III. POSSIBILITIES OF APPLICATION
As a critical concept to compare and analyze modern
dictatorships, the idea of totalitarianism cannot be
defined by a philological compilation of the uses and
connotations of the term. Yet most attempts at a typol-
ogy comprising the main elements of totalitarian sys-
tems have foundered on the contradiction between
historical and systematic analysis. This criticism has
been directed against the well-known theory of Carl
J. Friedrich and Z. K. Brzezinski: its rigid form is easily
attacked on the ground that more differentiated em-
pirical evidence does not fit into the axiomatic scheme.
Evidently modern dictatorship cannot be reduced to
a few variables. A synopsis of various typologies rang-
ing from Sigmund Neumann, Franz L. Neumann, and
Hannah Arendt to Robert Tucker and Leonard
Schapiro would offer a wider range of features and
variables for comparisons capable of dealing with sys-
tems of very different historical and intellectual, eco-
nomic and social conditions. Such a typology, while
operating on various levels of comparison, presents a
more complicated, less perspicuous picture than the
gross equation of Fascist and Communist systems. But
it remains the only way to reconcile social theory and
historical evidence, and to save the concept of totali-
tarianism as a useful tool from its uncritical friends
and its adversaries alike.
This means first of all that there can be no short
definition of totalitarianism that will cover the pioneer
example of the idea, Fascist Italy, together with
Hitlerism and Stalinism. Instead certain features can
be discerned as “typical,” which then or now may also
be discerned in other dictatorships (in Latin America,
the Balkans, Spain, and notably China). The most im-
portant characteristic remains, in all cases, the extraor-
dinary position of the Leader. His rise is of course
bound to the general conditions allowing for dictatorial
rule, but the character of a totalitarian system is un-
thinkable apart from Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, or
Franco and Mao. They rank as historical forces above
any other factor, including ideology or doctrine which
they use at will; this applies also to the use of Marxism
by Stalin, quite contrary to attempts to distinguish
principally between Fascist and Communist systems
on the ground of their profound ideological differences.
Hitler's neglect or violation of basic ideas of National
Socialism or the contradictory insertion of a Leader
cult into Marxism is ample proof of the dominating,
all-important role of the Leader; it is typical also of
his relationship to the (allegedly omnipotent) party as
well as to all other agencies of power and influence.
Either by purges or through the tactics of
divide et
impera, the Leader maintains a monopoly position—
least successfully defended by Mussolini—that makes
all authority derive from and depend on his arbitrary
will, and not even on the will of the seemingly omnip-
otent one party.
It is the “Leader” state, indispensable as the one-
party system may be for any totalitarian regime, that
determines the real power structure of such dictator-
ship, whatever qualities may be ascribed to its aims,
or doctrines. Here more than anywhere else the com-
mon totalitarian rationale is superior to any distinctions
made between left or right, progressive or reactionary
regimes. One may indeed conclude that the totalitarian
character which allows for close comparison of differ-
ent regimes is dependent on a cluster of forces in which
the Leader supersedes party and ideology; conse-
quently, Leninist or post-Stalinist dictatorship has to
be defined in more specific terms.
The same applies to the unlimited power of the
Leader versus state and law. This explains the typical
coexistence of extremely arbitrary acts with adminis-
trative and legal continuity, in the sense of a “dual
state” (E. Fraenkel) in which order and chaos, stability
and revolution form a pair. In reality, such a dualism
was only tolerated to provide pseudolegal cover for
arbitrary actions, with no legal security or predicta-
bility available outside the will of the Leader. This was
clearly the case in both the Hitler and the Stalin re-
gimes, with only superficial differences of more pseudo-
legal (the German tradition) or more revolutionary
camouflage; again Mussolini, while following the same
line, was least successful in view of the powerful rem-
nants of monarchy and church in Italy, despite his
regime.
Another important feature also distinguishing totali-
tarian systems from older forms of dictatorship, is the
degree to which individual and private life is controlled
and subjugated to a “new morality” of collective be-
havior. The regime demands quite openly the complete
politicizing of all realms of life, and its success in
performing this part of totalitarian control reveals the
degree to which the regime is able to realize its claim
to fuse state and society, party and people, individual
and collective into the ideal of total unity. It is here
that ideology aims to perform its central function: to
justify or even glorify the violation and abolition of
existing laws and morals in favor of higher goals of
national and racist, or social and class-oriented ideals
of community, again in the sense of a totality of means
and ends superseding individual sacrifices and sub-
limating terror and crime when they are used in the
service of the “whole” to which totalitarian ideology
is geared.
It has become clear how important in this connec-
tion the pseudodemocratic appearance must be for a
regime claiming total consent. To uphold the fiction
of a volonté générale embodied in the regime of one
leader and one party, as opposed to the empirical truth
that different individuals and groups naturally ask for
representation in different parties and power agencies,
a totalitarian regime could not be satisfied with older
techniques of autocratic rule by military repression or
religious sanction. It is only by ruling in the name of
the people that modern dictatorship can expect the
more or less voluntary support of the masses which
is necessary for large-scale mobilization and effective
functioning. This is helped by the extensive use of
modern propaganda, concentrating mainly on the
glorification of the Leader and on the manipulation
of his charismatic and pseudoreligious qualities. Among
the basic preconditions of totalitarian dictatorship
ranges the pseudodemocratic fiction that by mass
meetings and other emotional processes of communi-
cation the individual is directly linked to, and repre-
sented by, the Leader—without the need of interme-
diate agencies like free parliaments or interest groups:
it is the fiction of direct mass democracy.
In conclusion, the justification and usefulness of the
concept of totalitarianism seems quite independent of
the occasional misuse of the term in the service of cold
war and other propaganda. If there is no doubt about
some basic differences between Fascism and Commu-
nism in the realm of ideological goals and social policy,
the distinction between right and left totalitarianism
is much harder to establish in the actual working of
systems like the Hitlerian or Stalinist; at the same time,
the similarities of basic features of rule are striking.
While those systems seem to be a matter of the past
and history may not repeat itself, basic components
of the idea of totalitarianism remain present in our age
of democracy, of mass movements and profound social
change. This is a potential to be mobilized by future
Leaders whenever social crisis, emotional need for
security, and ideological conviction, and the hunger
for power coincide in the belief that only by concen-
trating all forces in one power agency and by com-
pletely subduing individual freedom to the chiliastic
promises of a political movement and its deified
leaders, can the problems of modern society be solved.
In this way, the idea of totalitarianism is not a phe-
nomenon of the past bound to the unique constellation
of the interwar period, but is part of the modernizing
process of nations and societies in the age of mass
democracy, bureaucracy, and pseudoreligious ideolo-
gies.
