RATIONALITY AND TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP
Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, so
problematical for the earlier stages of fascism, fits here. For here we
enter a realm where the calculations of interest that arguably governed the
behavior of both the Nazis and their allies under more ordinary circumstances
in the exercise of power no longer determined policy. At this ultimate
stage an obsessed minority is able to carry out its most passionate hatreds
implacably and to the ultimate limit of human experience. (R. Paxton, The
Anatomy of Fascism, p.170.)
Our strident critique of historicism as a
method for the theorization of revolutionary movements that degenerate into
totalitarian dictatorships was meant to highlight its fatal flaws both from a
theoretical standpoint and from a practical political one – flaws that we
preliminarily and cursorily contrasted with the merits of the historical
materialist approaches to the theory of these historical phenomena. From a theoretical
standpoint, we can show that all the historicist elements of analysis of
revolutionary movements can be traced back aetiologically – with the due
caution to be exercised whenever we invoke “causation” in historical events
that are intrinsically aleatory – to historical materialist theoretical notions
starting with the mode of reproduction and production of given societies, or
what may be more generally described as “social relations of production”.
This is not a matter of replacing “politicism” with
“economism” and reproducing thus the Cartesian and Kantian antinomies of Matter
or Nature, on one side, and Thought or Spirit, on the other. Nor do we seek to
lend support to the Diltheyan distinction between Natur- and Geistes-wissenschaften.
It is rather an attempt to show that human needs are universal, and for
that reason alone all human cultural activities can be shown to adhere to
fundamental requirements for their satisfaction which thereby determine those
cultural or ideological manifestations. Furthermore, from a practical
political standpoint, were it otherwise, were we to accept as an
ineluctable fact that human beings do not share needs that can be assessed and
satisfied in an intersubjective manner, then we would have to acquiesce in the
conclusion that human conflict is ultimately irresolvable and must result in
the total annihilation of humanity! Philosophically expressed, our reasoning
maintains that transcendence is inimical to human interests and that
only an immanentist, materialist assessment of human needs can
lead to a future civilization capable to live in harmonious freedom and peace.
The problem with historicism is that its chief
analytical notions – “the masses”, nationalism, racism, leadership cult –
either have other causes traceable to human material interests, or else they
are reified as ineluctable aspects of human existence – which means that we
must resign ourselves to the imminent annihilation, in a nuclear age, of the
entire human race! As Aron put it in connection with Khruschev’s account of
Stalinism,
[f]or the time being Khrushchev gives only one answer, one
interpretation [for the terror unleashed by the Bolshevik Party-State from 1929
onwards] — the cult of personality. This explains nothing. As a very
distinguished Marxist, Togliatti, the late General Secretary of the Italian
communist party has said, to explain it by the personality cult is not a
Marxist explanation. To explain such important phenomena by one person is the
kind of explanation that Marxist doctrine by definition does not allow. (R. Aron,
Democracy and Totalitarianism, p.192)
Before we leave this topic, and as a further
illustration, if any more were needed, of the insidious traps of historicist
thought, let us examine briefly a long paragraph from Hannah Arendt’s The
Human Condition regarding “mass society”:
The laws of statistics are valid only
where large numbers or
long periods are involved, and acts or
events can statistically
appear only as deviations or
fluctuations. The justification of statistics
is that deeds and events are rare occurrences
in everyday
life and in history. Yet the
meaningfulness of everyday relationships
is disclosed not in everyday life but
in rare deeds, just as the
significance of a historical period
shows itself only in the few
events that illuminate it. The application of the law of large numbers
and long periods to politics or history
signifies nothing less
than the wilful obliteration of their
very subject matter, and it is
a hopeless enterprise to search for
meaning in politics or signifi-[43]-
cance in history when everything that
is not everyday behavior
or automatic trends has been ruled out
as immaterial.
However, since the laws of statistics
are perfectly valid where
we deal with large numbers, it is
obvious that every increase in
population means an increased validity
and a marked decrease of
"deviation." Politically,
this means that the larger the population
in any given body politic, the more
likely it will be the social
rather than the political that
constitutes the public realm.
The
Greeks, whose city-state was the most
individualistic and least
conformable body politic known to us,
were quite aware of the
fact that the polis, with its
emphasis on action and speech, could
survive only if the number of citizens
remained restricted. Large
numbers of people, crowded together,
develop an almost irresistible
inclination toward despotism, be this
the despotism of a
person or of majority rule; and
although statistics, that is, the
mathematical treatment of reality, was
unknown prior to the
modern age, the social phenomena which
make such treatment
possible—great numbers, accounting for
conformism, behaviorism,
and automatism in human affairs—were precisely those traits
which, in Greek self-understanding,
distinguished the Persian
civilization from their own.
The unfortunate truth about behaviorism
and the validity of its
"laws" is that the more
people there are, the more likely they are
to behave and the less likely to
tolerate non-behavior. Statistically,
this will be shown in the leveling out
of fluctuation. In reality,
deeds will have less and less chance to
stem the tide of behavior,
and events will more and more lose
their significance, that is,
their capacity to illuminate historical
time. Statistical uniformity
is by no means a harmless scientific
ideal; it is the no longer
secret political ideal of a society
which, entirely submerged in the
routine of everyday living, is at peace
with the scientific outlook
inherent in its very existence. (The Human Condition, pp.42-3)
There
are two obvious hypostatic errors that Arendt commits here: the first is
that she attributes the stultification of the behaviour of political
constituencies to their sheer number. Arendt’s statement that “[l]arge
numbers of people, crowded together, develop an almost irresistible inclination
toward despotism” is almost incomprehensible coming
from an intellect as refined as hers – it is a blatant and reprehensible
falsehood which supports the charges of “aristocratic thinking” often moved
against her. The second error Arendt incurs is to attribute “statistical uniformity”
– which, as she rightly reminds us, “is by no means a harmless scientific
ideal” – to “a society entirely submerged in the routine of everyday
living”. Again, this proposition is entirely false, and in conscience
entirely inexplicable coming from such a perspicacious mind as Arendt’s: the
crude reality is that throughout history it is not and never has been an
abstract “society” that has become “submerged in the routine of
everyday living”: quite to the contrary, it has always been at the behest
and under the coercive impulse of specific social agencies that humans
have engaged collectively in varying levels of brutal behaviour. Once
again, as with her critique of Marx on the importance of “the social question”
as the real material springboard to political freedom, Arendt has made the
colossal “aristocratic” mistake of separating “the social” from “the
political”:
Politically, this means that the
larger the population
in any given body politic, the more
likely it will be the social
rather than the political that
constitutes the public realm [my
emphases].
Arendt’s
obvious equation of “large population” and “the social” with the abandonment or
decadence of “the political” is as misguided as it is false. We linger on these
flaws in Arendt’s reasoning not to inveigh against a person and intellectual
toward whom have feelings of respect, if not reverence, but rather to draw
attention to the misguidedness of historicist analysis in this sphere of
historical inquiry.
But
let us return to the periodization of revolutionary movements. When it comes to
the theory of revolutionary movements, we saw earlier that a periodization of
their evolution is in order, starting with their origin and formation, through
to their seizure of political power as Party-States, until their ultimate apotheosis
and apocalypse as totalitarian dictatorships. It is at this last stage that, as
Paxton affirms with remarkable lucidity in the quotation above with reference
to Arendt’s great intuition, ”we enter a realm where the
calculations of interest that arguably governed the behaviour of both the Nazis
and their allies under more ordinary circumstances in the exercise of power no
longer determined policy”. This is a conclusion of the utmost importance: the
way we should interpret it, in line with all of our foregoing analysis, is that
prior to the final apocalyptic stage of totalitarian
dictatorship, revolutionary movements – from Fascism to Nazism to Bolshevism –
had responded to, and acted in accordance with, “calculations of interest” that
“determined their policies”. But once these movements reach the final stage of
totalitarian dictatorship, these calculations of interest no longer determine
policy and – much worse, catastrophically worse – “[a]t this ultimate
stage an obsessed minority is able to carry out its most passionate hatreds
implacably and to the ultimate limit of human experience.”
Clearly, therefore, for Paxton, as for us, this
“ultimate stage” of totalitarian dictatorship may be distinguished from earlier
stages by the progressive relinquishment and indeed abandonment of any rational
policies or of any rationality in the policies that these totalitarian regimes
had adopted in the earlier phases of their development. Of course, the imminent
effect of this growing irrationality is to hasten the demise of these regimes,
as their respective histories have shown abundantly. (Maoist China may be
thought to be an exception, but there are obvious intervening factors – the
opening-up of the economy to Western capitalist investment until the renewed
turn to totalitarian irrationalism with Chairman Xi from 2012. We shall deal
with these factors later.) In the theorization of these regimes, then, it is
well to remember the gist of our thesis here – namely, that the origin and
formation of revolutionary movements is explained best with the adoption of
a historical-materialist framework of analysis rather than a historicist one –
even because, as we have shown, historicist analytical categories themselves
can easily be explained by historical-materialist ones -; whereas, by contrast,
the “ultimate stage” of Party-State regimes, the totalitarian stage, is
noteworthy precisely for this progressive or regressive jettisoning of
rationality in all spheres of social and military policy. (The great late
Marxist historian of Nazism, Tim Mason, adopts implicitly a similar
periodization to ours in his major essay, “The Primacy of Politics”, reprinted
in J. Caplan (ed.), Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class. Where we
differ from Mason here is in the utilization of Weberian categories of
“rationality” as a means of assessment of the conduct of totalitarian policies
and of theorization of totalitarian dictatorships, especially with regard to
their final stage in our periodization. Whilst we agree wholeheartedly with
Mason in his sturdy defence of the historico-materialist method, we feel that
he lays insufficient emphasis on the weakness of this method when applied to
the second phase, what we have called, with Paxton, “the ultimate stage” of
totalitarian dictatorship. )
We are suggesting here a separate periodization of
revolutionary movements in terms of the rationality of their
political strategies from the time of their formation as movements to their
seizure of power as Party-States, to their ultimate transformation into
totalitarian dictatorships. This differs from the three-stage periodization of
the movements and can be reduced to two phases: the first phase
covers the first two stages listed above, and the second phase covers
the last stage. In the first phase, the leadership of revolutionary movements
follows a purposive rationality (Zweck-rationalitat, in Weberian
terminology, or “ethics of responsibility”) whereby its political strategy is
dictated by short-term goals aimed at the realistic pursuit and acquisition of
political power initially and then at its consolidation through the mirroring
of existing state bureaucracies initially, and then the replacement of these
bureaucracies with new cadres and departments more suited to the acquisition of
totalitarian power. In the second and final phase, the leadership, which has
now turned into a totalitarian dictatorship, resorts to a value rationality (Wert-rationalitat
or “ethics of conviction”) whereby its policies and strategy grows increasingly
unhinged from the means realistically available to it.
This is not to say that the ideological goals of a
revolutionary movement or party do not form part of its political program from
the outset: rather, the leadership holds fast to these goals but is able to
justify its initial ethics of responsibility or purposive rationality on the
grounds that it evidently needs first to acquire the powers and instruments
needed for their realization. As Otto Kirchheimer observed in connection with
Italian Fascism,
[t]he
fundamentally bourgeois character of the Italian dictatorship does not
contradict the fact that fascism has successfully attempted to convince itself
and others that it represents a fundamental rejuvenation of the entire
political status of the Italian people. A system's political ideology must
be clearly separated from its actual materialization. Every political
system which intends to stay in power must perceive itself as a realization of
a political innovation. (O. Kirchheimer, Weimar – Was dann?)
Once in possession of political power and the state
machinery, however, the ethics of responsibility become increasingly dilatory
as the reality dawns on the leadership of the unattainability of the original
ideological goals and in the face of growing disillusionment on the part of the
Party membership. Yet, rather than lead to a curtailment or revision of
the initial goals through the ethics of responsibility, which would require a
more democratic consultation with the membership, and in order to preserve its
authority and legitimacy, the party leadership exasperates the ethics of
conviction instead. (In the case of Marxism and then Bolshevism, for instance,
the need for such “revision” became evident in the re-assessment of the
political strategy of German Social Democracy and the Second International
through the “evolutionary socialism” of Eduard Bernstein. The Leninist reply,
of course, was the catastrophic choice of what the Bolsheviks euphemistically named
“democratic centralism”. On the Bernstein-Debatte, see L. Colletti’s
brilliant summary in From Rousseau to Lenin.)
The ideological goals now become increasingly detached
from reality and lead inevitably to the failure of the Party-State to deliver
on its promises and to its unwillingness or inability to seek democratic
revisions of these eschatological ideals and goals from its membership
or constituency or base – with the
consequence that it must replace concrete practical measures with ever
more uncompromising idealistic goals that recede indefinitely
into the remote future and that require the increasingly authoritarian
regimentation of the party membership and then of the entire society. Hence, the
Party must be renewed or purged or cleansed constantly pursuant to a crescendo
of hysterical adhesion and devotion to the supreme ideal.
The important point to be made here is that because purposive
rationality prevails as the driver of the strategies of revolutionary movements
in their initial phase, it is then all the more essential to interpret these
strategies from a historico-materialist analytical framework. By contrast,
because in the second phase of development of revolutionary movements – the one
that covers their degeneration into totalitarian dictatorship – this purposive
rationality is abandoned in favour of value rationality or ethics of conviction
whereby the ideological goals entirely prevail over realistic means, then the
method of analysis can and indeed must turn to historicist categories precisely
because the more “scientific” categories, of historical materialism based on
purposive rationality, no longer suffice to understand the policies and
strategies of totalitarian dictatorships! Rational historical analysis is quite
simply and understandably incapable of comprehending the conduct of
totalitarian dictatorships because these, under their own inertial momentum or
historical tendency, can no longer comprehend the decisions of their leader or
leaders which are no longer based on the satisfaction of human needs.
The constantly receding horizon of the original ideological
goals, made even more remote by the late adoption of the ethics of conviction,
leads totalitarian dictatorships inexorably to seek to compensate for their
failings and to rationalize them by means of aggressive claims on other nations
and their resources on the grounds that these are illegitimately withheld from
their possession. This is where the historicist analysis of a Mosse in
connection with fascism comes into its own – because from this point onward the
purposive rationality of the historical materialist method (exemplified by the
renowned inveterate realism of a Karl Marx) ceases to comprehend the
“methodical madness” of totalitarian dictatorships:
The expansionist drive of fascism, fueled by nationalism…
was further sharpened: wars now became race wars, whether against external or
internal enemies. Racism here joined the apocalyptic strand in fascism
and especially in National Socialism... Ideas of regeneration, of sacrifice,
and a vision of utopia were the staple of all of fascism, as was the need to
triumph over ever-present enemies. If a heightened nationalism became a civic
religion, then racism for all its scientific pretensions was a belief-system as
well. The race war was always a crusade, a total war which seemed to require a
final solution. What other choice was there if the enmity between races was
hereditary, locked into place, and the differences between races absolute and
total? (G L Mosse, The Fascist Revolution, p.xv)
Now is perhaps the time to review the four elements
of the theory of totalitarian dictatorship as a distinct periodization of
revolutionary movements that have come under attack by the historicist or
cultural scholarship: allegedly, these are (i) the establishment of a
leadership cult (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Mussolini, Franco, now Xi Jin Ping
as we write), (ii) the combined use of propaganda to legitimize the regime for
its supporters and terror to deter or annihilate its opponents, (iii) the
elimination of the nation-state and, (iv), of class society. We say “allegedly”
because in reality the third and fourth elements – the elimination of the
nation-state and of class stratification – have never formed part of any of the
theories of totalitarianism (from Arendt to Friedrich to Bracher or Paxton) of
which we are aware. This is yet another straw man erected by the likes of Mosse
in their rather pathetic attempt to anoint their own misleading theories with a
patina of originality which they obviously and justifiably feared they lacked.
As they stand, theories of nationalism as exegeses for the rise of fascisms are
so weak as to be intellectually contemptible, not least because, as we are
about to see, “nationalism” itself is best explained by means of a historico-materialist
approach. Of course, neither of these
two elements, the obliteration of nation and class, form part of our proposed
periodization and theory of totalitarianism, so we may dismiss them offhand
with the contempt they deserve. (It irks us that De Felice, whom we otherwise
admire for his steadfast support of the classist theory of fascism, lent
support to Mosse’s inanity in his preface to the Italian translation of Mosse’s
The Nationalization of the Masses.)
So, after all the invective and vitriol, here is
Mosse on the leadership cult:
Theories of totalitarianism have also placed undue emphasis
upon the supposedly monolithic leadership cult. Here again, this was introduced
in the Soviet Union by Stalin rather than at first by Lenin. Even within fascism,
the cult of the leader varied: Piero Melograni has written on how the cult of
“Il Duce” and fascism were not identical, and that it was “Mussolinianism”
which won the people’s allegiance.3 In Germany there is no discernible
difference between Hitlerism and National Socialism. (G L Mosse, The Fascist
Revolution, p.3)
There are two things to be said without ado: first,
Mosse has completely failed to distinguish the first phase of totalitarian
dictatorship, which in the case of bolshevism coincides with the Lenin era, and
the second and last phase, which is properly Stalin’s. No wonder, then, that he
finds fault with our inclusion of the leadership cult as an essential element
of the second phase! Second, note how here Mosse surreptitiously (and here we
begin to doubt his sincerity, not just his scholarship!) moves from his
principal focus on Germany, where “there is no discernible difference
between Hitlerism and National Socialism” – contrary to his own thesis
against the leadership cult forming part of totalitarian dictatorship! -, to an
emphasis on the Italian fascist experience where “the cult of ‘Il Duce’ and
fascism were not identical, and…it was ‘Mussolinianism’ [not Fascism] which won
the people’s allegiance”. Now, this last statement is demonstrably false
especially with regard to the first phase of Fascism when Mussolini’s
leadership was questioned even within the Partitio Nazionale Fascista. Whatever
the case, it boggles the imagination that Mosse should use “Mussolinianism”,
that is, the very leadership cult that he wishes to remove from “totalitarianist”
theory altogether, let alone its final phase, as an example of why “the
leadership cult” has been “unduly emphasized” by the theories of
totalitarianism! Whatever else he may be accused of, proper use of logic
will never feature in any diatribe or heads of indictment against Mosse!
Clearly, in all instances of totalitarian dictatorship the leadership cult was
an indispensable ingredient at least in their final phase or “ultimate stage”.
Let us deal now with the remaining element of
totalitarian theory:
More serious is the contention, common to most theories of
totalitarianism, that the leader manipulates the masses through propaganda and
terror: that free volition is incompatible with totalitarian practice.4 The
term “propaganda,” always used in this context, leads to a serious
misunderstanding of the fascist conception of politics and its essentially
organic and religious nature. In times of crisis such politics provided many
millions of people with a more meaningful involvement than representative
parliamentary government—largely because it was not itself a new phenomenon,
but instead based upon an older and still lively tradition of direct democracy,
which had always opposed European parliaments. Even the widespread notion that
fascism ruled through terror must be modified; rather, it was built at first
upon a popular consensus. (G L Mosse, The Fascist Revolution, p.3)
The closer one looks at Mosse’s baseless reasoning,
the harder one’s fingers pull at one’s hair! There ought to be some kind of
legislation to criminalize stupidity of this colossal nature! First of all, the
term “propaganda” is used quite correctly by most historians for the very
important derogatory reason that it emphasizes how social institutions and
channels of communication are abused by dictatorships to further their evil
pursuits. To claim, as does Mosse, that “in times of crisis such politics
[politics!] provided many millions of people with a more meaningful
[meaningful?] involvement [involvement? In what? Surely not “politics”?] than
representative parliamentary government” – well, we had better leave Mosse
to his desperate lunacy before we go apoplectic ourselves! The blatant insanity
of his delusions need not trouble us further, except to say that if, like him,
we regard all forms of popular traditions as forms of “direct democracy” and as
customs of an “essentially organic and religious nature”, then we would have to
agree with Mosse that this “was not itself a new phenomenon”. – Except that
it most surely was not! Indeed, the reason why the propaganda, quasi-religious
liturgy, imagery, choreography and even the architecture of Nazism in
particular have elicited so much attention from scholars and a host of other
people is precisely that they were “novel” enough to attract such attention – and
alas, worryingly, even perverse admiration and imitation!
But there is even worse. Mosse claims that
[e]ven the widespread notion that fascism ruled through
terror must be modified; rather, it was built at first upon a popular
consensus.
This is utter garbage. Most historians with a
modicum of intelligence have remarked upon the fact that even after the
elections late in 1932, shortly before President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as
Chancellor, the NSDAP did not obtain a majority of votes and indeed its vote
was dwindling sharp and fast. Of course, fascism did not rule solely through
terror – no decent historian has ever claimed that. But terror was an essential
element from the beginning to deter, prevent and eliminate physically any
opposition to the Nazi “seizure” of power, which in reality took place with the
full blessing of the German authorities and ruling elites, and the Wehrmacht.
Mosse forgets or neglects what is perhaps the most important function of
terror: the imposition and propagation of thoroughgoing pervasive fear in a
population to the point that even the opponents of a totalitarian dictatorship
are induced into adhering to its party and social organizations so as to avoid
suspicion and potential victimization. (A hauntingly amusing instance is the widely-known
joke in Italy whereby the acronym of the Partito Nazionale Fascista [PNF] was
transliterated into the words “per necessita’ famigliare”, for family necessity!)
Mosse himself concedes that the so-called “popular
consensus” can be attributed only to the first phase of totalitarian
dictatorship (“at first”, in the last sentence), but surely not to the second
phase or “ultimate stage” of frenzied nihilism. Like De Felice, Mosse confuses
the early stages of incipient totalitarian movements with their later stages –
contrary to what the category of totalitarianism should duly cover, that is,
the later terminal stages when it has exhausted its rationalizations for
failing to deliver the goods, to fulfil the ideal. This is not the Lenin but
the Stalin stage. – Not the initial period of popular support but the later
stages of dislocation and collapse. “Popular consensus” and terror and
propaganda go hand in hand – they cannot be reduced to “popular cultural
traditions and religious rituals”, which are fundamentally different because of
their spontaneity and duration. Mosse completely mistakes the difference
between an original spontaneous folk tradition and its instrumentalization and
regimentation. The same goes for terror – which indeed, as was the case with
the Jacobin revolution under Robespierre which gave the name to this social phenomenon,
may also be carried out with the enthusiastic support of “crowds” or “masses”! (Cf.
G. Le Bon, La Revolution Francaise et la Psychologie des Revolutions.)
No comments:
Post a Comment