert Allen. ''Totalitarianism and American social thought'' (1971
online* J. L. Talmon, Talmon, J. L., ''The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy'' (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1952).
* Enzo Traverso, Traverso, Enzo, ''Le Totalitarisme : Le XXe siècle en débat'' (Paris: Poche, 2001).
* Tuori, Kaius. "Narratives and Normativity: Totalitarianism and Narrative Change in the European Legal Tradition after World War II." ''Law and History Review'' 37.2 (2019): 605–63
online
* Slavoj Žižek, Žižek, Slavoj, ''Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?'' (London: Verso, 2001)
online
External links
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