TOTALITARIANISM IN WIKIPEDIA

(This entry was originally titleless, being the second part of the preceding one, as it continues to tackle the overall subject of totalitarianism in popular definitions.)

Now, here is another characterization of totalitarianism, this time from the Wikipedia:

“Totalitarianism is a term used by some political scientists, especially in the field of comparative politics, to describe modern regimes in which the state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior.

The most influential scholars of totalitarianism have each described totalitarianism in a slightly different way. Common to all definitions is the attempt to mobilize entire populations in support of the official state ideology, and the intolerance of activities which are not directed towards the goals of the state, entailing repression or state control of business, labor unions, churches, or political parties. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, cult of personality, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, single-party state, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.
Critics of the concept say that the term lacks explanatory power. They argue that governments which may be classified as totalitarian may lack the characteristics said to be associated with the term. They may not be as monolithic as they appear from the outside if they include diverse groups such as the army, political leaders, industrialists, competing for power and influence. In this sense, such regimes may have pluralism through the involvement of several groups in the political process.” (Wikipedia.)

My hat off to the Wikipedia for admitting up front, albeit not explicitly enough, that all modern definitions of totalitarianism are basically reduced to descriptions of specific regimes of the past and a few of them of the present, rather than treating totalitarianism as a general principle, and tackling it from that perspective. This is exactly my main objection to today’s political science, that instead of a dignified academic approach to this question, it indulges in passing its judgment on a number of selected cases, and having picked Hitler, among these cases, who on earth would dare defend totalitarianism, as in this deal defending totalitarianism appears tantamount to defending Hitler? By the same token, Stalin in this equation comes indistinguishable from Hitler, fellow totalitarians, and, once again, defending Stalin appears tantamount to defending Hitler!

Thus admitting the glaring inadequacy of defining a general through a handful of particulars, let us still try to glean some welcome generalities regarding totalitarianism, but first cleaning them up as much as we can from the prejudicial specific associations.

The key part in the Wikipedia quote above is that “the attempt to mobilize entire populations” is “common to all definitions” of totalitarianism. Ironically, the same definition can be equally applied to all democratic nations in a state of national war. (Such as, say, Britain in World War II.) Does it mean that, as the French saying goes, all cats are gray at night, or, in our case, all nations become totalitarian under attack? It was a totalitarian state of collective mind in America after September 11^th, 2001 that allowed the George W. Bush Administration to get away with the indefensible war in Iraq, although in normal times the false pretext and the real motives behind that war would surely have been severely questioned, and the war itself would have been prevented. Thus the American example supplies the second part of the Wikipedia quote as the attempt to mobilize population in support of the official ideology, in our case, the ideology of neoconservatism.

But enough of that for the moment. A second major flaw of political science, as reflected in the definitions of totalitarianism provided by the Wikipedia, is the probably deliberate incompetence of confusing wartime nations, serving as the specific substitute for the general phenomenon, with what I may call totalitarianism at peace. We will be talking about this in the next installment of this totalitarianism-in-definitions series.

It should be clear, however, that totalitarianism, both at war and at peace, presupposes a certain significant degree of political mobilization of society under the control of the state. This is wholly consistent with the nature of the nation-state, as long as we emphasize that the most natural organization of a totalitarian state is along the national lines. Incidentally, the last paragraph in the Wikipedia quote points not to the norm of a totalitarian state, but to deviations from the norm, which are bound to doom the totality-based principle of social organization for its ultimate corruption and degeneration. Mind you, I am not defending the purity of the totalitarian principle here, as if complaining about its distortion through improper practices, but I am as always only pointing to its legitimacy in social philosophy, its appealing consistency with certain historical forms of the expression of people’s will and its philosophical appeal as an ultimate objectification of the national will in the nation-state. As far as I am personally concerned, I would have much preferred a perfect apolitical utopia, where the government would dutifully take care of the absolute social necessities, and the good people would be left alone, to themselves, provided that such an Utopia had been at all possible. But unfortunately, when people are left to themselves, most of them tend to turn very ugly, and society suffers, often terminally and morbidly, as we have seen in many countries today, destroyed by ethnic, religious, and other animosities, just as their governments crumble.

…This discussion will continue in my next posting…