Juan Linz's Definition of Totalitarianism PDF

I shall consider a system totalitarian when the following characteristics apply: 1. There is a monistic but not monolithic center of power, and whatever pluralism of institutions or groups exists derives its legitimacy from that center, is largely mediated by it, and is mostly a polit...

I shall consider a system totalitarian when the following characteristics apply: 1. There is a monistic but not monolithic center of power, and whatever pluralism of institutions or groups exists derives its legitimacy from that center, is largely mediated by it, and is mostly a political creation rather than an outgrowth of the dynamics of the preexisting society. 2. There is an exclusive, autonomous, and more or less intellectually elaborate ideology with which the ruling group or leader, and the party serving. the leaders, identify and which they use as a basis for policies or manipulate to legitimize them. The ideology has some boundaries beyond which lies heterodoxy that does not remain unsanctioned. The ideology goes beyond a particular program or definition of the boundaries of legitimate political action to provide, presumably, some ultimate meaning, sense of historical purpose, and interpretation of social reality. 3. Citizen participation in and active mobilization for political and collective social tasks are encouraged, demanded, rewarded, and channeled through a single party and many monopolistic secondary groups. Passive obedience and apathy, retreat into the role of "parochials" and "subjects," characteristic of many authoritarian regimes, are considered undesirable by the rulers. This third characteristic brings a totalitarian society closer to the ideal and even the reality of most democracies and basically differentiates it from most "nontotalitarian nondemocratic systems." It is this participation and the sense of participation that democratic observers of totalitarian systems often find so admirable and that make them think that they are faced with a democracy, even a more perfect democracy than one in which citizens get involved in public issues only or mainly at election time. However, the basic difference between participation in a mobilizational regime and in a democracy is that, in the former, in each realm of life for each purpose there is only one possible channel for participation and the overall purpose and direction is set by one center, which defines the legitimate goals of those organizations and ultimately controls them. It is the constant feedback between the dominant, more or less monistic center of decision making, undergirded by the ideological commitments that guide it or are used or manipulated by it, and these processes of participation for those ideological purposes within those controlled organizations that characterizes a totalitarian system. It should be possible to derive other characteristics frequently stressed in describing totalitarian systems from the three we just sketched, and we shall do so in discussing in more detail some of the main scholarly contributions to the study of specific totalitarian systems. Here we might give a few basic examples. The tense relationship between intellectuals and artists and the political authorities, in addition to being the result of the personal idiosyncrasies of rulers like Hitler and Stalin, is certainly the result of the emphasis on an ideology and the exclusion by the commitment to it of other systems of ideas or the fear of the questioning of the values implicit in the ideology, particularly the collective and public goals versus individual and private ones. Privatized, inner-oriented man is a latent threat, and certainly many forms of aesthetic expression search for that orientation. The same is true for the exacerbation of the normal conflicts between church and state to conflicts between religion and politics. The importance of ideology also has positive aspects, in the sense of making education a highly valued activity, making selective cultural efforts and their mass diffusion highly desirable. This is in contrast to most traditional autocracies, with the exception of religious indoctrination in religious autocracies and scientific and technological education in secular autocracies. Propaganda, education, training of cadres, intellectual elaboration of the ideology, scholarship inspired by the ideology, rewards for intellectuals identified with the system are more likely to be important in totalitarian than in other nondemocratic systems. If we ignore the limited content of that effort, the limitations or denial of freedom, we find here a certain convergence with democratic systems, in which the mass participation in political life requires also mass education and mass communications and assigns to intellectuals an important, even when not always welcome, role. The concentration of power in the leader and his collaborators or a distinct group of powerholders, formed by their joint participation in the struggle to gain power and create the regime, their socialization in the political organizations, or their co-optation from other sectors (keeping in mind criteria of loyalty and/or identification with the ideology), necessarily limits the autonomy of other organizations like industrial enterprises, professional groups, the armed forces, the intellectuals, and so on. The commitment to ideology, the desire for monopolistic control, and the fear of losing power certainly explain the propensity toward coercive methods in such systems and the likelihood for continuing terror. Therefore, terror, particularly within the elite rather than against opponents or even potential opponents to the system, distinguishes totalitarian systems from other nondemocratic systems. The size of the society, stressed by Hannah Arendt, and the degree of modernization in terms of technology linked with industrialization, stressed by other scholars, are not as important as ideological zeal in explaining the drive for positive commitment rather than apathy of subjects or just external conformity of bureaucrats. The nature and role of the single party is obviously the most important variable when we come to analyze in behavioral terms the impact of totalitarian systems on different societies. The importance assigned to the party organization, the specialized political organizations emerging from the party, and the mass organizations linked with it account for many of the basic characteristics of such systems. Foremost, their capacity to penetrate the society, to be present and influential in many institutional realms, to mobilize people for large-scale tasks on a voluntary or pseudo voluntary basis rather than just for material incentives and rewards allows such systems to carry out important changes with limited resources and therefore to serve as instruments for certain types of economic and social development. It also gives them a certain democratic character, in the sense of offering to those willing to participate (accepting the basic goals of the leadership rather than advancing alternative goals) a chance for active participation and a sense of involvement. Despite the bureaucratic character of the state and of many organizations and even the party, the mass membership in the party and in related sponsored organizations can give meaning, purpose, and a sense of participation to many citizens. In this respect, totalitarian systems are very different from many other nondemocratic systems authoritarian regimes-in which the rulers rely fundamentally on a staff of bureaucrats, experts, and policemen, distinct and separate from the rest of the people, who have little or no chance to feel as active participants in the society and polity beyond their personal life and their work. The party organization and the many minor leadership positions in it give many people a chance to exercise some share in power, sometimes over people who in other hierarchies of the society would be their superiors.