I dispute the definition of "totalitarianism" provided below as being the same as Kirkpatrick's "totalitarian theory." The discussion of Orwell was great. Kirkpatrick misrepresented Arendt's work. The basic concept of totalitarianism should not be discarded because of these and other abuses.
According to Arendt, Hitler's Nazi government and Stalin's communist government were totalitarian, but she rejected the claim that all fascist or communist governments or movements achieved totalitarian status. At the same time, Sagan argues that what he calls the "paranoidia" of greed and domination exemplified by "fascist and totalitarian regimes of this century" is present in less extreme forms in many societies. "The normal, expectable expressions--imperialism, racism, sexism, aggressive warfare--are compatible with the democratic societies that have existed so far," (1973:363).
Arendt discusses how totalitarian movements are built around a central fiction of a powerful conspiracy, (in the case of the Nazis, a conspiracy of Jews that planned to dominate the world) that requires a secretive counter-conspiracy be organized. Totalitarian groups organize the counter-conspiracy in a hierarchical manner that mimics the levels of membership and rituals of social and religious secret societies.
In recent years there has been a revisionist interpretation of Arendt's work, linking nazism and communism as two sides of the same political coin, or claiming that all communist or Marxist movements are totalitarian, or that only Nazi and communist ideologies can become totalitarian.
Arendt specifically repudiates this simplistic interpretation of her work when she writes "...ideologies of the nineteenth century are not in themselves totalitarian," and that although fascism and communism became "the decisive ideologies of the twentieth century they were not, in principle, any 'more totalitarian' than others." According to Arendt, the ideological victory of fascism and communism over other twentieth century belief structures was "decided before the totalitarian movements took hold of precisely these ideologies" as a vehicle for seizing and holding state power.
It was the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who is credited with concocting the thesis that it is morally defensible to work in Central and South America with right-wing "authoritarians" because they can be pushed toward democratic reform, but it is never proper to work with left-wing "totalitarians" because of their consolidated and inflexible political framework.
Totalitarian movements historically have shared a number of similarities:
*** A methodological link between the psychological and the political which forms both a theoretical world-view and a justification for indoctrinating members in an effort to create a new consciousness through a unique and exclusive technique understood only by the group's leaders.
*** Psychologically coercive techniques to manipulate members' views and actions.
*** Attempts to establish hegemonic relationships with other similar political groups, and, failing that, attempts to undermine the group and establish parallel organizations.
*** Virulent and unprincipled attacks on critics, including insults, agent-baiting, threats by attorneys and defamation lawsuits.
*** Re-writing of the group's political and organizational history to meet current needs.
*** A closed and covert hierarchical internal structure that is not necessarily congruent with the public organizational structure.
*** Differentiation between internal in-group and external out-group reality, use of propaganda, and implementation of a "secret-society" style.
-Chip "more books" Berlet
Arendt, Hannah. (1973 [1951]) The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Sagan, Eli. (1991) The Honey and the Hemlock: Democracy and Paranoia in Ancient Athens and Modern America. New York: Basic Books.
----- Original Message ----- From: "kelley" <kwalker2 at gte.net> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 7:09 AM Subject: Totalitarianism (was: "Clerical fascism")
> At 01:55 AM 10/16/01 -0700, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> >You could switch to clerical or theocratic
> >totalitarianism, or totalitarian fundamentalism-
>
>
> [PEN-L:7548] totalitarianism
> by Jim Devine
> 02 June 1999 16:19 UTC
> http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/jun99/msg00050.html
> I'm not going to get into a debate in which I disagree with both sides
> (Brad vs. Charles & Jim C.)
>
> However, I have a little note on the word "totalitarianism."
>
> The word was used a lot, with most of its usage being loose meaning "an
> authoritarian government I don't like." This looseness became Official
> Policy with Jeanne Kirkpatrick's view that "We" (the US government under
> Reagan) oppose totalitarianism (authoritarian governments We don't like)
> but support authoritarianism (authoritarian governments We like) because
> they are necessary evils in the battle against ... you guessed it,
> totalitarianism. It was an updated version of FDR's reference to Somoza as
> "our SOB" because he fought communism, radical nationalism, workers,
> peasants, and democracy, all obstacles to US foreign policy goals, i.e.,
> making the world safe for US business. It was also simply a rhetorical
> expression of what had been standard Cold War policy all along, long before
> Reagan.
>
> The "totalitarianism theory" is different, even though Kirkpatrick probably
> linked her usage and that theory in her mind. It refers to a specific
> theory of the nature and dynamics of USSR-type societies, as developed by
> people like Hannah Arendt and other leftish intellectuals who were often
> ex-Communists or ex-Trotskyists. (James Burnham, who went from being a
> comrade of Trotsky to the editorial pages of NATIONAL REVIEW contributed a
> lot.)
>
> I think the best expression of the theory is Orwell's novel _1984_ (though
> most people forget or never knew that the book is not just a response to
> Stalin's Russian, Hitler's Germany, but is also responding to the war
> hysteria in England during WW2 and also to the beginnings of McCarthyism in
> the devastation of postwar England).
>
> The thing about totalitarianism in _1984_ is that the authoritarianism is
> total with a capital "T." Big Brother rules Oceania _completely_, so that
> people don't even know exactly what year it is and people assume that the
> new enemy of Oceania (Eastasia) is identical to the old enemy (Eurasia).
> (The switch is reminiscent of attitudes in the USSR (and maybe Germany)
> after the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed; a similar switch occured when the
> USSR suddenly became the "West's" Enemy at the end of WW2, after being an
> ally against Nazi Germany, while Nazis were brought into help run the new
> West Germany.) There is no civil society, with the working class ("proles")
> marginalized and the middle class totally co-opted. All institutions serve
> Big Brother and the Party of Ingsoc. (The members of Ingsoc's version of
> the Boy Scouts spy on their parents, turning them into the Thought Police,
> just like the DEA wants kids to do concerning their parents' drug use.)
>
> Independent thought is impossible for any length of time, so that Winston
> Smith eventually learned to love Big Brother (just as Orwell himself, sick,
> broken, and in love, learned to love Big Brother and finked at the end of
> his life). The only opposition comes from Immanuel Goldstein (based on
> Trotsky) who seems to be a fiction thought up by the Thought Police to lure
> potential dissidents to stick their necks out so they can enjoy thought
> reform. Individual acts of opposition -- like Julia's wrapping of her
> "anti-sex league" sash tightly around her waist to emphasize her figure --
> seem to do nothing but reinforce the system.
>
> The key part of _1984_ and the totalitarianism theory is that there are _no
> internal contradictions_ in the system. There's No Way Out, so that the
> system will last forever. Even the competition (fighting over the division
> and redivision of what later called the Third World) from the other
> totalitarian states (Eastasia & Eurasia) simply reinforces the system's
> stability, since the Permanent War Economy not only deals with the economic
> contradictions of overproduction (described in the "Theory of Oligarchical
> Collectivism," the interesting book within the book, written by
> "Goldstein," which is reminiscent of Burnham's book, which highly
> influenced Orwell) but also provides the ideology that legitimates the
> system and the permanent generalized poverty, while justifying the
> suppression of dissidents and dissident ideologies. (This seems
> preminiscent of the role that the Cold war economy played in the US, though
> it encouraged prosperity until 1970 or so.)
>
> The theory says that totalitarianism will last forever. The Cold Warriors
> modified the theory to indicate that the only Way Out was for the "West" to
> oppose totalitarianism in every possible way, through containment, spying,
> subversion, military competition, alliance with the worst thugs, etc. (But
> Orwell might have been right: the Cold War and its "imperialist
> encirclement" of the USSR and its allies and puppets probably helped to
> keep the USSR going for a few years.)
>
> In the totalitarianism theory, the end of the USSR was not supposed to
> arise due to internal causes, like worker rebellion in Poland, by struggles
> for national independence as in Afghanistan, or the effort by sections of
> the Soviet Communist Party to benefit from "privatization." But it sure
> seems to have worked that way.
>
> So the totalitarianism theory, along with Stalinism, belongs in the
> waste-basket of history, not only because it was a crude ideology
> justifying the Cold War but also because it is incoherent as a theory and
> doesn't fit the empirical facts. All societies with a ruling class
> (including bureaucratic socialism and capitalism) have contradictions, so
> that there are internal reasons to reject their immortality.
>
> Jim Devine jdevine at lmumail.lmu.edu &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
> Bombing DESTROYS human rights. Ground troops make things worse. US/NATO out
> of Serbia!
>
>
>