Lecture 1-2 On the Concept of Totalitarianism PDF

Lecture 1 On the concept of totalitarianism The first problem I would like to deal with is the historical birth of the concept of totalitarianism and its polysemous use. Can we consider the category of totalitarianism really a scientific one? This is a problem of primary impo...

Lecture 1 On the concept of totalitarianism The first problem I would like to deal with is the historical birth of the concept of totalitarianism and its polysemous use. Can we consider the category of totalitarianism really a scientific one? This is a problem of primary importance, which can question the whole legitimacy of the subject of this course. We have to allow first of all that the concept of totalitarianism is far from being universally recognized by the community of scholars. Many categories and concepts in human sciences are certainly controversial, but this is particularly true in this case. There are several reasons for this disagreement, but if we want to find a common ground among scholars who criticize this concept, we should say that, from this point of view, the category of totalitarianism is not able to explain events that instead it claims to clarify. In particular, it is not able to highlight differences between Nazism and Communism. The concept of totalitarianism – so critics argue – is too general, is ambiguous, is not capable of showing huge diversities between regimes established on the principle of equality of man, and regimes based on opposite values, like inequality, hierarchy, etc. Most critics perhaps are Marxist scholars. This is a very interesting point, because one of the first to use the word totalitarianism in a positive meaning was the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci. In his Prison notebook, Gramsci wrote that fascism is not really totalitarian. Fascism is a false totalitarianism, because the only totalitarian ideology is Marxism. We can also observe that politicians and thinkers who belong to ‘heretical’ Marxism – above all Russians who escaped from Bolshevik persecutions in Russia – utilized the word totalitarianism and the adjective totalitarian to refer to the ideology of Lenin, Trockij and Stalin. For example, the Mensheviks, the greatest Russian Marxist faction before Lenin’s seizure of power, did this. In the late 1930s, even Trockij defined the Soviet Union as a totalitarian State and ‘Stalinism’ – we have to come back to this unconvincing expression – a form of totalitarianism very similar to Nazism. We can find the same use in the works of another important critic of totalitarianism, Victor Serge, one of Trockij’s followers. In the present day, however, many Marxist scholars criticize the concept of totalitarianism. In brief, they say that the economic structures of Hitler’s Germany and Lenin- Stalin’s Soviet Union cannot be compared. Critics of the concept of totalitarianism should be divided into two groups: those who totally reject the term and those who admit a very restrictive use of it. By way of example, we can take into consideration two scholars who embody these two different uses. The first is Enzo Traverso, a scholar of State violence in the 20th Century. Traverso writes that the category of totalitarianism is ‘poor, narrow, ambiguous, not to mention worthless’. This is why the concept of totalitarianism understands ‘only superficial similarities’. It should be noted that in ‘superficial similarities’ Traverso includes the systematic violation of fundamental liberties, the demolition of rule of law and liberal democracy, the dominion of the one-party State, violence as a form of government, the concentration system and an almost totally state-controlled economy. By the way, it is very questionable to consider these elements ‘superficial’ – I’m sure that millions of people who suffered the repression of totalitarian States wouldn’t agree with this opinion. Another point underscored by Traverso is also doubtful. He observes indeed that the comparison between Nazism and Communism is almost impossible, because in these two ideologies the relationship between means and ends is completely different. Communism – writes Traverso – contained a project ‘of some rationality’, if we refer to the modernization of the soviet society and economy. These goals have been pursued with irrational means, and authoritarianism. Traverso believes that Nazism, by contrast, followed irrational ends – the ethnic purification of society – in a rational way. Hence the difference between the concentrationary systems developed by Communism and Nazism. Nazi death camps did not have counterparts in communist regimes. In communist concentration camps the death of prisoners was an effect of starvation and slave labour rather than a goal pursued intentionally, and labour was functional to the policy of modernization of the regime. In conclusion: ‘The concept of totalitarianism can’t explain everything’, writes Traverso. Apart from the nonsense of this last observation – which concept can clarify everything? None of them can do it – we will demonstrate that the distinction suggested by Traverso between means and ends seems ultimately to lack real meaning. Russian communism, that is Leninism, pursued more a utopian and millenarian goal than the real modernization of society: to make society perfect, a society based on symmetrical and opposite values compared to those of the open societies. From this point of view, Leninism’s interpretation of Marxism appears a form of crypto-Slavophilism. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote that totalitarian States’ extermination of entire ethnic groups and social classes is in the interest of a goal: the goal is caused by a magnificent vision of a better and radically different society. Modern genocide is a requisite of social engineering, to achieve a social order in compliance with the perfect society. The second scholar we could usefully consider is Ian Kershaw, perhaps Hitler’s best biographer. Like Traverso, Kershaw considers the category of totalitarianism invalid, putting forward 4 reasons: 1. the concept of totalitarism doesn’t explain the differences between the Nazi and Soviet systems, 2. developments and changes of communist regimes aren’t taken into consideration, 3. differences between the two economic structures are neglected, 4. the concept of totalitarianism is an expression of the liberal-democratic ideology. I think each of these points can be strongly argued against. With reference to the first point, we can observe that the concept of totalitarianism doesn’t claim to describe all aspects of totalitarian ideologies and states and above all doesn’t deny that there are important diversities. As for the second point, I think that it is incongruent to ask a category of political philosophy to explain a historical change. Thirdly, the fact that the concept of totalitarianism isn’t able to highlight the differences between two totalitarian systems from an economical point of view doesn’t mean that there aren’t similarities between the economic dirigisme of Nazi and Communist States. Finally, the concept of totalitarianism was conceived, especially in Paris, within circles of the left-wing represented by Mensheviks, Trockijsts, Anarchists and other militants of leftist parties and movements persecuted by Bolsheviks. But even if this had never happened, the scientific nature of this category would stay the same, because it isn’t the source that determines that nature, but the fact that this category is able to reach its goals: that is, exactly, to find and explain strong similarities. In conclusion, it seems to me that this concept of totalitarianism is very useful, although – like all concepts – it is open to a certain and legitimate amount of criticism and shows some limitations. The most important feature is probably that the category of totalitarianism can not only stress the similarities between Nazism and Communism, but also – and this is maybe more relevant – can highlight diversities between totalitarian and not- totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian phenomenon has been explored by three different scientific disciplines: political philosophy or history of political thought; contemporary history; political science. The method most commonly used is to analyze totalitarianism as a political system, which ultimately gives rise to mass extermination and genocide. This course aims to deal with the concept of totalitarianism from the perspective of political thought: the area in which it has been and most harshly criticized. Therefore, we will try to demonstrate that, if we acknowledge that totalitarian regimes were similar, as well as their political policies and especially their repressive practices being comparable, then it’s very difficult to deny that ideologies which inspire totalitarian regimes can also be comparable. In terms of political ideologies, there are evidently many differences and I’ll try to underline them and to refrain from trivializing the matter. From a general point of view, in order to be clearer, I can already anticipate a point that will come to light from our lectures. Beyond relevant differences, totalitarianisms were similar because both left wing and right wing ideologies were ‘political religions’, ‘millenarian’ currents of thought, based on a kind of particular and secular gnosis, the revolutionary ideology. Both dreamt of and sought a radical transformation of society, the beginning of a New Era, the destruction of the open society and of the concept of homo oeconomicus. In this light, totalitarianism appears inspired by a utopian and anti-modernist spirit. Heir of Rousseau, Totalitarian thought claims that evil is caused by bad organization of society, and in particular is embodied in certain groups of people, which revolutionary parties believed must be eliminated. In view of its impressive project of social transformation of reality, totalitarian thought believes that society must be totally politicized, and that it’s necessary to use terroristic State violence on large scale. In the light of the above, in the following lectures I shall endeavor to highlight how, from an ideological point of view, there were essentially two totalitarian ideologies: communism (Leninism-Stalinism) and Nazism. Fascism on the other hand, although it shows a lot of totalitarian features, doesn’t include in its collection of errors and horrors one of the most distinctive traits of totalitarianism, that is, quoting the scholar Luciano Pellicani, ‘the idea of the world’s purification by extermination of corrupting and corrupted elements’. It’s no wonder that the ‘concentrationary universe’, perhaps the main expression of the repressive nature of totalitarianism, can’t be found in the history of the Fascist regime. Finally, I would like to suggest my definition of totalitarianism, which will be tested in my lectures: Totalitarianism is a philosophical and political doctrine that pursues a radical transformation of society in order to reach a perfect political order, and claims that this goal should be achieved with the means of cathartic purification of society. Among common elements of totalitarian doctrines we can find, on the theoretical level: 1) the repudiation of the values of modernity, such as individualism, free market, secularization, autonomy of civil society and rule of law, 2) the quest for a holistic society, 3) a vision of reality based on Manicheism and on an apocalyptical frame of mind.