[lbo-talk] "Authoritarian" -- define, please

[Manjur Karim]

Is it not true that Victor Serge was one of the first, if not the first, who used the term "totalitarianism" to refer to Stalinism?  It is curious how an Anarcho-Marxist critical term came to attain a whole different life of its own. Talk about words as "floating signifiers." 
Manjur

 

Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Chip Berlet wrote:


> There are certainly disputes over the terms "authoritarian" and 
> "totalitarian," but in European academic writing the terms are used 
> intelligently by some leftist scholars. In the U.S. the terms were 
> hijacked by anticommunist ideologues like Jeane J. Kirkpatrick.

Which led to my favorite definitions, in a four panel Auth cartoon from the 
early 1980s. Jean Kirkpatrick is giving a lecture:

1) In totalitarian countries . .

2) The government tortures, kills and suppresses unions and the press.

3) Whereas in authoritarian countries . .

4) These functions are left to the private sector.

Michael
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