On Discarding Totalitarianism: Relevance in Theory?

[RadioRaheem84]

The Red Phoenix brought up a great discussion on the use of the word in academia. Since it's inception it has been used by many liberal scholars to defame societies it deemed unworthy to bestow praise. It also took the spotlight away from them when examining just how "total" control can be vested in the bourgeoisie too.

It seems like the word can be used to describe both Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR. How so? How do they determine this and how can one not see the obvious differences in class relations and distribution of wealth?

According to Hannah Arendt who first employed the word in 1951 the particular feature of totalitarianism are:




All facets of society are controlled directly by the dictator and the government through force; the dictator dominates all areas of life without exception.
A highly militaristic society which glorifies the military and the police, as well as other armed forces of the dictator and the ruling government.
There is no separation of powers; judiciaries, legislative and executive are all controlled by the dictator or the ruling party.
The dictator or the party controls the thinking of the masses.
There is no freedom of speech or religion, no freedom of the arts and no freedom of the press except that which glorifies the dictator.
Political repression is practiced on those that dissent from the dictator or ruling party.
Torture of incarcerated persons and political prisoners.
Forced or compulsory military conscription.
Subordination of the individual in favor of the dictator and the ruling government.




Funny how the criteria was set up to eliminate liberal democracies from criticism.

Your thoughts comrade? Is the use of the word unscientific?

[Qayin]

I would argue the word is unusable because it leaves a lot out of context. You nailed it with




It seems like the word can be used to describe both Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR. How so? How do they determine this and how can one not see the obvious differences in class relations and distribution of wealth?

and

Funny how the criteria was set up to eliminate liberal democracies from criticism.


Is the use of the word unscientific?
Yes.

[RadioRaheem84]

Yes it offers the bourgeoisie to set the standard at liberal democracy to judge "good" and "bad" societies.

[Uppercut]

Yes it offers the bourgeoisie to set the standard at liberal democracy to judge "good" and "bad" societies.

That's a good way to put it. The nature of the authority is what really matters in determining if a people are truly free. You could have a near perfect society without class distinctions but still have a stable authority established whose exerciser is the people themselves, armed with whatever methods of power it controls.

[MarxSchmarx]

The problem is basically one of distinguishing between totalitarianism and an autocratic and authoritarian government. "Totalitarian regimes" like Nazi Germany are simply on one end of a spectrum, while relatively less oppressive authoritarian governments like Mexico under the PRI or Putin's Russia are closer to western liberal democracies. The term "totalitarian" is used usually to distinguish the extreme end of this spectrum from the run of the mill dictatorships with less power to control everyday life. In so far as it is used in that sense I don't have a problem with the phrase.

Nor do I think it is uniquely a bourgeois category. The mechanisms of social control employed by authoritarian states (like the police and military) are quite distinct from the mechanisms employed by the bourgeoisie (like corporate advertising), and the extent to which the methods of authoritarian states permeate every day life and affect decision making strikes me as a valid social scientific question.

[ComradeOm]

I made quite a few in-depth posts on the subject a while back. See these threads - here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-you-support-t105472/index.html), here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/totalitarianism-t115932/index.html), and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-nazi-joint-t106190/index.html). The book you want that demolishes this theory is a collection of essays, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick, called Beyond Totalitarianism


The term "totalitarian" is used usually to distinguish the extreme end of this spectrum from the run of the mill dictatorships with less power to control everyday lifeThis implies that there are 'good' and 'bad' dictatorships with the latter (surprise) being those that are ideological foes of the West. You never, for example, see Pinochet being held up as an example of totalitarianism. This is despite the fact that his regime was more brutal than Mussolini's, for example, and that the supposed "power to control everyday life" of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany is often grossly overstated. The 'all powerful' or 'monolithic' state that proponents of the thesis allege existed is a fragment of the imagination

[Proletarian Ultra]

I made quite a few in-depth posts on the subject a while back. See these threads - here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/do-you-support-t105472/index.html), here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/totalitarianism-t115932/index.html), and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-nazi-joint-t106190/index.html). The book you want that demolishes this theory is a collection of essays, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick, called Beyond Totalitarianism

This implies that there are 'good' and 'bad' dictatorships with the latter (surprise) being those that are ideological foes of the West. You never, for example, see Pinochet being held up as an example of totalitarianism. This is despite the fact that his regime was more brutal than Mussolini's, for example, and that the supposed "power to control everyday life" of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany is often grossly overstated. The 'all powerful' or 'monolithic' state that proponents of the thesis allege existed is a fragment of the imagination

Zizek's Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? is good too.

The fact that Pinochet is never counted as totalitarian pretty much says all you need to know about the term. It's basically just a club to beat the left with.

[Red Commissar]

Another term like "liberty" and "freedom" which can mean different things depending on who you ask.

Like previous posters have said before, it's main feature now is to be used for mudslinging.

[RadioRaheem84]

Is this the result of liberal/libertarian thinking in both classical sense?

[Thirsty Crow]

In fact, it seems to me that the very concept of totalitarianism is completely and utterly demolished by Foucault's work on the character and functioning of power in modern societies. Thus, not only is it dubious and faulty from the perspective of the revolutionary left, but it is also faulty in its basic assumptions (the character of power) as demonstrated by Foucault's historical analysis.

[RadioRaheem84]

In fact, it seems to me that the very concept of totalitarianism is completely and utterly demolished by Foucault's work on the character and functioning of power in modern societies. Thus, not only is it dubious and faulty from the perspective of the revolutionary left, but it is also faulty in its basic assumptions (the character of power) as demonstrated by Foucault's historical analysis.


I haven't read Foucault's work. Been meaning to, but thanks for the reference.

Yes, I would like to get into how it's not even rationally viable. Just totally faulty presuppositions.

[MarxSchmarx]

Originally Posted by MarxSchmarx
The term "totalitarian" is used usually to distinguish the extreme end of this spectrum from the run of the mill dictatorships with less power to control everyday life
This implies that there are 'good' and 'bad' dictatorships with the latter (surprise) being those that are ideological foes of the West. You never, for example, see Pinochet being held up as an example of totalitarianism. This is despite the fact that his regime was more brutal than Mussolini's, for example, and that the supposed "power to control everyday life" of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany is often grossly overstated. The 'all powerful' or 'monolithic' state that proponents of the thesis allege existed is a fragment of the imagination

You can't go as far as "good" dictatorships but as a matter of fact I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging that there are "bad" and "worse" dictatorships.

I haven't read that particular collection of essays, and Fitzpatrick does make a convincing case that whatever Stalinist Russia was, it was not a totalitarian society - or at least particularly successful insofar as the government strove to make a totalitarian society. A problem that the likes of Fitzpatrick run into is that just because the term has been misused or exploited for ideologically driven propaganda does not mean it is categorically invalid.

The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany did strive to create a "new German" and suppressed civil society considerably more, than, say, Pinochet's Chile. Whether they succeeded more than Pinochet's Chile (and it strikes me that they did) towards the goal of having their ideology pervasive is a somewhat separate question.

[ComradeOm]

You can't go as far as "good" dictatorships but as a matter of fact I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging that there are "bad" and "worse" dictatorshipsBased on their ideological differences with the West? :confused:

Not many people would disagree that Nazi Germany was worse than Pinochet's Chile (although that does expose us to the murky depths of lesser evils) but I fail to see why we have to invent an arbitrary and imaginary distinction between the two. Is it not enough to say that one was bad but the other was worse?

[Edit: To answer my own question, of course its not. At least not for Western governments. The 'bad' dictatorships must be shown to be structurally different from the liberal democracies and their 'good' dictatorial allies]


A problem that the likes of Fitzpatrick run into is that just because the term has been misused or exploited for ideologically driven propaganda does not mean it is categorically invalidThe problem is the opposite. The term has unfortunately entered popular language where it now means 'nasty commu-nazis'; there's nothing that we can do about that now. In that base sense (the "exploited" or "propaganda" meaning of the term) it may hold some worth. Either way its not worth worrying over

However what has been shown is that the more formal/academic conception of totalitarianism - the theory elaborated on from Popper and Arendt to Conquest and Ulam - simply does not hold true. And this is on a very basic level - the supposed perquisites for a totalitarian society (all powerful state, monolithic ideology, atomisation of the population, etc, etc) are either lacking in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia or took very different forms in each country. Which is the fundamental criticism of this thesis - if a common set of features cannot be determined from this very small sample size, then how can there be said to be a shared political template? The model just does not stand up to historical scrutiny

Which is why I said 'unfortunately' earlier. Popular perception of these regimes is still approximately where it was during the 1950s when claims of an omnipotent state were still credible. We just know better now and its impossible to speak of 'totalitarian features' except in the broadest possible sense


The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany did strive to create a "new German" and suppressed civil society considerably more, than, say, Pinochet's Chile. Whether they succeeded more than Pinochet's Chile (and it strikes me that they did) towards the goal of having their ideology pervasive is a somewhat separate question.Well here we come back to my point - that charges of totalitarianism are invariably ideologically motivated. You don't think that Pinochet "considerably suppressed civil society" or sought the establishment of a "pervasive ideology"? He didn't have people disappeared or interned in football stadiums for the fun of it. Nor did he rewrite the constitution, ban most political rivals, and engage in a course of shock capitalism on a whim. No, there was a real political agenda that drove Pinochet's reign but, like that of Argentina's 'Dirty War' or Spain's Franco, it was not incompatible with Western (and apparently paradoxically) liberal values

So gassing Jews and installing currency controls is 'totalitarian' but murdering trade unionists by the thousand ('cutting out the Marxist cancer' was a common refrain of both Pinochet and Franco) and adopting free market policies is not. No, both regimes pursued different ideological agendas (that of the Nazis obviously more abhorrent than even Pinochet*) but both did so with the intent of eradicating the opposition and ensuring that their ideology was "pervasive". The difference lies in the content of these policies, not the means of their enforcement

*Although this is hard to quantify. Most of the Nazi atrocities came after the regime had been radicalised by the war. The figures are obviously hard to compare - due to the fact that most of Pinochet's victims simply disappeared - but its quite likely that Pinochet's Chile murdered far more of its own citizens than pre-war Nazi Germany. Food for thought

[Barry Lyndon]

One of my issues with 'totalitarianism' is, setting aside the question as to whether Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia were 'totalitarian' as defined by Arendt and others(interestingly, I believe Arendt specifically defined the Soviet Union under Stalin as totalitarian, not under Lenin), is that a country is defined as 'totalitarian' only by its internal politics.

In other words, by this criteria, a nation can be as brutal, repressive, and exploitative as it wants to other countries, but as long as it is a bourgeois 'democracy' at home, it isn't 'totalitarian'. This effectively exculpates the entire history of European colonialism of the last 500 years and American neo-colonialism of the past 60+ years.

What was an individual Congolese tribesman, a Indian peasant, or an Algerian farmer in the grand scheme of Belgian, British, or French imperialism? Nothing but a tiny cog in a gigantic machine of economic exploitation, perhaps pressed into forced labor('corvee' as the French called it) to extract gold or ivory or rubber until he dropped dead. Whether he or his family lived or starved to death was completely dependent on the whims of London or Paris or Brussels. And all the while this system was justified by a state-sponsored ideology of racial supremacy. Arendt herself wrote that it was probably colonialism that paved the way for the Holocaust by making the notion of racial supremacy acceptable and classifying millions of non-whites as subhuman(Untermenschen), that it was a small step from treating Asians and Africans that way to doing the same to other Europeans.

Likewise, US imperialism has been content to support fascist and neo-fascist forces abroad to preserve its economic dominance in the Third World and savagely repress nationalist or Marxist revolutionary forces that threaten that hegemony. Pinochet, Suharto, Chiang Kai-Shek, Mobutu, the Somozas, Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, the list goes on and on of monsters bred and pampered by the CIA and the International Monetary Fund to be the cops of US Capital in the Global South. Apparently, however, overthrowing scores of revolutionary and progressive governments and replacing them with fascist thugs does not make you 'totalitarian'.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If Stalin's Wars is something to go by, then the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union under Stalin started in the early 1930s and ended with the Nazi invasion.

It was never continued in the Soviet Union after the war (botched plans for multi-candidate elections, drastic decrease in political bloodletting, etc.), but this totalitarianism was shifted for a time towards Eastern Europe.

[ComradeOm]

Only the most conservative US historians would consider the post-Stalin USSR to be totalitarian (Why? Did the Party suddenly disappear?). Depending on their proclivities, some argue that the totalitarian regime began with, or had its roots in, the October Revolution but most would chart it with the rise and fall of Stalin

[RadioRaheem84]

One of my issues with 'totalitarianism' is, setting aside the question as to whether Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia were 'totalitarian' as defined by Arendt and others(interestingly, I believe Arendt specifically defined the Soviet Union under Stalin as totalitarian, not under Lenin), is that a country is defined as 'totalitarian' only by its internal politics.

In other words, by this criteria, a nation can be as brutal, repressive, and exploitative as it wants to other countries, but as long as it is a bourgeois 'democracy' at home, it isn't 'totalitarian'. This effectively exculpates the entire history of European colonialism of the last 500 years and American neo-colonialism of the past 60+ years.

What was an individual Congolese tribesman, a Indian peasant, or an Algerian farmer in the grand scheme of Belgian, British, or French imperialism? Nothing but a tiny cog in a gigantic machine of economic exploitation, perhaps pressed into forced labor('corvee' as the French called it) to extract gold or ivory or rubber until he dropped dead. Whether he or his family lived or starved to death was completely dependent on the whims of London or Paris or Brussels. And all the while this system was justified by a state-sponsored ideology of racial supremacy. Arendt herself wrote that it was probably colonialism that paved the way for the Holocaust by making the notion of racial supremacy acceptable and classifying millions of non-whites as subhuman(Untermenschen), that it was a small step from treating Asians and Africans that way to doing the same to other Europeans.

Likewise, US imperialism has been content to support fascist and neo-fascist forces abroad to preserve its economic dominance in the Third World and savagely repress nationalist or Marxist revolutionary forces that threaten that hegemony. Pinochet, Suharto, Chiang Kai-Shek, Mobutu, the Somozas, Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, the list goes on and on of monsters bred and pampered by the CIA and the International Monetary Fund to be the cops of US Capital in the Global South. Apparently, however, overthrowing scores of revolutionary and progressive governments and replacing them with fascist thugs does not make you 'totalitarian'.

I want to expand on this because it shows the utter uselessness of such a word, unless one is using it to defame a nation one doesn't like. The US externally represses many nations through it's foreign policy and exerts an incredible amount of influence over the lives of many in the third world. It allows for freedom at home, but exerts the most amazing form of propaganda to marginalize dissident views the bourgeoisie have ever engaged in. It astounds me to see the level of inconsistent logic, misinterpretation of history and misinformation of current events in the US alone and how culture is steered toward elevating one form of life over the other. Not that it always works or is necessarily forced up on us, but does not coercion and social pressure also count?

The US has the most massive military force ever assembled. Dwarfs the the former USSR and Nazi Germany combined and is spread out over 700 military bases abroad. It ignores international law from the very same reformist commission group it created; the UN. It compels nations to succumb to the dictates of capital because it's the dominate paradigm that glosses the halls of DC; the Washington Consensus.

What's more dangerous? A tiny socialist nation like Cuba which has had a government in a state of war for over half a century and uses most of it's resources to keep big capital out and provide for its people a modicum of standard of living. Yet, Castro's Cuba would be "totalitarian" and offered nothing but scorn by the smuggest of liberals on the BBC and Meet the Press, but the United States is the standard of liberal democratic governance? Even while they admit to it being an imperial force (for good?)

[RadioRaheem84]

Secondly, the concern for not looking like a backwards "Stalinist" keeps leftists from really analyzing the situation of the USSR and the former Socialist nations. When comparing the brutal external repression of US foreign policy and outright invasion, the USSR looks less "totalitarian". Not to excuse Stalin's rather autocratic rule, but what is it that we're looking at here? The Imperial Powers have reeked havoc on the third world and unleashed a level of brutality unlike any other but because they do not internally repress their citizens they're allowed a moral clout in which to bash the socialist nations who are in a constant state of war and have had the deficiencies in their democratic struggles deformed. Even after all the civil wars, fascist invasions, imperial invasions, manipulation, terrorism, infiltration, these nations still managed to keep their workers from being over exploited like their comrades in the third world and were given a decent living standard. Now that these nations are all gone, the West praises the return of democracy. Well what good is the democracy when people are barely making ends meet and secondly, what democracy existed before? Most of the nations the socialist republics liberated were fascist of imperial client states. There was no democracy. So how can we really say that one form of totalitarian was replaced for another if they're supposed to be cut from the same cloth? And how bad was the latter "totalitarianism" if the living standards of the people sharply declined once they fell?

Remember what the former blocs and the socialist nations were holding back, which was the total onslaught of neo-liberal reform which has given rise to new and old forms of fascism, nationalism and religious extremism.

[Proletarian Ultra]

The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany did strive to create a "new German" and suppressed civil society considerably more, than, say, Pinochet's Chile. Whether they succeeded more than Pinochet's Chile (and it strikes me that they did) towards the goal of having their ideology pervasive is a somewhat separate question.

The transformation of Chilean society is invisible to bourgeois observers because it was a transformation into capitalist social order. Chilean labor is far more disciplined, Chileans are far more market-oriented, Chilean voters are far less receptive to transformative proposals, than they were before Pinochet.

It was really a sea-change. But because it took place in large part through 'neutral market forces' (those wreaked most of the damage; the torture and disappearances were indispensible but much smaller in scale) it doesn't get classed as totalitarian. To bourgeois eyes, it is pre-Pinochet society that looks anomalous, where Chile today is just a regular orderly society.

[RadioRaheem84]

Damn good post, ProletarianUltra!

[Die Neue Zeit]

Paradigm shifts alone do not make something totalitarian.

[MarxSchmarx]

Originally Posted by MarxSchmarx http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1835262#post1835262)
You can't go as far as "good" dictatorships but as a matter of fact I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging that there are "bad" and "worse" dictatorships Based on their ideological differences with the West? :confused:

Not many people would disagree that Nazi Germany was worse than Pinochet's Chile (although that does expose us to the murky depths of lesser evils) but I fail to see why we have to invent an arbitrary and imaginary distinction between the two. Is it not enough to say that one was bad but the other was worse?

[Edit: To answer my own question, of course its not. At least not for Western governments. The 'bad' dictatorships must be shown to be structurally different from the liberal democracies and their 'good' dictatorial allies]

Let's put aside for the moment the issue of what western governments consider bad or worse or good for their own purposes. For the moment, the fact that dictatorships vary along some measure (say, number of innocents killed or historic buildings destroyed) requires historical explanation. Some of it may be that some dictatorships arose in more populous regions - others that some dictatorships had more advanced technology. And still a third category is that some dictatorships had their state apparatus plugged into so many people's lives that they were quite efficient at seeking out victims. Whatever the cuases of these differentiation, positing structural reasons for these differences seems quite reasonable. When the confluence of structural reasons makes a dictatorship quite a bit "worse" it seems fair to call that extreme of the spectrum something - and the phrase totalitarian has stuck. Insisting these structural reasons must deal with their contrast to liberal democracy is the error, not asserting that such structural reasons for what makes a dictatorship work exist and attempting to identify them.


A problem that the likes of Fitzpatrick run into is that just because the term has been misused or exploited for ideologically driven propaganda does not mean it is categorically invalid
The problem is the opposite. The term has unfortunately entered popular language where it now means 'nasty commu-nazis'; there's nothing that we can do about that now. In that base sense (the "exploited" or "propaganda" meaning of the term) it may hold some worth. Either way its not worth worrying over


I agree.


However what has been shown is that the more formal/academic conception of totalitarianism - the theory elaborated on from Popper and Arendt to Conquest and Ulam - simply does not hold true. And this is on a very basic level - the supposed perquisites for a totalitarian society (all powerful state, monolithic ideology, atomisation of the population, etc, etc) are either lacking in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia or took very different forms in each country. Which is the fundamental criticism of this thesis - if a common set of features cannot be determined from this very small sample size, then how can there be said to be a shared political template? The model just does not stand up to historical scrutiny

Which is why I said 'unfortunately' earlier. Popular perception of these regimes is still approximately where it was during the 1950s when claims of an omnipotent state were still credible. We just know better now and its impossible to speak of 'totalitarian features' except in the broadest possible sense




While all that may be true, although one does wonder whether it has always been meant as a basically idealized philosophical concept, sort of like frictionless hockey pucks or an instantaneous market clearance price. If we accept totalitarianism in the abstract (say as a state embodying all the prerequisites you note), the question then shouldn't be so much was a particular state totalitarian or not? but rather how closely did it approximate the totalitarian society? Why is the latter any less valid a historical exercise than the question of, say, how closely a particular society approximated say "feudalism"? After all, "feudalism" in the marxist sense too is used by the bourgeoisie for propaganda, but seems to have quite a bit of historical utility even though no society was every purely "feudalist".




The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany did strive to create a "new German" and suppressed civil society considerably more, than, say, Pinochet's Chile. Whether they succeeded more than Pinochet's Chile (and it strikes me that they did) towards the goal of having their ideology pervasive is a somewhat separate question.
Well here we come back to my point - that charges of totalitarianism are invariably ideologically motivated. You don't think that Pinochet "considerably suppressed civil society" or sought the establishment of a "pervasive ideology"? He didn't have people disappeared or interned in football stadiums for the fun of it. Nor did he rewrite the constitution, ban most political rivals, and engage in a course of shock capitalism on a whim. No, there was a real political agenda that drove Pinochet's reign but, like that of Argentina's 'Dirty War' or Spain's Franco, it was not incompatible with Western (and apparently paradoxically) liberal values

So gassing Jews and installing currency controls is 'totalitarian' but murdering trade unionists by the thousand ('cutting out the Marxist cancer' was a common refrain of both Pinochet and Franco) and adopting free market policies is not. No, both regimes pursued different ideological agendas (that of the Nazis obviously more abhorrent than even Pinochet*) but both did so with the intent of eradicating the opposition and ensuring that their ideology was "pervasive". The difference lies in the content of these policies, not the means of their enforcement

*Although this is hard to quantify. Most of the Nazi atrocities came after the regime had been radicalised by the war. The figures are obviously hard to compare - due to the fact that most of Pinochet's victims simply disappeared - but its quite likely that Pinochet's Chile murdered far more of its own citizens than pre-war Nazi Germany. Food for thought

The assertion is not that Pinochet was a great guy or that he didn't entertain or even attempt to implement totalitarian visions (although as far as food for thought goes, he did eventually allow a transition to a liberal democracy, something quite unthinkable for Hitler).

Nor is it that by virtue of being a free market proponent Pinochet was some how a better dictator. It is simply that that is one area of his citizen's lives where he didn't seek state domination (at least ideologically - obviously IRL things were messier). To the extent that say Stalinist Russia attempted to establish a state planned economy, it approximated the totalitarian vision closer than Pinochet's Chile's did. That doesn't mean we shoudl consider it a necessarily a worse dictatorship on that fact alone, even though thats what the likes of Brzezinsky would want.

Relatedly, PU:


Originally Posted by MarxSchmarx http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1835262#post1835262)
The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany did strive to create a "new German" and suppressed civil society considerably more, than, say, Pinochet's Chile. Whether they succeeded more than Pinochet's Chile (and it strikes me that they did) towards the goal of having their ideology pervasive is a somewhat separate question. The transformation of Chilean society is invisible to bourgeois observers because it was a transformation into capitalist social order. Chilean labor is far more disciplined, Chileans are far more market-oriented, Chilean voters are far less receptive to transformative proposals, than they were before Pinochet.

It was really a sea-change. But because it took place in large part through 'neutral market forces' (those wreaked most of the damage; the torture and disappearances were indispensible but much smaller in scale) it doesn't get classed as totalitarian. To bourgeois eyes, it is pre-Pinochet society that looks anomalous, where Chile today is just a regular orderly society.

Again, it's only by comparison to the likes of Nazi Germany that Pinochet seems like a "not the worst dictator evar". I think somebody who fought in the German or Russian revolution on the side of the communists visiting Berlin or Moscow in 1938 would be far more impressed by the changes that occurred than a comparison of pre- and post-Pinochet comparison. It's idle speculation but it illustrates my point.

[ComradeOm]

Let's put aside for the moment the issue of what western governments consider bad or worse or good for their own purposes. For the moment, the fact that dictatorships vary along some measure (say, number of innocents killed or historic buildings destroyed) requires historical explanationYet why does there need to be a structural reason for this? We already have historical circumstances and the particulars of the dictator's political programme, plus a multitude of different factors, so why must there be an imaginary template that all particularly bad dictators must adhere to?

This is particularly nonsensical when no such structural template has been shown to exist. Which is really, as a history geek, my real bugbear here. The "structural reasons" that underpinned Nazi atrocities were very different from those that gave rise to Stalinist atrocities. This is not denying the existence of structural reasons in general but rather the notion that there is a common set that can be labelled 'totalitarian' and are inherently worse than mere 'dictatorships'. As I've said, totalitarian regimes only appear similar when compared to a third model - liberal democracy. This is the basic fallacy of the thesis and by using the same standard, ridden of ideological bias, all dictatorships can be defined as such

(Although, in saying that, there are probably few dictatorships that have exceeded the level of violence employed against its own citizens by the French Third Republic. Structural reasons?)


While all that may be true, although one does wonder whether it has always been meant as a basically idealized philosophical concept, sort of like frictionless hockey pucks or an instantaneous market clearance priceWe're really running through the typical excuses. I've seen this one many times before :)

The answer is no. You can of course consider totalitarianism as a sort of idealised state (akin to Utopia or Hobbe's Leviathan); no one can stop you doing that. This is not, however, the sense in which the term has ever really been used. From Rühle and Arendt onwards totalitarianism has been viewed as a very real political construct, embodied in the 'new' states of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. It was not an abstract ideal but a study (later enshrined in countless historical works) as to the functioning of the state in these nations. So not an "idealized philosophical concept"

Which is why the thesis is so open to historical critique - we now know that these societies simply did not function in the way people thought they did sixty years ago


Why is the latter any less valid a historical exercise than the question of, say, how closely a particular society approximated say "feudalism"? After all, "feudalism" in the marxist sense too is used by the bourgeoisie for propaganda, but seems to have quite a bit of historical utility even though no society was every purely "feudalist"Because with "feudalism" we are not describing a concrete set of political structures or policies but rather a mode of production. That is, the economic basis of society rather than the political manifestation of this


Nor is it that by virtue of being a free market proponent Pinochet was some how a better dictator. It is simply that that is one area of his citizen's lives where he didn't seek state domination (at least ideologically - obviously IRL things were messier)PU's post summed this up very nicely. That the Stalinist conception of the ideal economy differed from that pursued by Pinochet should not disguise the fact that both employed mass violence, and other coercive measures, to achieve this. It was simply less visible in Chile because autarky (or state planning) was never on the agenda. This in turn being a result of the different ideological and material conditions of these two regimes

And, of course, I can also point out many fundamental differences between the Nazi and Stalinist economic policies. If it is those of the latter that are considered as 'standard totalitarian' then the Nazi economy was not totalitarian

[MarxSchmarx]

Well this is an interesting discussion.




Let's put aside for the moment the issue of what western governments consider bad or worse or good for their own purposes. For the moment, the fact that dictatorships vary along some measure (say, number of innocents killed or historic buildings destroyed) requires historical explanation Yet why does there need to be a structural reason for this?
...
totalitarian regimes only appear similar when compared to a third model - liberal democracy. This is the basic fallacy of the thesis and by using the same standard, ridden of ideological bias, all dictatorships can be defined as such
When there are repeated patterns/phenomena or parallels in two otherwise distinct societies, it strikes me as rather reasonable to posit that there is a common cause (possibly ideological) for the ability of a dictatorship to implement policies that gave rise to those patterns. Now, one could argue about whether a given analogy/parallel between say Nazi Germany and Stalinist is justified, but IF there are such parallels which hold up to historical analysis, and if such parallels are unique to these societies in their degree of implementation, then it seems reasonable in going a further step and grouping them - the term used heretofore is "totalitarian". "Totalitarianism", or the drive to implement such a vision, is just one such account, of course, but appealing to the particulars in every case is a rather extreme solution to an admittedly confused mode of analysis.


From Rühle and Arendt onwards totalitarianism has been viewed as a very real political construct, embodied in the 'new' states of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. It was not an abstract ideal but a study (later enshrined in countless historical works) as to the functioning of the state in these nations.

If totalitarianism is simply equated a description of how a real existing state functions, then you are setting an impossible mark because no theoretical framework that attempts to explain politics could hope to be so all-encompassing as to account for the entirety of directives issued by multiple dictatorships. Totalitarianism is discussed as if it were a historically existing phenomenon, but at the end of the day it is still a model for how a society works, which necessarily entails considerable idealization.



Why is the latter any less valid a historical exercise than the question of, say, how closely a particular society approximated say "feudalism"? After all, "feudalism" in the marxist sense too is used by the bourgeoisie for propaganda, but seems to have quite a bit of historical utility even though no society was every purely "feudalist" Because with "feudalism" we are not describing a concrete set of political structures or policies but rather a mode of production. That is, the economic basis of society rather than the political manifestation of thisIf the distinction is just that deals with economic organization rather political structures or policies, why then should historically imperfect categorization permitted in the former and not in the latter?


Nor is it that by virtue of being a free market proponent Pinochet was some how a better dictator. It is simply that that is one area of his citizen's lives where he didn't seek state domination (at least ideologically - obviously IRL things were messier)That the Stalinist conception of the ideal economy differed from that pursued by Pinochet should not disguise the fact that both employed mass violence, and other coercive measures, to achieve this. The issue isn't whether state coercion was used to achieve an economic vision. After all, this happens in liberal democracies too. The issue is whether state domination of the economic affairs of its citizenry was the objective of state policy and the state employed dictatorial means pursued to attain that objective.

[ComradeOm]

When there are repeated patterns/phenomena or parallels in two otherwise distinct societies, it strikes me as rather reasonable to posit that there is a common cause (possibly ideological) for the ability of a dictatorship to implement policies that gave rise to those patterns. Now, one could argue about whether a given analogy/parallel between say Nazi Germany and Stalinist is justified, but IF there are such parallels which hold up to historical analysis, and if such parallels are unique to these societies in their degree of implementation, then it seems reasonable in going a further step and grouping them - the term used heretofore is "totalitarian"Which brings us back to the core of the matter - there are not shared characteristics that can divined from a study of both societies. The parallels that you hint at just do not exist. At least not outside the broadest possible senses. That is, they were both dictatorships, both had a ruling party, etc, but these are shared by a multitude of dictatorships (including many that exist today) and even then break down when examined in more detail. The function, and relation with the state, of the NSDAP and CPSU was very different in both societies, for example

The identification of common 'totalitatian' traits rests on two major errors that I've already noted - the use of liberal democracy as a false norm, and an outdated perception of the workings of both regimes. To take the latter, Arendt cannot be faulted for assuming, in the 1940s, that the Nazi state (to say nothing of its Soviet counterpart) was a monolithic beast driven solely by a simple ideology, but no modern historian of the Reich would subscribe to that thesis. Which is merely one example of the great distance (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1405411&postcount=40) between what a totalitarian state should be and the actual historical reality

I maintain that if an alien visited Earth today and, lacking in the above two misconceptions, he would be entirely unable to identify a coherent set of structural parallels between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. And if these are lacking, if the differences between these two regimes are too great to be accommodated by anything but the vaguest of formulations, then how can there be said to be a archetype totalitarian state of a collection of identifiable totalitarian traits?


If totalitarianism is simply equated a description of how a real existing state functions, then you are setting an impossible mark because no theoretical framework that attempts to explain politics could hope to be so all-encompassing as to account for the entirety of directives issued by multiple dictatorships. Totalitarianism is discussed as if it were a historically existing phenomenon, but at the end of the day it is still a model for how a society works, which necessarily entails considerable idealizationThe answer is as I've stated above. Proponents of the thesis minimise the practical differences between the two subjects through either historical ignorance (increasing unsustainable) and the use hidden use of of a third factor in the equation - liberal democracy. The latter in particular stresses the similarities between the two regimes by presenting a model that is equally different from both. Thus red is different from blue but when compared to green they can both be said to be 'non-green'

[Edit: Hence real differences between the two are minimised, and similarities exaggerated, in order to fit in with the idealised model. The latter being supposedly based on the similarities. No wonder the term has no real academic worth]


If the distinction is just that deals with economic organization rather political structures or policies, why then should historically imperfect categorization permitted in the former and not in the latter?Because the mode of production is not dependent on the specifics of the political superstructure. For example, there are real differences in the political structures of the French and US states but the underlying mode of production is still recognisably capitalism. Ditto with France and China - major political differences, which bleeds over into the economic sphere, but there's no question that both are capitalist economies. So 'capitalism' is not a label that is used to describe exact political or economic configurations but rather the underlying mode of production - how wealth is generated


The issue is whether state domination of the economic affairs of its citizenry was the objective of state policy and the state employed dictatorial means pursued to attain that objective.This is a very basic assumption in totalitarianism - that is, the state sought and exercised 'total domination' over its subjects. Here I'm at a disadvantage because on a very basic level this is simply not an analysis that I'm comfortable with. I've spent too long using Marxist class analysis to subscribe to a theory that is exceptionally un-Marxist. The idea that the state is some sort of leviathan hovering over society and subjecting it to its will is not something I agree with. Arendt got around this by arguing that these states emerged after society had been 'atomised' (ie, class bonds shattered) but I disagree. Particularly after studying these societies, more so the USSR obviously, when it becomes clear that the states did indeed have a class basis, that class bonds did survive, and that the control exercised by the state (aside from typically being grossly exaggerated) rested on traditional structures and be both cajoling and coercive

Of course its at the last point that it really becomes hard to talk about Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia in the same paragraph as they really did interact with their citizens in very different ways

But I'm curious as to what you mean by "state domination of the economic affairs of its citizenry". Are you equating totalitarianism with a specific set of economic policies?

[x359594]

I believe that Mussolini coined the expression "totalitarian" to describe the kind of fascism he wanted to implement in Italy. At various times he implied that he had accomplished his goal or that it was still in process.

It seems to me that using the term "totalitarian" is only meaningful when discussing the politics of fascist Italy and with the definition that Mussolini gave it. Ahistorical usage of the word such as employed by bourgeois commentators (who changed its meaning to suit their arguments) does not explain anything about the societies to which they apply it; rather, it tells us more about bourgeois ideology, as several posters here have indicatad.

Of course,

[RadioRaheem84]

This thread has become really interesting! Thanks for all responses, guys!

[blake 3:17]

To be fair to Arendt, the definition is 60 years old and really only described modern nation-states 25 years old (at that time).

Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia represent fairly extreme poles. Would it make sense to place each in relation to Italian fascism or Peronism? Arendt's defintions might make sense there.

There are partial democracies like Colombia, Iran, and Israel which embrace elements of fascism and have some totalitarian aims but don't fit Arendt's definition.

[ComradeOm]

I believe that Mussolini coined the expression "totalitarian" to describe the kind of fascism he wanted to implement in Italy. At various times he implied that he had accomplished his goal or that it was still in process.Ironically Mussolini is often ignored in these discussions (including academia) because there is very little about Fascist Italy that fits later definitions of totalitarianism :lol:


To be fair to Arendt, the definition is 60 years old and really only described modern nation-states 25 years old (at that time)Oh I'm not blaming or dismissing Arendt's work. Its pretty interesting stuff and she can't be blamed for not having the knowledge that we do today. Almost every intellectual that wrote about these societies around the same period - Orwell being the other obvious example - did so from the outside and had no reason to doubt the imposing façade presented by both regimes

Obviously this is no longer an excuse. Since the 1960s and 70s (Germany) and the 1980s and 90s (Russia) we now know far more about the internal workings of these societies


Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia represent fairly extreme polesExtreme when compared to what? This is the point that I've been trying to make above, totalitarianism fails to present an abstract/ideal model of a state because it cannot stand in isolation, cannot be discussed without reference to the norms of liberal democracy. When we remove the latter, and look only at the structures of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia (without reference to the West) we see that they have little in common

[MarxSchmarx]

Gah I meant to respond during my lunch hour last week but here goes.



When there are repeated patterns/phenomena or parallels in two otherwise distinct societies, it strikes me as rather reasonable to posit that there is a common cause (possibly ideological) for the ability of a dictatorship to implement policies that gave rise to those patterns. Now, one could argue about whether a given analogy/parallel between say Nazi Germany and Stalinist is justified, but IF there are such parallels which hold up to historical analysis, and if such parallels are unique to these societies in their degree of implementation, then it seems reasonable in going a further step and grouping them - the term used heretofore is "totalitarian" Which brings us back to the core of the matter - there are not shared characteristics that can divined from a study of both societies. The parallels that you hint at just do not exist. At least not outside the broadest possible senses. That is, they were both dictatorships, both had a ruling party, etc, but these are shared by a multitude of dictatorships (including many that exist today) and even then break down when examined in more detail. The function, and relation with the state, of the NSDAP and CPSU was very different in both societies, for example

The identification of common 'totalitatian' traits rests on two major errors that I've already noted - the use of liberal democracy as a false norm, and an outdated perception of the workings of both regimes. To take the latter, Arendt cannot be faulted for assuming, in the 1940s, that the Nazi state (to say nothing of its Soviet counterpart) was a monolithic beast driven solely by a simple ideology, but no modern historian of the Reich would subscribe to that thesis. Which is merely one example of the great distance between what a totalitarian state should be and the actual historical reality


Why does liberal democracy have to be the norm? As x359594 notes, the term likely originated in fascist Italy (credit for coining it apparently goes to a critic of Mussolini by the name of Amendola). And indeed Mussolini, along with the Nazis and a lesser extent the stalinists, embraced the term. As apparently did Trotsky. So it wasn't just defenders of liberal democracies that embraced the concept.

Then the issue boils down to merely a comparison of the lists of similarities and differences. Delineating them might be an interesting exercise. However, it's fruitfulness seems limited as I doubt we will agree on many points, as the similarities strike me as quite compelling, and you get a different impression.

The only way to successfully resolve this is to follow a quantitative classification scheme adopted in other fields. Only then can one meaningfully argue that the commie nozis were qualitatively distinct from other dictatorships. But in the interim, since (1) the phrase remains an idealized type, or (2) short hand for certain 20th century dictatorships, and (3) it appears to have struck some intuitive sensibility even among people opposed to liberal democracy, it remains a convenient and useful term in the broader theoretical conversation.

[ComradeOm]

Why does liberal democracy have to be the norm? As x359594 notes, the term likely originated in fascist Italy (credit for coining it apparently goes to a critic of Mussolini by the name of Amendola). And indeed Mussolini, along with the Nazis and a lesser extent the stalinists, embraced the term. As apparently did Trotsky. So it wasn't just defenders of liberal democracies that embraced the conceptWhy is liberal democracy the norm? Because it always has been. Simple as. The difference with the early Italian usage of the term (which does differ from later theses) was that the contrast was both explicitly made and considered positive. The likes of Gentile were not shy about offering the new 'totalitarian' society as an (inevitable) alternative to the supposedly decadent and collapsing liberal order. Even here, before the conservative historians or liberal philosophers got their hands on the thesis, it was essentially a tool for distinguishing new regimes from (or elevating above, according to the Italians) the traditional liberal order. Obviously this is an aesthetic that had broad appeal at the time

No, it was in the post-war environment that there was a real, and legitimate, attempt to analyse the emergence and common features of these no-longer-new societies. This is what is referred to 'totalitarianism' today and it differs from the the pre-war assessment in that it is no longer positive (or, in Arendt's case, any judgement at all) and that the comparisons are nominally being drawn not between fascist and liberal societies but between fascist and Stalinist regimes. A false comparison, as I've noted above


Then the issue boils down to merely a comparison of the lists of similarities and differences. Delineating them might be an interesting exercise. However, it's fruitfulness seems limited as I doubt we will agree on many points, as the similarities strike me as quite compelling, and you get a different impression.Again, I stress that these "similarities" are simply lacking and do not stand up to historical research. I made a number of in-depth posts in the threads that I linked to earlier in which I demonstrate that in a number of key areas (such as the role of the state and party, and the employment of mass violence against its citizenship) the supposedly common policies/structures/aims/whatever are just not there. Push beyond the stereotypical image of the monolithic Nazi/Stalinist state and you find that there was no such thing

So if you want to list similarities then go ahead. Its an exercise that I've already conducted in past threads


...it remains a convenient and useful term in the broader theoretical conversation.This (http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm) is what the term means in "broader theoretical conversation"

[MarxSchmarx]

Why does liberal democracy have to be the norm? As x359594 notes, the term likely originated in fascist Italy (credit for coining it apparently goes to a critic of Mussolini by the name of Amendola). And indeed Mussolini, along with the Nazis and a lesser extent the stalinists, embraced the term. As apparently did Trotsky. So it wasn't just defenders of liberal democracies that embraced the concept Why is liberal democracy the norm? Because it always has been. Simple as. The difference with the early Italian usage of the term (which does differ from later theses) was that the contrast was both explicitly made and considered positive. The likes of Gentile were not shy about offering the new 'totalitarian' society as an (inevitable) alternative to the supposedly decadent and collapsing liberal order. Even here, before the conservative historians or liberal philosophers got their hands on the thesis, it was essentially a tool for distinguishing new regimes from (or elevating above, according to the Italians) the traditional liberal order. Obviously this is an aesthetic that had broad appeal at the time

The point that critics of totalitarian theory make, though, is that the totalitarianism-liberal democracy spectrum operates on a normative level. You would have to argue not only that they were contrasting totalitarianism against liberal democracy, but that in fact people so doing took liberal democracy to somehow be "the natural order of things". Otherwise why make such a fuss about this, or, for that matter, consider totalitarianism somehow "bad"?



No, it was in the post-war environment that there was a real, and legitimate, attempt to analyse the emergence and common features of these no-longer-new societies. This is what is referred to 'totalitarianism' today and it differs from the the pre-war assessment in that it is no longer positive (or, in Arendt's case, any judgement at all) and that the comparisons are nominally being drawn not between fascist and liberal societies but between fascist and Stalinist regimes. A false comparison, as I've noted above

As a matter of historical fact the insistance that discourse about totalitarianism was confined to a "postwar enviroment" is somewhat dubious. Hitler, for example, saw many commonalities with his vision for the 1000 yr Reich in Stalinist Russia. Of course he was thinking about after the Soviet Union was conquered, but to call that a "post-war environment" is a stretch. Further, if that is the conception of totalitarianism you insist on working with, then it is inevitably tied up with cold war politics, as are just about every other political idea advanced since Nagasaki. While such an environment may acount for the idea's adoption and acceptance in the west, it does not have a monopoly on the pedigree.



Then the issue boils down to merely a comparison of the lists of similarities and differences. Delineating them might be an interesting exercise. However, it's fruitfulness seems limited as I doubt we will agree on many points, as the similarities strike me as quite compelling, and you get a different impression.
Again, I stress that these "similarities" are simply lacking and do not stand up to historical research. I made a number of in-depth posts in the threads that I linked to earlier in which I demonstrate that in a number of key areas (such as the role of the state and party, and the employment of mass violence against its citizenship) the supposedly common policies/structures/aims/whatever are just not there. Push beyond the stereotypical image of the monolithic Nazi/Stalinist state and you find that there was no such thing

So if you want to list similarities then go ahead. Its an exercise that I've already conducted in past threads


Well, another reason not to draw this out here. I haven't gotten around to wading through the other threads. I may do so when I have a bit more time, but again I don't see it as particularly fruitful.



...it remains a convenient and useful term in the broader theoretical conversation. This (http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm) is what the term means in "broader theoretical conversation
It's worth pointing out that Ruhle doesn't bother to define totalitarianism in that article.

[Apoi_Viitor]

In fact, it seems to me that the very concept of totalitarianism is completely and utterly demolished by Foucault's work on the character and functioning of power in modern societies. Thus, not only is it dubious and faulty from the perspective of the revolutionary left, but it is also faulty in its basic assumptions (the character of power) as demonstrated by Foucault's historical analysis.

Can someone post a link to this?

However, I'm going to take the minority opinion on this, and say that the definition of "totalitarian" is important. But, I don't see it as a stark contrast to modern liberal democracies, rather I see it as a description of it. Substitute the phrase "capitalist class" for dictator in Arendt's definition, and it'll be more-or-less an accurate description of any modern liberal democracy. Once you get past the deliberately facetious word-play, it's quite obvious that America is just as "authoritarian" as Cuba.

[ComradeOm]

The point that critics of totalitarian theory make, though, is that the totalitarianism-liberal democracy spectrum operates on a normative level. You would have to argue not only that they were contrasting totalitarianism against liberal democracy, but that in fact people so doing took liberal democracy to somehow be "the natural order of things". Otherwise why make such a fuss about this, or, for that matter, consider totalitarianism somehow "bad"?Well yes, that's the basic assumption that lies behind the liberal analysis. Hence my repeated referenced to the "norm" of liberal democracy. Compare with the related Sonderweg interpretation of history, which also deals heavily with Germany and Russia, that quite explicitly posits that the development of France and Britain represents a 'normal' course from which other nations 'deviated'

All of which is a criticism pretty implicit in my posts above


As a matter of historical fact the insistance that discourse about totalitarianism was confined to a "postwar enviroment" is somewhat dubious. Hitler, for example, saw many commonalities with his vision for the 1000 yr Reich in Stalinist Russia. Of course he was thinking about after the Soviet Union was conquered, but to call that a "post-war environment" is a stretch. Further, if that is the conception of totalitarianism you insist on working with, then it is inevitably tied up with cold war politics, as are just about every other political idea advanced since Nagasaki. While such an environment may acount for the idea's adoption and acceptance in the west, it does not have a monopoly on the pedigreeAnd what, pray tell, was Hitler's conception of totalitarianism? In which works did he elaborate it? How did this influence his government's policies?

The problem is of course that totalitarianism as used by most Nazis and Fascists was nothing but a propaganda tool. It was useful to describe these 'new' societies and differentiate them from the established order. As with many facets of fascist ideology (such as the Nationale Erhebung) it was largely a myth and a propaganda slogan intended to present these regimes, particular in the case of Mussolini, as more dynamic and radical than they actually were. Totalitarianism was thus first a fascist buzzword that later passed into general use

Academics in the post-war period simply picked up on this and sought to enrich it through deepening its theoretical and historical aspects. It moved from being a fascist propaganda tool to being a liberal academic theoretical framework... and later a liberal propaganda tool


It's worth pointing out that Ruhle doesn't bother to define totalitarianism in that article.Of course he doesn't. That's the point - when you strip totalitarianism of its theoretical content and insist on using it without any analysis behind it, it merely becomes another stick to beat the left with; another slur in the anti-communist political armoury


Well, another reason not to draw this out here. I haven't gotten around to wading through the other threads. I may do so when I have a bit more time, but again I don't see it as particularly fruitful.
Not fruitful? In which case I ask that you desist from asserting that there were similarities between the regimes in question. At least not until you're willing to engage in that conversation

[o well this is ok I guess]

In fact, it seems to me that the very concept of totalitarianism is completely and utterly demolished by Foucault's work on the character and functioning of power in modern societies. Thus, not only is it dubious and faulty from the perspective of the revolutionary left, but it is also faulty in its basic assumptions (the character of power) as demonstrated by Foucault's historical analysis. I've only started with Foucault, so I'm probably wrong, but I'm not getting the idea that he thinks the concept of totalitarianism is necessarily an impossibility.

Could you perhaps explain a little further, so I may see where I may have went wrong?