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

Manjur Karim piashkarim at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 29 16:26:27 PST 2005


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 ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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