Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

The most influential analytical models of totalitarianism were put
forward by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) in The Origins of Totalitarianism
(1951) 7 , and by Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski
in Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956). 8 The two books
propose markedly different methodological approaches: Hannah
Arendt’s “developmental” model explains the origins and evolution
of totalitarianism; Friedrich and Brzezinski’s “operational” or “functional”
model of totalitarianism, explains the main features and the
functioning of totalitarian regimes. Yet both approaches are compatible
in their emphasis on issues of coercion, repression, and terror
in defining the nature of totalitarianism, and can even be seen
as complementary in their analytical and chronological emphases.
Arendt approached the origins of totalitarianism from the perspective
of the emergence of mass politics, and focused mainly on the
psychological and sociological conditions under which totalitarian
movements and regimes emerged. Her main thesis is that the disintegration
of the bourgeois society of the nineteenth century resulted
in the transformation of classes into masses, the elimination
of all forms of group solidarity, and the “atomization” and “extreme
individualization” of society, thus creating the conditions for the
emergence of interwar totalitarian movements. Arendt defined totalitarian
movements as a new type of “mass organizations of atomized,
isolated individuals,” having as a main goal the creation of
an isolated, self-contained, and fully-indoctrinated society. 9 Totalitarian
movements which managed to conquer the political power attempted
to establish totalitarian regimes, defined by Arendt as a
new type of rule striving for “total” and “permanent domination of
each single individual in each and every sphere of life.” 10 The
“essence” of the new type of regime was institutionalized terror,
while the main instrument of terror was the Secret Police. To implement
their utopian ideological goals, totalitarian regimes adopt
innovative means of “dominating and terrorising human beings from
within.” 11 By means of totalitarian indoctrination and absolute terror
7 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1951).
8 Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian dictatorship & autocracy
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956). See also the
second, revised edition by Carl J. Friedrich (New York: Praeger, 1965); and
Carl J. Friedrich, ed., Totalitarianism (New York, Grosset & Dunlap 1964).
9 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 323.
10 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 326.
11 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 325.
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