Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe political systems where a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. The term is usually applied to states such as the Soviet Union (Russia, East Germany, Romania, etc.), National Socialist Germany, Democratic Kampuchea, Vietnam, Cuba, Mao-era and North Korea. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, central state-controlled economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.

Etymology

Difference between authoritarian and totalitarian states

According to Karl Lowenstein, "the term "authoritarian" denotes a political organization in which the single power holder - an individual person or "dictator", an assembly, a committee, a junta, or a party monopolizes political power. However, the term "authoritarian" refers rather to the structure of government than to the structure of society. As a rule, the authoritarian regime confines itself to political control of the state. By contrast, the term "totalitarian" refers to socioeconomic dynamism, the way of life, of a state society. The governmental techniques of a totalitarian regime are necessarily authoritarian^[1]. But the regime does much more. It attempts to mold the private life, the soul, the spirit, and the morals of citizens to a dominant ideology. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into every nook and cranny of the state society; its ambition is total.^[1]

Totalitarian regimes attempt to "atomize" society and destroy all independent nonpolitical institutions. However, neither the Italian fascists nor the Nazis completely "destroyed their respective social structures", for which reason, these countries "could rapidly return to normalcy" after defeat in World War II. In contrast, all attempts to reform the regime in the USSR, "led to nowhere because every nongovernmental institution, whether social or economic, had to be built from scratch. The result was neither reform of Communism nor establishment of democracy, but a progressive breakdown of organized life", according to Richard Pipes.^[1]

Origins

According to most scholars the first totalitarian regimes were formed in the 20th century, which include Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Union and, in some way, the Empire of Japan during the first part of the Shōwa era. Some other regimes are more commonly described as dictatorships rather than totalitarian systems. They include Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, as well as others. Some scholars 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.^[2]

Influential scholars such as Lawrence Aronsen, Richard Pipes, Leopold Labedz, Franz Borkenau, Walter Laqueur, Sir Karl Popper, Eckhard Jesse, Leonard Schapiro, Adam Ulam, Richard Löwenthal, Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Carl Joachim 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.

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. During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World (turned into a book in 1946) , the pro-Soviet British historian E. H. Carr claimed that "The trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable", that Marxism was the by far the most successful type of totalitarianism as proved by the Red Army's role in defeating Germany and Soviet industrial growth and and that only the "blind and incurable" ignored the trend towards totalitarianism^[3]. Sir 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 Communist 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.^[4]

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 as well as fascist regimes. For Friedrich and Brzezinski, the defining elements were intended to be taken as a mutually supportive organic entity composed 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.

The German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher, whose work is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany, argues that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski is an excessively inflexible model, and failed to consider the “revolutionary dynamic” that Bracher asserts is at the heart of totalitarianism ^[5]. Bracher maintains that the essence of totalitarianism is the total claim to control and remake all aspects of society combined with an all-embracing ideology, the value on authoritarian leadership, and the pretence of the common identity of state and society, which distinguished the totalitarian "closed" understanding of politics from the "open" democratic understanding^[6]. Unlike the Friedrich-Brzezinski definition Bracher argued that totalitarian regimes did not require a single leader and could function with a collective leadership, which led the American historian Walter Laqueur to argue that Bracher's definition seemed to fit reality better then the Friedrich-Brzezinski definition^[7].

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.^[8]

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)^[9]. 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.

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. Likewise, the German political scientist Richard Löwenthal argued that in the Soviet Union in the years after Stalin’s death in 1953 saw the emergence of a system Löwenthal called variously "authoritarian bureaucratic oligarchy" or “post-totalitarian authoritarianism”^[10]. Writing in 1986, Löwenthal contended the development of “post-totalitarianism” in the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe meant "Those countries have not gone from tyranny to freedom, but from massive terror to a rule of meanness, ensuring stability at the risk of stagnation"^[11]. 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, it became clear that totalitarian systems are intrinsically unstable. That was not obvious earlier for some 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.

From a historical angle, the totalitarian concept has been criticized. Historians of the Nazi period inclined towards a functionalist interpretation of the Third Reich such as Martin Broszat, Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw have been very hostile or lukewarm towards the totalitarianism concept, arguing that the Nazi regime was far too disorganized to be ever be toalitarian^[12]. In the field of Soviet history, the concept has disparaged by the "revisionist" school, a group of mostly American left-wing historians, some of whose more prominent members are Sheila Fitzpatrick, Jerry F. Hough, William McCagg, Robert W. Thurston,and J. Arch Getty^[13]. Through their individual interpretations differ, the revisionists have argued that the Soviet state under Stalin was institutionally weak, that the level of terror was much exaggerated, and that to the extent it occurred, it reflected the weaknesses rather the strengths of the Soviet state^[14]. Fitzpatrick argued that since to the extent that there was terror in the Soviet Union, since it provided for increased social mobility, and thus far from being a terrorized society, most people in the Soviet Union supported Stalin's purges as a chance for a better life^[15].

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."^[16]

Totalitarian Regimes

Vladimir Lenin, one of the first totalitarian politicians.

According to Richard Pipes, the political ideology of Hitler was "deeply affected by the Russian Revolution, negatively as well as positively. Negatively, the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia and its attempts to revolutionize Europe provided Hitler with a justification for his visceral anti-Semitism, and the specter of a "Judeo-Communist" conspiracy with which to frighten the German people. Positively, it helped him in his quest for dictatorial power by teaching him the techniques of crowd manipulation and furnishing him with the model of a one-party, totalitarian state".^[17] Hitler admitted that he had "learned a great deal from Marxism" and asserted that:

Adolf Hitler being saluted in the Krolloper which is adorn with Nazi symbolism.

"The whole of National Socialism is based on it. Look at the workers' sports clubs, the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda leaflets written specifically for the comprehension of the masses; all these methods of political struggle are essentially Marxist in origin. All I had to do is take over these methods and adopt them for our purpose... National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order".^[18]

Mussolini also acknowledged this connection: "In the whole negative part, we are alike. We and Russians are against the liberals, against democrats, against parliament".^[19] Leading Soviet communist Nikolai Bukharin observed that the political methods of fascism were "a complete applications of Bolshevik tactics, and especially those of Russian Bolshevism, in the sense of the rapid concentration of forces and energetic action of a tightly structured military organization" including the system of local Party committees, mobilization, and pitiless destruction of enemies^[20]

The term "Totalitarian Twins" was used by François Furet^[21] to link Communism^[22] and Fascism.^[23]

Large portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China. He is idolized as a Chinese hero by the government of the PRC.

Damaged downtown Baghdad monument of former Iraqi President and Iraqi Arab Socialist Baath Party leader Saddam Hussein.

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]

Pol Pot executed one of the largest and fastest genocides in history.

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")

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.

• Authoritarianism
• Carceral state
• Ba'athism
• Dictatorship
• Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
• Fascism
• Mind control
• Nazism
• Police state
• Single-party state
• Stalinism
• Total institution
• Totalism

Notes

References

• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1958, new ed. 1966)
• John A. Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism (New York: Random House, 1961)
• Franz Borkenau The Totalitarian Enemy, London, Faber and Faber 1940
• Karl Dietrich Bracher “The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism,” pages 11-33 from Totalitarianism Reconsidered edited by Ernest A. Menze (Port Washington, N.Y. / London: Kennikat Press, 1981), ISBN 0804692688.
• Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (in particular March 7, 1979 course)
• Carl Friedrich and Z. K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (2nd edn 1967)
• Guy Hermet with Pierre Hassner and Jacques Rupnik, Totalitarismes (Paris: Éditions Economica, 1984)
• Abbott Gleason Totalitarianism : The Inner History Of The Cold War, New York : Oxford University Press, (1995), ISBN 0195050177
• Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics (1982)
• Walter Laqueur The Fate of the Revolution Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917 to the Present, London: Collier Books, (1987) ISBN 0-02-034080-X.
• Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems Of Democratic Transition And Consolidation : Southern Europe, South America, And Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, (1996), ISBN 0801851572.
• Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944)
• Ewan Murray, Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism (2005)
• Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism (Routledge, 1996)
• Pipes, Richard (1995), Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc., ISBN 0-394-50242-6 .
• Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J: Chatham House, 1987)
• Wolfgang Sauer, "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404-424 from The American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967.
• Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism (London: The Pall Mall Press, 1972)
• J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, (1952)
• Slavoj Zizek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (London: Verso, 2001)

External links

Look up totalitarianism in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Totalitarianism - Article on the origin and meaning of the term; gives many 20th century examples and contrasts with Authoritarianism
• Dictatorship Watch, putting totalitarianism in perspective