Before we begin this entry, it must be noted that utilitarianism has many aspects, which are by no means all alike. It is terribly difficult to articulate what exactly utilitarianism is, as it exists in a variety of both general and particular applications. It is therefore virtually meaningless to discuss this subject in its entirety, but the picture becomes different and somewhat more manageable when we drop the pretense of a comprehensive grasp, and instead, concentrate on something very singular and very specific.
In examining the Utilitarian phenomenon in the history of Western philosophy---Jeremy Bentham and all---one intriguing question comes to mind. Considering that the political history of the world has boiled down, eventually, to the ongoing philosophical opposition of capitalism and free enterprise, on the one hand, versus socialism and communism, on the other hand, on whose side does this leave classic Benthamism, better known as Utilitarianism? Now, this is the kind of approach that can bear some meaningful fruit, instead of leading us into a barren hot desert, where, soon finding ourselves thirsty and delirious, we will be imagining a swarm of opposing armies fighting each other under the same banner of---you guessed it!---utilitarianism.
The great irony of our selective approach is that by thus restricting our area of application we will no longer be imagining things, but we shall see real armies fighting each other under the illusion that they are fighting against the very same enemy, namely, utilitarianism!
In Western tradition, utilitarianism is seen as a form of socialism. Capitalistic societies presumably hold the Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness as an individualistic pursuit, and once we start talking about happiness in numerical figures, hello, socialism! This is perhaps one way of looking at things, and I cannot say that it is a wrong way, but there are obviously other ways of looking at it too. In my conversations with some philosophically savvy American counterparts, I used to be somewhat surprised by their categorical dismissal of the Utilitarians as basically collectivists, who measure happiness by bigger numbers and therefore belong to the Communistic camp. This was all the more surprising having known the Soviet attitude to Utilitarianism, which saw it as a typical petit-bourgeois movement, closely tied to the capitalistic frame of mind, and inimical to socialism and scientific communism.
Who is right? Obviously, even theoretically Utilitarianism, which favors the greatest number at the expense of smaller numbers, contradicts the basic principle of totalitarianism, which sees society as a monolith, and refuses any opposition or conflict between larger and smaller numbers. The totalitarian principle is, of course, “All for One and One for All,” the One being the State, while the All are all citizens, down to the smallest number. As we can infer from this, the Utilitarian formula has no place in the totalitarian dogma, because it contradicts the principle of totality.
So, what is utilitarianism to a totalitarian? The incompatibility of utilitarianism with scientific communism and with other totalitarian principles can be seen emerging already in the attitude of Karl Marx to Bentham at the dawn of the era when all these conflicts and controversies were about to start coming to the fore.
“…The arch-philistine Jeremy Bentham was the insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the bourgeois intelligence of the Nineteenth Century.” Marx’s uncompromising invective, quoted from his magnum opus Das Kapital, where he puts everything in the communism-capitalism-utilitarianism triangle into their proper places, unsurprisingly matches to the tee the scientific opinion on this subject of the old Soviet scholars, and undoubtedly equally corresponds to the enduring opinion of all bona fide post-Soviet Russian political thinkers, who know a thing or two about the better, theoretical side of totalitarismo, even if they prefer not to use this politically incorrect word.
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