Progress pill
Political families under the microscope

Totalitarian regimes

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Totalitarian regimes

  • Hannah Arendt's insight
  • Definition and fundamental characteristics
  • The pillars of totalitarian control
  • Two models, one method: Hitler versus Stalin
  • Totalitarian thought in quotations
We conclude our analysis of the great political families with totalitarian regimes, but here we are dealing with something fundamentally different. Totalitarianism is not, strictly speaking, a political philosophy; it is rather the negation of all political philosophy. This is what Hannah Arendt shows us when she draws the distinction between classical despotism and totalitarianism.

Hannah Arendt's insight

In her major work The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt writes: "Totalitarianism does not tend to subject men to despotic rules, but to a system in which men are superfluous." What she means is that a totalitarian regime is not simply a classical regime tending toward tyranny or despotism (as monarchy sometimes did, or even democracy, as Tocqueville warned). It is something else entirely.
According to Arendt, totalitarianism is not a political family but the very negation of politics, a system in which human beings are rendered incapable of independent action. Politics, in her conception, is the capacity of a people to take its destiny in hand and to act. In totalitarian regimes, this capacity is destroyed.

Definition and fundamental characteristics

Mussolini declared in 1920: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." This reveals precisely what "totalitarian" means: totality. Everything is absorbed into the state, meaning there is no longer any separation between public and private space. The state entirely absorbs society, which at that point loses all form of autonomy. If you want to open a table tennis club, you need the party's authorization. And this extends to absolutely everything, including the intimate life of the family.
  • Freedoms: suppressed. Totalitarian regimes impose strong governmental control over both personal and economic life. Totalitarianism exists when the state controls everything in society and wields unlimited power, eliminating all forms of opposition through political policing.
  • Philosophy: Totalitarian societies are distinguished by their use of an ideology, the promise of a "paradise" (the end of history for communism, or racial purity for Nazism). The party unifies the masses against an enemy both external and internal (the capitalist bourgeois for communism, the Jew for Nazism).
  • Politics: a single-party system in which a tiny minority controls the entire population through ideology and terror. All totalitarian regimes came to power through violent revolution, a revolution that justifies violence by making a clean slate of the previous system.
  • Economy: totalitarian regimes may tolerate private enterprise if it is forced to serve the interests of the state, or they may demand that the state control all means of production. They see the free market as a threat to general order, because ideal societies must be planned by the authorities.

The pillars of totalitarian control

Totalitarianism is present when all of the following characteristics are assembled simultaneously: suppressed freedoms, unlimited authority founded on the single party and the cult of the leader, violent revolution, and a directed economy. This was already the case with the French Revolution, which is why some historians have identified a totalitarian dimension within it. It is important to note that modern democracies may exhibit some of these characteristics, but never all of them at the same time (at least, fortunately, not until now).

Two models, one method: Hitler versus Stalin

The differences between Nazism and communism are more apparent than real. Despite their historical antagonism, Hitler and Stalin employed identical methods: the cult of personality, total social control through surveillance, censorship, indoctrination, and political policing, and the systematic elimination of all forms of opposition or dissent. As Raymond Aron, an astute observer of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, wrote: "Nazi or communist totalitarianisms function in the same way, on two principles: the faith of the militants and the fear of the opponents." He speaks of "faith" in a quasi-religious sense; totalitarian regimes have been called secular religions, religions without God. A kind of fanaticism characterizes them beyond their different motivations.
  • Hitler (Nazism): although the Nazi regime did not formally abolish private property, there was an appearance of a market economy while the private sector was completely subordinated to the objectives of the state (war and rearmament). Economic autarky was imposed, meaning there was no free trade. There was centralized economic planning to serve the regime's goals.
  • Stalin (Communism): Stalinism exemplifies total state control of the economy. All private ownership of the means of production was abolished, the economy was fully planned (five-year plans), collectivization was forced, and the state controlled absolutely all aspects of production and distribution.
As Thierry Wolton, who has studied the comparison between these two regimes extensively, writes: "The twinship of Soviet communism and Nazism is a historical fact. The two totalitarianisms resemble each other in their mode of functioning and political practice: hatred of democracy, of humanist values, of individual freedom are traits common to both."

Totalitarian thought in quotations

The people do not need freedom, for freedom is one of the forms of bourgeois dictatorship. Vladimir Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, 1902
The German people will be led not by reasoning, but by a leader who embodies the will of the people. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925
Nazism and communism share a common opposition to liberal democracy and what they call the "capitalist bourgeoisie." [...] Both ideologies claim to be socialist and use that image against each other. Francois Furet, The Passing of an Illusion, 1995
These quotations reveal the common logic of totalitarian regimes: the rejection of individual freedom in favor of absolute centralized authority, whether communist or fascist. Indeed, the Nazi party's very name (National Socialism) signals this shared ideological matrix, even though the two movements detested each other.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
What is Hannah Arendt's key distinction between classical despotism and totalitarianism?