TOTALITARIANISM IN WESTERN TIDBITS PART I

(This entry is a direct continuation of the overall subject of totalitarianism in popular definitions, raised in my previous two postings.)

To continue this summary of Western academic conceptions of totalitarianism, with an understanding that no fair and balanced alternative to them is extant, here is another characteristic sample (quoted from Yahoo Answers):

“Totalitarian Governments: Those countries, whose governments are usually characterized as totalitarian, were Germany, under the National Socialism of Hitler; the USSR, particularly under Joseph Stalin; and the People's Republic of China, under the Communist rule of Mao Ze-dong. Other governments have also been called “totalitarian,” such as those of Italy under Benito Mussolini, North Korea under Kim Il Sung, Syria under Hafez al-Assad, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.” (From answers.yahoo.com.)

Ironically (or should I say scandalously?), this enumeration of totalitarian governments fails to mention the fact that it was Mussolini’s Italy that had given birth to the term totalitarianism, in the first place, and here, look: it is reduced to a dubious “also-ran.” I wonder what poor Giovanni Gentile would have said to such a terrible affront?! “…Also been called totalitarian,” my foot! Then, of course, North Korean totalitarianism has definitely survived the first Kim, passed on to his late son, and still showing no apparent cracks under the latest obscenely youthful grandson. As for Syria under the first Assad, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, these were authoritarian dictatorships, and by no means totalitarian societies. With regard to Assad the son, currently under attack, he must be a far better ophthalmologist than he is a dictator. It is actually not he, but his father’s old regime, which is rather feebly fighting for its life and for the lives of the terrified minorities of Syria against an enemy far more dangerous to the future of Israel and the whole region than either Hafez or Bashar ever were.

As for the omissions on the list above, the most significant omission is that of Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam. It was North Vietnam’s totalitarian nationalism that not only prevailed in the Vietnam War, but achieved an even greater triumph in the reunification of the whole nation under the impoverished Hanoi’s supremacy over the rich Saigon. Such is the nature of totalitarianism that its political strength and national cohesion prove stronger in the end than superior economic might. For this reason, I am convinced that in the future Korean reunification (which is only a matter of time), despite all the glaring shortcomings of the North, the unified national government will sit in the nuclear weapons-rich totalitarian Pyongyang, rather than in the economically prosperous but otherwise wanting Seoul.

 “The Party and Its Tools: Under a dictator, the members of the ruling party become the nation’s elite. The entire society is subjected to a hierarchical organization, where each individual is responsible to another in a position of higher authority, with the single exception of the supreme leader, who is answerable to no one. All nongovernmental social groups are either destroyed totally or coordinated to serve the purposes of the party and the state. Total subjection of the individual is possible only through the advanced science and technology. Among the decisive, technologically conditioned features of totalitarian dictatorships are their monopoly of mass communications, terroristic secret-police apparatus, monopoly of all effective weapons of destruction, and a centrally controlled economy.” (Here and subsequently, the passages are quoted from the Wikipedia.)

It is incredible how arbitrary and circumstantial, rather than logical and definitive, these descriptions are. It may be true of most regimes, called totalitarian, that they indeed used to be tied to a one-party system, and Lenin’s famous exhortations of the latter are well-known. But, as I said before, the condition of a one-party system is theoretically unnecessary to define a totalitarian state. Instead of becoming the head of his party, the leader may choose to rise above the partisan fray, allowing a very small number of political “parties” to vie for victory in parliamentary ‘elections’ and for nominal ‘representation,’ always under the state control. We may also consider Plato’s totalitarian Politeia, where those diverse social castes can be said to represent different political parties without any infringement upon the overriding totalitarian principle.

Indeed the word “party” may have acquired some normally accepted meaning on account of habitual usage, but its actual parameters even if becoming a temporary captive of usage, do not have an organic connection to it. To use a rather clever analogy, if the first ten students in a random sampling of a classroom turn out to be male, this does not give the sampler the right to conclude that the school is for boys only.

The logical error of the one-party-stipulating conclusion becomes apparent, when we view it as a mistaken transfer of the one-state truistic stipulation to overlap and coincide with the accepted one-party occurrence with no regard to the rules of necessity and sufficiency, which, in this case, do not even apply.

Finally for the passage above, the talk about the necessity of advancement in science and technology, for a totalitarian state to become possible, is also rather superficial, as one can easily conceive of the totalitarian principle pre-existing its realization in the age of mass communications, the latter making the stipulation of totality easier to implement, but only in technical, not philosophical terms.

“Control of Mass Communications: By virtue of its monopoly of mass communications the ruling party and the government are in possession of all channels, through which people get information and guidance. All newspapers, magazines, book publishing, as well as radio and television broadcasting, theater production and motion pictures, are centrally controlled. All writers, actors, composers, poets, speakers are enrolled in party-controlled organizations licensed by the government. Usually they are required to be members of the party. The party line, that is, its interpretation of policy, is imposed on all mass media via censorship.” (Wikipedia.)

Once again, this rigid preoccupation with the one-party system blurs the real picture. It’s the state, stupid! And, incidentally, the requirement of party membership mentioned above was never imposed from above, at least in my firsthand post-Stalinist and second-hand Stalinist experience within the Soviet State. On the contrary, the State looked upon those who would eagerly seek Communist Party membership as suspected careerists. In the Great Purge of 1937, Communist Party members were particularly targeted, similarly to the case of the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada, when Jewish Christian converts were ordered to be examined, and many were burned at the stake on the suspicion of insincerity. The highest criterion of good citizenship was therefore not the Party membership, but the citizen’s unwavering loyalty to the State, and in all walks of life, loyal non-members of the Communist Party had a much better chance of eventual survival and success in life than the “lucky” card-holders.

(Part II of this entry will follow tomorrow…)