Characteristics of Totalitarianism

Many researchers and writers have chosen to define totalitarianism by establishing specific criteria that highlight its most prominent characteristics. The term “totalitarianism” is first examined and questioned as to its meaning; once it becomes clear that the meaning is anything but clear, the crux of this paper is to describe the criteria used to define totalitarianism. This includes looking at the criteria from various viewpoints that are essentially political and social. Once the criteria are established and the ramifications are more fully explored, the paper briefly explains the basic role of technology, and arrives at the conclusion that fear and a false reality are the two essential ingredients for creating a totalitarian system.

Keywords Communism; Ideology; Marxism; Nazism; Proletariat; Secret Police; Silent Majority; Totalitarianism

Characteristics of Totalitarianism

Overview

Exploring the Word, Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a frequently used term that many assume has a clear definition. However, upon examining the concept more closely for its particular meaning, totalitarianism becomes increasingly obfuscated; it becomes confusing whether totalitarianism is synonymous - partially or entirely, and in what way - with other terms such as "dictatorship," "despotism," "tyranny," "fascism" "authoritarian regime" etc. Does totalitarianism have a unique meaning? This is why Rabinbach (2006) asks whether the term totalitarianism is useful at all, and he also asks some important questions that point out the lack of clarity in our assumed understanding of totalitarianism:

Is it [totalitarianism] an exact description or merely an epithet directed against all enemies of liberalism and democracy? Unlike most terms in our political vocabulary, totalitarianism was coined in the twentieth century to describe a specifically modern phenomenon. Is it compelling shorthand, as some of its first theorists insisted, used to argue that modern tyranny is unique because it is more invasive, more reliant on the total assent of the "masses" and on terror than old-fashioned despotism? Is it a "project," as Hannah Arendt famously argued, an experiment in "fabricating" humanity according to the laws of biology or history? Is it an ideal type (in the Weberian sense) to which no real-world dictatorship actually conforms? Or can the term only be defended negatively - it represents the ultimate rejection of pluralism, legality, democracy, and Judeo-Christian morality? (Rabinbach, 2006, p. 77).

Because it is difficult to supply a clear and concise definition to the term, many researchers and writers have chosen to define "totalitarianism" by establishing specific criteria that highlight the most prominent characteristics of totalitarianism; however, this method presents its own problems. For example, once we establish such criteria, then we must interpret historical circumstances in order to demonstrate that a given government fits the set criteria - which is by no means an exact science. Also, as the semantic and etymological meanings of the term imply, we should ask in what way or ways is totalitarianism total (Latin totus, entire, all)? And is the concept an all-or-none principle, such that a government must fulfill all the criteria and is thus completely and unquestionably totalitarian, or does the concept allow for some middle ground so that a government can fit most of the criteria, and is therefore mostly totalitarian? What about half-totalitarian, or somewhat totalitarian? These are the kinds of questions we must ask when determining the exact meaning of "totalitarianism," and when endeavoring to correctly apply that meaning.

Developing a valid and agreed upon set of criteria is most important, and then we may examine the criteria for theoretical and ideological underpinnings - philosophical, political, social, economic, etc. - that create the totalitarian system. We should also consider whether there is a difference between the terms "totalitarian government" and "totalitarian system," since using the word "system" may encompass both the government as well as its counterpart: the individuals comprising a totalitarian society. Another interesting aspect to establishing criteria is that, depending on the area of emphasis (i.e., government or society) the criteria vary - though, as we will see, all the criteria seem to complement each other. Birch (2007) offers a traditionally accepted set of criteria (based on the ideas of Friedrich and Brzezinski) consisting of six standard features of totalitarianism:

• An official ideology

• Domination by a single party, usually led by a dictator

• A terroristic police force to eradicate dissent

• A monopoly on the means of communication

• A monopoly on violence

• State control of economic life (Birch, 2007, p. 154).

Further Insights

Totalitarian Criteria

Marková (1997) contributes some additional, related characteristic features that are essential elements for forming a totalitarian system, but her set of criteria, like others to be discussed below, view these totalitarian elements from another perspective. If we look at the above criteria, they are all from a point of view examining the form and function of the state or government, but there are sociological and psychological features relating to society which can establish a different, yet complementary, set of criteria. This is the main reason that various writers explain and define totalitarianism in different ways.

Manipulation of the Collective Memory

Marková's first totalitarian characteristic is that human memory is manipulated so that history can be reinterpreted and rewritten in a way that supports the totalitarian state - sometimes by interpreting history through the filter of its ideology, as was the case for all the countries comprising the former Soviet Union. Marková (1997) observes that, for the individual and the community, our understanding of the past is essential in forming a sense of identity. The author notes that we consider the past as something real and tangible, so that "building on the past, recycling and preserving something one already knows provides a sense of security" . By manipulating an individual's sense of past, the individual's perception of the future can be reshaped. If history is gradually reshaped so that it is fundamentally replaced by another history, this can in turn substitute one future for another future. According to Marková, this is why Marxist collectivism endeavored to "obliterate memory and to replace the remembered history by another, artificially created, history" (Marková, 1997, p. 13).

For example, many of the countries of Eastern Europe that were occupied by Nazi Germany historically celebrated the Soviet Union's "liberation" of their nations from Nazi occupation. After these satellite countries experienced revolutions and became truly independent from Soviet influence, their historians gradually reinterpreted national histories such that history textbooks today generally express the viewpoint that Russians "occupied" or controlled these nations after the Germans, and the term "liberation" was simply a matter of Communist propaganda. This contemporary historical viewpoint could not be found in books or schools during the years that these smaller Communist countries were part of the Soviet Union; at that time, their history books interpreted past events through a Marxist viewpoint that was the Soviet Communist perspective. In turn, this interpretation of history pointed to a bright and golden future wherein the Proletariat would create a perfect, egalitarian government of the people. This is a prime example of what Marková means when she claims that revising history creates a certain viewpoint of the future.

A Terroristic & Secret Police Force

Marková's second basic totalitarian feature relates to the existence of a terroristic police force to eradicate dissent. However, Marková presents this idea from a psychological and sociological viewpoint rather than a political and governmental viewpoint. She writes that, "promoting distrust among neighbours was another effective way of destroying communities" (1997, p. 14). This is the central sociological aspect of a secret police; it erodes local communities since it destroys personal trust among members of society. According to Marková, under Communism this secretive organization "not only actively persecuted undesirable individuals but they also created an atmosphere of fear by fostering the impression that they control everybody and everything" . As could be expected, a repressive organization that promotes a totalitarian system's protection and continuity at the expense of individual rights keep its functions a secret so that its activities cannot be regulated by law. The Center for the Study of Democracy argues that this explains why, under the Soviet Union, "the secret service's status and its organizational rules were determined through classified decrees, decisions, and regulations of the governing party or state bodies" (Center for the Study of Democracy, 2006, p. 59). This was how Communist powers manipulated the law and the legal system; they were not accountable to citizens or laws since their activities, including their violations of basic human rights, were kept secret. Thus, the secret police secretly kept their classification of files on individuals under investigation, and also of how and why they gathered their information; even the organization's status and functions remained off the record (Center for the Study of Democracy, 2006, p. 59).

Through such methods, the secret police were quite effective in creating a sense of paranoia among individuals. No one could trust other members in society because the totalitarian system stood between each. One never knew whether another person, even one's next door neighbor, was a secret police informant, and one could not know whether "one's flat was actually bugged and whether or not telephone conversations were listened to" (Marková, 1997, p. 14). Thus a mindset of paranoia, grounded in a sense of fear, psychologically controlled individuals in their totalitarian society, and the secret police played a central role in propagating that sense of paranoia and fear.

Isolation & Fear

Hannah Arendt believes the only way terror can rule a society is by effectively dividing and conquering enough individuals. Arendt (1976) writes that terror presses, like a wall, the "masses of isolated men together and supports them in a world which has become a wilderness for them," while another wall, "the self-coercive force of logical deduction" presses from the opposite side and psychologically coerces the individual into lonely isolation against all other individuals (Arendt, 1976, as cited in Schmidt, JoffÉ & Davar, 2005). Arendt notes that terror destroys the relationships between individuals while the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins the individual's relationship with reality. In this way, the citizens "lose contact with their fellow men as well as with the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought." Arendt's main point here is that terror can only rule absolutely over individuals who are isolated against each other (as cited in Schmidt, JoffÉ, & Davar, 2005, p. 160). Marková's point of view is that the secret police intentionally function to create a sense of fear that isolates the individual.

The Silent Majority

The last fundamental feature that Marková presents is the concept of the "silent majority". The author observes that many of the political theorists and philosophers who have researched and studied the phenomenon of "totalitarianism" have examined the same central question: "Why did the totalitarian regime manage to gain power and why were the two World Wars fought?" According to the author, many theorists have argued, "…that it was because of consistent and focused activities on the part of active minorities and, at the same time, because of the apathy of the masses" (Marková, 1997, p. 14). Thus, there must be a somewhat apathetic and "sheep-like" populace in order for a totalitarian system to thrive. If we consider the above sense of fear and paranoia, this is perhaps enough to control a nation's "silent majority."

The State of Fatalism

These features give us some insight into the concept and definition of totalitarianism, but there are yet other features or characteristics developed by theorists that also complement these criteria. Coskun (2007) writes that Ernst Cassirer, in his book The Myth of the State, claims that four basic criteria allow for the rise and the "establishment of the hegemony of fascism and its corollary, the totalitarian state" (p. 163). Cassirer, who fled Germany just as Hitler and Nazism rose to power, developed these four totalitarian features by observing and analyzing how German society evolved into a totalitarian system. Although not explicitly stated, these features inherently concentrate on yet other elements of human psychology or sociology that help create and support a totalitarian system. According to Cassirer, the individual must first be put, psychologically, in a "state of fatalism, so that he could see no way of freeing himself from social and economic malaise through ordinary means." This "state of fatalism" gives the individual a sense of hopelessness and desperation, and this in turn creates a "collective wish" that is then embodied by a "strong and magical leader". From this, the foundation is laid for "the myth of hero-worship" (Coskun, 2007, p. 163).

The second feature Cassirer notes is that the state must proclaim "a single, simple, supreme value … one which would not permit another value next to it," and with which the members of society will identify and feel a sense of unity. The "supreme value" could be race, class, nation, or an ethnically defined community, but regardless the value will stress an emotional bond between the individual and the community. Thus, whatever the "supreme value," it will usually require individuals to make noble sacrifices for the benefit of a greater whole. Any questioning of the supreme value will cause strong feelings - probably a sense of anger or outrage at the idea of betraying the unquestionable supreme value (Coskun, 2007, p. 163).

Disabling Culture

Thirdly, competing cultural forms that are ethically binding or cultivating - i.e., belief systems, philosophies or concepts that "suggest other perspectives on life, that reminded one of the fact that one is foremost a reflective being, not free of responsibilities, but free because of taking responsibility for one's own actions" - must be discredited and disabled. This relates to the second feature since these other "cultural forms" are essentially other values that the "supreme value" cannot permit to compete with it, since this sort of dissonance - whether moral or cognitive - can cause individuals to think for themselves and thereby disagree with and oppose the "supreme value." This is what Coskun (2007) means when he argues that myth can have an "absolutizing effect" so that the "powers of myth paralyzed the flexibility of the human faculty to find solutions for a problem through a variety of symbolic schemes." If there is no variety of "symbolic schemes," then there is no opportunity to consider events from any other point of view than the one a government offers its citizens - in the language of its choosing. According to Coskun, the first symbolic capacities to be manipulated are linguistic functions.

Manipulation of Language

The absolutizing power attacks transforms the structure of language through "the introduction of new words and the revision of old words that altogether established the replacement of ordinary semantic or propositional language by emotional or magical language" (Coskun, 2007, p. 163). This concept is essentially the same as George Orwell's concept of "Newthink" in his novel 1984. Language can be used to control the perception and thinking of individuals. In today's vocabulary, we call this "propaganda" - or perhaps the latest term is "spin." Words such as "patriotism" or "freedom," if used in "Newspeak" fashion, can control the perception and thinking of an entire nation. Thus a society can come to believe in such oxymoronic, Orwellian slogans as "War is Peace" or "Freedom is Slavery" - or a majority may consent to the unquestioned truth of totalitarian platitudes such as, "freedom threatens security."

According to Roviello (2007), a totalitarian government, when creating its false reality, does not even seek to hide the realities that refute it, meaning the distorted reality,

… is ineffective from the standpoint of the obvious; on the other hand, it is formidably efficient from the very fact of that ineffectiveness, for it destabilizes judgment and clouds all the issues that would make for an assured, sensible judgment (p. 924).

Roviello claims that totalitarian propaganda not only lies about the government's true aims and real actions, but it also creates the necessary means needed to change the real world and "make it 'true' to its assertions, though they be utterly absurd and utterly monstrous." Because of this, Roviello argues that the totalitarian "big lie" is formidably effective for two main reasons: "the totalitarian lie is no longer there to hide a reality that remains intact behind it, it is a kind of 'factual lie' that rests precisely on the elimination of that reality which either unmasks the liar or forces him to live up to his pretense" (Roviello, 2007, p. 923). Thus, manipulation of language is essential to controlling the thoughts and opinions of individuals and society. The Nazi rulers often manipulated public opinion through such contortions of language; for example, "creating a final solution" seemed much more acceptable to society than "murdering an entire race." In short, "Newspeak" is essentially a form of thought control, and is a basic characteristic of totalitarian societies.

New Social Rites

Cassirer's fourth criteria is the introduction of new social rites. Coskun quotes Cassirer, from his The Myth of the State, as saying that "nothing is more likely to lull asleep all our active forces, our power of judgment and critical discernment, and to take away our feeling of personality and individual responsibility than the steady, uniform, and monotonous performance of the same rites" (p. 164). This repetition of rites that everyone performs causes the individual to cease from questioning his or her own environment, and to acquiesce. Public ritual solidifies the reality that is under construction. As Coskun writes, "no other practice seems to bind the individual stronger to the community than rites performed by all" (Coskun, 2007, p. 164). Coskun observes that these rites give individuals a sense of security and belonging, but these rites can also cause the individual's own "moral personality" to erode until the individual can no longer think independently, and instead relegates responsibility or thinking to the group or the magical leader. Coskun notes that this process is hypnotizing much the way a snake will paralyze its victims before attacking them, so that a vast majority of individuals may become victims of totalitarianism without ever having offered any serious resistance. Citizens are subdued before they can realize what has actually taken place. As Coskun observes, "the politicians of myth knew quite well that the masses could not be directed at will by sheer physical force; they knew they [the masses] had to be subdued through the force of imagination" (Coskun, 2007, p. 164).

This "force of imagination" seems to permeate many aspects of the rise of totalitarianism. A nation's leaders can, through lies, spin and media repetition, cause individuals to imagine a sense of hopelessness, anger, or desperation. Collective imagined desperation becomes real, in much the way that a currency is real and has value because society believes it to be so; the same can be said of an ideology, or of any government's legitimacy - including a totalitarian government's. A supreme value such as race, religion or nationalism (or patriotism) is also a matter of the imagination and emotion, as is the recasting of thought through transforming language, and the observance of rites that rise in symbolic significance. Cassirer and Coskun argue that opportunistic politicians who desire to concentrate power are aware of this, and they therefore subdue the masses through the force of imagination.

The Role of Technology

Technology plays a central role in constructing a modern society's reality. According to Cassirer, fascist politicians in Germany discovered the power of modern technology to further their system of mental control over the German population. German citizens were gradually brought to "a state in which they could be receptive to manipulation" (cited in Coskun, 2007, p. 159). Cassirer believed that technology could be made instrumental for humanity, and that "it [technology] could be inspired by a truly ethical will and raised to ethical consciousness." However, Coskun notes that Cassirer also believed that, "in its contemporary form or stage, though, technology does not fulfill that function". Rather than serve to promote ethical standards, Coskun argues that technology "absolutizes its own norms and settles, so to speak, its hegemony over man's cultural life as a whole." Thus, when the Nazi government used new technology to support and maintain its desired myth, "this hegemony became a dark cloud gloomier than anyone could have imagined."

Consequently, Coskun argues that, in Nazi Germany, technology was at the foundation of a "cultural crisis", and gave the totalitarian Nazi government powerful new tools to manipulate the entire society (Coskun, 2007, p. 160). Particularly, the propagation of a "Newspeak" and the manipulation of people's thinking would not have been possible without such powerful new technologies such as radio and television. The same technology was behind shaping Communist societies as well, as can be witnessed by the thousands of short propaganda scripts recorded and broadcast daily to radios and television sets throughout all Communist countries. When looking back at these Communist film clips, what seems most apparent is the ideological "Newspeak" used to shape reality.

Conclusion

In examining the various concepts that theorists develop around totalitarianism, it becomes apparent that, through various means, a uniform false reality is imposed on a mass of individuals until enough of them - a vocal minority and a silent majority - accept the constructed reality as the only legitimate reality. Thus, totalitarianism is closely associated with creating a false and distorted reality that a government supports (while actively suppressing any opposition), and a mass of citizens accept (while passively allowing the suppression of any opposition). This construction of an agreed upon "reality" is at the heart of totalitarianism. Thus, totalitarianism is as much a state of mind as it is a form of one-party government control, for a government could not control a society unless a large majority, representing mainstream opinion, did not agree with the system and obey its dictates. Much of the totalitarian criteria relating to psychology and sociology is essentially an exploration of how a society comes to the point that it accepts the loss of individualism and human rights, and allows the totalitarian system to subdue the individual in the name of the collective. When gathering the various criteria and concepts of writers on the subject of totalitarianism, it seems the fundamental factors in creating a compliant collective is fear and a false reality. A totalitarian government uses these two factors in many ways, but the most basic means are to hide its activities as much as possible in secrecy (creating fear) and to create propaganda -- "Newspeak" -- to form opinions (creating a false reality).

Terms & Concepts

Communism: A socioeconomic structure that promotes a classless, stateless society which maintains common ownership of the means of production. Communism draws on Marxist works such as The Communist Manifesto as its philosophical foundation.

Ideology: An organized collection of ideas or systems of thought often applied to public matters and politics.

Marxism: The philosophy and practice of politics derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism maintains a view of history in which class struggle and the conflict between classes with opposing interests shapes all historical periods and drives political and cultural change.

Nazism: A form of German National Socialism, in particular the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party and the policies adopted by the government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.

Proletariat: A term for wage-earners from Marxist theory that describes the class of society that does not own the means of production. Originally the term was derogatory until Karl Marx used it as a sociological term to refer to the working class.

Secret Police: A police force that operates in the utmost secrecy maintaining national security against internal threats to the state. Totalitarian regimes usually employ secret police to maintain the political power of the state rather than uphold the law.

Silent Majority: First coined by President Richard Nixon to refer to those Americans who did not participate in the demonstrations against the Vietnam War. It is an unspecified majority of people in a nation or group who do not express unpopular public opinion.

Totalitarianism: A concept referring to political systems in which a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. The term is familiarly applied to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or the former Soviet Union.

Bibliography

Abbas, A. (2012). China and the human. Social Text, 30, 91-108.Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74649784

Birch, K. (2007). The totalitarian corporation? Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions; 8 : 153-161. Retrieved May 14, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24233071&site=ehost-live

Center for the Study of Democracy (Bulgaria). (2006). Partners in organized crime. Trends in Organized Crime; 10 . 58-60. Retrieved May 14, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=23243994&site=ehost-live

Coskun, D. (2007). The politics of myth: Ernst Cassirer's pathology of the totalitarian state. Perspectives on Political Science; 36 : 153-167. Retrieved May 20, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=26496412&site=ehost-live

Johnson, E. A. (2011). Criminal justice, coercion and consent in ‘totalitarian’ society: the case of national socialist Germany. British Journal Of Criminology, 51, 599-615. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=60264704

Khazagerov, G. G. (2013). The forced fraud in the totalitarian culture. Sotsiologicheskiy Zhurnal, , 125-139. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=89915078

Marková, I. (1997). The individual and the community: A post-communist perspective. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology; 7 : 3-17. Retrieved May 14, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11819900&site=ehost-live

Miftode, V., & Morariu, C. (2011). The protection of the individual against "totalitarian ideologies". Scientific Annals of the 'Al. I. Cuza' University, Iasi. Sociology & Social Work / Analele Stiintifice Ale Universitatii 'Al. I. Cuza' Iasi Sociologie Si Asistenta Sociala, 4, 7-18. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=63020902

Myers, B. (2011). Inside the red box: North Korea's post-totalitarian politics. Acta Koreana, 14, 313-316. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=62856319

Rabinbach, A. (2006). Totalitarianism Revisited. Dissent; 53 : 77-84. Retrieved May 14, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21307533&site=ehost-live

Roviello, A.-M. (2007). The hidden violence of totalitarianism: The loss of the groundwork of the world. Social Research; 74 : 923-930. Retrieved May 21, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27466492&site=ehost-live

Schmidt, C., JoffÉ, G. & Davar, E. (2005). The psychology of political extremism. Cambridge Review of International Affairs; 18 , 151-172. Retrieved May 14, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=17032882&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Bassett, C. (2007). Forms of reconciliation. Cultural Studies; 21 . 82-94. Retrieved May 14, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=23331971&site=ehost-live

Jimmy Carter on Moral Crisis. (2005, November 9). CBS News. Retrieved May 20, 2007 from the World Wide Web. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/09/earlyshow/leisure/books/main1028087.shtml

Lim, J.H. (2005). Historiographical perspectives on 'Mass Dictatorship.' Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions; 6 . 325-331. Retrieved May 20, 2007 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=18806954&site=ehost-live

Maier, H. (2007). Political religion: A concept and its limitations. Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions, 8 . 5-16. Retrieved May 18, 2008 from the EBSCO Academic Search Premier Database. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24233081&site=ehost-live

Mulieri, A. (2013). Liberalism against democracy: A comparative analysis of the concepts of totalitarian democracy and positive liberty in Jacob Leib Talmon and Isaiah Berlin. History Of European Ideas, 39, 449-466. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=86994746