TOTALITARIANISM

Totalitarianism is defined as a political system or regime in which the government seeks total control of society. This requires breaking down all the intermediate associations of civil society or turning them into agencies of the government, so that all that exists are, on the one hand, atomistic individuals and, on the other, the unity of the state.

Totalitarian systems have significant implications for science, technology, and ethics. Totalitarian governments rely on communications technology to spread an official ideology and to monitor subjects, while totalitarian control of the economy creates major hurdles to technological invention and innovation. Scientists face numerous ethical challenges in totalitarian systems, from ideological conditions often imposed on their research (a rejection of Jewish science in Germany and the promotion of Trofim Lysenko's genetics of the inheritance of acquired characteristics in the Soviet Union) to the kinds of projects on which they may be required to do research.

Features of Totalitarianism

The two classic scholarly examinations of totalitarianism are Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzesinski's Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956). Friedrich and Brzesinski identify totalitarianism as a unique political order, opposed to democracy yet distinct from authoritarianism and dictatorship, and characterized by six key features. The first is an official ideology. In totalitarian systems, this ideology includes a blueprint for remaking society, either in ethnic or racial terms (as in the case of fascism) or in class terms (as in the case of communism) as well as justification for the monopoly of political power.

The second basic feature is a single mass political party, usually with a single leader, with a monopoly of political power. This group is part of the total penetration of society by the rulers. Other rival group identities in society—religious organizations, voluntary associations, other political parties—are either destroyed or brought under the control of the party.

The third characteristic is the existence of a secret police force and rule through the development of terror in the population. Because the leaders of the political system seek to penetrate and remake society, they are ruthless in dealing with political and cultural opponents. Any autonomous organization of activities is seen as a threat and all who are not active in their support of the ruling party are possible targets of harassment by the secret police. Even active, and loyal, party members are not immune, however. The purges of the Communist Party under Stalin, for example, were aimed at party members who were deemed not diligent enough in their identification and condemnation of potential threats to the system.

The fourth feature is its monopoly over the means of communication. Although it is impossible to control all forms of communication, totalitarian regimes seek to limit the autonomous flow of information. Control over information is a crucial component in solidifying the ideology in the minds of the population—facilitating the establishment of legitimacy for the leaders, justifying its monopoly of political power, and creating support for its social blueprint.

The fifth characteristic, highlighted by Friedrich and Brzezinski, is the monopoly over weapons in society. This is not a feature unique to totalitarian systems (many democracies control access to weapons by the general population). It is, however, a necessary feature of totalitarian control.

The final feature is a centrally controlled economy. Control over the economy serves three purposes. First it assures the social blueprint; economic development can be structured in the way most supportive of the plan for remaking society, and the workplace can be used as an arena for socializing the masses in support of the system. Second it assures access by the state to the resources it requires to maintain power at home and expand its influence abroad. Finally, and perhaps most important, a centrally planned economy makes people dependent on the state. Thus, while arguably economically inefficient, a planned economy is politically efficient.

Arendt proposed a similar description of totalitarianism, emphasizing its ability to atomize the population (controlling the ability of the population to engage in group activities autonomous from the party or the state) and its effective use of ideology. The development of a mass adherence to official ideology is essential for the formation of legitimacy in totalitarian systems. Control over communications—particularly the educational system and mass media—made the development of such adherence theoretically possible.

Totalitarianism in Practice

In practice totalitarianism has never achieved the complete penetration and control of society. Although people were careful in public, and often went through the motions of participating in state-sponsored mobilization efforts, they led separate public and private lives. Terror crept into the private lives of individuals—one had to be extremely leery of speaking ill of the government even among one's good friends—but people also partook in the activities of normal life: shopping, attending the ballet, walking in the park, and so on.

Because the ideal differed from the reality of totalitarian life, some political scientists and many social historians (see, for example, writings by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Stephen Cohen) criticized the totalitarian model for overemphasizing politics, underemphasizing the role of society, and assuming a system of tight, top down control devoid of political and social conflict. The totalitarian model of politics assumed that everyone was completely controlled and atomized, and that leaders never responded to society. But in the Soviet case, leaders sometimes appealed to constituencies, and policies were, at times, sparked by initiatives from below.

The three examples in the real world that came closest to approaching the totalitarian ideal have been Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany (1933–1945), Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union (1929–1953), and, more recently, the Taliban-run system in Afghanistan. None of these, however, achieved full realization of the totalitarian ideal. These three cases provide helpful examples of three forms of totalitarianism: fascism, communism, and Islamism. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that fascist and communist dictatorships were basically alike, though one can identify different points of emphasis between the two forms of government. Fascism is a form of totalitarianism that emphasizes racial and/or ethnic superiority, engages in militarism, and argues for the need for a dominant state to develop the capacity of the superior race and/or ethnic group. According to Barrington Moore (1966), fascism develops as the result of an alliance among the state, the land-owning elite, and the industrial bourgeoisie. Communism emphasizes the remaking of society to eliminate economic exploitation through state control of the means of production. Moore argues—ironically, given Karl Marx's prediction of workers' revolutions in the most economically developed countries—that communism developed where the lack of a middle class and the presence of a large and disgruntled peasantry allowed revolutionary leaders to seize control of the government in the name of destroying the old economic order. In both forms of totalitarianism in practice, increasing control over the economy and society were justified through the claim that one or more groups (for example, capitalists or Jews) were enemies of the people.

Islamism is a more recent variant of totalitarianism. Its ideology is anti-western, critical of modernization, and emphasizes the dominance of Islamic law—as interpreted by the leaders—over society.

Science, Technology, and Ethics

The totalitarian goal to penetrate and remake society completely has significant implications for science and technology. The control and monitoring that characterized totalitarianism shaped the practice of science dramatically. In the ideal totalitarian system, scientists are less free than in any other type of system to pursue their research as they see fit. Scientific research and related technological advances become the property of the party-state. This situation poses ethical dilemmas for scientists. On the one hand, the likelihood that the fruits of their labor could be used in unpleasant ways by the state creates a disincentive for scientists. On the other hand, working through the official scientific channels is the only way for such scientists to conduct their research. Thus, although in practice scientists in systems with totalitarian features conducted pioneering research, such scientists were limited both by the imperatives of the totalitarian ideology and by their personal ethical concerns about the consequences of their research.

Technology is a necessary tool in the transformation of tyranny into totalitarianism. Friedrich and Brzezinski emphasize technology in their discussion of totalitarianism, arguing that this type of political system could only have arisen in an era of modern technology. They highlighted the role of technology in allowing control over communications and making possible large scale economic planning, as well as in facilitating the monitoring of everyday life by the secret police. Totalitarian governments direct scientists to develop such technology.

Though technology is a necessary part of a modern totalitarian state, technology was not easily absorbed into the totalitarian system in practice. Not all technological products of scientific research found a receptive audience in the party-state bureaucracy. The economic planning approach that was a feature of the Soviet system, for example, made it difficult to incorporate technology. Many economic planners feared the introduction of new technology because of the uncertainty that accompanied the introduction. As a result, when there was a clear goal to increase production, and when this increase could be achieved through the addition of more inputs into the system (extensive growth), the totalitarian planning system worked fairly well. As the global economy moved in the direction of growth resulting from technology-driven improvements in efficiency (intensive growth), the Soviet planning system lagged behind.

Finally technologically-conditioned improvements in communication posed serious problems for totalitarian systems. While technology made monitoring of large numbers of citizens possible in the middle part of the twentieth century, the growth of fax machines, personal computers with printers, cellular telephones, and Internet connections by the early twenty-first century, provided citizens in dictatorial countries with access to information from outside the country and enabled them to compose and spread antigovernment messages quickly and relatively anonymously. Technology may allow Big Brother more ways to monitor citizens, but it also provides citizens more opportunities to engage in subversive activities.

LOWELL W. BARRINGTON

SEE ALSO Arendt, Hannah;Authoritarianism;Conservatism;Fascism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arendt, Hannah. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Cohen, Stephen. (1985). Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917. New York: Oxford University Press.

Easton, David. (1965). A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1986). "New Perspectives on Stalinism." Russian Review 45(October): 357–373.

Friedrich, Carl, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. (1956). Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Moore, Barrington, Jr. (1966). Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press.