II. HISTORICO-POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
The origins and the main stages of the idea of totali-
tarianism reflect the problems of interpretation and the
controversies surrounding the use of the term in social
science, history, and philosophy. From the beginning,
the concept of the total or totalitarian state and regime
is basic to Fascism and remains so, while its transfer
and application to Communist systems, i.e., the analogy
of a rightist and leftist totalitarianism poses manifold
problems. Earlier use of the term is rare and vague:
the “total war” signifies, in the period from the French
Revolution (Robespierre) to World War I (Ludendorff)
and II (Goebbels), the levée en masse (“universal con-
scription”) in its most radical form; Totalität (“organic
wholeness or unity”) is ascribed to the idea of the state
by Hegel or Adam Müller; “total revolution” is occa-
sionally to be found in the writings of Marx and
Lassalle.
Yet Italian Fascism, for the first time, transformed
such general notions into the systematic terms totali-
tario and totalitarietà that were to describe and proph-
esy a radically new political phenomenon: the unity
of theory and action, of organization and consent in
state and society alike. It was Mussolini who first (and
then repeatedly) applied the idea in this sense to the
Fascist state, in a speech of October 28, 1925: Tutto
nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro
lo Stato (“Everything in the State, nothing outside the
State, nothing against the State”). This formula was,
however, more than simply extreme etatism; at the
same time Mussolini and other leading Fascists pro-
claimed their feroce volontà totalitaria (“violent totali-
tarian will”) and talked about the “totalitarian program
of our Revolution.”
What this early vocabulary of Fascism meant, is
above all a political style of violence, determination,
unconditional and absolute action, of radical demands
and intolerance. The dual aspects of the idea of totali-
tarianism are clearly visible here, as later on, in other
non-Italian contexts: not only full and absolute power,
but also a political dynamism based on dictatorial
decision and permanent action, as an emanation and
confirmation of unlimited power. Both aspects, the
totalitarian-etatist (as presented dogmatically by Mus-
solini's Hegelian Philosopher-Minister G. Gentile) and
the totalitarian activist (leading into imperialist and
finally even racist radicalism) are present in the con-
cept of totalitarian policy. German National Socialism,
though under different national conditions, demon-
strates a similar combination of state-absolutist and
radical-absolutist revolutionary elements. But while the
Hitler regime realized a dictatorship of utmost radical
consequence, the rhetorical use and the philosophical
exposition of the idea of totalitarianism remained a
domain of the Italian fascists, whether it was concen-
trating on the etatist-institutional or (after 1933 and
influenced by the triumph of National Socialism in
Germany) on the dynamic radical-revolutionary mean-
ing of the concept. The leading role of the party as
a “movement,” the continuation of a revolution never
completed but in fact permanent was stressed, as
against the traditional party and state structure.
On the other hand, since the term “totalitarianism”
was applied by critical observers very early (1928) to
both Fascism and Communism, its comparative use was
not merely a product of the cold war after 1945, as
critics of the term have suggested. Distinction should
be made between the use of the term (negatively) by
liberal analysts (like G. H. Sabine, 1937) or (positively)
by political movements and systems posing as totali-
tarian: most emphatically Italian Fascism, National
Socialism chiefly during the first years of the Third
Reich (Hitler himself preferred the word autoritär).
Communists reduced the phenomenon of totalitarian-
ism to the confrontation of revolutionary and counter-
revolutionary systems. The Fascist theory of totalitar-
ianism in turn has never recognized the Soviet Union
as a totalitarian state, but instead as a class dictatorship
radically opposed to the Fascist idea of a unified and
classless society.
In Germany, different from Italy, the idea of a “total
state” was developed before the Nazi seizure of power
(and even outside the Nazi Party) by political lawyers
and theorists like Carl Schmitt; it was the antiliberal,
antipluralistic consequence of a parliamentary democ-
racy in crisis, the Weimar Republic. In the crucial
period of 1932-33 this concept of a strong, monocratic
state was applied to the new reality of the Hitler
regime. Yet for this very reason, after an initial inflation
of writings on the total state, it never became official
doctrine (as in Fascism). Some protagonists of state
absolutism were even suspected of contradicting the
revolutionary and racist dynamism of National Social-
ism.
On the other hand, the structure and politics of the
Third Reich corresponded, as no other dictatorial sys-
tem, to the idea of totalitarian organization, power,
and ideology. In fact, since the rise of the SS-state over
the traditional state and legal system, the wartime
regime of National Socialism with its policy of mobili-
zation and expansion, of persecution, terror, and exter-
mination, of a declared “total war” was meant to be
as totalitarian as possible, even though the result was
a guided chaos. Totalitarian order and efficiency turned
out to consist of a system of arbitrary decisions and
a state-party dualism, under the sole will of the Leader.
But if the idea of the monolithic order of the totali-
tarian Leader system did not correspond to reality, it
still was real as the principle dominating the reorga-
nization of state and society. Much as we know today
about the chaotic, improvised state of the Third Reich,
its basic drive toward totalitarian organization and mo-
bilization still presents the most appropriate point of
departure for an analysis of National Socialism.
Does this Leader principle also hold true after a
critical analysis of the Stalinist system? Communist
theory never adopted the terminology of totalitarian-
ism to explain or legitimize the rule of the dictator
or the alleged dictatorship of the proletariat. But the
idea to represent a more perfect, true form of democ-
racy, at times even claimed by Hitler, does not in itself
contradict the totalitarian character of a political
movement or system. Indeed totalitarianism differs
from former types of dictatorship by its capacity to
handle democratic formulas and fictions, while using
all the possibilities of modern communication and
technology to manipulate the consent or submission
of the masses. This pseudodemocratic base of totali-
tarian systems should however not be mistaken for
reality, as is done by both conservative critics who
explain totalitarianism simply as the consequence of
democracy, and by apologists of Communist or Fascist
systems who praise the “democratic” quality of plebi-
scites and acclamations. The very fact that the ruling
clique or leader seek to legitimize their dictatorship
by appeals to mass support does not prove the demo-
cratic quality of a regime but signifies the specific form
of mass dictatorship in a democratic age. Thus the
range of the idea of totalitarianism is not only a matter
of definition but depends on the question, whether it
is restricted to systems that proclaim to be (or become)
totalitarian, or extended as a tool of critical analysis
and comparison, to dictatorial systems with a different
vocabulary and dogma. In the first case, the idea of
totalitarianism would be no more than a rather curious
piece of exaggerated power philosophy, typical of the
self-styled superman attitude of Mussolini's Fascism,
with little explanatory value as to the working of the
Fascist system, and even less of the Hitler regime. In
the second case, however, the idea of totalitarianism
must be further developed to signify and explain the
basic structural elements of modern, post-democratic
dictatorship, independent of its self-interpretation as
radical or progressive, democratic or revolutionary, left
or right.
