Totalitarian Democracy and After: International Colloquium in Memory of Jacob L. Talmon, Jerusalem, 21-24 June 1982 9652080640, 9789652080646

Citation preview

TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY AND AFTER

TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY AND AFTER

INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM

IN MEMORY OF JACOB L. TALMON JERUSALEM, 21-24 JUNE 1982

THE ISRAEL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY JERUSALEM 1984

ISBN 965-208-064-0 1984 The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University Printed in Israel at Alpha Press Ltd., Jerusalem

PREFACE

T h e c o n c e p t o f t o t a l i t a r i a n d e m o c r a c y gained widespread

currency among students of modem history largely after the publication of Jacob L. Talmon’s first book and his analysis there. In this colloquium, dedicated to his memory, the organizers decided to investigate further the meaning of this formulation as well as to explore its repercussions on contemporary historical and literary trends and its relevance to the political traditions and dynamics of countries and continents today. Talmon’s passionate interest in the Jewish situation and its expressions in various ideologies, mainly their culmination in Zionism, have been given attention in a special section of the colloquium. Talmon served as Professor of Modem History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a long-time member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, until his untimely death in June 1980. The colloquium is sponsored by these two institutions. The present volume contains the major papers presented at the colloquium, as well as those of the commentators who were invited to participate in the discussions. We hope that this forum of distin­ guished contributors will serve its purpose in commemorating Jacob Talmon’s opus and will elicit a response of continuous interest in the challenges of this subject. On behalf of the Hebrew University and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities we wish to thank the organizing committee for pre­ paring the programme of the colloquium, and Professor Yehoshua Arieli who, as chairman of the Professor Talmon Memorial Foundation, took part in all the arrangements. We wish to express our gratitude to the participants who prepared their papers for publication as well as to Mrs Yvonne Glikson who took care of the volume for press. Nathan Rotenstreich

CONTENTS

PREFACE Yehoshua Arieli: Jacob Talmon — An Intellectual Portrait

1

P A R T I: T H E H I S T O R I O G R A P H Y A N D P H I L O S O P H Y OF H I S T O R Y I N R E L A T I O N T O H I S T O R I C A L R E A L ­ I T Y I N T E R M S OF T O T A L I T A R I A N D E M O C R A C Y John Dunn:

Totalitarian Democracy and the Legacy of Modern

Revolutions — Explanation or Indictment?

37

James H. Billington: Rival Revolutionary Ideals

56

Karl Dietrich Bracher: Turn of the Century and Totalitarian Ideology

70

PART II: T O T A L I T A R I A N D E M OCRACY — T U RA L T R A D I T I O N S AND M O D E R N IZ A T IO N

CUL­

Totalitarian Democracy — Cultural Traditions and

S. N. Eisenstadt:

Modernization. Introductory Remarks Michael

Heyd:

Christian

Antecedents

83

to

Totalitarian Democratic

Ideologies in the Early Modern Period Shlomo Avineri:

Different

Visions of Political Messianism in the

Marxist European Tradition Michael Confino:

86

96

Russian and Western European Roots of Soviet

Totalitarianism

104

Moshe Zimmermann: The Historical Setting of German Totalitarianism

118

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh: Political Traditions and Responses in Islam

128

Uriel Tal: Totalitarian Democratic Hermeneutics and Policies in Modern

Jewish Religious Nationalism

137

Ben-Ami Shillony: Traditional Constraints on Totalitarianism in Japan

158

PART III: THE V A R IE T IE S AND T R A N S F O R M A ­ T I O N S OF T O T A L I T A R I A N D E M O C R A C Y I N D I F ­ FERENT COUNTRIES AND UNDER DIFFERENT REGIMES George L. Mosse: Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian

Democracy Revisited

167

Yaron Ezrahi: Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian Democ­

racy Revisited. Comments on George L . Mosse3s Paper vii

177

Michael Walzer: Totalitarianism and Tyranny

183

Yirmiahu Yovcl: Totalitarianism and Totality. A Response to Michael

Walzer

193

Zeev Sternhell: Aux sources de l'idéologie fasciste: La révolte socialiste

contre le matérialisme

197

Baruch Knei-Paz: Ideas, Political Intentions and Historical Consequences — The Case of the Russian Revolution Richard Lowenthal:

232

Totalitarianism and After in Communist Party

Regimes

262

Harold Z. Schiffrin: Totalitarianism and After in Communist Party

Regimes. Comments on Richard LowenthaVs Paper

323

P A R T I V : T H E I M P A C T OF T O T A L I T A R I A N D E M O C ­ RACY ON T H E J E W I S H S I T U A T I O N Jonathan Frankel: Democracy and Its Negations — On Polarity in

Jewish Socialism Israel Kolatt: Zionism and Political Messianism

329 342

Anita Shapira: Zionism and Political Messianism. Comments on Israel

Kolatt’s Paper Erik Cohen:

354

The Israeli Kibbutz — The Dynamics of Pragmatic

Utopianism

362

Menachem Rosner: The Israeli Kibbutz — The Dynamics of Pragmatic

Utopianism. Comments on Erik Cohen9s Paper Ben Halpem:

377

The Context of Hannah Arendt9s Concept of Total­

itarianism

386

Ephraim E. Urbach: Between Rulers and Ruled — Some Aspects of

the Jewish Tradition

399

Jacob Talmon — An Intellectual Portrait

by

YEHOSHUA ARIELI The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

I a m a w a r e of the honour and responsibility in being asked to open this colloquium with an evocation of the memory of the man in whose honour we have convened and to draw for you here the image of Jacob Talmon that will do justice to his personality and his work. Let me remind you of some of the features familiar to all who knew him : his emotional intensity and élan ; the sensitivity and generosity of his mind and heart ; the never stilled thirst for knowledge and experience ; his curiosity and open-mindedness concerning people and the affairs of men ; his passionate participation in the affairs of his country and his times ; his moral seriousness and sense of responsibility as a citizen of his country and the world ; his need to give testimony to his convictions, and his courage to do so in the face of a hostile public. Such a man could not and would not be a secluded scholar, an intel­ lectual who kept aloof from the rough and tumble of events, people, causes and issues. On the contrary, though the centre of his life and mind lay in his intellectual work, this was inseparably bound up with the world in which he lived and with the predicaments of his times. Talmon was possessed by a never-ceasing urge to size up intellectually, to penetrate empathically the world of man, to capture its spirit and aspirations and understand its dilemmas and perplexities. He did so in order to recreate his insights as powerful works of historical critique on the character and course of the modern world. The life of Talmon was encompassed by the violent, chaotic and revolutionary period of post-World-War I, first in his native Poland, then in Mandatory Palestine, in France and England during World War II, and eventually in the State of Israel from 1949. It was the overwhelming power of the events of these times which determined his choice of work as a historian and writer. [ 1]

Totalitarian Democracy and After At first sight Talmon seemed to be one of the many Jewish intellectuals of our age who devoted themselves to the study and interpretation of their times because of their basic insecurity and alienation and because they were endowed with a rare sensitivity and almost prophetic capacity of divination and insight into the great currents and undercurrents of contemporary society. Like many of them he was a man whose pro­ vince was the whole world and who thought in terms of universal history, in terms of the great movements which have shaped the fate of man in our age. There is little doubt that the unique position which Talmon held as a historian and intellectual in Israel was due to his wider role as an interpreter of the modem world and of its ideological and spiritual forces, as an observer and a critic of the fundamental trends and attitudes which characterize the entire human condition in our time. Yet this was not the complete picture. Talmon was always part, and, more to the point, felt himself always part, of an intensely experienced community of belonging and aspirations. To him the Jewish world of Eastern Europe with its life-style, passions, and visions, the Zionist movement with its aspirations and loyalties and the new Jewish society of Palestine and the State of Israel were his true home. Despite growing alienation towards certain trends in Israel after 1967 Talmon remained totally committed, in loyalty and involvement, to Israel as an idea and as a reality, its development and survival. This feeling of rootedness and belonging gave Talmon a base of security and self-assurance in relation to his own society as well as to that of the wider world ; a sense of measure and balance as well as criteria of reasonableness and reality in his approach toward events, ideas, policies and people. Jerusalem and the Hebrew University, its faculty and student body, were integral to Talmon’s sense of partnership and community. Talmon spent most of his life in the city of Jerusalem. He made his home and' brought up his family there, becoming a member of the community of scholars, public servants and intellectuals. When he first came to the Hebrew University Talmon was part of a small body of students who had only recently arrived from Central and Eastern Europe. All of them were deeply aware of the unique significance of the Hebrew University for the renascence of the Jewish people in its ancient homeland and in its eternal city. From the university on Mount Scopus, with its vistas over the Judaean Desert, the Jordan valley and the mountains of Moab, in sight of the Old City of Jerusalem with the Temple Mount, its spires and holy places, and the new Jewish city growing outside the walls, Talmon first explored [ 2]

Yehoshua Arieli the world of learning, and took directions and the measure of himself and the world. After his return from England as lecturer at the Hebrew University Talmon’s life centred around Jerusalem, the Hebrew University, the Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and of course his home. Talmon was undoubtedly an exciting and dedicated lecturer wherever the occasion happened to be, at Columbia, Massachusetts, or Oxford, or from the numerous academic and public platforms where he was invited to speak the world over. Yet teaching in Jerusalem had dimen­ sions of obligations and mission uniquely their own. It meant the responsibility and opportunity to shape the mind and outlook of a generation upon which depended the character and the future of Israel. Actually this meant a return to the classical conception of the uses and value of the study of history, as magistra vitae, as a medium of gaining not only knowledge but self-knowledge, of becoming acquainted with a ‘philosophy teaching by example’ and to be confronted by the experience of humanity. How revealing were the parting words Talmon used to utter, when we separated for our respective teaching assignments and classrooms : ‘preach well’ said half-jokingly and half-seriously. Teaching and lectur­ ing possessed for Talmon the dignity of the pulpit, and for this he mobilized all the sources and resources of his mind, his heart and his imagination to bring forth the seriousness and vitality of the great moments and issues of the past and their hidden significance. Like an artist he was sensitive and finely tuned to the receptivity of his public. He was elated when the classroom fell suddenly silent because the listeners found themselves face to face with poignant issues of their own life and existence, and recognized suddenly the nature of the human predicament mirrored in the discourse on the past. All these, the teaching, the writing and the historical work of Jacob Talmon immensely enlarged the intellectual horizon of young Israelis and the Israeli reading public. The far-reaching influence of his work in Israel was founded less on the special message which made him famous — his views on political messianism and the nature of totali­ tarian democracy — than on his role as an interpreter of modern times and on his capacity to create in his listeners a sense of shared experience with the world at large and with the fortunes and predicaments of his age. This profound sense that history mattered, so powerfully stimulated by his teaching and writing, was reinforced by the active part which Talmon took in public debate on decisive political issues facing Israel. When discussing critically policies advocated by the government or the [ 3]

Totalitarian Democracy and After public, Talmon frequently inserted remarks such as ‘history teaches’.1 It was often difficult to distinguish when he really thought that his views were formed by what one could consider ‘historical lessons’ and when he used historical arguments rhetorically in order to strengthen his arguments as the classical concept of rhetoric has done since the times of Isocrates. His political pronouncements and opinions were fused with historical insights, political and psychological analyses and the skilful use of historical analogy and comparisons. Talmon evaluated the course Israel was taking in regard to the Israeli-Arab conflict and the ‘Palestinian’ question by criteria which he believed were derived from a long-range historical perspective, and he frequently based his pronouncements on historical forecasts. Al­ together I believe that Talmon was convinced of the relevance of true historical knowledge and understanding to political analysis and deci­ sion-making. He thus would agree with Polybius and the pragmatic conception of history that statesmanship and historical study and imagination were as intimately related as experience and action. To a certain degree this applies, though inversely, to Talmon’s his­ torical work. Here, his most important insights stem from political analyses and experience, and from views gained from that mixture of values and norms won by experience, a kind of political and moral arithmetic and a certain temperament which we call political wisdom or judgement. However, his skilful utilization of historical analysis and insights not only lent great weight to his political pronouncements, and made him a one-man power of political critique, but in the same degree raised the public interest in historical knowledge and analysis and recreated thereby the older connection between ‘history and politics’, which the so-called scientific and Bildungs-oriented mode of historical scholarship had derisively dismissed. This is of course not peculiar to the historical work of Talmon. It was the opinion of Benedetto Croce that the essence of history con­ sists in an act of perception and comprehension, the motives of which derive from the needs of practical life. Historical works are born at all times and among all peoples out of urgent current needs and the per­ plexities they entail.2 In a similar way the British historian, Trevor Roper, has asserted : 1 See, for instance, J.L. Talmon, Israel Among the Nations, London-New York 1970, ‘The Six-Days’ War in Historical Perspective’, pp. 131-132, 137, 182 ff. 2 See Benedetto Croce, History As the Story of Liberty (trans. S. Sprigge), London 1941, pp. 17-18.

[ 4]

Yehoshua Arieli Historians in every generation. .. see history against the dominant background of events of their time. They turn to it in order to explain problems of their time, to give these problems a philoso­ phical context, to see them as part of a continuance. .. and thereby be perhaps understood in their proper measures.3 This is eminently true of the work of Jacob Talmon. His entire life was devoted to one subject and one purpose : the study of the nature and development of the modern revolutionary movements, their ideolo­ gical expressions and the reasons why they crystallized politically into totalitarian regimes. In the preface to his first book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Talmon wrote in 1951 : This present study on the Origins of Totalitarian Democracy will be continued in two further volumes. The one will be devoted to the vicissitudes of the totalitarian-democratic trend in nineteenthcentury Western Europe ; the other will deal with the history of totalitarian democracy in Eastern Europe, Russia and the ‘people’s democracies’ from about 1860 till our own days and will also touch on contemporary events in the Far East. It is astonishing today, after thirty-one years, to see the extent to which Talmon accomplished his design and remained close to the original conception and organization of his work. True enough, the outline as suggested in 1951 related in the main to the rise and development of totalitarian revolutionary ideologies of the left, whilst the work in fact increasingly extended to the whole range of revolutionary mass-ideo­ logies. Yet even so the unity, approach, vision and subject-matter is impressive. I think that such an intensive concentration on one subject as a life­ long project is the result of some critical, compelling experience. And indeed we have the testimony that this was the case in Jacob Talmon’s historical work. In the final chapter of his recently published book The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution he wrote : This quest, which was started in The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, was carried on in Political Messianism — the Roman­ tic Phase, and is now brought to a close in the present work, was originally triggered by a personal response to certain shattering contemporary events. In 1937-1938 when the minds of so many, 3

H. Trevor Roper, ‘History — Study and Teaching’, Times Literary Sup­ plement (1980), p. 833.

[ 5]

Totalitarian Democracy and After especially of the young, were being deeply exercised by the terrible enigma of the Moscow trials, I happened to be working on an undergraduate seminar paper on the ultra-democratic French con­ stitution of 1793 as seen against the background of the Jacobin terrorist dictatorship. The analogy between the year two and what was happening in 1937-1938 struck me most forcibly. Who had so criminally betrayed the Russian Revolution — the accused or the accusers ? In either case, how could such vast evils, whether committed by one group or the other of the makers of the October Revolution and the builders of the Soviet Union, be reconciled with the message of universal salvation upheld by both sides. But why the analogy ? Surely it could not be just the same eternal and incurable human wickedness or merely a similar concatenation of untoward circumstances that had brought about both sets of developments. The parallel seemed to suggest the existence of some unfathomable and inescapable law which causes revolutionary Sal­ vationist schemes to evolve into reigns of terror and the promise of a perfect direct democracy to assume in practice the form of totalitarian dictatorship.4 Great historical intuitions in the modern period generally stem from the desire, fed by anxieties and the sense of threat, to understand the meaning and significance of the trends and events crowding in on the individual in order to be able to deal with the critical problems of the present. A loss of confidence, a feeling that human society is moving at an accelerating pace towards an unknown destination, that prece­ dents have no longer any validity, have haunted many of the great historical thinkers of the last hundred and fifty years, from de Tocque­ ville and Macaulay to Hippolyte Taine, Jacob Burckhardt, Nietzsche, Lord Acton, and Henry Adams, and to Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Jan Huizinga wrote in 1936 in his book, In the Shadow of Tomorrow : We are living today in a demented world and we know it. It would not come as a surprise to any one if tomorrow the madness gave way to a frenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with the spirit gone.5 4 5

J.L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, London 1981, p. 535. J. Huizinga, In the Shadow of Tomorrow, Norton paper-bound edition 1964, p. 15.

[ 6]

Yehoshua Arieli The prevalence of such sentiment is most evident in the work and thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, whom Talmon considered to be closest to his own views and to whom he referred again and again in his writings.6 All of de Tocqueville’s mature life, his thought and writings, bore the stamp of two great insights : that the revolution, which had begun in the generation of his parents, which continued to grow in strength and dominated his life and that of his generation, had not yet come to its end, and indeed its end and ultimate destiny could not be foreseen ; and furthermore that this revolution, which had started in the realm of politics, had turned into a social revolution which, by changing all established attitudes and norms, threatened to destroy the foundations which had ensured in the past social stability and the survival of civilization itself.7 Right in the beginning, as the epigraph for The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Talmon chose the searching remark of de Tocqueville on the character of the future: I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world. Our contemporaries will find no prototype for it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it. The old words Despotism and Tyranny are inappropriate : the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it.8 De Tocqueville’s discernment of the rise of an all-powerful and totally comprehensive state power over a society of lonely individuals, completely atomized and strangers to each other, as the outcome of the democratic revolution, is of course different from the concept of totalitarian democracy which Jacob Talmon introduced in his work. The description by de Tocqueville of ‘the immense and tutelary power which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratification and to watch over their fate’, a power ‘absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild’, is closer to the Kafkaesque vision of a total welfare state directed 6

7 8

See, for instance, J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London 1952 (paperback edition 1960), pp. 257-258 ; Myth, p. 546 ; Israel Among the Nations, p. 5 ; and, foremost, in J.L. Talmon, Political Messianism—The Romantic Phase, London-New York 1960, pp. 323325, 329-331, etc. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (trans. G. Laurence), London 1970, chap. 6, pp. 4—5, 11-15. See idem, Democracy in America, New York 1954, II, p. 336.

[ 7]

Totalitarian Democracy and After by a Byzantine-type bureaucracy than the dynamics of a ‘revolutionary Salvationist scheme’ turned into a reign of terror.9 Yet the broad out­ lines of their historical analysis and of the patterns of historical trans­ formations observed by the two authors reveal a remarkable similarity. This is even more salient in regard to their explanations of the basic motive forces of the process, its origins in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the religious and messianistic character of the out­ look of the French revolutionaries, their expectation to remould the human race, and their political messianism. Of this secular religion de Tocqueville wrote : No previous political upheaval, however violent, had aroused such passionate enthusiasm, for the ideal the French Revolution set before it was not merely a change in the French social system but nothing short of a regeneration of the whole human race. It created an atmosphere of missionary fervour and, indeed, assumed all the aspects of a religious revival__ It would perhaps be truer to say that it developed into a species of religion, if a singularly imperfect one---- Nevertheless, this strange religion has, like Islam, overrun the whole world with its apostles, militants, and martyrs.10 Talmon summed up the same observation in the following words : The postulate of some ultimate. .. valid social order is a matter of faith. . . . But its significance to the believer, and the power it has to move me n . .. can hardly be exaggerated. Now in Eu­ rope ... for the last century and a half there have always been men and movements animated by such a faith, preparing for the day---- Jacobins may have differed from Babouvists, the Blanquists from any secret societies. . . the communists from the so­ cialists .. . yet they all belong to the same religion. This religion emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century and its rise will be traced in these pages.11 I think it therefore a fair guess to assume that Talmon, who admit­ tedly first became preoccupied with the problem of the inherent ten­ dency of revolutionary perfectionist movements to turn into violent dictatorships during his study of the French Revolution, was deeply influenced by the way de Tocqueville interpreted the French Revolution Ibid. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, Manchester 1971, pp. 43-44; see also Talmon quoting de Tocqueville in Israel Among the Nations, pp. 5-6. II Origins (1960), p. 12.

9 10

[ 8]

Yehoshua Arieli as the fountainhead of the great revolutionary movement of his times. One could even say that Talmon rediscovered certain aspects of the Tocquevillean interpretation of the French Revolution and the revo­ lutions of the nineteenth century, which became central to Talmon’s historical views.12 The selfsame revolution that de Tocqueville had perceived as a mighty wave proceeding from the recent past towards a distant future had become the overriding reality of the twentieth century. In contrast to de Tocqueville, who interpreted this historical move­ ment in the light of the French Revolution and the revolutions of the nineteenth century, Talmon interpreted the same in the perspective of the great ideological revolutions of his century — communism, fascism and totalitarian racial nationalism. The motive force behind these tremendous events would have to be explained by the vision of univer­ sal or national salvation and the claims of its proponents and disciples to an unbounded authority to shape the world in the image of a totalitarian ideology. The revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were inspired by a new attitude towards history, the world and man, an attitude which was essentially a new set of expectations, an ideolo­ gical mentality, seeking to change the face of history and society by means of political action. It had all the characteristics of a secular messianistic religion, which, like its religious prototype, looked forward to a radical change of the world. This ideal envisioned a society freed from all contradictions, sufferings, evils and mutual antagonism, a promethean society of free men unbound, realizing the promise of unlimited progress and ever-increasing perfection. Only if one realized the tremendous force and fervour of this faith could one understand the ruthlessness with which its followers pursued its realization, and the inevitable perversion which succeeded the attempt to translate vision into reality. Yet, as Jacob Talmon himself had indicated, his intellectual quest was not only directed to understand, describe, and explain the rise, develop­ ment and fortunes of these revolutionary totalitarian ideologies but to discover and disclose the dialectic logic by which revolutionary Sal­ vationist schemes, ‘evolved into reigns of terror and the promise of a perfect direct democracy assumed in practice the form of totalitarian dictatorship’.13 12 13

See Talmon’s account of the differences between his reading of history and that of de Tocqueville, in Origins (1960), pp. 257-258. See Myth, p. 535.

[ 9]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Talmon was fascinated by the ways in which fundamental religious drives in man, his quest for meaning and salvation, found expressions and substitutes in an increasingly secular and disenchanted world, and how these strivings created new myths and deities to whom men were ready to sacrifice themselves and their fellow men. His growing acquaint­ ance with the work and theory of psychoanalysis, social psychology and sociology of knowledge, the impact of sceptic historians and thinkers like Burckhardt, Namier, Nietzsche and Sorel, and the pessimistic antirationalistic trends of the twentieth century made him extremely sen­ sitive to the pretence, assumptions and motives of ideological mental­ ities and prophets of salvation : In its yearning for certainty and craving for happiness, Humanity is swaying and swinging from one message of salvation to another, throwing itself into the arms of now one saviour now another and when the intoxication has worn off, the hangover makes men feel sicker than ever.14 However, the single-minded attention which Talmon paid to Salva­ tionist totalitarian ideologies as the terrible tempter of the modern mind did not spring from a pessimistic view of man but rather from certain impulses which fused in his work. The first was that of the historian and intellectual, to describe, analyse and understand the forces and mentality inherent in the great revolutionary movements of our time ; the other was to understand the dialectics by which ideals and messianistic visions turn into the opposite results to their intentions. Then there was also what my colleague Dr Hedwah Ben-Israel has called the therapeutic intent in Talmon’s historical research. He saw the power of historical and ideational analysis, like that of psychoanalysis, to unmask ideological pretensions, to subject them to the critical aware­ ness of the mind trained in sober analysis and freed from the emotional pressures of the quest for total solution, in short, a liberal mind whose criteria of truth are pragmatic and empirical.15 Lastly Talmon was drawn, as indicated before, by the sheer fascination of the phenomenon itself, the power of ideas, visions, and beliefs, the infinite wealth of images and mental worlds created by the spiritual and psychic needs of man.

14 15

See J.L. Talmon, The Unique and the Universal, London-New York 1965, ‘Mission and Testimony’, pp. 157-158. See H. Ben-Israel-Kidron, ‘Historical Research as Instrument for the Solu­ tion of the Anxieties of Our Time’, In Memory o/ Jacob Talmon (1981), Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem (in Hebrew).

[ 10]

Yehoshua Arieli Secular religion, or ‘political messianism’ in Talmon’s terminology, had assumed since the end of the eighteenth century various forms and manifestations. Jacobins and Babouvists differed from the revolution­ aries of 1948, and both from the proponents of the twentieth-century revolutionary movements. Nevertheless, in terms of longing, fun­ damental attitudes and expectations, they represented a continuum of a common mentality. The pattern of events and action which charac­ terized political messianism during the French Revolution represented a kind of paradigmatic model for the later development of political messianism. The Jacobin phase of the French Revolution, which demonstrated for the first time the great ironic law according to which revolutionary Salvationist schemes evolve into regimes of terror, and the promise of a perfect direct democracy assumes in practice the form of a totali­ tarian dictatorship, bequeathed, according to Talmon, ‘a hypnotic model and myth, and above all started a continuous tradition’ : The experience of the French Revolution was soon universalized by its devotees into a vision of a preordained revolutionary break­ through to the consummation of the historic process in the form of a final and perfect social order. According to the myth this new order was willed by all men of good will in their hearts of hearts, but would inevitably have to be enthroned by a vanguard of the enlightened and the brave. . . . The numerous versions of the religion of revolutions and the various groups that sprang up to propagate them, including the one which proved the most important... of all. .. Marxism ... should therefore be regarded not as self-contained doctrines and entities but rather as different rationalizations of a primary semi-religious impulse and successive elaborations and applications of a single sustained endeavour in the light of changing circumstances.16 Talmon’s historical trilogy attempts to delineate the history of secular messianistic ideologies during the last two hundred years, to describe the physiognomies of these movements in their various phases and the dialectic impact of their confrontation with reality. At first sight Talmon’s writings seem to deal primarily with ideas and ideologies, their spokesmen and heralds, and with the morphology and metamorphosis of the ideational factor in the course of the nine­ teenth and twentieth centuries. The list of individuals, thinkers, writers, prophets of salvation and visionaries of social betterment is long and 16

Myth, pp. 535-536.

[ 11]

Totalitarian Democracy and After variegated. It includes practically all outstanding representatives of European political and social thought in the last two hundred years. From Morelly, Mably and Rousseau to the main actors of the French Revolution and its aftermath ; from Kant, Fichte, Herder, Hegel and Humboldt to Saint-Simon and his school, Utopian socialists and the young Marx ; from the heralds of romantic nationalism to Guizot, de Tocqueville and the leaders of the European revolutions of 1848. From the elder Marx and the socialist international to Nietzsche, the Russian anarchists and nihilists, Sorel, the Autro-Marxists, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and the proponents of proto-fascist and fascist ideologies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nevertheless the significance and intent of Talmon’s work lies in its historical character, in its sense of history as an integral and com­ prehensive texture of human life and fate. Even when dealing with ideational factors, with beliefs and ideologies, Talmon always remains close to the historical phenomenon. He is faithful to the special phys­ iognomy of ideas as they were formed and formulated in the fervour of public discourse and debate, in the arena of political action and the confrontation of historical forces. His concern was not with the abstract meaning of ideas, but with their political and psychological implications, their roles as foci of social attachment and the operative conclusions that actually followed from them. It was the historical significance of ideas and beliefs which fascinated him, their subterranean structure of symbols, intentions and drives, which appear as patterns of a mentality. The central analytical concept of Talmon’s historical interpretation, ‘political messianism’, was of just such a character, signifying a way of feeling towards the future, an all-embracing psychological and emo­ tional attitude towards life and history, a new conception of man which centred exclusively on history and politics, or rather on political action as the dimension of the realization of its visions. ‘What this study is concerned with’, wrote Talmon in the Origins of Totalitarian Demo­ cracy, ‘is a state of mind, a way of feeling, a disposition, a pattern of mental, emotional and behaviouristic elements best compared .. . to the set of attitudes engendered by a religion’.17 The reduction of ideas to their mental or emotional ground, as ex­ pressing moods and mental states, enables one to view a wide range of different historical phenomena, such as Jacobin democracy, socialism and bolshevism, as variant expressions of common attitudes suggesting continuity and the existence of one historical impulse over a long period. 17

Origins (1960), ‘Introduction’, p. 11.

[ 12]

Yehoshua Arieli The concept of ‘totalitarian democracy’ too does not denote a parti­ cular political regime or type of political system. It rather describes a basic approach to the realm of politics that retains its identity through­ out all its historical manifestations. In the words of Talmon : The totalitarian democratic school is based on the assumptions of a sole and exclusive truth in politics. It may be called political messianism in the sense that it postulates a preordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven and at which they are bound to arrive. It recognizes ultimately only one plane of existence, the political, it widens the scope of politics to embrace the whole of human existence. It treats all human thought and action as having social significance and there­ fore as falling within the orbit of political action. Its political ideas are an integral part of an all-embracing and coherent phi­ losophy. Politics is defined as the art of applying this philosophy to the organization of society and the final purpose of politics is achieved when this philosophy reigns supreme over all fields of life.1* This formulation or descriptive definition, however, does not exhaust the meanings implied in the concept of totalitarian democracy in Talmon’s historical writings. The term also indicated the tendency present in these movements to claim for those who dedicate themselves to the realization of their vision, the revolutionary élite, the right to guide society towards the attainment of the goal and even to impose the realization of the same against society’s own will, by force or manipula­ tion. This is the right ‘to enthrone’, in Talmon’s words, the final and perfect order by a vanguard of the enlightenment and the brave with the help of coercion, a total reconstruction of society, and a sustained effort of far-reaching and all-embracing reeducation.1819 Both terms, political messianism and totalitarian democracy, introduced by him into the vocabulary of political and historical thought, are analytical terms of great explanatory value, concrete universals, which as concepts illuminate central aspects of modern history and its revo­ lutionary movements. Both terms were in all probability winnowed from the theory and practice of revolutionary and utopian socialism, in particular from Marxism and its Leninist practice, and then traced 18 19

Origins (1960), pp. 1-2. Mythj p. 535.

[ 13]

Totalitarian Democracy and After back to their origins in the French Revolution and the radical En­ lightenment. This would explain that both terms are frequently used as if they were interchangeable,20 or at least intrinsically connected in a relation of content and form, the one leading to the other. Such ideational linkage creates, as we shall see, explanatory difficulties and raised conceptual assumptions which rather impeded the work of Talmon in regard to his interpretation of twentieth-century revolutionary trends. There is no necessary ideational connection between political messianism and the concept and movement of totalitarian democracy, if political mes­ sianism is defined as having at its core a universalistic ideal of humanity and totalitarian democracy is defined as the extension of politics to all spheres of life and thought. They coincided in certain aspects of the Jacobin mentality and the movements leading up to Marxism yet go separate and mutually contradictory ways in the case of organistic, totalitarian theories of nationalism, racialism or sheer historicism. At the same time such a linkage existed on the historical plane and through the dialectics of the inevitable radicalization of Salvationist ideologies. It referred to the constantly recurring phenomenon that a revolutionary élite claims the right to lead society, even against its will, towards a radical change of historical existence. The term ‘totalitarian democracy’ connotes then three convergent though distinct meanings : a totalitarian conception of the nature of politics as comprising all dimensions of life and as an instrument of radical change of human nature and society ; a regime of populist radical character, which claims legitimation by representing the true interests and will of society and aims to indoctrinate the masses and mobilize support by ideological means ; and, lastly, it has an elitist element, which claims the right of a revolutionary élite to lead society to the realization of a vision of total and radical change. True, the exposition of the nature of totalitarian democracy as intro­ duced in Talmon’s first book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, was, as already remarked, strongly influenced by ideas and subjectmatter which were prominent in Talmon’s mind when he was for­ mulating his views : namely, his purpose to account for the emergence of a messianic totalitarian democratic ideology out of the universalistic background of the radical Enlightenment, and to explain the bifur­ cation between the liberal, democratic trend and the totalitarian trend out of a common climate of opinion ; and, secondly, to formulate the latter in a way which would show its continuity in revolutionary so20

See its first definition in Origins (1960), pp. 1-2.

[ 14]

Yehoshua Arieli cialist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In both accounts the common elements in the liberal and the totalitarian ideal of human life and society had to be stressed, and their prevalence in both the French Revolution and socialism had to be recognized : namely, the quest for freedom, liberty, and human dignity, and the stress on equality formulated in demands for social justice. These elements were to be found, according to Talmon, both in the Jacobin tradition of the French Revolution and in the fundamental assump­ tions of revolutionary socialism. The term democracy possesses, there­ fore, a fundamental ideological significance as the form in which the contradictions between liberty and equality, individuality and social justice will be reconciled or overcome (aufgehoben) by the common will, and by the harmony expressed in this community of will. It was Talmon’s opinion that out of these assumptions the true dialectics of totalitarianism inevitably arise : Both schools [the liberal and the totalitarian] affirm the supreme value of liberty. But whereas the one finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment ©f an absolute collective purpose. . . . The problem that arises for totalitarian democracy. . . may be called the paradox of freedom : Is human freedom compatible with an exclusive pattern of social existence, even if this pattern aims at the maximum of social justice and security ? The paradox of totalitarian democracy is in its insistence that they are compatible__ It is thought to be immanent in man’s reason and will, to constitute the fullest satisfaction of his true interest and to be the guarantee of his freedom. This is the reason why the extreme forms of popular sovereignty became the essential concomitant of this absolute purpose. From the difficulty of reconciling freedom with the idea of an absolute purpose spring all the particular problems and antinomies of totalitarian demo­ cracy.21 Throughout his work Jacob Talmon maintained this interpretation of totalitarian democracy as the attempt to reconcile fundamentally an­ tagonistic and incompatible elements in one ideological dogma. He explained the totalitarian consequences as the inevitable outcome of these internal contradictions. It is not my intent to consider or explain fully Talmon’s view, which traced the source of political messianism and totalitarian democracy 21

Origins (1960), pp. 2-3.

[ 15]

Totalitarian Democracy and After to the ideas, beliefs and assumptions of the French and European Enlightenment, and his thesis that from this common ground the two branches of democratic ideologies, the pragmatic liberal and the totali­ tarian democratic, took their rise. Nor can we enter into the reasons of the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of the crystallization of these respective and divergent trends, as his writings deal almost exclusively with the history of the revolutionary trends. On the basis of his writings one may be justified to view secular political messianism as a powerful independent force, drawing into its fold all those in need and thirsting for a vision of secular salvation. The steadily mounting attraction of this political messianic movement for European society is directly related to the loss of roots and traditions, the growing dislocations of groups and indi­ viduals, in a society which undergoes an ever-increasing process of change and disruption and in which alienation on the one hand and the sense of power and of unlimited possibilities to master the problems of man go hand in hand.22 The tracing of the liberal democratic mentality to a common source with political messianism reveals beyond its historical validity some basic loyalties, ideals and sentiments of Talmon. Talmon’s heart and mind were deeply engaged by the ideals and values which motivated the vision of these movements. In the explanation of their failings it was less the vision, the ideals that inspired the protagonists of political messianism which Talmon rejected, but their fanatical belief and vwll to translate this vision by political action into reality, their refusal to accept any difference of opinion as legitimate or to admit the utopian nature of their quest. It was, in the words of Talmon, the fanatical determination of saviours-in-a-hurry, intent on fitting an imaginary new man into an artificially contrived, or as it came to be held, an inevitably evolved ultimate social harmony, that became the source and motive of all contradictions, paradoxes, casuistry, hypocrisy, ruse and tyranny displayed in the Jacobin dictatorship and several generations later in the bolshevik regime, the Soviet purges and the Stalinist era.23 In spite of the condemnation of the ‘saviours-in-a-hurry’ there is an underlying regret in seeing the aberration of something that was basical22

23

See Origins, pp. 3-5 ; see also Unique and Universal, ‘Mission and Testi­ mony’, p. 160 ; ibid., ‘Right and Force’, p. 194 ; Israel Among the Nations, pp. 8-9 ; Political Messianism, Part IV, ‘Ideas and Realities’, pp. 339-368. Unique and Universal, ‘Mission and Testimony’, p. 157.

[ 16]

Yehoshua Arieli ly decent, that contained the core of humanism and the idea of humanity, the concept of human dignity, solidarity and equality.24 The recognition of the basic affinity which a true, liberal, humanistic world view shares with the basic assumptions and ideals of revolu­ tionary socialism became more emphatic for Talmon, with his grow­ ing preoccupation with the historical significance of racial and secular anti-Semitism and its role in the emergence of a totalitarian racialist and biological ideology which rejected the most fundamental beliefs of Western culture and its Judaeo-Christian view of men and humanity.25 Both branches of Western civilization, the Christian and the rationalist... share the common premise of a direct relationship between man as an individual and humanity as a species. Dif­ ferences of race, origin. .. are of secondary importance in com­ parison with the primary fact of man’s humanity. The Western tradition has always drawn a clear distinction between the human species, whose distinguishing attributes are soul and reason, and all other manifestations of creation. The destiny of man, in this view, is in a never-ceasing endeavour to gain clear knowledge of reality and a social order based on harmony. . . the doctrine of race negates the reality of men as men as well as the con­ ception of humanity as such.26 It is in this light that the three books of Talmon’s historical trilogy, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Political Messianism — The Romantic Phase, and his last book The Myth of Nation and the Vision of the Revolution should be considered. They must be judged not only as a systematic study of the revolutionary mentality in its various ideological and political manifestations in the last two centuries, but also as a searching analysis of a deviation, or fall from grace. They treat something central, precious, admirable in the Western mind, embodying at one and the same time the greatest promise and the greatest failure, Prometheus and the myth of Lucifer inextricably bound together. Talmon’s historical vision and mode of analysis has a marked dialec­ tical character. He presents the history of the period in terms of con­ flicts of different types of mentality ; in terms of the interaction between ideologies and aspirations on one side and the forces and factors 24 25 26

See Myth, p. 536. See, for instance, Unique and Universal, ‘Mission and Testimony’, pp. 123, 127. Ibid., p. 146 ; see also ibid., ‘Right and Force’, p. 183.

[ 17]

Totalitarian Democracy and After operating in society at a given time on the other ; in terms of the attempt to change society according to ideological thinking and the intractable nature and resistance of formed reality. Moreover Talmon’s thought and work is dialectical in the original sense of the term in the way he explores the meaning of the structure of ideas, ideologies and other forms of mental-psychic expression, and follows their inherent evolution, or rather devolution, transformation and metamorphosis, into new and different patterns of ideational, emotional and representational elements. He is a master in sensing and tracing patterns of affinity and antithetical transformation, and the directions into which certain attitudes and conceptual positions tend to move and evolve. It was part of this dialectical analysis of the modern mind and the modern age to posit the liberal pragmatic type of European democracy and totalitarian democracy as two op­ posing ideological orientations, sprung from the same source, the En­ lightenment. Undoubtedly such an interpretation of the recent past was decisively influenced by the confrontation between the West and the East, be­ tween the free society of Western democracies and the totalitarian societies of the communist world after World War II. This would explain Talmon’s statement in the opening of The Origins of Totali­ tarian Democracy : From the vantage point of the midtwentieth century, the history of the last hundred and fifty years looks like a systematic prepara­ tion for the headlong collision between empirical and liberal democracy on the one hand and totalitarian messianic democracy on the other [a collision] in which the world crisis of today consists.27 This statement is revealing for several reasons. The terrible confronta­ tion between the totalitarian, dictatorial regimes, the Axis powers and the Allies, the Western democracies and Soviet Russia — which had just been consummated in the Holocaust of the Jewish people in Europe — is quite obviously not included in the interpretative account of the last one hundred and fifty years just quoted. The phenomenon of the Holocaust as a key to the understanding of the modern human condition is in a curious way overlooked. Should one assume that Talmon both as an individual and a scholar-intellectual, preferred for the sake of sanity and psychic-intellectual equilibrium to concen­ trate on issues which could be handled without despair and which 27

Origins (1960), p. I.

[ 18]

Yehoshua Arieli left hope to man ? Not less revealing is the obvious absence from this work of any — even if only superficial — presentation or analysis of the liberal pragmatic trend in modern history as an indicated and a dialectically necessary counterpart to totalitarian democracy. I do not believe that Talmon evaded such a confrontation only for architectural-structural reasons concerned with the main subject of the book, the revolutionary movement of political messianism. Actually this selfsame abstention from any systematic analysis of the liberalpragmatic-democratic mind or praxis can be noticed in practically all other theoretical-historical writings. Of course, a systematic treatment of the liberal pragmatic trend of democracy, in contradistinction to the revolutionary trend, would be extremely difficult to present as a continuum. But beyond this, such confrontation between the revolution­ ary messianistic trend and the liberal-pragmatic trend would in all prob­ ability result in an anti-climactic presentation of the intellectual, ethical, emotional and imaginative attitudes and points of view of the latter, if one could demonstrate at all a systematic liberal-democratic-prag­ matic point of view throughout the nineteenth century. The true liberal democratic counterpart and counterpoint is really represented in Talmon’s critical, deep-searching, demasking analysis of the nature, history and predicaments of revolutionary political mes­ sianism as illuminated by his liberal, humanistic point of view and mind. The same is, of course, true of Talmon’s political publications, which concern the most pressing and fundamental problems of policy in Israel, such as his writings on the Israel-Arab conflict, the question of the Palestinians or the growth of an anti-humanistic, self-righteous isolationist and aggressively nationalistic trend in the public mind and the government of Israel. Talmon refused to accept for the legitimation of Israel policy different values and norms from those recognized as standards by enlightened world opinion ; his capacity to see the other’s point of view and the other’s right ; his insistence on the application of identical standards of morality for Jews and Arabs, on the validity of universal norms of rights, justice and human dignity for Israel, and his appeal to rationality and common sense, all created a most im­ pressive testimony and body of principles for the liberal mind of a democrat and a humanist. I think, then, that one may be justified in the assumption that the liberal, pragmatic, democratic movement which Talmon posited as the dialectic counterpart to political messianism could not be treated historically as Talmon really projected a twentiethcentury ideal and reality onto the nineteenth century. The question may be raised whether Talmon’s interpretation of the ideological and political struggles of the modern world does elucidate [ 19]

Totalitarian Democracy and After and explain the major trends of the great ideological contests that have racked modem society in our time. In considering his work before the last volume of the trilogy appeared one is struck by his ambivalent approach to the idea of nationality and nationalism as an independent category of thought and ideology in the analytical scheme of his sys­ tematic work. True, his first book, the Origins, which introduced the concept of political messianism as the leitmotiv of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, did not require the introduction of the concept of nation­ alism, as the idea and term of nation in revolutionary France carried the universalist connotation it had acquired from the radical Enlight­ enment. Yet surely this was no longer true in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the idea of the nation acquired increasingly central importance in the shaping of political, national and inter­ national affairs. Any work dealing with this period would by necessity have to establish the relationship between nationalism and secular mes­ sianism and consider their respective weight and influence on the history of the West and the world. Indeed, in all his later books, Talmon placed nationalism as one of the two major axes around which European and world history revolved.28 In these works the advent of nationalism is treated as the emergence of a new focus in the field of historical forces, with events now moving within the tension existing between the two ideological poles — na­ tionalism and revolutionary universalism. Like political messianism, nationalism assumes and changes forms and contents while preserving an identity of mentality and fundamental patterns of reference. Yet at the same time Talmon pointed out that until the second half of the nineteenth century the national idea and the national movement had fallen within the categories established in his first book and within the two prior-established types of ideological mentality, the liberal democratic and the totalitarian messianistic, and that they frequently represented a mixture of both.29 The result is the establishment of a new historical dichotomy across the pragmatic-messianistic axis or con­ tinuum, expressing itself as a dichotomy between particularist and uni­ versalist attitudes, between nationalism and socialism. Hence a new pattern of relations and associations is created in the

28

29

See Political Messianism; J.L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt—Europe 1814—1848, London 1967 ; Unique and Universal ; J.L. Talmon, The Age of Violence, Tel Aviv 1974/5 (in Hebrew) ; Israel Among the Nations, and, of course, Myth. See Political Messianism, pp. 29-30 ; ibid., Part II, pp. 278 ff.

[ 20]

Yehoshua Arieli realm of ideology and history, ranging from alliance or mutual support to radical polarization. This presentation is apparent in the second part of his trilogy, in Political Messianism — The Romantic Phase, and in some of his essays published in The Unique and the Universal. It raises the question whether Talmon accorded to nationalism the same specific and independent weight that he attributed to political messianism and totalitarian democracy. Whilst Talmon undoubtedly emphasized the tremendous attractive force of nationalism, and the antithesis it presented to the universalist outlook of political messianism, he hesitated to endow it with a structural significance which would endanger the general interpretation of the nineteenth century at the height of romantic messianism — In the long run there was hardly a more important ingredient in the evolution of the polity of nations since 1848 than the relationship between socialism and nationalism . . . . Socialism and the revolutionary nationalism of the first half of the nineteenth century are considered in this volume to be two aspects of the same phenomenon and as springing from the same motive — poli­ tical messianism.30 In the same work Talmon noted that the revolutions of 1848 became the historical watershed which parted the ways between nationalism and universalist political messianism, and, by bringing out their latent antithetical structure of values, aspirations and mentalities, set them on the path of increasing antagonism. I believe that Talmon’s view on the nature of nationalism, his concepts of its character and inherent dynamics, did undergo a fundamental change in the course of his work. This change can be studied in the essays he published during the 1960s, in the volume significantly called The Unique and the Universal. Most of the essays here concern the problems of nationalism and nationality versus universalist ideologies and their claims of general validity for their norms, precepts and im­ peratives seen in the perspective of the Jewish experience in modern times. Let me remark in this context that the essays which Talmon wrote on diverse occasions throughout his career served frequently to liberate his mind from the frameworks and conceptual schema of his more systematic writings. They enabled him to explore new avenues of thought and insights, which, in their intellectual sweep and daring synthesis, are among his most impressive writings. This is eminently true of the 30

Political Messianism, p. 278 ; also Unique and Universal, p. 35.

[ 21]

Totalitarian Democracy and After essays collected in The Unique and the Universal. Here he developed his thoughts on the nature and significance of Jewish history in the framework of the history of the West. He sees anti-Semitism as the mirror image of the unsolvable problem of Jewish existence among the nations that displayed the permanent tension between particularism and universalism, between uniqueness and a rational world order. It is in this context, of the universal-historic significance of the problem of Israel among the nations, seen in the perspective of the Holocaust, that Talmon reconsidered and reformulated his view on the role and historical impact of the idea of the nation and the ideology of nation­ alism on the history of the West, and, since the beginning of the twentieth century on the whole world. In the introduction to the volume Talmon writes : These essays are concerned with the quest for identity in a world where on the one hand rationalist modes of thought, technological developments and universal ideologies seem to be wiping out all racial and national differences, but, on the other, nationalist self-assertion is growing more and more intense .. . the present book has been inspired by the author’s existential situation as a Jew who has lived through the traumatic experiences of nazism and communism, chose Israel as his home, and who at the same time feels deeply committed to the Western tradition. The Jew is unable.. . to shake off his uniqueness, but he can live only in a world based on universal values. In this he is unique, but at a deeper level his problem is really a parable on the human con­ dition in general. In recent years Jews became the witness and whipping-block to the furies released by the unresolved conflict.31 His essay on ‘National Brotherhood and the International Confrater­ nity— Nationalism and Socialism’, presented first as a lecture at All Souls College, Oxford, in 1959, and considerably enlarged for publica­ tion in 1965, is an attempt to look at the period starting with the French Revolution in the perspective of the history and development of na­ tionalism. It therefore opens up a different interpretation of the period from that which had focused upon the concepts of totalitarian demo­ cracy and political messianism. Nationalism is seen here as a funda­ mental frame of mind, a type of awareness, loyalty and commitment. It is when at a given moment in time, members of a nation wake up to the fact of their forming an all embracing. . . exclusive entity, a 31

Unique and Universal, Foreword.

[ 22]

Yehoshua Arieli partnership in all things, more real than,. . . a religious faith, a social class, that we may speak of the emergence of nationalism.32 Like political messianism, nationalism seeks to substitute itself for reli­ gion. It is as well as other things ‘a form of striving for spiritual re­ demption, a straining for a solution of the contradictions. . . between a desire for self-expression, and the yearning for self-surrender.. ,’.33 Talmon pursued this line of inquiry as regards the Jewish fate in several other essays in this volume, in particular in ‘Mission and Testimony, the Universal Significance of Modern Anti-Semitism’. He made it the central problem in the long essay ‘Jews between Revolution and Coun­ ter-Revolution’, published in 1970 in Israel Among the Nations. There is no doubt that in this perspective, and under the blinding searchlight of the Jewish experience of European nationalism in the twentieth century, the fundamental and radical difference can be per­ ceived between the spirit, assumptions and operative consequences of nationalism in the second half of the nineteenth and during the twen­ tieth centuries and those of the ideological movements which bore the rationalist and universalist imprint of the Enlightenment. The features of nationalism, in contrast to liberal humanitarian democracy and the revolutionary messianistic vision of socialism and communism, are brought out in sharp and dramatic contours. Nationalism is inevitably stamped by the tendency towards anti-Semitism, aggression, and the cult of power and violence. It marks the regression towards the glorifi­ cation of the segregated group spirit and denial of the validity of universal norms and values and the idea of the unity of humanity.34 Moreover, in these essays Talmon comes quite clearly to the conclusion that nationalism, with its element of group cohesion, of the integral unity and brotherhood of the naturally grown national group, wherever it came in competition and confrontation with revolutionary universalism, was bound to win over the souls of man and be victorious.35 The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of the Revolution treats nationalism as a fundamental force and pattern of ideological and psychological orientation absolutely different from and opposite to those of the messianistic revolutionary ideologies of socialism, syndicalism and bolshevism. In this last part of the trilogy the centre has shifted to a true confrontation between rival movements, in which the antithetical 32 33 34 35

Unique and Universal, p. 12. Unique and Universal, p. 19. See Unique and Universal, ‘The National Brotherhood’, pp. 50, 61 ; also ibid., ‘Mission and Testimony’, pp. 123, 127, 146-147. Unique and Universal, pp. 17, 61.

[ 23]

Totalitarian Democracy and After relations between them are systematically explored. In the first two volumes Talmon had sought for common ideological roots in a secular version of messianism and in the genealogy of the Volonté générale transformed into a totalitarian concept of unity and unanimity. In the Myth, which deals with the latter part of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, the common denominator of these move­ ments lies almost exclusively in their shared character as totalitarian ideologies, creating systems of total domination of a society turned into a mass of atomized individuals by self-elected all-powerful élites. Both rose in an environment of total breakdown : The mood of exasperation caused by the Great War, the gnawing doubts about the future of civilization, deepening all the time under the impact of inflation, the great depression, and mass unemploy­ ment and the resultant loss of nerve and self-confidence in the centre — all these combined to bring the extremes to the fore, and to make the bewildered multitude receptive to the rantings of these terrible simplifiers, the standard-bearers of world revolution on the one hand, and the guardians of national destiny on the other.36 Undoubtedly this change of perspective and views was dictated by the subject-matter of the book. The emergence of mass democracy, the mobilization of the masses for an integral and aggressive nationalism soon turned into anti-parliamentarian, anti-democratic and authorita­ rian ideologies of race, manifest destiny and the sanctification of na­ tional egotism, which rejected the idea of the unity of man. In this context it was difficult to maintain the original thesis that totalitarian democracy and political messianism continued to inform the revolu­ tionary movements of the West in the period leading to the second half of the twentieth century. Of the definitions of totalitarian democracy only those parts remained valid which define it as being based on the assumptions of a sole and exclusive truth in poli­ tics . . . . It recognizes ultimately only one plane of existence — the political. It widens the scope of politics to embrace the whole human existence.37 With this Talmon came to perceive nationalism as a fundamental sui generis phenomenon operating on a totally different mental wave36 37

Myth, p. 549. See Origins, pp. 1-2.

[ 24]

Yehoshua Arieli length and expressing different needs, aspirations and emotional drives from those of the universalist-oriented revolutionary movements of the left.38 Their basic incompatibility is indicated by an ever more pro­ minent antagonism, hatred and viciousness in their encounters. Let me repeat that this interpretation grew out of the fact that the subject of the historical analysis in Talmon’s last volume had moved to the period in which nationalism took a sinister turn in relation to the Jewish problem. It developed an ever more strident and murderous anti-Semitism in the latter part of the nineteenth and during the twen­ tieth centuries reaching a climax in the satanic world view of German National Socialism. Talmon perceived the ‘Jewish Problem’ of modern Europe and the modern world as the touchstone, the main indicator and precipitate, of the major trends and problems of modern times indicating the degree of virulence of the collective neuroses as well as accelerating them :39 ... the tragic paradox of the Jews in modern times has been the fact that their existence and success have been dependent upon the triumph of the idea of the oneness as represented by liberal demo­ cracy and socialism, while the very phenomenon of Jewry is an unparalleled demonstration of the enormous power of the element of uniqueness. The Jews did not want and could not escape the fact of their uniqueness, the gentiles would not and could not be made oblivious of it.40 Measured by the indicator of the Jewish problem, the antithetical rela­ tionship between nationalism and world revolution became dramatically clear. The tremendous attraction which the radical version of political messianism held for Jews, the decisive importance that the ideas of the Enlightenment had for Jewish emancipation, and the eventual rejection of both by the radical totalitarian version of nationalism and the creation of the myth of the Jewish world conspiracy, indicated the diametrically opposed nature of the values and mentalities of the two ideologies en­ gaged in a life-and-death struggle for the domination of the world. And yet despite these fundamental differences and total reciprocal negation, Talmon pointed out certain similarities, affinities and com­ mon traits which derived from their character as totalitarian democratic ideologies : Both types of totalitarianism were based on the assumption that there is a single, all-embracing, and exclusive truth in politics, and 38 39 40

See Myth, p. 145. Myth, p. 184. Unique and Universal, ‘Mission and Testimony’, p. 123.

[25 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After both ... recognized only one plane of existence — the political... each. . . anchored itself to a vision of history destined to reach a Salvationist consummation . . . . Both creeds adhered to a Manichean view of history... both for different reasons developed the cult of élite and an infallible personal leader. Both preached a form of democratic participation... to both the alleged permanent state of emergency.. . also guaranteed and justified forced unanimity.41 It is exactly in the question of the Jew that the abyss between the two ideologies is revealed. Though the demonization and the metaphysical satanic characterization of the Jews in national socialist mythology could be traced to an inverted messianism of race, while the consequent Man­ ichean world picture of the final victory of the good is shared with a different content in messianic communism, the ultimate difference be­ tween the two hinged upon this point : All violations of the values of the Western heritage were defended by the left as speeding up the realization of that predestined social harmony. The modern extreme right defiantly and uncompromis­ ingly rejected that vision, seeing in it the very negation of its own image of history as the stage upon which superior specimens as­ serted their superiority in the crucible of rivalry and battle.42 The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution contains there­ fore at least in part a reinterpretation of the phenomenon of political messianism and totalitarian democracy in the light of the polarization of the history of the twentieth century. The book itself presents a tremendous, almost agonizing, intellectual effort to comprehend the period beginning with the 1860s and con­ cluding with World War II in the light of these great analytical con­ cepts, its vital centres of forces, its structures of politics, and its funda­ mental predicaments. With this book, which he completed in the last weeks of his life, Talmon consummated the task he had set himself thirty-two years earlier. It involved in effect the reinterpretation of the major aspects of Euro­ pean history from the eighteenth century. Although the focus of his work lies in the analysis of mentalities, ideological movements and ideas, and of certain critical situations and confrontations between revolu­ tionary forces and societies in crisis, to achieve his purpose required a comprehensive examination of total historical situations. Though the

41 42

Unique and Universal, pp. 551-551!. Unique and Universal, p. 552. [26]

Yehoshua Arieli historical discourse focused on specific events, or rather clusters of events, their presentation and analysis always rested on the perspectives of the historical continuum, and, in the last respect, on the perspective of world history. These clusters and centres of events, the meeting points between actions, ideas, circumstances and contingent factors grew in density and number from volume to volume of Talmon’s work until they comprised in the last one practically all the major events of the past hundred years. This immense broadening of the canvas involved a steadily growing effort and investment of intellectual and emotional energy, which is reflected in the amount of time required for the writing of the trilogy. Talmon took nine years to write the second volume, Political Messianism, and twenty years to write the Myth. The renown which Talmon’s first book gained almost immediately after its publication in 1951 was no doubt attributable to the Talmonian thesis on the influence of political messianism and totalitarian demo­ cracy on modem history. But a closer examination reveals that his fame rested at least as surely on the way he presented his thesis as a central phenomenon of the modern period, in the persuasive historical presentation of the nature, development and history of political mes­ sianism, and the skill with which he traced its course in an impressive and convincing historical study. The study of totalitarian regimes and ideologies began long before the publication of Talmon’s The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, but for obvious reasons the subject first assumed a central place in political thought and social and social-psychological theory in the period fol­ lowing World War II. We mentioned de Tocqueville.43 He is joined later by thinkers, socio­ logists and philosophers such as Ortega y Gasset, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Friedrich von Hayeck, Franz Neumann, Karl Popper, Franz Borkenau, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, James Burnham, Carl J. Friedrich, and Hannah Arendt, to name only some of those who preceded Talmon or who wrote on totalitarianism at the same time.44 The difference between their treatment of the subject and 43

See also Lord Acton’s essay ‘Nationality’, first published in 1862, in which he clearly indicated the totalitarian nature of the three ideas stemming from the French Revolution, Jacobin democracy, socialism and nationalism, in Essays on Freedom and Power, New York 1955. 44 No attempt is made here to indicate the history of ideas, theories and research which have dealt systematically with the subject. For a partial survey see among others : Wege der totalitarismus-Forschung, ed. B. Seidel & S. Jenkner, Darmstadt 1968.

[27]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Talmon’s work is the difference between the method, conceptualization and basic aims of inquiry characteristic of the social sciences, or of the proponents of systematic political-philosophical thought, and that of the historian attempting to understand the inner workings of events and the motivating forces of human action. Unlike the former the his­ torian searches for the links between events and the factors guiding men in their public activity. He seeks to understand and describe the longings, experiences and mental images shaping a society’s world in a specific period. For him explanation is not achieved by generalizations and their inferences but by resurrecting a rich, variegated and complex human past which develops in unanticipated directions in accordance with the meanings which the historian describes and interprets. This difference is valid, despite the obvious fact that Talmon’s main his­ torical work, the trilogy7, is built around theses, general conceptions, leitmotivs, or the concrete universals which serve as the basic conceptual framework for the organization of the historical data. We have said that the power of the Talmonian thesis is derived from the force of its historical evidence, the persuasiveness of its historical presentation. Still Talmon’s contribution and the importance of his work are not confined to his interpretation of modern history in the light of the concepts he postulated. They reside equally in the under­ taking itself, which is a historical literary creation in the fullest sense. He had the gifts and ability to penetrate by scholarly analysis, assisted by the powers of a rich imagination, to the very core of the subjects under discussion — people, events, ideas, circumstances and situa­ tions — and to see them in the general context as part of a historical texture specific to the particular period. This texture, permeated with conceptual elements and assumptions, is still apprehended as a living and authentic presence. His writings arc abundant in convincing ima­ ginative descriptions, empathie insights sustained by mature experience, a broad culture and a profound grasp of the complexity and magnitude of the problems surrounding the human condition. They are distin­ guished by a keen sense of expression, a rich, sensitive and disciplined language indicating a remarkable literary gift. This creates a historical picture, alive and pulsating in its concreteness and authenticity. The reader of Talmon’s books immediately senses the intellectual and literary pleasures with which the author has painted his living, multicol­ oured canvas of the past, sometimes lingering over this or that detail because of its uniqueness, vitality or bizarreness, and sometimes describ­ ing events with dramatic suspense altering the rhythm of the nar­ rative or changing the mode of argument in order to achieve the desired effect, and by a pointed characterization or an enlightening [28]

Yehoshua Arieli comparison, simile, metaphor or analogy, shedding light on individuals, situations and problems. Talmon’s historical thought is focused on the present. He searches the past in order to discover the factors that have determined the patterns of today. The perspective created in this way is necessarily foreshortened. It spotlights certain phenomena and leaves the rest in the half-light where only the contours are distinguishable. The orienta­ tion of the historical perspective to the present creates a unity of vision with respect to the subject and a unity in the structure of the subject itself. The past is illuminated by the light of present experience which in turn is explained in terms of the past. Talmon was fully aware of the significance of placing the past in the perspective of the present, and for the sake of the present, and con­ sidered the issue repeatedly. The dilemma of the historian was whether to offer a photographic record by concentrating on those events and activities which loomed large in their own time, or to focus his sights on things often still quantitatively insignificant but poten­ tially highly effective and dominant.45 Speaking of the method used in his book Political Messianism, which in fact characterizes his whole work, Talmon writes: ... the second plane is that of historical perspective. The high tide of political messianism is seen in this study as act two in the wider drama of the unrolling of the story of messianic totalitarian democracy from the eighteenth century till our own day. While the climate and ideology of the period were an aftermath of the French Revolution... they were also the womb out of which in due course emerged the frame of mind and body of ideas which shaped the bolshevik revolution and were made dominant by it.48 This present-oriented perspective in the historical composition of Tal­ mon’s work and thought means more than a conscious rejection of Rankean objectivism and its quest ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen ist’ as subjective illusion. It is more than the full admittance of the critical postulate that history is ‘the record of what one age finds in another age’, or even more than E.H. Carr’s remark that ‘great history is written precisely when the historian’s vision is illuminated by insights into the problems of the present’.47 It is the method of gaining a true under­ standing of the present, or of historical movements revealed in their 45 46 47

See Romantism and Revolt, p. 13. Political Messianism y p. 16. See Unique and Universal, p. 213.

[29]

Totalitarian Democracy and After full significance only in the present, by a historical account and analysis of their roots and the factors which fashioned their characteristic physiognomy. The focusing of the historical perspective on the present is related to Jacob Talmon’s conception of the role he ascribed to ideas, ideologies and mental factors in the moulding of the modem period. Talmon appreciated the tremendous importance of the social sciences for his­ torical understanding and research, and devoted increasing attention to the significance of impersonal factors and processes in his work. Nevertheless he emphasized the unique and irreplaceable significance ^nd impact of ideas, ideational expressions, motivations and images, of beliefs, mental events and psychic events, for the basic structure and fundamental constitution of history and historical understanding. To the best of my knowledge Talmon had little patience with the epistemological and philosophical discussions concerning the nature of the historical discipline, its place among the sciences, and the structure of historical explanations, which have been so prominent ever since the distinction between the sciences and the Geistes-Wissenschaften was raised to become a cardinal philosophical and ideological issue. Logical ‘proofs’ and analyses of the structure of historical discourse seemed to him superfluous and of little value. He was more interested in the discussions concerning the relations between the historical and social sciences, yet preferred even in this case to rely on insights, generaliza­ tions and conceptualizations, which grew out of the subtle workings of the mind immersed in the study of human life and experience. Nevertheless Talmon possessed most emphatically a philosophical con­ ception of the nature of the human condition and what history was about which underlies his writings and inheres his approach to his subject matter with its characteristic fusion of concreteness and gener­ alization. It was part of this conception to emphasize the fundamental unity of the humanities and their difference from the so-called social sciences, and the impossibility of dealing adequately with the world of history except in terms of the humanities. From this viewpoint he emphasized the supreme importance of mental and ideational contents, of integral factors such as character or personality, for the adequate understanding of the human world, and maintained the impossibility of reducing human experience, ideas, images and events to non-human terms. In the foreword to Romanticism and Revolt Talmon wrote : My natural penchant has led me to dwell more on patterns of mind and behaviour than on the substratum of social-economic realities. I have done this partly because of my reluctance simply [30]

Yehoshua Arieli t o . . . paraphrase what others have already done with a com­ petence much greater than I could aspire to. I am also convinced that the recent tendency to turn history into statistical survey and sociological analysis — one might call it social geology — has gone far enough, and that it is time for a corrective in the direction of human drama.48 Talmon wrote in Political Messianism : We seek to confront ideas with reality. What can the investigation teach us of the relationship between the two ? Which is the parent and which is the offspring ? . . . this book. .. is undertaken in the conviction that faith is an identifiable factor in shaping human urges, attitudes and actions. However much influenced by cir­ cumstances, a faith is more than the sum total of response to actual situations. .. It was there when these [the circumstances] emerged and may outlive them, although probably somewhat altered by them.49 Not historical processes, circumstances, the concatenation of events, forces and disparate occurrences create historical significance but rather systems of ideas, beliefs, psychological attitudes, norms and values, horizons of awareness and their responses to reality. A forceful expression of this view was given in the draft of the con­ cluding chapter of the last book of the trilogy : In their irresistible sweep, socialism and nationalism were of course influenced and affected by the great multitude of facts and forces which emerged independently in the course of the last two hundred years, such as technological innovations, the industrial revolution, economic developments, social change. . . . But it will be no exag­ geration to say that perhaps in every case they [socialism and nationalism] succeeded in absorbing, assimilating, and turning all those forces into handmaids, or sweeping them away if not sup­ pressing them altogether.50 The dialectical relationship between impersonal processes and structures of events, of forces and control, and ideational forces trying to master reality and human fate is clearly brought out in the concluding pas­ sages of this volume, which sum up a life-long preoccupation with this problem.51 The rise of totalitarian ideological regimes was intrinsically 48 49 50 51

Romanticism and Revolt, Foreword. Political Messianism, pp. 16-17. See also Myth, pp. 548-549. Myth, pp. 548-549. [31]

Totalitarian Democracy and After related to the breakdown of European civilization subsequent to World War I. And yet these circumstances were not sufficient conditions for the rise of totalitarian ideologies to power. The European mind and indeed that of the world in the twentieth century had to be and had been thoroughly prepared for the massive reception of these ideas and ideologies. Public opinion of the masses, no less than the mind of élites or intellectuals, had become saturated with the images, views and arguments of an ideological mentality created by a century-and-a-half of secularization and revolutionary changes in all dimensions of life.52 The immense power of ideas, beliefs, symbols and images to shape human life and history fascinated Talmon. It presented both the highest attributes of man and his most destructive and terrifying force, the road to grace and redemption and the road to damnation. It was this aspect of history, its ideational and religious forces and features, man’s search for meanings, that struck the richest cords of Talmon’s mind and personality and elicited his deepest response. May one suggest that this attitude revealed an altogether Jewish quest to interpret reality in terms of mental and ideational drives and to understand the human predicament as the permanent tension between the quest for meaning and the irreducible, obstinate structure of reality. Although Talmon was preoccupied with the role of the ideational element in shaping the course of events, he dealt with the great ideolo­ gical movements of secular universalist salvation and totalitarian na­ tionalism in terms of tragedy, irony, pity and horror. He was aware of the unending cycle in history created by the attempt to actualize total solutions and comprehensive aims and the inevitable way such attempts tend to turn into forces of violence, terror and oppression. We have stressed that the tenor of his whole work is a fundamental critique, motivated by a liberal humanistic world view and tempera­ ment, of the temptation inherent in Salvationist secular ideologies to arrogate to themselves total power and total truth, and so to bring forth intolerance, fanaticism and consequently total destructiveness. Talmon emphasized the inevitable gap between intentions and outcome, the irony revealed in the unfolding of events which makes forecasts presumptuous and dramatizes the unintended consequences of conscious acts. Yet, unlike Kant and Hegel, Talmon felt that the ‘cunning of reason’, like the ‘invisible hand’, frequently creates disastrous and horrifying results. Talmon was aware of the innumerable subterfuges and stratagems springing from men’s minds to hide their secret devices 52 Ibid. [32]

Yehoshua Arieli by rationalizations and sanctimonious justifications. He recognized the fragility of rationality and of the conscious mind, the abysses of fear and anxiety in the hearts of individuals and social groups, the complexity of the human soul and its readiness to take refuge and find hope in anything offering security and rest. This pessimism, or rather this clear-sightedness, increased with the years. Talmon’s acquaintance with the insights of depth psychology, of the critical analyses of human motivation by Pascal, Nietzsche, Sorel and the modern prophets of doom, and above all the terrible experience of this age of violence, increasingly coloured his evaluation and under­ standing of his time and of the activities of the improvers of the world. Terms such as ‘collective neuroses’, ‘collective traumatic experiences working themselves out over the centuries’, ‘bewilderment’, ‘frenzy’, serve to describe and explain historical developments. Talmon’s work occupies a unique place in the historical literature of our day — foremost because of the universal character of his inquiiy. He was one of the few in our time who has dared to choose as the subject of his study the general development of the modern period. He thereby created a historical and literary work of monumental dimen­ sions and added an important chapter to the understanding of history as universal history, Weltgeschichte. This is true no less of what he wrote on Jewish history and the role and fate of the Jews among the nations and civilizations of the Near East and the West. Though it is beyond my competence to evaluate correctly the scientific merit of these studies, Talmon’s capacity to analyse the fundamental patterns underlying the relationship between Jews and gentiles over a span of millennia is an intellectual tour de force of truly impressive dimen­ sions, as is his interpretation of the universal historical significance of these relations for the correct understanding of the great spiritual trends, predicaments and dilemmas in the history of Western civiliza­ tions. His reading of Jewish history sub species historiae universalis has a sweep of imaginative thought and breadth of intuition which are rare. His work stands out no less in point of method, and its epistemological assumptions and conceptualizations. In a period in which the dominant concepts in historical research are those derived from or associated with the school of the Annales and similar trends, and in which the profession is guided by the findings and concepts of the social sciences, Talmon stressed the importance and brought up for new discussion the cen­ trality of ideas, volitions and psychic forces. He underscored the sin­ gular status of individuals and of purposive actions in the shaping of things, and posited the confrontation between these factors and a his­ torical given reality as the true subject of history. [33]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Thus, while the professional jargon of the social scientist was beginning to predominate, when quantitative analysis began to replace qualitative description, and the language of the historian grew pale and incapable of describing the canvas of human life and experience, Talmon main­ tained the humanist tradition which holds that a historical work must have literary merit, and be a work of art which, by the force of its language, can resurrect a rich, variegated and unique world which is gone. In a world where historical research has sometimes become the highway to escape reality Talmon grappled with reality, its com­ plexity, anxieties and tragedies. Jacob Talmon stands out as a human­ ist in a world of increasingly narrow, professional outlook and spe­ cialization. He drew upon all the fountains of knowledge and culture in order to understand and describe man in all his dimensions and complexity and to remain loyal to the calling of the tradition of great history. In a paper which he read at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, USA, in autumn 1979, in memory of the late Charles Frankel, Talmon spoke about the predicaments of the humanist in the present. It was a kind of self-portrait which he called ‘Portrait of a Humanist and his Dilemmas’. He there observed : It has been said that the humanist should, in the language of Matthew Arnold, exude light and sweetness. But in the modern world of egalitarian mass societies, he has been placed in the position of an embattled warrior and suspect citizen. Is it the humanist dilemma to choose between culture and justice ? Must he be a jealous defender of a precious heritage bequeathed by, let us face it, a fundamentally aristocratic tradition . .. and close his ears to the call : ‘Cain, where is thy brother, Abel ?’ The human­ ist who feels committed to the humanistic heritage and the cause of social justice badly needs the reassurance accorded by a gener­ ous and optimistic estimate of human nature. He must cherish the hope of all Israel becoming one day prophets ; the glimmer of hope that we could impart to all men the curiosity and the ability to commune with the things of the spirit. To this he dedicated his life, and his work is his testament.

[34]

PART ONE

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY AND PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN RELATION TO HISTORICAL REALITY IN TERMS OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY

-P

'S

:& 4 4

% Oht

‘i y

"{r T c,’

-a

5"

,r^i ' D W '

I.Í J

4

P

Totalitarian Democracy and the Legacy of Modem Revolutions — Explanation or Indictment ? by JOHN

DUNN

Cambridge University, UK

I.

Talmon,and the Concept of Totalitarian Democracy

O n T u e s d a y 15 D e c e m b e r 1981, in a televised press conference fol­ lowing the declaration of military rule in Poland, the leader of the Italian communist party, Enrico Berlinguer, acknowledged bluntly (and in some respects for the first time) the heavy burden which the political character of the Soviet Union and its satellite powers had long placed on the prospects for socialism in the West.1 In the subsequent weeks this acknowledgement was extended and amplified (if in some measure hedged), and it has been essentially sustained ever since. In itself, this belated recognition of the catastrophic political character of existing communist regimes is not especially impressive. But the occasion which elicited it, and the stress laid by Berlinguer himself on the profoundly undemocratic character of the Soviet state, do mark an ideological turning-point of a kind. They also perhaps highlight the marked ideological precariousness and instability of the very idea of totalitarian democracy and the continued practical importance of explaining adequately and validly why the Soviet experience has proved politically so repellent. Both of these preoccupations were plainly of central importance to the late Jacob Talmon. His famous study of the ideological origins and internal dynamics of the tradition of totalitarian democracy — up to the time at which state power was first taken and retained under its aegis — fills three large volumes, and its publication stretches across almost three decades. In its first and briefest volume. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, very much a work of the early 1950s, Talmon offered an influential and pointed diagnosis of the political discontents of the advanced capitalist world in the aftermath of World War II. 1

See L’Unità (Milan), 16 Dec. 81, pp. 1, 24 ; 30 Dec 81, pp. 1, 16 ; 12 Jan. 82, pp. 1, 8-9 ; 24 Jan. 82, pp. 1, 20.

[37]

Totalitarian Democracy and After It is not necessary in this setting to emphasize the striking qualities of the trilogy as a whole, the extraordinary range of learning that it exhibits or the human vitality and sense of drama that shine through every page and, in more personal relations, enabled Talmon to capture and retain the deep affection of scholars whose political sentiments and judgements differed very sharply from his own. But timely and impressive though it certainly was, there have always been major reservations about the validity of the book’s central contentions. 1 take these to be essentially two. Firstly, that totalitarian messianic democracy (for current purposes, the political character of a com­ munist regime) is to be disjoined from liberal empirical democracy, not by its institutional forms (and certainly not by its structure of ownership and economic control), but, rather, by its distinctive attitude towards the scope of politics.2 And, secondly, that its attitude towards the scope of politics is, in turn, a product of a single metaphysical and dispositional error, an error that unites a simplistic moral absolutism and rationalism with a gratuitous trust in the self-regulating capacity of the historical process. In this sense, the contrast between modem Marxist politics, for example, and the politics of ancient republicanism in the Machiavellian tradition3 would not lie in the former’s pre­ ference for community over individual, or in its somewhat evasive union of moralizing asceticism with promises of future largesse, but rather in its striking optimism about the future viability of the wellordered polity, once this has been well and truly founded. The an­ cient prudence, as a heroically forceful and ingenious apparatus for postponing an inevitable decay and corruption of the body politic, is now succeeded by a modem prudence — the Marxist-Leninist doc­ trine of state — for which the possibility of political decomposition from within through the normal workings of natural forces simply cannot arise. (For a communist regime, unlike a classical republic, to succumb to internal decay can, in its own eyes, only occur through great folly or a great crime — though some qualification on this point is probably, or at least was probably, in order in the case of J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London 1952 (Mer­ cury pb. ed., London 1961, is referred to here), especially pp. 3-8, 11, 249. There are a number of important differences of emphasis between the Origins and the two later volumes, Political Messianism — The Romantic Phase, London-New York 1960, and The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, London 1981, but they do not affect this central judgement. 3 For the best outline of this tradition, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton 1975, and idem, Politics, Language and Time, London 1972, chaps 3 and 4. 2

[38]

John Dunn Maoism.4) It is worth emphasizing this contrast between ancient and modern prudence because, at least to some degree, it is common to the two traditions of political understanding that Talmon counterposes. For John Adams or James Madison56the question of the future viability of the American republic was complex and necessarily open. But the presumption of the intrinsic and indefinite internal viability of the American polity is at least as deeply ingrained in the political pre­ sumptions of most Americans as the analogous presumption in relation to the USSR appears to be widespread amongst Soviet citizens. Polities today vary very widely in the extent to which their citizens regard them as well ordered ; but it is not clear, even at the level of ritual pronouncements, let alone at that of practical reproduction, that rigidity of constitutional form or socio-economic structure is a prerogative of the totalitarian democrats. Total rigidity of either can hardly be sus­ tained for long amidst the intense and turbulent interplay of economic and ideological forces which marks the late twentieth century ; and political pronouncements are necessarily a poor index of the scale of change or persistence in any form of society. It is probably fair to say that the main criticism which has been offered of Talmon’s work (apart from the simple reversal of political pre­ ferences between liberal empiricism and Marxism) has centred on the propriety of the method which he followed for understanding the history of ideas. There is certainly some substance to these criticisms. A contrast between The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy itself and, for example, John Lough’s careful, if somewhat pedestrian, study The Philosophes and Post-Revolutionary France? or George Taylor’s analysis of the ideological content of the Cahiers de doléances7 of early 1789, does bring out a certain methodological airiness and insubstantiality in Talmon’s claims for the coherence of the philosophe programme and for its causal impact upon the revolutionary process. But at some level Talmon would have had every reason to regard such criticisms, whatever their individual cogency and textual foundation, as largely 4

5

6 7

Cf. S. R. Schram, ‘Introduction — The Cultural Revolution in Historical Perspective’, in: S.R. Schram (ed.), Authority, Participation and Cultural Change in China, Cambridge 1973, pp. 1-108. Z. Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Paris, New York 1964 ; E. Handler, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams, Cambridge, Mass., 1964; J. E. Cooke (ed.), The Federalist, Cleveland, Ohio, 1961. J. Lough, The Philosophes and Post-Revolutionary France, Oxford 1982. G. V. Taylor, ‘Revolutionary and Non-revolutionary Content in the Cahiers of 1789’, French Historical Studies, V II:4 (Fall 1972), pp. 479-502.

[39]

Totalitarian Democracy and After beside the point. Since what he wished to understand was the develop­ ment of an entire mode of political perception and sentiment, and since he explicitly wished to understand it because he saw it as the causally indispensable imaginative prehistory of a hugely important modern idiom of political practice, the finer points of scepticism as to the causal role of particular authors or particular texts were of comparatively minor interest to him. Even if the actual political role of the ideas of Rousseau, for example, was largely one of radical misunderstanding amplified by hearsay at third or fourth remove,8 it might still be ap­ propriate to include their author as prominently as Talmon did in representing the shaping and reshaping of the traditions of belief and sentiment which he wished to depict. IL

Non-ideological Determinants of the Character of Communist Regimes

What is less easy to endorse, however, is the intellectual judgement behind the shape of his trilogy as a whole. For the key question raised by his entire enterprise concerns the relation between the imaginative prehistory of communist regimes (seen by Talmon himself as over­ whelmingly a European history) and the causal properties of those regimes themselves. What Talmon chose to study was, to quote from the opening page of the Origins, ‘a systematic preparation for the headlong collision between empirical and liberal democracy on the one hand, and totalitarian messianic democracy on the other, in which the world crisis of today consists’.9 Looked at from thirty years later, how­ ever vivid one’s distaste for the Soviet Union, that formula suggests a narrowly self-serving and theoretically inept conception of the causa­ tion of the Cold War, identifying its sources firmly in the distressing confrontation of our own rational and well-founded system of beliefs with the deranged, hysterical and menacing political presumptions of our enemies, the Soviet Union and its allies. Now it would be absurd to presume, even outside the context of a world crisis (whatever that may be), that the doctrines of state of the Soviet Union (or of any other state) have no causal implications for the manner in which its state power is intentionally exerted, or even for the ways in which its social, economic and political structures do in fact over time develop. But it would be even more absurd to presume that the predominant determinant of the intentional exercise of state power, or the principal effective controller of the structural development of a polity, economy 8 9

Cf. the somewhat unilluminating negative findings of J. Rousseau and the French Revolution, London 1965. Origins, p. 1.

[40]

Macdonald,

John Dunn or society, could be a unitary system of beliefs and sentiments shaped elsewhere and at some other time. The first question posed by Talmon’s approach is therefore simple enough. What are the exact implications of Marxism or Leninism’s becoming a ruling doctrine of state ? Talmon’s answer to this question is a bold one : that its adoption in this guise spells inevitably a nasty fusion of ritualized hypocrisy and practical oppression10 — precisely because of the absurd metaphysical hubris on which its claims to authority rest. It is clear by now to anyone open-mindedly interested in the question (and anyone of any political decency must be interested in the question and attempt to retain some open-mindedness in the face of it), that there is something in Talmon’s answer. The link, for example, between metaphysical hubris and ritual hypocrisy does appear to be internal and logical and not merely external and contingent. And the link between both of these disfigurements and oppressive political practices has been too constant for it to be regarded as just a sorry chapter of accidents. But there is something drastically misconceived about the character of Talmon’s position, a presumption of a quite unwarrantable degree of determinacy to the question’s answer. One can see this most economically, perhaps, by considering the case of totalitarian democracy’s ghostly, and for the most part also eminently material, enemy, the tradition of liberal empirical democracy. It would not, of course, be accurate to construe the empirical component of this tradition as an explicit feature of the doctrines of state in which it eventuates. And there is some strain (and not merely one generated by constitutional heterogeneity) even in construing either its liberal or its democratic component as necessarily a part of its doctrines of state. There is some real plausibility in lumping together the range of Marxist regimes, however cantankerous their mutual relations may now have become. But there is less felicity — constitutionally, ideolo­ gically or substantively — in seeing their political adversaries as united by much more than a common object of their loathing. The political challenge of regimes of Marxist inspiration is domestically rather feeble in France or Britain or Israel, let alone in West Germany or Japan or the United States of America. But it is very considerably less feeble in such countries as Brazil or Argentina, South Africa or Indonesia ; and its persisting salience in these settings (however thin on the ground it may at times have been rendered in practice) has prised the liberal and democratic velleities crisply away from the demands of the em­ pirical. This fissure has been established, too, not merely through and 10

Origins, pp. 8, 253. [41]

Totalitarian Democracy and After for the citizens of these countries but at least as dramatically, for the purposes of the United States government in relation to them. In the face of the menacing seductions of Marxist absolutism, the liberal and democratic, outside its heartlands, has been abandoned wholesale for reasons which in themselves appeared, at least to its deserters, to be both empirical and virtually impossible to deny or elude. These deformations can and should be blamed in part on the opportunistic ruthlessness of the international political demeanour of the Soviet Union and other communist states since their respective inceptions. But it is hard to see how the political protagonist of liberal empirical democracy can hope to avoid sharing the blame, and indeed doing so in respects that blot its own escutcheon very unbecomingly indeed. And even that measure of blame which appropriately falls on the op­ portunistic ruthlessness of Soviet action must be balanced imaginatively by the realization of a corresponding responsibility on the part of western powers for the nervous sense of menace in the more domestic Soviet purlieus in Eastern Europe, which explains so much of the most grossly obnoxious of Soviet conduct. Some aspects, at least, of the collision which Talmon hoped to understand simply cannot be under­ stood by considering its ideological history but must be grasped, if they are to be grasped at all, in terms of the ideologically disobliging prag­ matics of a politically riven but strongly interrelated world. I do not wish to suggest that Talmon himself was in any sense foolish enough to deny this explicitly. But I think it fair to say that the character of his work is less than imaginatively sensitive to the significance of this consideration. There is every reason to share Talmon’s view of the political character of communist regimes as an unremitting historical disaster, and a dis­ aster whose practical consequences for the rest of the world are acutely but as yet unfathomably menacing. But there is also good reason to remain more than a little perturbed in many ways by the political character, not merely of some of the allies of liberal empirical democracy (Iran under the Pahlavis, Argentina, South Africa, Indonesia), but even at times of some of its least contestable exemplars : the United States, Great Britain, Israel. And since there is good reason to remain somewhat perturbed in these ways, it remains of very pressing in­ tellectual and practical importance (as well as being morally salutary) to attempt to understand the causal properties of communist regimes with no less and no more prior commitment of sentiment than that with which we understand those of our own governmental traditions and practices. It may seem both an unadventurous and a banal proposal to attempt to attain a common causal perspective on the variety of state forms [42]

John Dunn which deface or adorn the world today. What political scientist could acknowledge any other ambition ? But in practice the will to any such impartiality of causal imagination is for most of us extraordinarily feeble and fitful ; and in consequence it is effortlessly overborne by other desires and fancies which are altogether more importunate. And it seems to me self-evident that an effective commitment to such imaginative detachment in the first instance will be (and has been) subverted beyond hope of recapture if we do presume the contrast between communist regimes and our own to be a contrast between regimes which generate and depend upon political beliefs which are intrinsically deranged and vicious in their epistemic foundations and regimes which, instead, form their political beliefs in circumstances and by methods which are cognitively beyond reproach. I return therefore to the entirely real and pressing question (perhaps still the central historical question of the hour and the question which, it seems to me, Talmon sought so doggedly to answer for himself and for others) : why exactly is the political character of communist regimes such an unremitting historical disaster ? Part of the answer manifestly does lie in the sort of considerations on which Talmon himself focussed. But even this part cannot be very clearly understood in the sort of terms which he offered. And other — and in my view causally weightier — parts of the answer depend on quite different sorts of considerations. In particular, they depend upon a careful assessment of the processes of political and social disorganization which have in every historical instance up to the present preceded the effective and durable establishment of a communist regime capable of protecting itself. In addition they depend upon an equally careful assessment of the political and military challenges to any such establishment and of the expedients thus far essayed for meeting these challenges victoriously. One huge component of their political character, that is to say, comes simply from the mode of their inauguration through civil war or foreign conquest by force of arms, the brutal and disorientating exigen­ cies of the politics of revolution.11 A second, and perhaps equally massive component, comes from their commitment, however various the forms in which this is realized, to organizing their economies on the basis of common rather than private ownership. III.

Marxist Possibilities and Communist Actualities

It is difficult in principle to separate out in a convincing fashion the relative weights of these two considerations because we have no reasonII

See, for example, J. Dunn, Modern Revolutions — An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon, Cambridge 1972.

[43]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ably clear examples of either unaccompanied for extended periods of time by the other. A confident sense of their unsunderable causal union, or ready political disjunction, must therefore rest on political faith rather than on direct experience. Those who see the Marxist tradition as a tradition of democratic socialism will necessarily wish to stress the mishap of attaining power, not merely (as always emphasized) in poor and somewhat barbarous countries but through a process of struggle of such condensed and erratic violence that all democratic niceties speedily go to the wall. (This emphasis, of course, is more cogent in some instances than it is in others — in Russia, China and Vietnam, for example, than in Czechoslovakia or Cuba.12) Those who see the Marxist tradition, as Talmon saw it, as a form of messianic rationalism will see such mishaps themselves as natural outcomes of the political vices of the tradition as a whole. Those (like myself) who see the Marxist tradition (and even in some measure the thought of Lenin himself) 13 as inherently ambivalent and unstable in its com­ mitments, both on the claims of democracy and on the criteria for objective historical opportunity, will see the range of political pos­ sibilities which make up the tradition as broader and less determinate. They will also see the process of determination of which possibilities are in fact actualized in the future (and which possibilities have already been actualized in the past) as historical and mediated by the beliefs and judgements of human agents, severally and in groups,14 and not as theoretically pre-guaranteed and controlled by either purely material factors or the strict logical or political implications of a system of false belief. To put the matter very crudely indeed, proponents of the latter view will see the key determinant of the historical impact of the tradition not in strictly materialist or narrowly idealist terms but rather as a Machiavellian pragmatics, in which the causal balance between virtu and fortuna on any particular occasion can only be ascertained in principle a posteriori. No serious analysis of the role of Marxist politics in the twentieth century can be excused from the need to explain convincingly just why it is that, at least in its Leninist 12

13

14

Cf. Dunn, Modern Revolutions, op. cit. (n. 11), chaps 1, 3 and 5, with chap. 8, and J. Rupnik, Histoire de Parti Communiste Tchécoslovaque — des origines à la prise du pouvoir, Paris 1981. For a well-informed and careful analysis of Lenin’s political thought, insufficiently sensitive to its divergences from that of Marx, see N. Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, I-II, London 1977-1981. See Dunn, Modern Revolutions, op. cit. (n. 11) ; idem, Political Obligation in Its Historical Context, Cambridge 1980, pp. 91-94, 217-239 ; idem, ‘Understanding Revolutions’, Ethics, XCII : 2 (Jan. 1982), pp. 299-315.

[44]

John Dunn transposition, Marxism in this century has proven such a dramatic and dynamic culture for the genesis of political virtú. IV.

Why Can Marxists Now Take State Power?

In this respect the hubristic rationalism of its theoretical convictions (the sheer enormity of its pretensions) is scarcely a sufficient clue to its practical potency. No doubt it is politically invigorating to know oneself to be the solution to the riddle of history,15 though one may doubt whether the extremity of that cognitive presumption really makes it easier to sustain in conditions of adversity. No doubt, too, Leninism, in the course of violent conflict, does offer some aid in psychic identification and thus in sustaining a strong ethos of solidarity. But here again the psychic sustenance does not necessarily derive predo­ minantly from the epistemic pretentions. Considering the impact of the Falkland Islands upon the politics of Great Britain or the character­ istic response of Israel to imminent military peril, it does not appear to be true that the projective solidarity of human groups in the course of struggle depends upon a prior dogmatism, and indeed dogmatism itself is often less of a precondition for such solidarity than a con­ sequence of its display. Where the clue to its potency does lie, rather, is in the eminently Machiavellian insight that nothing succeeds like success, and that success can in practice excuse all manner of prior intellectual irregularities just as it can elide all manner of earlier crimes. What has made Leninism politically so formidable (with rather little direct assistance from the thought of Marx himself) has been above all its skilfully cultivated sensitivity to the political vulnerability of different types of regime in the present century16; first of all, to that of the European and Asian dynastic monarchies and empires, then, and in a sense more remarkably, to that of colonial rule, and, lastly, and thus far somewhat erratically, to the confusing variety of neocolonial and postcolonial units which form the majority of mem­ bers of the present international state system. This sensibility, of course, was in no sense an instance of prior causal knowledge. Lenin’s own anticipations, and at least the expressed anticipations of all his suc­ cessors, have thus far grossly overestimated the political vulnerability of mature capitalist societies ; and the postrevolutionary states of the Marxist confession have repeatedly inflicted severe damage upon them­ selves by premising their actions on these gross miscalculations. But, 15 16

Cf. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), in : Marx & Engels, Collected Works, III, London 1975, pp. 296-297. Cf. Dunn, Political Obligation, op. cit. (n. 14), chap. 9, especially pp. 227-233.

[45 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After decade by decade since 1940, more and more states have joined the Marxist confession, and political leaders and organizations have won power over them through interpreting the political opportunities pre­ sented by their societies in these terms and by acting boldly upon their interpretations. The sense of incremental assurance which has come from this process, assurance of the essentially military efficacy of a particular mode of understanding society and history, contrasts increasingly sharply with the distinctly less assured sense of practical control over the internal properties of society and economy held by communist rulers over the same period. It is not as yet clear how best to separate out the components of causal understanding which figure in this process from the rewards of blind courage or effrontery. More than four-and-a-half centuries ago the great Florentine historian Guicciardini explained why with exemplary economy : The pious say that faith can do great things, and, as the gospel tells us, even move mountains. The reason is that faith breeds obstinacy. To have faith means simply to believe firmly — to deem almost a certainty — things that are not reasonable ; or, if they are reasonable, to believe them more firmly than reason war­ rants. A man of faith is stubborn in his beliefs ; he goes his way, undaunted and resolute, disdaining hardship and danger, ready to suffer any extremity. Now, since the affairs of the world are subject to chance and to a thousand and one different accidents, there are many ways in which the passage of time may bring unexpected help to those who persevere in their obstinacy. And since this obstinacy is the product of faith, it is then said that faith can do great things’.17 Now this is an analysis of which Talmon might well have approved. The political rewards of obstinacy can rest four-square upon faith. There is no need to distinguish the rewards of fanaticism from those of opportunism since a steady and energetic opportunism (which is what has enabled political revolutionaries this century to alter so drastically and irreversibly the history of the entire globe) is itself merely the political expression of a prior fanaticism. I have to confess that I used to regard this as a deft and sophisticated judgement my­ self. But further reflection (aided by subsequent developments in the causal understanding of revolutions by political sociologists like Theda 17

Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance States­ man, trans. Mario Domandi, New York 1965, p. 39.

[46 ]

John Dunn Skocpol18) suggests that it requires some amendment. At the most general level, for example, it is clearly an objective causal property of some modern states and some modern counter-state political or­ ganizations that concerted political action by the latter can in some circumstances overthrow the former and replace them. As an objective causal property it obviously grossly under-determines rational political conduct for revolutionaries or incumbent regimes in any actual in­ stance and, of course, it also differs rather sharply from the style of allegation about the causal impact of political action which Marx himself favoured and on which many Marxists on many occasions, now as in the past, have trustingly relied. But, however discordant with moral pretension and however hazily related in detail to practical rationality, this vulnerability to direct assault does seem to constitute a real causal relation between an incumbent regime and contenders to replace it. The most striking example of such causal understanding, and an example in which Lenin was plainly dramatically in advance of his time, was the Comintern apprehension of the extreme structural fragility of colonial rule as a system extended across the whole globe.19 Putting the point in slightly different terms, and inspecting the tra­ jectory of state forms since 1914, we might say that however crassly dependent upon faith the Bolsheviks may have been in that year, their obstinacy by now, as contenders for state power, can rest more com­ fortably upon an accumulation of rational causal belief. However selfserving and evasive their grounds for regarding themselves as fit to exercise state power, they have certainly earned by now an epistemically plausible title for supposing that, in historically propitious circum­ stances, they may well possess the capacity to take such power and very possibly to retain it also for the readily imaginable future. Leninism, then, has prospered (where it has done so) because in some respects and by some criteria it works. But it has, of course, hardly had the sorts of consequences which Marx himself initially advertised as the social, economic and political fruits of anti-capitalist revolution. Some of these anticipated fruits — the absence of any profound structural conflicts of human interests in the societies which emerge from anti-capitalist revolution -— may fairly be regarded as messianic expectations. Others, however, like the presumption of the possibility of benign revolutionary transformations of advanced capi­ talist societies or that of the potential economic efficiency of socialist 18 19

See particularly, T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge 1979. For a valuable treatment, see H. C. d’Encausse & S. R. Schram, Marxism and Asia — An Introduction with Readings, London 1969.

[47]

Totalitarian Democracy and After economies, have less the flavour of misplaced theology than that of somewhat erroneous causal belief. Erroneous causal beliefs are no prerogative of socialists or rationalists. (Indeed it is precisely the com­ mon hallmark of devotees of liberal democracy and empiricism that they should fully acknowledge their fallibility in this respect.) What we most need to see more clearly, therefore, is the systematic relations (if such there be) between more or less proven pragmatic efficacy and errors of causal belief which are plausibly systematic in character. For only if we can grasp these in an intellectually convincing fashion can we seriously assess how important causally the residual messianic commitments of the Marxist confession have been over the last threequarters of a century — and, more crucially, how important they still remain today and will be likely to remain for the imaginable future. For an initial sketch of the relevant pattern, it seems best to represent the locus of proven efficacy of Marxist revolutionary practice (as already suggested) in its sensitivity to the political contradictions of capitalist reproduction. This may be little more than a matter of heuristic energy and alertness ; and, over the one-hundred and thirtynine years since 1843, this sensitivity has certainly misled its optimistic exponents far more often than it has guided them to success. None of its major theoretical expressions — Marx’s initial conception of Germany’s distinctive revolutionary susceptibility in 1843,20 the casting of the 1848 risings within a materialist theory of the historical process as a whole,21 Lenin’s understanding of imperialism, or the doctrine of the weakest link — have combined analytical power and precision with much claim to validity. But this persisting epistemic vagueness or error has proven, through time, far less important than the capacity which it furnishes for sustaining a consistently and eagerly Machiavellian political sensibility through thick and thin. Modem prudence may have some quite Polybian absurdities as a political goal within the cycle of regimes. But its capacity to nurture virtu certainly beats the fantasies of James Harrington into a cocked hat.22 Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law — Introduction (1844), in : Marx & Engels, Collected Works, III, pp. 175-187. 21 There is no very satisfactory account of this phase of Marx’s political thinking. For contrasting views, see A. Gilbert, Marx’s Politics — Com­ munists and Citizens, London 1981 ; R. N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, I, London 1975. See also H. Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution — Part 1 : State and Bureaucracy, I—II, New York 1977. 22 Cf. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, op. cit. (n. 3 ), chap. 4, and C. Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman, Cambridge, Mass., 1959.

20

[48]

John Dunn V.

Why are Communist Regimes So Oppressive in Practice?

Identifying the principal locus of error is more controversial. Most political analysts, whether friendly or hostile towards Marxism, still perceive this as lying principally in the idioms of revolutionary or post­ revolutionary political practice : in the practical ineffectiveness of open and democratic socialist struggle in advanced capitalist societies or in the nefarious consequences of all too effective covert and au­ thoritarian political ventures elsewhere (and perhaps in the fullness of time even in an advanced capitalist society). This is a necessarily vexed set of questions, turning as it does on the choice for an ex­ planation of the gap between political advertisement and political ex­ perience, between blind faith in the benignity of the historical process and unyielding animosity towards the political morals of one’s opponents. We can consider briefly below how far it is possible to elide the crudity of this choice. But what needs first to be emphasized (and it is the central thesis of this essay) is that to concentrate on the political vices or political misfortunes of Marxist political practice is to lay the main weight of explanation in quite the wrong place. In the work which effectively commences the tradition of political struggle to impose communist institutions by force of arms, Buonarroti’s famous account of the Conspiracy for Equality, the author describes the political essence of the French Revolution as ‘the explosion of the ever­ present discord between the partisans of opulence and distinctions on the one side and the friends of equality or the numerous class of workers on the other’.23 The ideological form taken by this conflict was that of a struggle between partisans of what Buonarroti called the order of egoism, or aristocracy (the English doctrine of the economists),24 and those of the order of the equality which he associated above all with Rousseau.25 The English (or, more properly, Scottish) doctrine of the economists made the prosperity of nations consist in ‘the multi­ plicity of their needs, in the ever-growing diversity of their material enjoyments, in an immense industry, in a limitless commerce, in the rapid circulation of coined metals and, in the last instance, in the anxious and insatiable cupidity of the citizens’.26 Marx, of course, modified this prissy attitude towards desire as such, promising a future F. Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’Egalité dite de Babeuf, Paris 1957, I, p. 25. 24 See especially, I. Hont & M. Ignatieff (eds), Wealth and Virtue — The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge 1983. 25 Buonarroti, op. cit. (n. 23), p. 28. 26 Ibid., p. 26. 23

[49]

Totalitarian Democracy and After in which the productive advantages of the order of egoism could be dependably combined with the avoidance of its hitherto attendant psychic and moral costs. But as matters have worked out, this synthesis has proved elusive. It is above all just this proven elusiveness which explains the residual viability of capitalist state forms over a huge portion of the globe, in some measure even in poor countries but above all in the wealthy countries of the West. It is the economic contradictions of socialism which have above all offset the comparative advantages that socialism might otherwise have drawn from its historical juxtaposition with the economic and political contradictions of the miscellany of capitalist states between 1917 and the present day. This is not to say, of course, that there are no deep tensions or in­ coherences in the political traditions of Leninism, still less that the tensions which there certainly are in theory can be reasonably expected to fail to emerge in practice. Both the main types of criticism pressed against Marxist-Leninist practice remain, men being taken as they are, eminently cogent. The conditions for the establishment of a socialist state power in revolutionary struggle may not dictate a priori an aban­ donment of all civil and political liberties and all vestiges of democratic responsibility. But they certainly make these ugly outcomes overwhelm­ ingly likely in practice ; and, of course, once their practical probability has been not merely established by experience but also deliberately espoused in advance the chances that any less odious form of regime will emerge effectively vanish. Political oppression can be put to good use for a time in poor countries (though that is not to say that it very often has been or is being put to good use there). What is wholly unclear is that it offers the least benefit in societies that are compara­ tively wealthy and whose level of material well being depends upon a complex system of production and exchange. Modern revolution may not guarantee the establishment of a politically oppressive regime. But we have as yet no example of its failing to furnish such a regime in practice, and the causal pressures which favour its doing so are by now extremely easy to understand. But, except trivially and tautologously, there is no political reason why a socialist regime should require a revolution for its establishment. A Eurocommunist regime, for example, might perfectly well arise by purely peaceful means and might sharply modify the political economy of a capitalist state without succumbing to domestic subversion or suppressing civil and political liberties. At present Eurocommunism enjoys a bad repute in most quarters. Right-wing commentators suspect the ability of the leopard to change its spots ; and commentators from

[50 ]

John Dunn the left, by contrast, fear that it really has done so, thus transforming itself into a toothless reformism with no greater capacity to establish a viable socialist order than the by now extremely tame battalions of European social democracy. But the main grounds for distrusting the more insinuating advertisements for Eurocommunism, the combination of distributive equity and commitment to popular welfare with po­ litical civility and civil liberties, are no more than that : grounds for distrust, not guarantees of impossibility. Marxism as a doctrine of state, or as a guiding tradition of political reason for a political party, affords (by its rationalism and its naive equation of the political rejection of capitalism with the eventual establishment of the politically unpro­ blematic) overwhelming ideological resources for partisans of political monopoly. As a doctrine of state within an already highly oppressive state form, one might expect these resources to be so overwhelming as to preclude the liberalization of the regime from within. But a number of experiences since 1956 in Eastern Europe have shown this expectation to be false. Since a Eurocommunist regime will not arise under the aegis of the Warsaw pact, it need not adjust its political calculations directly to Soviet susceptibilities ; and within its own ter­ ritory the considerable political costs of the will to monopoly might well offset its intrinsic charms to the possessor and its ideological appeals within the ranks of the faithful. In Marxist parties or governments (as elsewhere) the relation between doctrine and agency is not one in which the former directly dictates the latter.27 Rather, aspects of the former assign different costs and gains to different possible courses of action. Assessment of their relative weights by competitors for political power and authority leads these to espouse one possible course rather than another ; and the accuracy and realism of these assessments is proven in practice by the outcome of their competitive efforts over extended periods of time. The political ecology of a Marxist regime or party heavily favours an overwhelming monopoly of authority ; and, political effectiveness always being limited in reality, it favours also a correspondingly harsh style of rule. But no political ecology dictates a monopoly of authority (which is always, whatever else, a feat of skill). And a combination of taste, prudence, courage, adroitness and luck might well succeed in avoiding such a monopoly more or less indefinitely. Of course, taste, prudence, courage, 27

For helpful general points, see Q. Skinner, ‘The Principles and Practice of Opposition — The Case of Bolingbroke versus Walpole’, in : N. McKendrick (ed.). Historical Perspectives, London 1974, pp. 93-128; idem, ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’, Political Theory, II : 3 (Aug. 1974), pp. 277-303.

[51 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After adroitness and luck is a lot to ask for in a political leadership at any point ; and too much to depend on confidently for lengthy periods of time. But of course, too, the republican tradition has always acknowl­ edged an unnerving degree of dependence on levels of political virtue. Capitalist democracies simply are politically less hazardous, less accidentprone, forms of life than socialist states. If we remember what originally prompted Marx to the opposite view of the comparative vulnerability of these forms of socio-political or­ ganization (and if, in addition, we consider the often unsavoury record of capitalist states in the present century in the face of acute economic and political crisis), it should be easier to see the drastic importance of the purely economic contradictions of socialism. Capitalist economies certainly remain susceptible to crisis. But it is increasingly hard to see their record (from almost any angle except perhaps the distributive) as inferior to that of socialist economies. The Stalinist growth strategy (electrification essentially without Soviets) did for a time provide a startling rate of economic growth for one huge economy with highly distinctive factor endowments. But after the construction of a heavy industrial base, neither this particular strategy for growth nor the relatively wide range of expedients subsequently essayed in one or other of the socialist countries looks very promising as a long-term economic project. The well-known micro-economic inefficiencies of non-market economies remain to some degree compensated by macro-economic ad­ vantages, so that comparatively well-run socialist economies (of which there are few) can continue to combine the welfare advantages of very low unemployment with fairly low rates of inflation and even some residual economic growth.28 But the juggling act increasingly requires luck as well as skill. There is increasing understanding, par­ ticularly amongst Eastern European economists,29 that socialist eco­ nomies, too, possess their own laws of motion and that these are little 28

For especially clear treatment of a delinquent example, see D. M. Nuti, ‘The Polish Crisis — Economic Factors and Constraints’, in : R. Miliband & John Saville (eds), The Socialist Register, 1981, London 1981, pp. 104—143; idem, ‘Open and Repressed Inflation in Poland, 1975-1981’ (unpublished paper CREES, Birmingham, March 1982). 29 See J. Kornai, Economics of Shortage, I-II, Amsterdam 1980, especially conclusion, II, pp. 569-571 ; T. Bauer, ‘Investment Cycles in Planned Economies’, Acta Oeconomica, XXI (1978), pp. 243-260 ; W. Brus, Socialist Ownership and Political Systems, trans. R. A. Clarke, London 1975 ; idem, ‘East European Economies Facing the Eighties’, afterword to The Economic History of Communist Eastern Europe, Oxford 1983 ; M. Rakovski (pseudonym), Towards an East European Marxism, Lon­ don 1978.

[52 ]

John Dunn more subject to rational control by human will than those of their capitalist confrères. And the radical absence of political charm in their regime form, and the persisting difficulty of uniting luck with skill in their administration, make their intrinsic economic inefficiency a source of dramatic vulnerability. The Polish case makes these points particularly graphically. Poland is, to be sure, a highly idiosyncratic country, with a past and a cultural self-consciousness which have been of key importance in sustaining the resistance of civil society to the communist regime.30 But even in Poland, with its overwhelming and somewhat archaic Catholic commitment, its large peasant residue and its intensely anti-Russian nationalism, it is clear that popular opposition focuses not on an essentially so­ cialist organization of production as such,31 nor on a set of distributive policies, but on the political monopoly of an incompetent, subservient and repressive regime. What turned Solidarity into a major mass move­ ment was the catastrophic economic performance of the Gierek govern­ ment, the reckless fuite en avant of its ill-considered growth policy and the hardships which the utter failure of this policy must eventually impose upon the Polish people. Amongst the Comecon economies it has been in many cases economic failure which has generated political challenges to the regime. (And there is certainly every reason to believe that the efficient running of a highly complex modern socialist economy with its devastating depen­ dence on the availability of full and accurate information is wholly incompatible with a high degree of political repression.) But the key relation, perhaps, runs in the opposite direction. If we ask why some capitalist states can continue to avoid political repression for long periods of time, it is hard to avoid the judgement that the principal source of their capacity to do so has been the considerable success of their economies. Existing socialist states built on the Marxist-Leninist model might be unlikely to disestablish their ruling apparatus of their own accord and without harsh prompting from their irate subjects. But existing socialist states are too tightly interrelated to take such decisions one by one. And for the moment it is perhaps more important (because more fundamental) to insist that a diminution of political monopoly by rational choice on the part of the monopolists requires some level of confidence on their part. A rationally planned command economy, after all, requires an effective central authority. Such authority might 30 31

N. Ascherson, The Polish August, Harmondsworth 1982 (reprint). S. Nowak, ‘Values and Attitudes of the Polish People’, Scientific American, CCXLV, 1 (July 1981), pp. 23-31.

[53 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After in principle sustain itself, for a time at least, purely on its merits. But what is clear, both in West and East, is that no one at present knows how a socialist economy can and should be organized and administered through time in such a way as to deserve the trust and applause of an entire population. An incumbent government faced with a choice between attempting to legitimate itself by persistently executing a feat which no one really knows how to carry off and filling in for its executive deficiencies by additional and readily available increments of coercion is unlikely to choose the former course with much con­ sistency. The political viability of a capitalist state depends covertly and slyly upon a measure of success of its capitalist economy for which it manages to take only a limited degree of responsibility. But the political viability of an unrepressive socialist state would have to depend solely upon the degree of success of a socialist economy for which it could hardly hope to elude full responsibility. Until socialist rulers, potential or actual, learn how this responsibility can be discharged effectively (if, indeed, it is actually possible to discharge it effectively at all), the economic contradictions of socialism and the political contradictions of capitalism will together guarantee a long future for totalitarian democracy. VI. Moral The moral that I wish to draw from these reflections is an old one ; but its relevance is perennial. What we confront in the historical encounter between the orders of egoism and equality over the last two centuries is not the combat of wisdom and folly or vice and virtue. Such combats never take place over very long periods of time and very wide expanses of territory. Human history is not like that ; and to elect to see the world in those terms alone is imaginatively infantile and in the long run ineluctably self-destructive. What we do in fact confront is simply the ineradicable queasiness and the drastic human weight of politics in general — a domain in which understanding is necessarily agonizingly limited, in which self-righteousness is almost always misplaced, and yet in which the most vital human interests are constantly and inescapably at stake. What we need today (and when I say we, I mean human beings in every land, in Baghdad and in Nablus, in Tyre and Beirut, in Yammit and in Moscow, in Washington, in London and in Port Stanley) is to learn to live with more suppleness and more agility both with the contradictions of socialism and with those of capitalism. What we need is not more practice in endlessly recycling the routine pieties of the orders of egoism or of equality, but instead the genesis of a decidedly

[54 ]

John Dunn more modern and more prudent prudence, a matter, above all, for our wits. For unless we learn to live more skilfully and wisely with the practical political contradictions of our world the alternative which we face is simply that of dying with them, nation by nation or in one mad spasm together. This last point is not one which, I think, needs to be laboured in the great, beautiful and tragic city of Jerusalem and in the face of the dreadful events of the June and July of 1982.

Rival Revolutionary Ideals by

J A M E S H. B I L L I N G T O N The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., USA

L ike

G i b b o n , whose great work was inspired by the sight of Fran­

ciscan friars shuffling over Roman ruins, so Jacob Talmon tells us at the end of his trilogy on revolutionary messianism that his enterprise also had concrete human origins — in the experience of working on the ultrademocratic French constitution of 1793 and its interaction with the Reign of Terror at the very time that the Stalinist purges were being perpetrated. Talmon shared with Gibbon a sensitivity to the present that informs his account of the past along with an under­ lying commitment to Enlightenment values. But Talmon’s approach differed radically from that of Gibbon, who confidently moralized from a distance, lamenting the fall of an ideal he found in the past. Talmon was an anguished participant in what he described, seeking to explain how lofty ideals produced horrendous outcomes all around him, aspir­ ing to build a more humane future. Gibbon’s work flowed forth with regularity after the first volume appeared in the year of America’s independence. He took time out only to write an august defense of British opposition to the creation of that destabilizing new democracy situated to the West of Europe. Talmon’s opus came in three widely separated volumes that were continually interrupted by his personal involvement in the creation of another destabilizing new democracy to the East. In the conclusion of his trilogy, Talmon suggested that the tendency of ‘revolutionary Salvationist schemes to evolve into regimes of terror’ is the result of ‘some unfathomable and inescapable law’. He recognized as ‘inescapable’ the connection between ideology and atrocity that all but conservative historians had hitherto generally found ways of escap­ ing. At the same time, he saw that the precise linkage is ‘unfathomable’, and thus cannot be made the basis for any simple, moralizing con­ clusion.

[56 ]

James H. Billington Underlying his trilogy are two basic ideas, which most contemporary historians continue either to ignore or to evade. First is the assumption implicit in his first volume that the French Revolution was the decisive seminal event in modern history, creating and validating revolution as a secular substitute for traditional religion and politics as the all­ controlling plane of human existence. Second is the suggestion, in­ creasingly implicit in his last two volumes, that not one but two new authoritarian ideals issued forth from that revolution : totalitarian democracy calling for social revolution and political messianism calling for national revolution. Talmon’s insistence on the importance of the ideas issuing from the French Revolution puts him at odds with most post-war academic writing about revolution. These writers have tended to deemphasize the role both of ideas and of distinctive events, seeking general social scientific laws through comparative study, and foraging for data ahistorically across centuries and aculturally across borders. Talmon’s approach also challenges almost all French schools of thought about their own revolution : the Marxists’ hostility to the importance of ideas in revolutionary change ; the Annalistes’ doubt over the longue durée about the importance of revolution in changing much of any­ thing ; the Godechot-Palmer emphasis on a unitary Atlantic or Demo­ cratic Revolution stressing the continuities between America and France. There is not a single major French institution or personality mentioned in the copious, multinational acknowledgements Talmon makes to those who have helped or stimulated him in any of his three volumes. As one who has recently tried to cover the same period on a smaller scale using different data, I would like now to pay tribute to this remarkable historian by indicating ways in which I believe the lines of his vast canvas might be extended, or drawn more boldly, in two areas central to his enterprise. The first is the French revolutionary origins for modern totalitarianism, and the second, the question of a typology for the different strands in the modern revolutionary tra­ dition. I.

Occult and Romantic Origins

Talmon traces the genesis of the left totalitarian attitude from the ideas of Rousseau and other radical figures of the Enlightenment through the practices of the Jacobin dictatorship to the authoritarian collectivism of the Babeuf conspiracy. He is, of course, describing successive anticipations of future conclusions rather than a clear or continuous movement ; there are, I believe, other kinds of evidence that can be added to Talmon’s essentially cerebral account to support

[57 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After his basic insight that a proto-totalitarian mentality was emerging during this era. I would mention three pro to-roman tic influences which have received relatively little attention in the vast literature on the impact of ideas on the French Revolution. First and most important was the powerful, yet almost totally neglected, tradition of esoteric occultism. A popular countertradition to that of Enlightenment rationalism that had a continuous importance in early European history, it was staging a florid, massive revival in the twenty years prior to the French Revolution through the rapid spread of higher order Masonry. Many, if not most, of the organizational struc­ tures, architectural plans, heraldic symbols, and festive rituals of the French revolutionary republic derive from this essentially authoritarian, pseudo-religious tradition, which promised simple, instant — even magical — solutions to complex questions. Historians have yet to see in the occultist mania of the late eighteenth century important origins of the authoritarianism inherent not only in French revolutionary politics, but also in German romantic philosophy. A second, even more emotional, force driving during and after the French Revolution toward the ‘terrible simplification’ of a new au­ thoritarianism was the evocative power of the new romantic art, which unleashed at both textual and subliminal levels the kind of total emotional assault on traditional authority that precluded rational remedy. The romantic movement really began, I believe, with the Sturm und Drang of young poets who were both awed by and envious of the heroic anti-traditionalism of Frederick the Great (the one enlightened monarch to write prophetically and at length about the meaning of revolution even before 1776). His example inspired a new aesthetic sensibility with a Promethean and ultimately political ambition that soon moved from poetry to the more social medium of the stage. Romanticism began, not with Wordsworth’s readers smelling flowers, but with Schiller’s audience smelling power ; and the insurrectionary impulse idealized in his early works like The Robbers and Don Carlos acquired even greater evocative force after the revolution. Their influence appears in the melodramas of Nodier and Hugo, and in the incendiary vernacular poetry of resistance leaders who were as un­ consciously imitative of Napoleon as were thé earlier Germans of Frederick. The national revolutionary tradition was simply less ra­ tional and more purely emotional than even Talmon’s admirable analytic treatment sometimes suggests. Both the old occult tradition and the new Promethean plays bespeak a far greater pre-revolutionary influx of German ideological influence into France than anyone has yet acknowledged —- through Switzerland,

[58 ]

James H. Billington through Strasbourg, through Mirabeau in Berlin, and many other chan­ nels. But there was also a third, more mundane, and purely Parisian force that inseminated the French revolutionary era with proto-totali­ tarian longings. The simple belief in the possibility of total material happiness was nurtured in the café subculture of Paris, and particularly in the great privileged sanctuary of aristocratic indulgence, the PalaisRoyal. Four of the most innovative figures in moving the revolutionary tradition in an authoritarian direction all began as literary pomographers before turning to revolutionary politics : Mirabeau, the first politician to use the word ‘revolutionary’ in its new meaning of a totally new, totally secular order ; Saint-Just ; Maréchal, whose Mani­ festo of Equals for Babeuf’s conspiracy first developed the myth of a second, social revolution to come ; and Restif de La Bretonne, who first coined the word ‘communist’ to describe its objective. Literally, as well as figuratively, the mob that stormed the Bastille first formed in the Palais-Royal, and many subsequent revolutionary processions moved from its Café de Venus to the Champs de Mars. The Palais-Royal was the pleasure dome of the King’s brother, the Grand Orient of occult higher order Masonry, Philippe of Orleans, the future Philippe-Egalité. The age-old dream of some total satis­ faction of the senses seemed to become at least a fleeting reality in its opulent arcades, with all their culinary, narcotic, and erotic delights. Nowhere (the literal meaning of ‘utopia’) had become somewhere — and might someday be everywhere. Saint-Just’s ascetic pursuit of virtue followed dialectically his erotic taste of vice in the same Palais-Royal that was haunted by Choderlos Laclos and the Marquis de Sade. II.

A Foretaste of Leninism

An illustration of how all three of these proto-romantic anti-Enlightenment influences converged to drive the revolutionary movement in a totalitarian direction can be found in the totally neglected jour­ nalistic leader of the Palais-Royal, Nicholas de Bonneville, who was perhaps the leading French student of occult movements as he was the pioneering French translator of Schiller throughout the 1780s. Bonneville became in 1789 the first to coin the revolutionary cry aux armes and to use the revolutionary tu for the king. He turned his apartment overloooking the Palais-Royal into a ménage à trois with Thomas Paine and his wife after sharing it with Camille Desmoulins, and used the main building inside the courtyard of the Palais-Royal, the so-called Cirque, to assemble perhaps the first proto-totalitarian revolutionary organization of modern times, the Social Circle. Bonneville’s activities of 1789-1790 already anticipate not so much [59]

Totalitarian Democracy and After perhaps a totalitarian reading of the democratic ideal as a direct anticipation of the anti-democratic Leninist ideal. The title of Bonne­ ville’s first journal of 1789, The Tribune of the People, was later used by the Babeuf conspiracy. Bonneville seems to have interpreted the early urban revolution in Paris as a foretaste of that broad and final social revolution which Maréchal later called for in his Manifesto. Like Lenin later, Bonneville saw the revolution replacing all govern­ ment authority with a new order of socio-economic equality, and saw the revolutionary process as legitimized by a secular ideology. Bonne­ ville’s occult prophecies and Pythagorean calculations served the func­ tion of later ideologies as both describing and prescribing social change. A third area of resemblance to Leninism lay in Bonneville’s belief that the revolution must be led by a new type of disciplined, hierar­ chical party which objectively represented all oppressed people. His Social Circle worked within the outer front group of a ‘universal confederation of the friends of truth’, and may even have envisaged a central point from which a new egalitarian society of artisans might somehow emerge : a pointe centrale des arts et métiers. Like the exponents of later Leninism, Bonneville saw the final revolution for social equality occurring inside, and in opposition to, a prior political revolution in the name of liberty ; he tried to organize his revolutionary network and to translate its ideology into tactics largely through a combat-oriented central journal like Lenin’s Iskra. Bonneville’s Bouche de Fer succeeded his earlier Tribune, and this ‘mouth of iron’ was seen as issuing orders for the final social revolutionary struggle against the ‘mouths of gold’ of the forces of entrenched privilege. Yet another feature of Leninism in particular, and of modern totali­ tarianism in general, is, I believe, also prefigured in the French revo­ lutionary era perhaps more than Talmon’s account generally suggested : the interaction and frequent interdependence of the extremes of right and left, which became most evident, of course, in the complex late symbiosis of the early Bolshevik underground with the tsarist police. The term les extremes se touchent was coined even before the revo­ lution by another literary figure and utopian fantasist from the PalaisRoyal subculture, Mercier de la Rivière. And extreme royalists did in fact collaborate with extreme Jacobins to form a common anti-Napoleonic front in the first clandestine revolutionary conspiracy to form after the Babeuf conspiracy : the society of Philadelphians. The society was led once again by an artist rather than a philosopher, the romantic playwright and teacher of Victor Hugo, Charles Nodier. So let me summarize my first gloss on Talmon by confirming his [60]

James H. Billington basic insight that important origins of what he saw to his horror in the late 1930s in the USSR can be found in the French revolutionary era. These origins lie, however, not so much in the logic of Enlighten­ ment ideas and Jacobin practices, as in the psycho-logic of proto­ romanticism and the subculture of politicized urban intellectuals. III.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

My second gloss is a tripartite typology of the modem revolutionary tradition, which may make explicit Talmon’s suggestion that there are both national and social revolutionary components in the modern revolutionary tradition — and a third one, perhaps even more con­ genial to him though less explicit in his work. I will suggest that there are in fact three rival revolutionary traditions in the modem world ; and that each has its own essential identity and own distinctive chrono­ logical and cultural origins. While these three traditions interact and overlap, they are basically different. Each can be identified with one word of the original revo­ lutionary slogan : liberty, equality, fraternity. The tradition of revolution for liberty grew out of the political ex­ perience of the North Atlantic entrepreneurial, primarily Protestant world. A wave of political upheavals moved from Holland in the sixteenth century', to England in the seventeenth century, and to a culmination in the American Revolution. This tradition (that was continued in the Belgian and Swiss revolutions of the nineteenth cen­ tury) mobilized relatively traditional forces for a practical, limited struggle to overthrow tyranny and define a constitutional order, usually in the form of a republic. The aim was to restore concrete liberties by limiting and dividing central political power. The French Revolution also began as a revolution of this type — for constitutional liberties — and seemed to confirm this identity when the most powerful king in Christendom was replaced by the First French Republic in 1792. Almost immediately, however, the ideal of a political revolution for liberty was overtaken and overwhelmed by the prototypical example of the second form of the revolutionary faith — the revolution for fraternity. This was an unlimited, emotional military struggle on the part of hitherto inarticulate masses seeking not to limit tyranny and divide power, but to defend and extend the authority of the sovereign territorial nation and to galvanize its citi­ zenry into a neo-tribal brotherhood. Salut et fraternité was the greeting of the new blood brotherhood. Its favourite political slogan — what Nodier called le mot talismanique — was no longer république, but nation (a word rarely used in America [61]

Totalitarian Democracy and After prior to the 1790s), and soon la grande nation. Revolutionary national­ ism subsequently spread primarily through Catholic, largely southern, Europe, reaching on to Latin America and Poland, and becoming the dominant faith of the revolutionary movement as a whole until the final defeat of the last French revolution in 1871 and the discrediting of French leadership. By then, the revolutionary tradition had moved east and produced in Germany and Russia its third variant ideal, of revolution for equality. Egalitarian social revolution called for the establishment of a universal communauté or commune of socio-economic equality that would render both liberal constitutions and national identities irrelevant. The Babeuf Conspiracy of Equals was the precursor from the original revolutionary era ; the Paris Commune of 1871 provided a new model and martyrology. But the new ideal of social revolution and its main slogans — so­ cial democracy, socialism, communism — were most warmly adopted in the authoritarian hierarchical societies of Lutheran Prussia and Orthodox Russia. There at last, in 1917, revolutionaries came out of the wilderness and into power. IV.

The French Move From Liberty

The original tradition of revolution for liberty differs radically from both later traditions of national and social revolution in three impor­ tant ways. First, the earlier liberal revolutionaries (to invent a term) always used the word revolution in its Copemican sense of a re-volution back from a temporary tyranny to a more just and natural norm that was pre­ sumed to have existed previously. Both national and social revolu­ tionaries used the word revolution in the new sense of something totally new and totally redemptive that first appeared only in the French Revolution. The American founding fathers did not call themselves revolutionaries. Second, the earlier, liberal revolutionaries generally continued to affirm the predominate pre-romantic belief in a divine creator and an ob­ jective moral order, never accepting the belief that anything approach­ ing salvation could be found on the secular political plane through a nation or a community. Finally, and most important, these American-type revolutionaries be­ lieved the immediate post-revolutionary task to be the creation of complexity to preserve liberty rather than radical simplification to enshrine fraternity or equality. The prototypical liberal revolutionary document was the American constitution, which moved from the sim-

[6 2 ]

James H. Billington plicity of declaring independence to the complexity of separating central powers and layering federal authority. The French Revolution, in contrast, moved from the immense com­ plexity of the reform struggles in the late 1780s to the terrible simpli­ fications of the mid-1790s : from many estates to one state ; from many titles to the one of Citoyen ; from many formal ways of address to the one familiar tu ; from many points of power to one — from a national assembly, to a twelve-man committee, a five-man directorate, to one emperor ; from the complexity of a discussion to the simplicity of a slogan. The French revolutionaries sought to begin time over again with a new calendar ; to reshape space with pyramids and spheres, and society with triangles and circles ; to link life itself with prime numbers, primal incantations, primeval nature. The classical no less than the Christian heritage was swept aside for the occult romantic druidism of a pyra­ midal earth mound in place of the high altar in Notre Dame Cathedral. Bonneville contended that the cathedral itself was a kind of gothic camouflage over an earlier shrine to Isis, whose name in turn was allegedly derived from the first sound created when fire met water and produced the sound is-is. The two new mythic ideals presented by the French Revolution — a nation of brothers and a commune of equals — emerged in two suc­ cessive, very different waves of incendiary simplification : the one heralded by the Marseillaise and culminating in the emotionalized levée en masse, the other announced by the Manifesto of Equals and the rationalistic Conspiracy of Equals. The very words that have been used ever since to describe these new authoritarian ideals — nationalism and communism — were both first coined in the wake of these experiences in the late 1790s. It is possible, I believe, to extract from the historical record charac­ teristics of a prototype, if not an archetype, for both the national and the social revolutionary movements. Ideal types of this kind never fully correspond, of course, to any real-life examples, which often have some qualities of the other type and almost always use rhetoric from the older liberal tradition. V. Fraternity versus Equality But there are at least six areas where these two newer, more authorita­ rian, traditions can be contrasted with each other as well as with the older North Atlantic tradition of revolution for political liberty. Let me make this contrast, then, between the typical national revolutionary from the Catholic Franco-Italo-Polish context up to the 1860s with

[63 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After the typical social revolutionary that arose in the Lutheran-Orthodox Prusso-Russian context thereafter. First, in basic aims, national revolutionaries seeking fraternity sought to create a nation through the emotional unification of a people. Social revolutionaries seeking equality sought rather to create a commune or community through the rational manifestation of truth. The basic mobilizing device of the one was the trans-rational call to the national emotions in the Marseillaise ; of the other, the trans-national revelation of a universal rationality in the Manifesto of Equals. Contrast the exultation, simplification, and absolutism of either one with the com­ plexity, practicality, and relative dullness of the prototypical document of the earlier American revolution for liberty, the Constitution of 1787 (or even the long itemization of specific practical complaints that fills up the Declaration of Independence). Related to the different essential tasks of the two traditions were the contrasting basic mechanisms for broadening their appeal, which were lyrical for national revolutionaries and cerebral for social revolutionaries. The emotive Marseillaise on the one hand and the rationalistic Manifesto on the other both pointed toward a closed and absolute social objective. They contrasted with the open, argumentative mode that was charac­ teristic of a federal dialogue, representative legislatures, and the per­ petuation of open-ended debate in America. The lyrical mechanisms of national revolutionaries included mythic history, evocative folklore, and, above all, the romantic vernacular poetry that spilled into politics through Lamartine, Mickiewicz, and Petofi — and escalated into musical heroism in the new vernacular operas of national liberation. Live operatic performances literally started two major revolutions (in Piedmont in 1820 and Belgium in 1830). Beginning with the first attempt at political assassination of Napoleon in 1800, through the assassination of the Bourbon Duc de Berry in 1820 in Paris, down to the spectacular attempt of Felice Orsini to kill Napoleon III in 1858 during the playing of the William Tell overture, an astonishing number of violent acts by national revolu­ tionaries occurred in or around opera houses during live performances. The Italian national revolution — the great success of this era — swept to power with the masses singing Giuseppe Verdi’s choruses, with Giuseppe Garibaldi entering and exiting like the heroic tenor Lopenzo Salvi (with whom he had shared a flat in exile in Staten Island), with Camillo Cavour singing ‘Di Quella Pira’ as he entered the crucial battle against the Hapsburgs, and with an uncertain king validating his claim to national leadership by acronymie identity with Verdi — Vit­ torio Emmanuele Re d’ltalia. [64]

James H. Billington In sharp contrast, the social revolutionary tradition relied on cerebral methods of mobilization, which required not a lyric leader but an ideological high commander. The socialist’s weapons were polemic prose for an atomized reading public, not lyric lines for an assembled audience. The realistic, social novel aroused the social revolutionary consciousness in some of the same ways that romantic national opera aroused that of the national revolutionaries. Unity among social revo­ lutionaries was provided by the occult truth distilled from dross within the secret inner circle of a revolutionary élite and then made manifest to the masses, whose most active and ambitious leaders could then seek initiation into the intellectually aware leadership group. The leader­ ship image is not the heroic conductor arousing a chorus, but the in­ tellectual alchemist enlisting apprentices. His secret task was to trans­ form the macrocosm through the microcosm of a vanguard. The word manifesto — from Maréchal to Marx and on to its vulgarization in Germany, Russia, and points east — never loses altogether its con­ nections with the occult. The prototypical social revolutionary subculture emerged, of course, in Russia where ambitious, uprooted students were cut loose from traditional religious moorings to float in polemic prose and drift toward islands of imagination and organization in which total rational equality seemed within the grasp of a dedicated intellectual vanguard. The Russian word intelligentsiia, coined in the 1860s to describe this group, can be traced back through earlier Polish usage to the Latin intellegentia of the occult tradition. In addition to contrasting aims and means of mobilization, there is a third difference in models of organization between national and social revolutionaries. In shaping the soft technology of its organization, each tradition unconsciously derived its model from the radically dif­ ferent type of hard material technology that dominated its particular cultural context. The Franco-Italian era of romantic national revolution was under the spell of the pre-industrial image of a structure, while that of the Germano-Russian era was shaped by the industrial image of a machine. For national revolutionaries the microcosmic model was almost always that of the aristocratic, Masonic lodge : a structure that suggested the world itself being transformed into a rebuilt Temple of Solomon. It was an architectural model — static, but unique, personalized, and suitable for local adaptation by the great variety of revolutionary movements that arose largely against monarchical Catholicism in the nineteenth century. For social revolutionaries, or­ ganization was modelled on a machine, by its nature dynamic, but impersonally uniform and ultimately incapable of basic variation. [65]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Illustrative of this difference are the contrasting archetypical loci for mobilizing the young for national or social revolution — those places which played the role in these traditions that the Palais-Royal had played for the original French Revolution : as a sanctuary privileged by imperial patronage in which junior members of the old order could indulge in pleasures denied ordinary people — including the ultimate one of uniting to destroy the old order. This role of a kind of ‘liberated zone’ unwittingly nurturing revolution was played for national revo­ lutionaries by the Italian opera houses of the Hapsburgs in which explicitly anti-Hapsburg works like William Tell or Don Carlos in­ spired young audiences to dream of national uprising. A similar role was played by the Imperial Technological Institute in St Petersburg where the first modern dynamo in Russia stood like a totem at the centre of a complex directly created and patronized by the Roma­ novs — yet where the student lunchroom became known as the Zaporozhnyi Sich (the historic headquarters of the free Cossacks) and where the first Leninist circle and first Soviet of Workers were both in­ cubated for the social revolution that overthrew those same Roma­ novs. VI. Differing Forms of Violence A fourth area of difference between national and social revolutionaries lay in their preferred forms of violence. The national revolutionary tradition evolved largely out of anti-Napoleonic military resistance movements, which invented the words guerrilla and partisan to de­ scribe their mass-based, irregular forms of total war against traditional armies. Violence was romantic, expressive and heroic, seeking to over­ come apathy and unify people by arousing the emotions. Social revo­ lutionary violence was basically rational, calculating and impersonal, a controlled use of applied technology, designed systematically to soften a political structure for revolutionary change. The most characteristic form of social revolutionary violence was, of course, terrorism, a word first used as a badge of pride among Russians in the late 1870s. Whereas the national revolutionary used the assassin’s dagger or pistol as a kind of extension of his own emotional personality, social revo­ lutionary terrorists gravitated toward the bomb, which they assembled communally and dispensed with disciplined teamwork. The ultimate in radical, revolutionary simplification came when the pioneering Rus­ sian terrorist organization did not announce its programme, or even its name, until after exploding its first bomb. In this expression of ‘the People’s will’, the social revolutionary tradition moved beyond manifestos, slogans, even incantations, to explosion as its basic identity. [66]

James H. Billington The archetypal revolution for liberty in America did not until many years later begin to sing about ‘the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air’, which in any case never approached the bloodthirsty quality of the Marseillaise (‘qu’un sang impur n’abreuve nos sillons’). America initially took over Britain’s own anthem, proclaiming God as the ‘author of liberty’ — changing the final ‘God save the King !’ not as German national revolutionaries did to ‘Volks im Gewehr !’ but simply to ‘Great God, our King !’ A fifth difference is the central role which women played in the social revolutionary tradition, in contrast to their distinctly minor role in revolutionary nationalism. There had been little room for sorority in the original revolutions for fraternity, which, incidentally, guillotined its women victims (Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, Marie An­ toinette) with a special savagery never quite equalled in the case of men. Gifted women pioneered in shaping the revolutionary search for trans­ national equality when it first became a major movement in the 1840s. Flora Tristan (who organized the first international proletarian or­ ganization) and George Sand (the leading literary' popularizer of the new socialist ideal) were, however, more admired in Prussia and Russia, respectively, than in their native France. In Russia, women provided much of the central energizing passion amidst all the discipline and calculation of the original ascetic descent into terror, from the heroic trial of Vera Zasulich, through Sophia Perovskaya’s role in the assas­ sination of the tsar, on to Krupskaya’s forming of the first revolutionary cell of her husband, Lenin. The self-immolation in prison of several women students at the end of the century helped intensify the accelerat­ ing commitment to social revolution in later imperial Russia. The revo­ lutionary fire had moved from the minds of men to the bodies of women. The demonstration that suddenly escalated into the social revo­ lution that overthrew the tsar in March 1917 was staged for and on International Women’s Day. The revolution that later failed in Berlin produced perhaps the greatest martyr of the social revolutionary tra­ dition in Rosa Luxemburg. Sixth and last are the different, but equally devastating ways in which national and social revolutionaries destroyed their ultimate ideological rival : traditional religion. Social revolutionaries seeking equality direct­ ly attacked the final foundation of all hierarchy, belief in God. From Maréchal, the author of the Manifesto of Equals, who called himself HSD (l’Homme Sans Dieu), through Blanqui and Bakunin to Marx and Lenin, the seminal social revolutionaries were that rarest of all type of believer, authentic atheists.

[67 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After National revolutionaries generally also actively sought to destroy any tra­ ditional sense of a universal divine sovereignty or any serious ecclesias­ tical authority that might in any way limit the new sovereign authority of the nation. But their technique was generally to coopt or transmute religious ideas and symbols in order to mobilize the masses. Hence the growing worries in Talmon’s later works about the power of nation­ alism as a pseudo-religion : risorgimento turning to Götterdämmerung, myth and music intensified by race and radio. Beyond the spectacle of an atavistic totem for another tribe loomed the nightmare of the gar­ goyles taking over the cathedral. Each of these two new revolutionary ideals contained a structural flaw that was evident in the period of prophecy and became glaring with the gaining of power. Fraternity all too often meant, in the phrase of one critic of the French revolutionary era, the fraternity of Cain with Abel. A sense of blood brotherhood within the nation seemed always to require bloody opposition to those outside. And equality — the open end to old hierarchies everywhere ■ — seemed to require secret beginnings with a new hierarchy somewhere. In the Bonneville-Babeuf-Lenin lineage, the new hierarchy seemed compelled to extend authority everywhere. National and social revolutionaries each had an ideology that required violence and pointed towards a closed society that excluded independent moral authority — least of all that of the Judaeo-Christian God. The violence of World War I ultimately doomed the nascent liberalism of the Provisional Government and the Weimar Republic, eventually creating in Russia and Germany different totalitarian symbioses whose respective labels each suggests both nationalist and socialist ideals : Stalin’s Socialism in one country and Hitler’s National Socialism. And we are still faced today with heavily armed epigones of the social revo­ lution for equality in the Second World as well as aggressive proponents of new revolutions for fraternity in the Third. But I am not despairing about the continued appeal and regenerative capability of the liberal democratic ideal, which was so central to the man we honour here. It has taken root in the lands that led the fight against the liberal democracies in World War II, Japan and Germany ; it has grown up during the post-war period in many centres of tra­ ditional authoritarianism in Southern Europe and South America, and in others with a colonial heritage in South Asia and parts of Africa ; and it has produced a new kind of infection in Poland for which there may be no long-term repressive cure. Unlike the more authoritarian revolutionary ideals, that of liberty is not necessarily linked to violence (which presents rising risks in the world today) or to a closed society (which frustrates ever-rising as[68]

James H. Billington pirations). Revolution for liberty has always been essentially a re-volu­ tion for practical ends rather than a revolution for ideological salvation. Liberty is most at home in a world of peaceful evolution, which in­ creasingly may be seen to be in everyone’s rational self-interest. There may, of course, be an inherent flaw in the ideal of liberty no less than in the other ideals. New liberty for some often seems to bring new bondage for others. But this is surely not a necessary consequence of liberty so much as failure to recognize that responsibility is, and will always remain, the Siamese twin of liberty. And when asking ‘responsibility to what ?’ one poses the question that might perhaps open up the key to recapturing for the cause of liberty some of the broad emotional appeal that the rational cause of negative liberties never quite evokes. For, in affirming responsibility to God in their personal life, ordinary citizens may have fortified themselves against the intellectuals’ tendency to adopt those God-substitutes called ideo­ logies in their political thinking. Perhaps the hidden weapon of the revolutions for liberty was that they came from people who believed in a Covenant before they crafted a Constitution. For somewhere at the base of our national memory in America — and surely of Talmon’s creativity and concerns here — lay admiration and awe for the com­ mitment of ancient Israel to becoming a special people building justice in time, rather than just another kingdom extending power in space.

[69]

Turn of the Century and Totalitarian Ideology by

KARL D IE T R IC H BRACHER The University of Bonn

D u r i n g t h e p a s t f i f t e e n y e a r s the study of totalitarianism,

and even use of the term, has been exposed to sharpest criticism among social scientists, historians, and the political public. The context may often be political, since in a period of détente it seems inopportune to many to call communism by its name. But the fact remains that there were and are similarities between right- and left-wing extremism not to be overlooked. It is the very great importance of Jacob L. Talmon’s work of three decades, and the specific significance of his third, final volume which he has left to us, that he gives new impulses to a dis­ cussion barricaded by taboos and suspicions against all those who still dared to call totalitarian phenomena by their true name. My paper is dedicated to the memory of an unforgettable friend of common days in Princeton 1967/68, in Bonn 1972/73 and in Jeru­ salem 1974 (where he introduced my lectures before the Israel Academy on interpretations of Hitler, and before the Hebrew University on parliamentary democracy). These discussions with Jacob Talmon have also inspired my book on twentieth-century ideologies, Zeit der Ideo­ logien (Stuttgart 1982, English ed. 1984). In the following remarks I shall try to promote the historical discussion of totalitarianism by dealing with two approaches : 1. The analysis of processes around the turn of our century leading to the transformation of old and new ideas into ideologies, with a great deal of eclecticism from fragmented theories of nationalism, socialism and revolution. 2. A more specific historical understanding of totalitarian thought as it distinguishes Talmon’s approach, through the history of ideas and philosophies, from that of others, who concentrate on the political systems and underrate the role of ideologies.

[70 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After I We have learned from Talmon’s pioneering book of 1951 to what degree the phenomenon of totalitarian democracy can be deduced from the revolutionary changes at the end of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the deep-going changes around 1900 mark a new im­ portant starting-point for modem ideologies, a second or third throw­ ing of switches (Weichenstellung) after the French Revolution and the romantic phase of nationalism and messianism. When, although a former ancient historian, I was working on various aspects of con­ temporary history and politics, I became more and more impressed by a double fact. First, that most of the basic concepts and questions took their present shape in the years shortly before and after 1900, and secondly, that, to a surprising degree of continuity, those political ideas have since prevailed, are revitalized and re-used to the very present. This applies not only to the main political directions — liberal, socialist, conservative — which, of course, took form long before that time, but also, and especially, to their authoritarian and totalitarian variations and extremisms, which developed before and during World War I and its aftermath. Indeed, when we study the radical political movements of the 1920s or 1930s, and again those of the 1960s and 1970s, we are drawn to look back at the turn of this century in order to understand how ideas can become ideologies — and then political realities. Of course, in a wider perspective, one could look at other turns of centuries. There is the period around 1800, when modem ideologies were pre-formed, as Talmon’s first volume has described it in so fundamental and impressive a way, or even around 1700, when the influence of John Locke and the conflicts of Enlightenment and Ab­ solutism set in. Furthermore, the importance of the nineteenth century as a hotbed of revolutionary messianism, socialist and nationalist alike, has been ex­ posed by Talmon’s second volume, and most recently by James Billington’s Fire in the Minds of Men — Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (1980). Indeed, Talmon arrived at our date of 1900 from his deep insights into the structure of revolutionary and nationalist thought since Rousseau and the French Revolution, while I trace back the roads from modern totalitarian dictatorships to their genesis before World War I. But, as to our century, it can indeed be said that most of the im­ mediate intellectual impulses behind the political decisions, with which contemporary history to the present day is faced, come to the fore around 1900, in particular since the 1880s, and long before World

[71 ]

Karl Dietrich Bracher War I. Zeev Sternhell begins his book on The Revolutionary Right in France (1978) with the year 1885, and speaks of a period of incubation with an extraordinary richness and density of ideas which were to change the world a few years later. A number of important studies have stressed the point, concentrating on various aspects of intellectual challenge and revolution. Below are mentioned only a few outstanding examples. Fritz Stem in his Politics of Cultural Despair has analysed the varia­ tions of cultural pessimism, the feelings of civilization change and material expansion as a threat that gave rise to ideas of authoritarian and élitist salvation. George Mosse, in his important work on the Crisis of German Ideology, has followed the folkish and racist implica­ tions contained in popular literature and education and aimed at the ‘nationalization of the masses’. Carl Schorske in his Fin-de-siècle Vienna (1979) deals with the intellectual transition of liberal and cosmopo­ litan Austria, as it changed and became perverted in the course of three generations after 1848, and with the critical turn into conflicting moods of nationalism and modernist emancipation around 1900, right before the advent of Hitler there. This was, to quote Karl Kraus in 1914 (!), the Austrian laboratory of world doom (‘österreichische Versuchsanstalt des Weltuntergangs’). The new German development of anti-Semitism among Christians, and even liberals, in this truly crucial period between 1870 and 1914 was treated by Uriel Tal in his Religion, Politics and Ideology (1975). Furthermore, Peter Gay has shown how the boom of post-war Weimar Culture (1968) following World War I was already actually taking shape under the ancien régime of imperial Germany. The avant-garde are shown as outsiders before they became insiders. Most recently, Peter Paret in Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany (1980) has writ­ ten on this theme and on the connection between modernization and ideological radicalism, pro and contra. And Gerhard Masur ex­ posed the Prophets of Yesterday (1961), who were throwing their shadows on post-war times, notably the rebellions of the youth move­ ment, which were to become, or feel like, the lost generation. II What is common to those and other remarkable studies of the in­ tellectual climate around 1900, like the Dutch historian Jan Romein’s comprehensive book The Watershed of Two Eras — Europe in 1900 (American edition, 1978), or, with respect to America, David A. Shannon (ed.), Progressivism and Postwar Disillusionment 1898-1928 (1965) ? They all discover a growing disillusionment with the idea of [72]

Totalitarian Democracy and After progress, and a deep-going challenge to rational and liberal optimism, along with the disturbing complications of the modernizing process. On the other side, they point to the discovery of new avenues of analys­ ing and interpreting human needs, notably in the expanding fields of sociology and psychology. New ways of thinking combine with the ambiguous ambition and promise of both — scientific-positivistic Auf­ klärung and pseudo-religious Weltanschauung instead of traditional belief. We find that the turn of the century here marks a turn of direction in four major areas, which may be enumerated as follows : 1. The turn in expansion. After 1893, when F. J. Turner published his famous essay on the significance of the frontier in American history, the question arises : what happens after the end of the frontier, i.e. of expansion, to the progress of democracy linked to it ? Is this dis­ cussion, even in the so-called country of progress, America,1 typical of the crisis of modem Western civilization based on expansion, and at the same time symptomatic of the exhaustion of liberal-democratic thought ? 2. The turn in science and culture. The new physics shows infinite possibilities, but these point also to the relativity of knowledge and to the limits of a rational solution to the riddles of the universe. 3. The turn in social development. The new social science is con­ fronted with the contradictions of modem society, torn between achieve­ ments and (revolutionary) doubts about reformist solutions. Social alienation and the discovery of the unconscious dimensions of man open new fields of conflict and integration. 4. The turn in politics. Traditional notions and rational concepts are changed to irrational forms with the rise of ideological movements set on totalitarian ‘solutions’ and carried by political religions. The extremities and extremisms now become evident, manifest and overwhelming, in society and political thought as well as in the realm of arts and artistic religion. They aim at the perfection of the machine age, or at total individualism, or at collective revolution : the hope of the avant-garde of 1917 and the following years. The polarization also has become extreme. On the one hand there is a total trust in mod­ ernization, utopia, and on the other, the shock of or before moderniza­ tion, urbanization, and finally anguish or anxiety (Angst), which has become a central topic of philosophy in the name of existentialism. In so far as the new ideas point at the machine as a means of doing

1 Gf. Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay, New York 1896.

[73]

Karl Dietrich Bracher away with social injustice and arbitrary politics, they pose as the cultural fulfilment of the industrial revolution, bridging the cultural lag and leading into a new future. But modern techniques like totalistic art and architecture were not able to secure, or even support, political and social progress ; rather they confused the issues by pronouncing the ultimate truth in terms of absolute Weltanschauung. In the end they contributed to the tendencies of wishful thinking, of anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois revolt, which, since the turn of the century, become characteristic of left- and right-wing anti-liberalism. Most of their underlying arguments were evolved in this mixture of socio-economic and philosophic-artistic ideas of the either perfection or doom atmos­ phere around and after 1900. I ll Now, it is my thesis that, as a result, the breaks in and refractions {Brechungen) of progress intensify and accentuate the trends towards totalitarian ideologies. Modern ideologies offer at the same time pro­ mises of definite solutions to all problems and world riddles ( Welträtsel, Ernst Haeckel, 1900) and disenchantment with and breaks in progress. And both versions, the progressive and the pessimistic alike, lead to­ wards totalitarian formulas for solutions of world problems, with the key notions of race or class war. The contrast between the stormy advance of science and technology and the lagging behind of social and political structures becomes increasingly clear. This leads to clashes between fin-de~siecle pessimism and machine-age utopianism, with its visions of a new society, as of a new art, new architecture, etc. Yet it is to become a time of preparation for the new Great Terror : of war, of revolutions, of modernist dictatorship, and of the ideas pro­ pelling for it. Never before in history had the achievements of mankind seemed richer and more promising, the advance of civilization more irresistible, the faith in progress more justified. Yet a few years later the greater part of this civilized world lapsed into a devastating war, which shook the foundations of its self-reliance and self-confidence to a degree from which Europe never wholly recovered. Talmon’s third volume contains a fascinating analysis of the impacts of World War I. Mass persecution and mass murder committed in the name of ideas, first in Russia, then in Germany, were crimes in which our century has surpassed all past history. This was not as unexpected as it may seem. The heyday of triumphant progressivism was also the moment of its first serious crisis. From the 1880s philosophers like Nietzsche had proclaimed their profound doubts. [74]

Totalitarian Democracy and After A ‘revolutionary right’, as described by Zeev Sternhell,2 was formed along with the revolutionary left. And in 1908 George Sorel, much better known for his contemporaneous Réflexions sur violence, also published his anti-liberal, anti-bourgeois Les illusions du progrès. For a radical socialist like Sorel this entailed the sharp criticism of both the liberal faith as well as socialist reformism. Even more significant, Sorel stressed that the idea of progress as such should be seen as an ideology. He used this reproach for his attack on the bourgeoisie, but he extended it into a general critique of civilization. The fight against progress as an ideology, and for its debunking, Entmythologisierung, became a formula for both, cultural pessimism and the myth of revo­ lutionary action. It is significant that influential men like Sorel and the proponents of the school of Sorelism supplied arguments for Lenin as well as for Mussolini, as Talmon pointed out in his fundamental article on ‘The Legacy of George Sorel — Marxism, Violence, Fascism’,3 now a central chapter in his third volume, besides the extensive chapters on Leninism. Here, as in the thinking of Sorel’s contemporary Vilfredo Pareto (and his theory of the circulation or cycle of élites), we can observe the close connection between the problems of progressivism and the rise of new forms of authoritarianism. And this applies to the political left and to the political right as well. Because, as Talmon has put it, the Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution are developed at the same time, with confrontation and interchange of the key ideas directed against liberal democracy : the ideas of an élite and leadership, of an exclusive movement aiming at the proclaimed identity of ruler and ruled, the totalitarian version of the volonté générale. On the one hand, left-wing revolutionary thought leading to communism was set on enforcing, and putting through, the idea of progress as a definitive historical process of iron necessity. As Lenin saw it and his fol­ lowers practised it, this needed authoritarian means, justified by the ends of revolution and leading to the political form of one-party state with an avant-garde élite and bureaucratic dictatorship. It must use un­ limited violence to seize and maintain power, and have permanent authoritarian structures to defend it against the ideological enemy, the ever-present counter-revolution. The persistence and world-wide expansion of the cult of Lenin and Leninism to the present testify to this decisive formulation of modern totalitarianism. On the other hand, right-wing radicalism was set on fighting the im2 3

See below, pp. 197 ff. Encounter (Feb. 1970).

[75 ]

Karl Dietrich Bracher plications of progress with the classical arguments of cultural pessimism, leading to fascism and national socialism. ‘It emerged originally’, as Talmon puts it, ‘as a reaction to the victory of the religion of progress in the French Revolution’,4 and again, a century later, we may add, tracing the roots of Mussolini and Hitler in the crisis of early twentiethcentury progressivism. Here authoritarian and totalitarian rule become justified by the ideas of leadership and the strong state with dictatorial powers, as a protection against the demonized consequences of mass democracy : nationalism and race struggle instead of, and set against, internationalism and class struggle. It was opposed, it is true, to Leninist communism, but at the same time it used, imitated and superseded its drive and means. To give only one example of the precise formulation of radical resent­ ment from both sides against liberal democracy in pre-revolutionary Russia we may look at Talmon’s description in the chapter ‘Russia — Holy, Profaned and Predestined’ : The establishment were afraid of the liberal influence of Western ideas, and were desperate to stop their infiltration. The revolu­ tionaries, for their part, feared that bourgeois, liberal capitalism would delay or prevent the arrival of the perfect predestined order of their dreams. Both sides were in a hurry'. Neither wanted read­ justment, compromise, gradualness. Only total confrontation was possible ; only war to death. Salvation was now or never.5 On the other hand, the German case was no less two-sided. Talmon cites, among many other examples, Richard Wagner and his ‘baffling transition from the atheistic, social radicalism of a barricade fighter in 1848 to extreme racist anti-Semitism and to poetry of the pagan germanic myth’, with anti-liberal consequences to come.6 The Italian scene is illuminated by the two-front-constellation of socialist anarchosyndicalism and of nationalist neo-machiavellism, for which even Mazzini, not to speak of Mosca or Pareto, can be claimed : the ‘mutilated dream’ of the Risorgimento.7 IV These are only a few hints at the connection and interaction of pro­ blems and tendencies that were building up well before World War I 4 J. L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, London 1981, p. 537. 5 Myth, title. Part V, p. 240. 6 Myth, p. 208. 7 Myth, p. 477.

[76]

Totalitarian Democracy and After brought them into political effect. Many examples could be discussed to show the affinity of broad contemporary thought with such tenden­ cies, not to be confined to extreme forms of minority radicalism. For instance, in 1907, when Sorel was writing his pamphlets, the leading Ger­ man historian Friedrich Meinecke, until then a moderate conservative, published his Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat. There, in the words of his student, Felix Gilbert, he ‘regarded the development from universalism and cosmopolitanism to nationalism as clear, unquested pro­ gress’.8 With Talmon we might say, ‘the myth of the nation’ competes with ‘the vision of revolution’, and the two ideas, by the dynamics and fanaticism of their main prophets and champions, blended into militant anti-liberal streams of thought. The two roads to totalitarianism become visible. Gilbert continues : The process which he [Meinecke] describes and on which he comments with approval is that of the gradual renunciation of all commitments to cosmopolitan values, until at the end the sovereign national state is recognized as the supreme value and final goal of history. According to Meinecke this is a process which possesses ‘necessity, greatness, and ethical dignity’. This glorification of na­ tionalism and of the national state — dangerous and even repul­ sive as it might appear to us — was in accordance with the political climate of the years before the First World War. These were the convictions and values of the tim e... Because he [Meinecke] regarded the state as an entirely indepen­ dent individuality, he believed that a state had to fight against others to maintain itself. ‘Struggle, care, and conflict are the destiny of the genuine national state, not peace and calm’. To this étatist nationalism and power Darwinism add the social question and the quest for Salvationist political religions instead of established churches, and you have the explosive combination of ideas devastating civilized politics in the age of the two world wars. Such a pseudo-religion again is to be found on both sides. In the words of a Russian socialist, Grigori Goldenberg, around 1880 : May socialism be sown by my blood, just as once the blood of the early Christian martyrs made the Christian church sprout forth... socialism is a new revelation ... a new religion, will usher in a new e ra ... will sweep the whole world.9 8 9

F. Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State, Introduction to English ed., Princeton 1970, pp. V III f. Myth, p. 232.

[77 ]

Karl Dietrich Bracher And later Mussolini, the ex-socialist, was to say in the Dottrina del Fascismo : ‘the peoples’ thirst for authority, for leadership, for order. . . for a faith’.10 Hitler followed up with his counter-religion, with ‘the mystery of the blood’, as Talmon put it,11 quoting the early Hitler : ‘Now begins the great last revolution’, fulfilling Germany’s international mission as ‘a vital question for all humanity, with the faith of all nonJewish peoples depending on it’.12 Anti-Semitism became the political religion of national socialism. Overlooking the development since then, we may see four especially crucial periods of modern political ideas derived from the turn of the century to be emphasized. These are the periods before 1914, after World War I, after World War II, and since the late 1960s. By combining a historical and a systematic approach, we can find in each of these periods a number of similar key ideas, varying in their relation to the changing cultural, social and political conditions. The idea of progress is one such concept, as well as the old idea of decline presently so popular again among various brands of cultural pessimism. Do they foreshadow actual decline, as once in Rome, or in the first quarter of our century, and with the break of the idea of progress prepare the way to new ideologies ? (with ‘alternative movements’ in the West ?) Similarly, in all four periods since 1900 we are confronted with the issues of modernization, with the great hopes and the violent reactions it generates then and now. Furthermore, we can observe the ideological use of Kulturkritik, stressing the negative impact of material change on culture, of Demokratiekritik, ambivalent expectations in the wake of mass politics, of individual and social fear as powerful motives (as in Germany by 1933) and means of pseudo-democratic mobilization and totalitarian temptation. I can name only a few more points characterizing the periods in question. Before 1914 it is the rise of irrationalism and political religions, bringing forth modem versions of élitism and authoritarianism. Between the wars, one is dealing especially with disturbances and illusions in the relation­ ship between intellectuals and politics in the age of the new pseudodemocratic dictators (as distinct from the classical military or con­ servative dictators). And since the mid-1960s, after a period of ideological vacuum and the promise of the ‘end of ideology’ (Daniel Bell), we are confronted with new quests for ideologies (Reideologisierung), and

10 Myth, p. 503. 11 Myth, p .5 2 3 . 12 Myth, p. 525.

[78]

Totalitarian Democracy and After what is now called the ‘silent revolution’ (Inglehart 1977) of a deep­ going value change or even a cultural revolution. But much that is being discussed and published during the stormy years of new ideological conflicts since 1968 again reflects the confrontation of progress and crisis thought which first came to the fore around 1900. V In concluding, I should repeat my point that the turn of our century was more than just a date, a change in calendar. It marked the publica­ tion of the leading racist book, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Found­ ations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), which became the Bible of all Nazi intellectuals. It was the appearance of John A. Hobson’s crucial book on Imperialism (1902) which inspired Marxist-Leninist theory. It was the eve of the first great strikes and revolts in Russia, which paved the way to the revolution, and the eve of the war, which facilitated and accelerated such tendencies. It was indeed the formative period first of Lenin (b. 1870), then of Mussolini (b. 1883) and of Hitler (b. 1889). Of course Marxism came first, Fascist and Nazi ideolo­ gy fell in later. But almost simultaneous is the crucial formative period marking the transition of socialism into a totalitarian myth of the party, and putting together the pseudo-religious creed of fascist or na­ tional socialist movements. This decisive period began in the 1880s and culminated in World War I. In Talmon’s words : ‘The extreme right and left shared the same mode of thinking and understanding each other well. To both force was the final arbiter between classes and parties’.13 If I have a difference of opinion with Talmon’s third volume, it is the need to stress more (as I would do) the distinction between fascism, as extreme étatist nationalism, and national socialism, as primary völkish racism, utilizing a destructive anti-Semitism, as a kind of quasiinternationalism.1415But the cardinal definition comprising all forms and motives, pseudo-rational and irrational, is contained in Talmon’s ex­ planation of the genesis of totalitarianism. As happened time and again : ‘Democratic principles came to be violated in the name of the highest form of democracy’.1®Or, as he put it in comparing the Jacobin Terror of 1792-1794 and the Moscow trials of 1937-1938 (which, as he says in his ‘Conclusions’, motivated him as a student forty-five years 13 Myth, p. 33. 14 Myth, p. 232. Cf. my German Dictatorship (Penguin ed.) 1980, pp. 605 ff. (New York 1970, pp. 490 ff.). 15 Myth, p. 542.

[79]

Karl Dietrich Bracher ago), there is ‘an ironic law which causes revolutionary Salvationist schemes to evolve into regimes of terror, and the promise of a perfect direct democracy to assume in practice the form of totalitarian dic­ tatorship’.16 To sum up : the turn of the century marked both the acceleration of and the rebellion against that general tendency to egalitarian mass society in the name of democracy and freedom which de Tocqueville had seen at work since the nineteenth century. In both cases, a deep rebellion developed against liberal democracy in the name of left- or right-wing ideologies. And this happened, as it did already in 1789, in the form of an intellectual revolution. Modem political turning-points, as we should have known long before and after 1900, and should not forget in the wake of new movements, are primarily ‘cultural revolutions’. They are turns of intellectuals and their ideas, which are more than just Superstructures. Hence more than ever, as political historians and political scientists alike, we have to be deeply interested in the workings (and the pathology) of political ideas. Talmon’s life-work is a lasting milestone in this endeavour to understand, explain, and finally to prevent, further triumphs of totalitarian ideas. His ideal, which should be ours, was that of moderate, limited government. It is always the lesser evil to the relentless, perfectionist but anti-human final state and society.

16

Myth, p. 535.

[80 ]

PART TWO

TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY — CULTURAL TRADITIONS AND MODERNIZATION

Totalitarian Democracy — Cultural Traditions and Modernization Introductory Remarks by S. N . E I S E N S T A D T The Hebrew University, Jerusalem J. L. T a l m o n ’ s analysis of totalitarianism in general and of totali­

tarian democracy in particular focused on developments within the framework of European civilization — and in modem times. This raises two questions : first, whether totalitarianism and totalitarian democracy are specific to European civilization ; and second, whether they are specific to the modem era — whether they constitute a specific reaction — even if only one — to modernization or to the mode of construction of modernity. A first superficial glance at historical and contemporary evidence seems to provide a negative answer to the first question and an affirmative one to the second. Various types of totalitarian movements and ideologies in general, and different varieties of totalitarian democracy in particular, have spread throughout the world — be they the totalitarian regime of Soviet communism, Japa­ nese fascism, the so-called Iranian revolution of Khomeinism, or various other types of Islamic or African ‘socialism’ — but only in modem times. But the great variety of what can be called different forms of totali­ tarianism or totalitarian democracies raises anew the problems men­ tioned above and calls for their redefinition. Thus, first of all, there is the problem whether it is legitimate to designate these phenomena as manifestations of totalitarianism (or totalitarian democracies). In other words, we have to ask what they have in common with the ‘original’ phenomena analysed by J. L. Talmon, in what ways they differ from these phenomena, and to what degree such differences are due, either to different cultural and civilizational traditions or to different historical constellations, including, above all, the different con­ stellations of the forces of modernization or of modernity. This brings us to the second problem, namely to identify the specific historical constellations of the forces of modernity — both in the original setting [83]

Totalitarian Democracy and After of modernity in Western Europe and in its spread throughout the world, which has generated different types of totalitarian response. The papers in this section explore some of these problems in a variety of ways. Thus the paper by M. Heyd examines the roots of the potentials for democratic totalitarianism in the Christian-European tradition, while those of M. Confino, S. Avineri and M. Zimmermann specify some of the historical conditions and constellations in which these potentials may be activated, as against the conditions in which they remain only a sort of latent possibility. The papers by U. Tal, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh and B. Shillony investigate the possibilities of the development of such predilections for totali­ tarianism beyond the realm of European Christian civilizations : the first two within other monotheistic civilizations — Judaism and Islam — and the last in Japan, where seemingly there developed in the 1930s a fascist movement which has often been depicted as being similar to, or even identical with, the totalitarian movements in Europe in the same period. Yet it is exactly this last case that indicates the limits of the applicability of the term ‘totalitarian democracy’ or totalitarianism. Shillony shows that, however authoritarian it evidently was, the so-called fascist regime in Japan lacked the crucial ideological elements in totalitar­ ianism or in totalitarian democracy to be categorized as such, i.e. it lacked the ideology and practice of the total regulation of society by the centre ; it did not require the destruction of the traditional form of society and the creation of new national symbols. Shillony relates these lacuna to some of the basic aspects of Japanese civilization, especially to the absence of the utopian element, due, in Japan, to the absence of perception of a basic tension between the transcendental and the mundane orders which has characterized all the so-called Axial Age civilizations.1 As against this, the monotheistic civilizations shared with Christianity the conception of such tension, as well as a very strong this-worldly orientation, impeding the reconstruction of the political centres of their respective societies and the perception of the political sphere as one of the major arenas for resolving the tensions between the transcen­ dental and mundane orders. Needless to say, there have also developed great differences between the different monotheistic religions with respect to the potentialities 1

See S. N. Eisenstadt, ‘The Axial Age — The Emergence of Transcendental Vision and the Rise of the Clerics’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XXIII (1982), pp. 294-314.

[84]

S. N. Eisenstadt of development of such totalitarian tendencies or tendencies to totali­ tarian democracy. These differences were greatly dependent on the basic conception of these religions concerning the relations between the transcendental and the mundane orders, on their tendencies to democracy, to equal access to the realm of power and approach to the sacred, on their internal structure of power and authority and on their specific historical experiences. Some of these have indeed been touched upon in the papers presented here.

Christian Antecedents to Totalitarian Democratic Ideologies in the Early Modern Period by

MICHAEL

H E YD

The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

O n t h i s o c c a s i o n I should like to open on a personal note. I have been a student of Professor Jacob Talmon for many years, and my historical interests have crystallized to a significant extent under his influence. Not only did he encourage me to specialize in the Early Modem Period, but my particular interest in the problem of seculariza­ tion was largely a result of his own research and teaching. This point has direct bearing on the theme of this symposium so I take the liberty to elaborate on it as a point of departure. For Talmon, the emergence of political messianism and totalitarian democracy from the late eighteenth century onwards was the result of a previous process of secularization. He took this process as a starting point, and used to explain it as the outcome of exhaustion following the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That explanation, I must admit, I did not find completely satisfying, but it motivated me to try and investigate the question myself. Talmon referred in fact to the phenomenon of ‘secularization’ in several senses, which should be distinguished. On the one hand he took it to mean the decline of religious belief, and as such, as a precondition, indeed a cause of the rise of political utopianism : Once religious belief was undermined.. . the evils and injustices of this life could no longer be regarded as merely temporary or temporal ; therefore, they ceased to be tolerable, and men began to put their faith in the achievement of perfect justice and the settling of accounts in this world, not the next.1 There was another reason why secularization in this sense was a neces­ sary prerequisite for the emergence of political utopianism. Only with 1 J. L. Talmon, Utopianism and Politics, London 1957, p. 11.

[86]

Michael Heyd the decline of belief in the doctrine of Original Sin was the distinction between Heaven and Earth obliterated, and only the conception of man as good by nature could give rise to the active attempts at establishing a perfect society on earth. Such attempts, however, were themselves the manifestations of a deep collective urge for salvation. Indeed, Talmon presented modern political messianism as a secular religion which filled the vacuum created by the decline of traditional religion. In this respect, ‘secularization’, with which totalitarian demo­ cracy was linked, meant not the decline of religious beliefs proper but rather the transformation of traditional themes and urges to a secular universe of discourse.2 Totalitarian democracy may thus have had its roots in past traditions, but at the same time it followed the breakdown of traditional religion. In order to assess the relative roles of tradition and modernization in the rise of totalitarian democracy it is necessary to examine whether there were Christian antecedents to totalitarian democratic ideologies in the Early Modern Period and in what sense they can be charac­ terized as such. I must admit that I approach this vast and highly complex question with some trepidation. Let me stress first of all, that I understand totalitarian democratic ideologies in the sense that Talmon has given them, namely ideologies which seek collective salvation in the political realm and regard liberty and democracy as absolute ideals and hence, paradoxically, as coercive, justifying the use of terror to achieve them. Such ideologies also warrant the claims of a revolutionary élite (or a revolutionary leader) to possess infallible truth and speak in the name of the people even if in fact the majority of the people does not yet support these claims. A democratic vision of liberty and equality is thus transformed into a totalitarian regime.3 In Christian terms, such an ideology means an attempt to establish the perfect Civitas Dei as an external community here on earth, and the consequent obliteration of any distinction between Church and State, or between Heaven and Earth. It also presupposes a belief in the perfectibility of man and a conception of the people as the repository of divine, immanent truth. On that basis, can one talk then of Christian antecedents to totalitarian democracy in the early modern period ? The condition of belief in imminent collective salvation here on earth J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, New York 1970 ; originally published in London 1952, pp. 21-24. This theme is further elaborated in the second volume of Talmon’s trilogy, Political Messianism — The Romantic Phase, London-New York 1960. 3 Talmon, Origins, pp. 1-6. 2

[87]

Totalitarian Democracy and After makes the official Catholic tradition an unlikely direction in which to search for such an antecedent. The Church in Catholic societies main­ tains a mediating role between ultimate values and the political order, and it denies the possibility of equating an external secular society with the perfect City of God. There might be one exception in the early modern period which in fact proves the rule, the Catholic Holy League which took over Paris in 1588—1594 when the accession of a Protestant king to the throne seemed impendent. Indeed, Elie Bar-Navi from Tel Aviv has made the most recent and systematic claim to view the radical wing of the League as a precursor of modern revolutionary and totalitarian movements. The League was not only a revolutionary movement with a structured organization, a broad social basis and an elaborate ideology, justifying resistance and popular sovereignty, BarNavi argues, but in using effective propaganda and systematic terror it may be characterized in a sense as a totalitarian party. Yet BarNavi himself points out the limits of such a characterization. The term peuple in the pamphlets of the period was rather vague, and the monarch was supposed to be elected by notables as legitimate repre­ sentatives of the people. No attempt was made to abolish the hierar­ chical structure of society, only to change the criterion on which that hierarchy was based, replacing the traditional aristocracy with an aristocracy of the elect in the religious sense. Moreover, the ambiguous relationship of the League with the Church highlights the limitations of a ‘totalitarian’ ideology within the Catholic tradition. On the one hand the League fought for the cause of the Church alongside the cause of the people, ‘la Cause de Dieu et des libertés’, though the two were not completely identical. On the other hand, as they grew radical and disillusioned with the Church establishment, the Ligueurs became increasingly anti-clerical themselves, coming out precisely against the ‘mediating’ factors in the Catholic tradition, the Pope, St Geneviève, the protector saint of Paris, and even Notre Dame de Chartres. They thus clearly excluded themselves from mainstream Catholicism.4 In the Protestant tradition these mediating factors were removed and the notion of a ‘priesthood of all believers’ came close to the idea of a ‘kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (srnp ’111 D’IHD DD^ÖÖ) and thus could give rise to some version of ‘totalitarian democracy’. In 4

E. Bar-Navi, La Ligue Parisienne (1585-94) — Ancêtre des Partis totali­ taires modernes ?’ French Historical Studies, Vol. XI, No. 1 (Spring 1979), pp. 29—57. See also his book, Le Parti de Dieu — Etude sociale et politique des chefs de la Ligue Parisienne 1585-1594, Louvain 1980, and the debate between Robert Descimon and Bar-Navi in the Annales Economies Sociétés Civilisations, "KXX.WII (January-February 1982), pp. 72-121.

[88]

Michael Heyd Lutheran countries the removal of an independent church as a mediat­ ing factor strengthened the authoritarian character of the secular regime, though I am not quite sure whether it can be characterized as totalitarian and of course it cannot be described as democratic. In Calvinism the Reformed Church held a more independent status but aimed at a Godly reformation of society and claimed to control the moral and daily life of every member of society in a way which has often been characterized as totalitarianism. In fact, Professor Michael Walzer has proposed seeing in the Calvinist and Puritan movements of the Early Modern Period, particularly in Geneva, Scotland and England, the precursors of the totalitarian revolutionary movements pf the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks. He has drawn special attention to the disciplinarian and authoritarian character of the Calvinist move­ ment, a character based on an absolute commitment to an impersonal ideal, a sense of alienation from ‘normal’ society and a consciousness of being a chosen élite.5 Indeed, some Calvinists and especially the Puritans in England and New England increasingly tended to identify themselves as ‘visible saints’ and attempted to create a godly community, a City on the Hill. Yet, as one of the notable historians of this tradition, Edmund Morgan, has stressed, they ‘never repudiated St. Augustine’s distinction between the visible and the invisible Church. They all insisted on the impossibility of a Church without blemish in this world’.6 The Calvinist programme was essentially that of Reform, an attempt to reach an approximation of the ideal Civitas Dei, not a complete realization of it. The ideal itself remained transcendent and acted as a restraining model. This is especially clear in the concept of the Cove­ nant which was not only a covenant among the members of the com­ munity, but between the community and God. Heaven and Earth were still kept apart.7 Similarly the ecclesiastical authorities and secular M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints — A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, Cambridge (Mass.) 1965. 6 E. S. Morgan, Visible Saints — The History of a Puritan Idea, Ithaca, New York 1965, p. 33. 7 For the classical discussion of this concept in New England’s political and religious consciousness, see P. Miller, The New England Mind — The Seventeenth Century, New York 1939 ; Boston 1961, pp. 398-431, 475484. A recent Ph. D. dissertation by our colleague A. Zakai claims to revise Miller’s views by stressing the importance of millenarian expectations in the formation of the Puritan communities in New England. Yet, as Zakai himself stresses, these expectations (and preparations for the mil­ lennium) did not obliterate the distinctions between the civil and the ec­ clesiastical authorities. The Civic Covenant still preceded and was dif­ ferent from the Church Covenant, even though both were to sen e the

5

[89 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After government were never completely identified in Calvinist societies. Even Calvin’s Geneva at the height of his power was not officially a theocracy (in the sense of a society ruled by the sacerdotal order) as many of his opponents and subsequent historians have argued. The Calvinist élites were often authoritarian when holding positions of power, but, for the reasons mentioned above, I do not think that they can be characterized as totalitarian, unless they became activist millenarian like the Fifth Monarchy Men in England, a point to which I shall return below. Neither did the Calvinists subscribe to a demo­ cratic political ideology though they could advocate the right of re­ sistance in revolutionary situations. The Calvinist conception of liberty and equality referred explicitly to the Christian believers even if implicit analogies were sometimes made to the social and political order.8 The Augustinian distinction between society and the invisible Church could be blurred by Calvinists, especially under critical conditions. These distinctions were completely cast aside, however, by the radical trends of the Reformation, and it is here, I believe, that we come closest to Christian precedents for totalitarian democratic ideologies. The radical sects wished to establish the pure community of the faith­ ful here on earth and a certain measure of ‘internal’ communitarian totalitarian democracy may be discerned in some of them. But in most cases they separated themselves from politics and from society at large so their ideology cannot be regarded as totalitarian properly speaking. This is different when we come to the millenarian move­ ments motivated by an urge for salvation which was collective, ter­ restrial, imminent and total. Usually such movements passively ex­ pected the millennium to come about by supernatural means, but, in a few cases, they became activist and militant, thus resembling modem totalitarian revolutionary movements. A typical prophet of such an ideology was Luther’s contemporary and rival, Thomas Müntzer, who became an ideological leader of the

8

purpose of a godly Reformation ; see A. Zakai, ‘Exile and Kingdom — Re­ formation, Separation and the Millennial Quest in the Formation of Massachusetts and its Relations with England, 1628-1660’, Ph. D. Thesis, Johns Hopkins University 1982, chaps II, IV (unpublished). The role of analogy between the order of Grace and the order of Nature as a source of egalitarian views among Calvinists has been especially stressed by A. S. P. Woodhouse in his well-known Introduction to Puri­ tanism and Liberty, London 1938 ; new ed. with Preface by I. Roots, 1974. His interpretation has not remained unchallenged however. It should be particularly noted that many of the Levellers and other radicals in the English Revolution came from a Baptist or Sectarian religious background rather than a strictly Calvinist one.

[90 ]

Michael Heyd Peasants’ War. Although there is some controversy as to whether his vision was indeed millenarian (that is, expecting the millennium here on earth before the end of history), or rather apocalyptic (expecting the last judgement soon), it is clear that his programme was meant to be carried out by the godly people, the elect whom, in the revolution­ ary context of the Peasants’ War, Müntzer tended to identify with the oppressed and the poor.9 Stressing the role of the Spirit in individual and collective salvation, Müntzer denied the mediating role of both Church and the Bible, and could present himself and his colleagues as direct divine agents, an avant-garde élite acting in the name of all believers. By obliterating the distinction between this world and the next, Müntzer claimed to give political expression to the equality of all believers, and that entailed the destruction of the hierarchical social order in favour of a free communitarian one in which everything is common, ‘omnia sunt communia’. Thus we have here most of the elements of a totalitarian ideology, though it must be stressed that a gap still existed between God and man, the principle of legitimacy remained external even if its manifestations were immanent. Moreover, Müntzer never really gained political power so that the dynamics of his ideology cannot be fully assessed and tested.10 By contrast, there was one famous and perhaps unique case in which such a movement succeeded in holding power for a short while. I refer of course to the Anabaptist take-over of Münster in 1534-1535.11 Here we can see in operation many of the features that characterize the dialectic of a totalitarian revolution : a millenarian ideology which expects imminent and collective salvation and claims to establish (or ‘restitute’) the divine and perfect order here on earth, a ‘new Jeru­ salem’ ; the consequent identification of the political realm with the religious one, an identification which invests politics with a clear eschatological meaning ; the consciousness of an elect community For a ‘millenarian’ interpretation, see N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Mil­ lennium, revised and enlarged ed., New York-Oxford 1970, pp. 234-251. For an ‘apocalyptic’ interpretation, which makes Müntzer closer to Luther on this point, see G. List, Chiliastische Utopie und Radikale Reformation, Munich 1973, pp. 129-139. 10 On the relationship between Theology and Revolution in the thought of Müntzer, see T. Nipperdey, ‘Theologie und Revolution bei Thomas Müntz­ er’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LIV (1963), fase. 2, pp. 145-179, reprinted in his Reformation, Revolution, Utopie, Göttingen 1975, pp. 38—76. 11 The literature on this episode is very extensive. Two convenient summaries of the episode in English may be found in G. Williams, The Radical Re­ formation, Philadelphia 1962, chap. 13, and Cohn, op. cit. (n. 9 ), pp. 252-280. See also List, op. cit (n. 9 ), pp. 198-231. 9

[91]

Totalitarian Democracy and After led by a charismatic leader who embodies the absolute truth ; and finally, the historical circumstances of a revolution under siege. The com­ bination of these circumstances with a totalist millenarian ideology gave rise to a reign of terror in which there was constant need to ‘purge* the community. Starting with a vision of Christian freedom and equality of all believers, the Münster experiment drifted to a totalitarian regime, and its charismatic prophet, Jan of Leiden, became a king surrounded by a flamboyant court. In this respect, the dialectic of freedom in Münster is analogous to the one analysed by Talmon concerning the French Revolution. Analogous, not identical, since ‘liberty’ and ‘equality* had very different connotations in each case, and ‘democracy’ was not part of an explicit political programme in Münster. The ideal of the community of goods, however, could be partially realized, and the confiscation of private property was a charac­ teristic of the Anabaptist regime there as it was to become in modern totalitarian revolutions. Indeed, the threat to private property, along­ side insinuations of sexual freedom and the community of wives, were constant elements in the stereotype of the Münster episode for the succeeding two hundred years. The spectre of Münster has accompanied radical movements through­ out the Early Modern Period, but especially during the English Revo­ lution of the mid-seventeenth century.12 The most activist millenarian movement in that revolution, the Fifth Monarchy Men, envisioned indeed a totalitarian rule of the saints, but its political ideology was essentially elitist, not democratic.13 On the other hand, the movement with the most explicit ‘democratic’ programme, the Levellers, was not millenarian at all, let alone totalitarian, insisting as it did above all on liberty of conscience. In the second half of the seventeenth century and early eighteenth, For some characteristic quotations, see B. Manning, The English People and the English Revolution, Penguin 1978, pp. 56-57. 13 On the Fifth Monarchy Men in general, see B. S. Capp, The Fifth Mon­ archy Men — A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism, London 1972. For a subtle analysis of the totalitarian elements in that movement, see A. Cohen, ‘The Fifth Monarchy Mind — Mary Cary and the Origins of Totalitarianism’, Social Research, XXI (1964), pp. 195-213. Cohen draws attention to the sanctification of political action in the mil­ lenarian thought of Mary Cary, to the paradox of determinism and volun­ tary action which was implicit in the thought of Cary as well as in modern totalitarian movements, and to the ambiguities of the term ‘saint’ which potentially could be applied to all Christian believers but in fact was confined to a rather narrow élite. The ‘people’ as such were not conceived by the Fifth Monarchy Men as the repository of divine truth.

12

[92]

Michael Heyd claims to possess absolute truth in religion or politics were viewed with great suspicion. Those who had made such claims, based on direct divine inspiration, were labelled ‘enthusiasts’ or ‘fanatics’.14 It is highly interesting to see, in the critique of enthusiasm, arguments which aim precisely against the attempt of the ‘enthusiasts’ to obliterate the dis­ tinctions between earthly society and perfect Christian ideals. Intel­ lectuals, clergymen and politicians of the establishment also criticized the tendency of the enthusiast to impose on the public sphere a private conception of truth on the pretext that it was absolute, transcendental in origin, and hence obligatory. The public realm of politics, the critics argued, had to be run on the basis of pragmatic criteria of ‘interest’. Finally, such criticism stressed the danger, not only to the social order and private property, but to those very Christian ideals which the ‘saints’ wanted to realize.15 In this respect, Talmon was right, I believe, in seeing in the conflict between the totalitarian and liberal versions of the programme of the Enlightenment a secular transmutation of the conflict between the pfficially orthodox and the radical millenarian interpretations of the Christian message.16 It is still an open question whether there were intellectual and social continuities from the Christian to the secular type of this conflict, but recent research indicates that there could be more links than Talmon has supposed between the radical movements originating in the Reformation and the radical tendencies of the Enlightenment.17 14

15

16 17

See M. Heyd, ‘The Reaction to Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth Century — Towards an Integrative Approach’, Journal of Modern History, LIII (June 1981), pp. 258-280. For the Anglican critique of the enthusiast’s claims to have private in­ fallible truth, see, e.g., the famous sermon of George Hickes The Spirit of Enthusiasm Exorcised, London 16801, pp. 37-38, and Robert South, Sermons, New York 1870 ed., pp. 79, 163-165. Also typical were the words of the Huguenot minister Marc Vemous concerning ‘John of Leyden’: ‘The barbarous Procedure of these Visionaries was a thing full of Terror, who never spoke of anything but Inspirations, Visions and Prophecies, and yet filled the World with their Murders and Robberies’; see Marc Vemous, A Preservative Against the False Prophets of the Times : Or, A Treatise Concerning True and False Prophets, London 1708, p. 58. Vemous wrote this text against the French Prophets in London at that time. Talmon, Origins, pp. 8-11. See, e.g., Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment — Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, London 1981, and the highly interesting article of J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Post-Puritan England and the Problem of the Enlightenment’, in : P. Zagorin (ed.), Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment, Los Angeles 1980, pp. 91-111.

[93]

Totalitarian Democracy and After There was one political tradition in the Early Modern Period, how­ ever, which clearly had a direct influence at least on the Jacobin version of ‘totalitarian democracy’. I refer to the Republican tradition whose ideal was a republic of virtu and whose model was classical Sparta. This tradition has been admirably traced by J. G. A. Pocock in his book The Machiavellian Moment,18 Though he did not follow it up to the French Revolution itself, we have learnt from Talmon that the Jaco­ bins, and especially Saint-Just, were direct heirs and exponents of that tradition.19 Republican freedom and virtue, when confronted with the opportunism and corruption of daily political life, could mean highly compulsive ideals. Pocock concluded his book by pointing to the in­ herent paradox of freedom which has become absolute, reminding us : ‘There is a freedom to decline moral absolutes ; even those of the Polis and history, even that of freedom itself when proposed as an absolute’.20 This Republican tradition was essentially secular, deriving its inspira­ tions from classical ideals, but, as Pocock pointed out, it could well merge in the Early Modern Period with Christian millenarian visions. Civic community could be easily identified with the Holy Community of the elect, and the best example, of course, was Savonarola’s Florence. Savonarola sought to revive the popular republican tradition of Florence and at the same time to establish Florence as the New Jerusalem, an earthly paradise announcing the millennium, thus combining a Repu­ blican and Christian regime.21 With certain reservations we have men­ tioned above, this combination may also be found in Calvin’s Geneva and in some of the later Calvinist communities. We can conclude at this point that the active urge to establish a free and perfect polity on earth, an urge which had totalitarian implica­ tions, was not unknown in the Early Modem Period. However, it was usually contained by a mediating élite, a Church which denied any soteriological meaning to the political sphere and claimed to promise salvation outside of history. These mediating bodies were weakened in Protestant societies and rejected altogether by the militant anti-cleric­ alism of the Enlightenment in Catholic countries such as France. Where­ as in Protestant countries the link between traditional religion and the J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment — Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Tradition, Princeton 1975. 19 Talmon, Origins, pp. 139-143. 20 Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, op. cit. (n. 18), p. 552. 21 Ibid., pp. 104—113, and the important study of D. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence — Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, Princeton 1970, especially pp. 310-311. 18

[94]

Michael Heyd basis of legitimacy and self-definition of the political community was not completely severed, in Catholic countries secularization involved a radical break away from Christianity. Such a break left the political realm as the exclusive arena for the search for collective salvation. Herein lies one aspect of modernization which prepared the ground for the emergence of totalitarian ideologies as ‘substitutes’ for traditional religion. The other element (which may be partly connected with it) was the democratic ideology itself. It should not be forgotten that in the Early Modem Period, democracy as the form of government was rarely a central issue of political debate. The Aristotelian-Polybian notion of mixed constitution was usually taken for granted in republican thought and even revolutionary movements focused on the right of resistance, individual freedom (of conscience) or social justice, not on a democratic regime. Strictly speaking then, democratic totalitarian ideologies are a modern phenomenon. Nevertheless, in their attempt to invest the political sphere with soteriological significance, and the paradox of freedom which this attempt entailed, these ideologies should be seen as secular transformations of tendencies which, though heretical, are deeply rooted in the European Christian tradition.

[95]

Different Visions of Political Messianism in the Marxist European Tradition by S H L O M O AV I N E RI The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

was undoubtedly the main intellectual concern behind Jacob Talmon’s monumental trilogy, his explicit treatment of it as an historical phenomenon is complex and sometimes ambiguous. This represents not only Talmon’s own ambivalence about the role of Marxism in modem European intellectual and political history, but also the bifocal vision of Marxism itself within that historical tradition. The attempt to understand modern communism and its roots was the most dominant issue on the agenda of Talmon’s intellectual endeavour. How did a message of universal salvation and redemption degenerate into the kind of morass and nightmare the Soviet Union turned out to be under Stalin ? This was the question, asked by so many in the 1930s and 1940s, which Talmon set out to unravel. The answer, according to Talmon, could not be understood merely in terms of the vicissitudes of Marxism itself, or the travails of the Soviet Union since Lenin. A much deeper structure of historical development was involved, and in order to uncover its foundations Talmon felt he had to go back to the eighteenth century. Writing in 1951, at the height of the Cold War and the Western intel­ lectuals’ disappointment with Soviet communism, Talmon stated in the Introduction to his The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy : W hile

M arxism

The object of this book is to examine the stages through which the social ideals of the eighteenth century were transformed in­ to totalitarian democracy. These stages are taken to be three : the eighteenth century postulates, the Jacobin improvisation, and the Babouvist crystallization ; all leading up to the emergence of economic communism on the one hand, and to the synthesis of popular sovereignty and single-party dictatorship on the other__ Modem totalitarian dictatorship is a dictatorship resting on pop[96]

Shlomo Avineri ular enthusiasm___ In so far as it is a dictatorship based on ideology and the enthusiasm of the masses, it is the outcome, as will be shown, of the synthesis between the eighteenth-century idea of the natural order and the Rousseauist idea of popular fulfilment and self-expression. This programmatic statement makes it abundantly clear that Soviet communism was the model of totalitarian democracy, and that in order to understand twentieth-century Russia Talmon decided to go back to eighteenth-century France : the roots of Lenin were to be found not only in Marx, but in Rousseau as well. The most enthusiastic reception accorded to Talmon’s first volume was expressed in these terms also. Talmon’s first volume was perceived as providing a key to the understanding of the phenomenon of Soviet communism. As such, it belonged to the same category as the equally perceived books of Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper. Yet, curiously, this straightforward equation of Marxism with totali­ tarianism, which is so unequivocal in the opening pages of Talmon’s first volume, is not followed up in the later volumes, where one would expect a detailed account of Marx and Marxism as the intellectual sources of contemporary communist totalitarian democracy. In Volume II, for example, the Saint-Simonians and Fichte appear as much more a model for totalitarian democracy than Marx. While less than twenty pages are devoted to Marx’s thought in this volume, more than ninety deal with the Saint-Simonians ; even Fourier is accorded more space than Marx. The meagre chapter on Marx deals only in very general terms with pre-1848 Marx, and does not in any way claim to be a comprehensive study of Marx’s thought (or even of his pre-1848 development). In the same volume, the revolutions of 1848 appear as a case study in the rise and fall of political messianism. Yet Marx hardly figures in Talmon’s account of the 1848 débâcle. This is, of course, a sound historical judgment, since Marx and the miniscule League of Com­ munists played a very marginal role in 1848, despite the later Marxist historiography, which blew up this role out of all proportion and made The Communist Manifesto appear as the harbinger of the revolutions of 1848. It was nothing of this sort, and was hardly known outside a very small and rather insignificant group of German exiles in Brussels and Paris, which played no role whatsoever in the outbreak of the revolution itself. Yet, while Talmon is right in his assessment of the marginality of Marx in the events leading up to 1848 and during the 1848—1849 revolutions themselves, the fact remains that Talmon's second

[97 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After volume thus does not have Marx and Marxism at the focus of the developments which culminated in the magnificent failure of the 1848 revolutions. A similarly low profile is accorded to Marx in Volume III, which deals with the post-1848 era — and here the most astounding fact appears : it now turns out that nowhere in his magisterial account of nineteenthand twentieth-century intellectual and political developments does Talmon offer a detailed and full-fledged discussion of Marx and Marxism. We have seen that Volume II offers a mere cursory discussion of some of Marx’s pre-1848 texts. If one expected a detailed account of Marx in Volume III, one is equally to be disappointed. What Volume III does include is a very nuanced and detailed discussion of the attitudes of Marx and Engels to nationalism, culminating in the totally justified, and hardly ever challenged, conclusion that Marx and Engels never really confronted the problem of nationalism and utterly failed to in­ tegrate this phenomenon into their system. Volume III then goes on to include, as perhaps its most gripping and fascinating chapters, two extraordinarily evocative and insightful portraits of Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin. There is, however, no discussion of the post-1848 Marx — no analysis, for example, of Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune or of his Critique of the Gotha Programme — two pieces which are not only loci classici of Marxist hagiography but also come as close as possible as the mature Marx ever came to sketching a vision of his future socialist society. For anyone viewing the Marxian gospel as central to the emergence of totalitarian democracy, these texts would be crucial to his argument. In short, despite the programmatic identification of Marxism with totalitarian democracy at the outset of Volume I, ultimately Talmon never presents classical Marxism as the main component of modem totalitarian democracy or political messianism. Other traditions play a much more central role in that development. This lacuna cannot, of course, be a mere oversight since it relates, after all, to one of the central and most systematic thinkers of the nineteenth century. It appears that out of the speeches of Fichte, or the disjointed writings of Saint-Simon and his disciples, Talmon was able to construct a much more impressive model of political messianism than out of the systematic corpus of Marx’s writings, ft would be claiming too much to suggest that over the three decades that elapsed between the publication of the first and third volumes Tal­ mon changed his mind about the contribution of Marx’s thought to totalitarian democracy. Yet the fact remains that before he had studied Marx in detail (when he composed the opening statement to Volume [98]

Shlomo Avineri I), Talmon credited Marxism unequivocally with responsibility for mod­ em totalitarianism, a view also well in tune with the general atmos­ phere of the 1950s. Yet when he progressed with his studies and had an opportunity of looking at Marx more carefully, and in greater detail, his verdict appeared much more nuanced. This must have been the reason that while Lenin and Luxemburg figure so centrally in Volume III, Marx and Marxism are never fully discussed in any comparable detail in either of the last two volumes. I would like to suggest that this ambivalence of Talmon in his later two volumes represents a sound judgement on the complexity of Marx’s own thought. Not only has recent research shown that with the discovery of Marx’s early writings (and especially the 1844 Paris manuscripts), the philosophical underpinnings of Marx’s system now show him to be a more complex thinker than his one-dimensional disciples, as well as erstwhile opponents, took him to be. But the Marxian tradition itself, by drawing upon this complexity and ambivalence, now suggests that one cannot really speak of a closed Marxist system of doctrine. Besides a Rosa Luxemburg there is a Plekhanov, besides a Lenin there is a Kautsky, and while it is not the business of the historian to judge who is the true inheritor of the Master’s thought, there is no doubt that all of them do represent a legitimate interpretation of Marx’s thinking, and have all, each in his or her own way, further contributed to the development of the Marxist tradition. It is here that I come to the kind of questions raised by our chairman concerning possible typologies and conditions that give rise to totalitar­ ian movements. The history of Marxism itself can point to some of the conditions that accentuated the totalitarian potential, which classical Marxism obviously contained, while other conditions brought out the libertarian ingredients also inherent in the same tradition. For the test of every ideology is, after all, not its internal consistency, por can one judge it as an historical phenomenon merely by subjugating its different components to the logician’s fine scalpel. Its ultimate test is, as Talmon himself has shown so convincingly in his work, its his­ torical praxis. In this sense, one can show that two diametrically opposed traditions grew out of the Marxian heritage: the Western social democratic tradition, and the Eastern totalitarian one. The first tradition is that of Western European Marxism. Between 1848 and 1'917 the contribution of Marx’s thought to Western European political development was mainly in the libertarian direction. The move­ ment nourished by Marx’s thought was that of the Social Democracy of the Second International. Its mainstay was a widely based working

[99 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After class movement, slowly but consistently being reconciled to the par­ liamentary system, whose social basis was itself constantly broadened so as to include ever larger sectors of the lower middle class and the proletariat. German Social Democracy and Austro-Marxism were the two main pillars of this tradition. In German Social Democracy, the commitment to parliamentary democracy grew slowly with the gradual opening up of the political system itself to working-class participation. In the case of Austro-Marxism, an element of cultural and ethnic pluralism further opened Marxism to a libertarian and non-authori­ tarian interpretation, culminating in the slightly bizarre commitment of a Marxist party to the continuing existence of the Hapsburg Empire, albeit in a modified form. Similar developments could be seen in the growing acceptance of parliamentary government by pre-1914 French and Italian socialists ; in some cases this even involved their participation in ‘bourgeois’ cabinets. Far from being a treasonable relapse from Marxist orthodoxy (as later claimed, after 1917, by Lenin and his fol­ lowers), this trend represented an internal logic inherent in Marx’s thought itself, and expressed in some of his political decisions, e.g., his dissolution of the League of Communists after 1850, his opposition to the Blanquists’ attempt to seize power in France after the 1871 débâcle, his quarrel with the Bakunists.1 In the West, then, the Marxist tradition bred a libertarian political culture. Those who challenged it from within the socialist movement were people like Georges Sorel, who attacked the very rationalist basis of the Marxian tradition and wanted to supplant it by an evocation of mythical symbolism. Others who opposed the libertarian tendency of Social Democracy were those within the socialist movement who have been identified by Zeev Sternhell as the proto-fascists : they usually came from the radicals within the movement, prefiguring the later Mussolini and De Man. The mainstream of Western Marxism, how­ ever, was anything but a model of totalitarianism or political messianism. It was in Eastern Europe, on the other hand, that Marxism acquired a distinctly authoritarian and totalitarian hue, and this is the second tradition within Marxism. As Venturi, Confino and Walicki have shown, Marxism in Eastern Europe, and especially in tsarist Russia, was grafted upon a political tradition with very different ingredients from that of 1 Marx’s vehement opposition to Bakunin and the Anarchists should not be credited to an ‘authoritarian’ or ‘statist’ Marxian opposition to the aims of an anarchist utopia, but to a principled Marxian rejection of the means of indiscriminate terrorism and irrationalist cult of force so deeply em­ bedded in Bakumin’s and Nechaev’s ethos.

[100]

Shlomo Avineri nineteenth-century Central and Western Europe. The hierarchical au­ thoritarianism of the tsarist political system, the lack of representative institutions and utter subordination of society to the state, the lack of a significant working class, or, for that matter, of an autonomous middle class as well, and the highly authoritarian and élitist traditions of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia itself, as exemplified in the theories of Tkatchev — all these tended to impregnate Russian Marxism with elements which were lacking in Western Marxism. In such an ambience, even Utilitarianism, which certainly is viewed as a mainstay of liberalism in the West, became the terroristic nihilism of a Raskol­ nikov in Dostoevski. These ingredients of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Rus­ sian society had more similarities with eighteenth-century France than with contemporary modem Western Europe. This may also explain why Russian Marxism had, in a way, a much greater affinity to French Jacobinism and why Marx’s comments about a dictatorship of the proletariat, which were side-stepped in the Western Marxian tradition, became so central in the Russian context. Western Marxism, on the other hand, from Marx himself down to Kautsky and Bernstein, saw Jacobinism, with its élitism, terrorism and authoritarianism, as a con­ tinuing ‘childhood disease’ of the socialist movement and always ad­ vocated emancipating the proletariat from the illusions inherent in these attitudes. In his polemic against Bakunin, Engels, in a letter to Marx of 29 April 1870, warned against the spectre of Russia with 40,000 revolutionary students, with no proletariat, or even a revolutionary peasantry behind them __ If there is anything which could ruin the Western European movement, then it would be the importation of these 40,000, more or less educated, ambi­ tious, hungry Russian Nihilists : all of them officers’ cadets with­ out any arm y. . . . A similar, and much earlier, warning against the authoritarian potential of a Russian intelligentsia without a working class was voiced in 1850 by Moses Hess, one of Marx’s closest friends — and opponents — within the socialist movement. Hess saw this dichotomy between East and West and perceived the threat it posed to the socialist movement as a whole. This critique came in an almost prophetic polemic with Alexander Her­ zen. In a series of letters to Herzen, Letters to Iskander, Hess objected to Herzen’s contention that socialism would conquer Europe from the East. After the débâcle of 1848-1849, many radicals lost faith in the imminence of a revolutionary transformation of European society. In [101]

Totalitarian Democracy and After this context, Herzen published his Letters from the Other Shore, in which he postulated a new revolutionary upsurge, this time from Russia : ex Oriente lux, Herzen argued — Europe is a spent force, and like the declining Roman Empire it can be rejuvenated only from the outside. The Russian people, on the other hand, are young and vigorous, still uncontaminated by capitalism, preserving in their communal mir and obshtchina a socialist potential soon to be released in Russia and to sweep all of Europe in a massive revolutionary maelstrom. While many Western socialists, dispirited by the failure of 1848, welpomed this prophecy of another historical salvation emanating from the ever-mysterious East, Hess objected to it most strongly in his letters to Herzen. Analysing the traditions and existing institutions of Russia, Hess argued that there is nothing in the Russian historical heritage which can give rise or credence to such a liberating force inherent in Russia. Russia, Hess maintained, cannot be the harbinger of liberation or emancipation. The only thing which can come out of Russia may be ‘a new Byzantium. .. or an Occidental China’, as the Russian revo­ lution itself is bound to be authoritarian and hierarchical. What are, then, the ingredients in these two distinct contexts that give to Marxism its ambivalent developmental potential — libertarian in the West, authoritarian and totalitarian in the East ? 2 The development of these two schools out of the same Marxian heritage seems clearly to be related to the different social, political and cultural traditions of the countries involved. In societies that have undergone far-reaching secularization and modernization, where state and church have been traditionally separated, where representative institutions have been functioning and pluralistic traditions have been legitimized, and where both a middle class and a working class existed, there Marxism 2

Here one should add that the authoritarian impact in the post-1917 Western socialist movement came not only under the direct influence of the Bol­ shevik revolution itself but contained some other elements as well. It is a fact that in the 1918-1921 situation in Germany a disproportionately high number of the left-wing revolutionaries in the socialist movement who ended up in Spartakus and the KPD were of Eastern European origin. Talmon himself has so movingly portrayed the world of Rosa Luxemburg: but of similar background were Leo Jogiches, and so many of the most radical leaders of the abortive Bavarian Soviet republic (Levin, Leviné). This fact was later presented in a distorted way by Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda, but it still remains true. Few of these Eastern European exiles ended up in the moderate wing and remained in the SFD. In France, on the other hand, the emergence of a Soviet-oriented communist party after World War I revived much of the Jacobin cult and tradition, which the pre-1914 French socialist party had tried to overcome and severely limit, on both the symbolic and operational level.

[102]

Shlomo Avineri tended to develop in a libertarian way, as found in Western and Central Europe. In Eastern Europe, and mainly in Russia, the traditional political and social infrastructure remained centralized and authori­ tarian. Church and state were not separated, and representative institu­ tions were hardly in existence. Both the middle class and the working class were miniscule. A deracinated, yet highly politicized and secu­ larized, clerisy appeared with the spread of relative educational pro­ gress, but many of its members did not, and for a multiplicity of reasons could not, integrate into the existing structure. In such a society, where there existed too wide a gap between the normative foundations of society and the norms and belief-systems of the intelligentsia, the quest for a new metaphysical foundation for so­ ciety became a quest for a new legitimacy, which was then sought and found in a totalitarian and authoritarian ideology. In such a context, Marxism tended to become authoritarian and totalitarian, a new reli­ gion of salvation, a new Jacobinism. Eighteenth-century France, pre-1917 Russia, contemporary China and many Third World countries do possess these ingredients, and there secularized clerisies turned to what Talmon called ‘political messianism’ as the new secular religion. Western Europe, certainly after 1848, did not possess these ingredients and hence, in its context, Marxism deve­ loped mainly in a libertarian direction. Talmon’s ambivalence about Marxism can, then, be seen in the light of the dual tradition within Marxism itself.

[103]

Russian and Western European Roots of Soviet Totalitarianism by MICHAEL CONFINO Tel Aviv University

A d i s c u s s i o n of the Russian and Western European roots of So­ viet totalitarianism belongs, at one and the same time, to several wider and overlapping areas of thought and historical research. One of these concerns the features and ingredients of the Soviet regime ; another the remote causes or the antecedents of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 ; yet another is an extension of the classic and perennial topic ‘Russia and the West’ with its concomitant —- and not less impor­ tant — meaning of ‘the West in Russia’. This paper cannot explore these numerous and multifaceted issues ; its more limited and circum­ scribed purpose is to analyse and summarize the main features of the historical conditions obtaining in Russia before 1917, which may have had — or are believed to have had — some influence upon, or connec­ tion with, the subsequent evolution of Russia and the shaping of the Soviet regime. The conventional and widespread treatment of the Russian and West­ ern historical roots of this regime would usually proceed, with minor variations, along the following line of argument. I.

Russian Roots

The native elements which participated in the emergence and shaping of Soviet totalitarianism are said to relate to a set of political, ideolo­ gical, and psychological features. Among the most important of these native elements, the first often cited is Russian messianism, which be­ gins with the belief in ‘Moscow, the Third Rome’, and continues through the more modem vision of the redeeming role of Russian Orthodoxy and the Panslavist idea of empire. The second, sobornos^, is an expression of Russia’s unique cohesive spirit and, probably, comes closest to the spirit of the ‘general will’. This untranslatable term, sobornosf, means at one and the same time

[ 104 ]

Michael Confino ‘unity in multiplicity’ in the ecclesiastical sense (in this sense, a deeply ambivalent notion), and also communalism, which encompasses gre­ gariousness and togetherness ; and finally, the organic unity of all ‘in Jove and freedom’.1 The third Russian element is autocracy as a principle of government, and it represents, in this case, the element of continuity in the political regime before and after 1917. One of the latest proponents of this line of reasoning is Alexander Yanov, according to whom ‘the basic features of the present Russian political system. .. date not from October 1917, but from January 1565 when, in a bloody “revolution from above” and a subsequent reign of terror, Ivan set at naught his country’s European heritage and fundamentally altered its future’.2 The fourth element is the Russian submissiveness to the powers and state authorities as expressed in a traditional way of behaviour of the Russian people. (This ‘feature’, which may seem discredited, im­ pressionistic, and reminiscent of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century meditations on the ‘Russian soul’, has become fashionable again now­ adays under supposedly more respectable labels provided by ‘psycho­ history’.) The fifth and last main element often cited is the lack, in Russia’s political history, of a Rechtsstaat tradition, and this missing feature has made easier, as it were, the implantation of the later Soviet totali­ tarianism. Several critical observations are usually called forth by this analysis and should be mentioned at this early point. One of them is that the idea of ‘Moscow, the Third Rome’ represents not a political myth in the Russian political tradition, but rather a historiographical myth stemming from some historians’ imagination or misinterpretation. Fur­ ther, in a search for totalitarian roots, sobornost’, as the organic unity of all in ‘love and freedom’, is to be understood in a dialectical way, and as an imposed unity of all in hate and slavery. It should also be remembered that autocracy, although presented as a native Russian element, is considered by some thinkers and scholars as a Western-type political regime ; the Slavophiles are obvious repre­ sentatives of such modes of thought ; another is Mikhail Bakunin, who defined the Russian state as a ‘knuto-Germanic empire’ : the ‘knut’ 1 See, for instance, N. V. Riasanovsky, ‘Khomiakov on Sobornos f , ed. E.J. Simmons, Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, New York 1955, pp. 183-196. 2 A. Yanov, The Origins of Autocracy — Ivan the Terrible in Russian His­ tory, Berkeley 1981 ; the quotation appears on the dust-jacket of the book ; see also pp. 13-14, and passim.

[ 105 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After being the Russian ingredient, and the autocracy the German, finally, the absence of a Rechtsstaat tradition may be questioned as having played a role in the issue under discussion, since the existence of such a tradition in other states and nations did not prevent them from establishing totalitarian regimes of their own. Before I proceed to the presentation of the Western roots of Soviet totalitarianism, a preliminary remark is called for here. An important, albeit heterogeneous, group of thinkers and scholars regard the ‘Western-European-roots’ hypothesis as a fallacy and as utterly useless in explaining the course of modern Russian history. In their view, Soviet totalitarianism stems ‘naturally’, from Russian roots, and from Russian roots only. Probably the first, and most outspoken, thinker to have elaborated on this theme (in the 1920s and 1930s) is Nikolai Berdiaev. In his seminal, although controversial, essay The Origin of Russian Communism, he argued : Russians are always inclined to take things in a totalitarian sense ; the sceptical criticism of Western peoples is alien to them. This is a weakness which leads to confusion of thought and the sub­ stitution of one thing for another, but it is also a merit and in­ dicates the religious integration of the Russian soul.3 And in another of his essays : In accordance with the Russian spiritual turn of mind the revo­ lution could only be totalitarian. All Russian ideology' has always been totalitarian, theocratic or socialist. The Russians are maxi­ malists and it is precisely that which looks like a utopia which in Russia is more realistic.4 And further : Communism is a Russian phenomenon in spite of its Marxist ideo­ logy. Communism is the Russian destiny ; it is a moment in the inner destiny of the Russian people and it must be lived through by the inward strength of the Russian people. Communism must be surmounted but not destroyed, and into the highest stage which will come after communism there must enter the truth of com­ munism also but freed from its element of falsehood. The Russian 3

4

N. Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism, Ann Arbor 1960, p. 21 ; the book was written around 1933, and published first in English in 1937; the Russian original subsequently appeared in 1955 in Paris (YMCAPRESS). N. Berdyaev, The Russian Idea, Boston 1962, p. 249.

[106]

Michael Confino Revolution awakened and unfettered the enormous powers of the Russian people. In this lies its principal meaning.5 Berdiaev’s vision assumes, therefore, the existence of an entity variously referred to as the Russian soul, the Russian spirit, and at times the Russian ideological mentality (whatever that may mean) ; the Russian spirit is at one and the same time deeply religious and forcefully total­ itarian, hence the shaping of a profoundly Russian secular religion under the form of ‘Soviet Marxism’. Finally, another feature of the Russian mind is its propensity to debase, to distort everything coming from the West (an idea reminiscent of Peter Chaadaev’s forebodings about Russia’s future and her inability to assimilate on local soil the achievements of the West). Thus, Soviet totalitarianism is seen as a purely Russian phenomenon, deeply rooted in Russia’s past and owing almost nothing to Western influences. Interestingly enough, several ideas of Berdiaev’s grand thesis have been voiced again of late by some Soviet dissidents, although this time as a criticism of Russia and using terminologies different from Berdiaev’s. A- Yanov, quoted above, is one example ; Alexander Zinoviev and Pavel Litvinov are others. The latter wrote : Under the czars we had an authoritarian state and now we have a totalitarian state but it still comes from the roots of the Russian past. You should understand that the leaders and the ordinary people have the same authoritarian frame of mind. Brezhnev and the simple person both think that might is right. That’s all. It is not a question of ideology. It’s simply power. Solzhenitsyn acts as if he thinks this has all come down from the sky because of Com­ munism. But he is not so different himself. He does not want democracy. He wants to go from the totalitarian state back to the authoritarian one.6 As hinted in this passage, Alexander Solzhenitsyn rejects entirely all the possible variants of this thesis. In his view, the October Revolution was deeply anti-Russian and opposed to the Russian national spirit and tradition ; this ‘upheaval of titanic proportions’ took place only thanks to foreign (Western) forces : a foreign ideology — Marxism ; foreign money — German funds funnelled to the Bolsheviks ; and foreign revolutionaries — Poles, Jews, Georgians, Latvians, Hungarians,

5 6

Ibid., p. 250. Quoted from S. Bialer, Stalin’s Successors — Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union, Cambridge (Mass.) 1980, p. 146.

[ 107 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Chinese ; Lenin himself was not a Russian, for he had only one quarter of Russian blood in his veins. Similarly, in Solzhenitsyn’s view, Soviet totalitarianism was a result of Western political devices and institutions. It was not an outgrowth of the tsarist autocracy but of the chaos generated by the democracy of the liberals and socialists who came to power after the February Revo­ lution. Never, and at no time in human history, says Solzhenitsyn, has an authoritarian regime led to a totalitarian one ; all the totalitarian regimes have emerged from the moral and political chaos created by liberalism, democracy, and the multi-party system — this most unfor­ tunate and immoral political regime shaped in the West from the Enlightenment on to our days.7 Thus, according to Solzhenitsyn, not tsarist autocracy and the Russian national spirit, but Western liberalism and democracy lie at the roots of Soviet totalitarianism. Interestingly enough, although Solzhenitsyn is widely considered as reviving today some of Berdiaev’s basic ideas, it appears that on the fundamental issue of the roots of Soviet total­ itarianism he holds a diametrically different view. To pursue the com­ parison in another direction, it appears that with regard to the role Solzhenitsyn attributes to the Enlightenment in the emergence of total­ itarianism, he comes close (although for quite different reasons) to one of the major ideas in Jacob Talmon’s interpretation of the course of modern European history. II.

Western European Origins

Solzhenitsyn’s rather curious interpretation closes this preliminary re­ mark, and we can now turn to a more traditional view of the Western European roots of Soviet totalitarianism. These are usually summarized under two main headings : Western techniques and technology ; and Western ideas. Under the first heading comes the whole range of social, economic, and political developments usually described within the process of modernization (often called Westernization). It seems important to underline that this encompasses also techniques of government, bor-

7

See A. Solzhenitsyn, ‘Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations’, in : From Under the Rubble, Chicago 1981, pp. 105—143 ; idem, ‘Miscon­ ceptions about Russia are a Threat to America', Foreign Affairs (Spring 1980), pp. 797-834 ; idem, Lenin in Zurich, New York 1976, pp. 103-104 ; and, for a more detailed treatment of this topic, see my ‘Solzhenitsyn — The Artist as Historian’, Zmanim (A Quarterly of Historical Studies), Vol. II, No. 5 (Winter 1981), pp. 4-27 (in Hebrew).

[108]

Michael Confino rowed from the West and transplanted in Russia, such as the structure of scientific institutions, the legal system, the political police, or army organization. An obvious question which could be raised in this regard is, of course : why should Western technology be an element of total­ itarianism ? After all, technology is neither conservative, nor liberal, nor totalitarian ; as such, it is (like television and nuclear power) neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. One of the answers is that historically, from Peter the Great onwards, Western, advanced technology in Russia has often served to strengthen autocracy and repression. Better techniques (of organization and of communication, for instance) have contributed to rationalize the state apparatus and to make it more efficient and ruthless. Technology, of course, is indeed ‘neutral’, but only when seen in vacuo (that is, only as an exercise of the mind). In real life, which is the usual ‘habitat’ of technology, it becomes clear that the same technological change, device, or innovation may have completely dif­ ferent social functions (and produce very diverse results) within dif­ ferent societies. (And my contention is that this applies to ideas too, a subject to be discussed later.) Incidentally, the point can be made that, even before sociologists and historians had formulated this differential social function of technology, some contemporaries, sixty years ago or so, were dimly aware of it. This is one of the meanings, for instance, of Lenin’s oft-quoted state­ ment that ‘Communism equals Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country’. On the other end of the ideological spectrum, the same implied assumption can be found in Kropotkin’s view that Bol­ shevik rule is the worst tyranny in human history, because it means ‘Genghis Khan plus the telegraph’. Kropotkin correctly perceived that in terms of a dictatorship’s efficiency and ruthlessness, it makes an enormous difference whether it has at its disposal a modem tool (a ‘technology’) like the telegraph, or not. The telegraph, of course, is neutral, neither good nor evil, and it can be used for sending birthday greetings or execution orders. Its main feature (which is neutral, too, in a way) is that both messages will be transmitted swiftly. And in different societies this would mean quite different messages. Lenin’s ‘electricity’ and Kropotkin’s ‘telegraph’ stand as symbols of modern technology and reveal the understanding that these two historic figures had of the social and political role of technology. Of course, as implied above, technology may also have completely opposite effects and act, not as a factor that strengthens the autocracy, but as a disrupting one. Let us take two examples from the realm of Western techniques of government. Thus, the Secret Political Police (the Okhrana) was created and reformed according to the French [109]

Totalitarian Democracy and After model, and it used Western-like operational techniques. There is no doubt that the Okhrana was a powerful instrument in strengthening the autocracy internally and in influencing the regime’s most important political features. Quite different was the role of the judicial system in Russia, which in the second half of the nineteenth century underwent reforms according to Western models ; in addition, surprising as that may seem in the light of conventional wisdom, Russia had during that period, and until 1917, an independent judicial system by Western European stan­ dards. What was the result of this modernization of the judicial branch of government and the adoption of Western judicial institutions and processes ? ‘The result was’, in the words of a well-informed scholar jn this field, ‘a state at war with its own court system, a total rift be­ tween the traditional and the legal bases of the autocrat’s authority’.8 And he explains : Legal modernization did not bring an element of stability to Russia. Imbued with a consciousness of its own worth and mission, the new legal profession had impugned the autocrat’s claim to be the source and protector of legality. It represented an alien system that did not share the preoccupations and fears of the ruler and his entourage. As such, it only added to the inimical forces the government found beyond its power to direct or curb. The independent courts defended standards of legality that the autocrat, in the midst of bitter political struggle, could not ob­ serve. The tsarist government resorted to increasingly brutal and extralegal methods to deal with the revolutionary movement at the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. In such circumstances, it was difficult for the ruler to maintain his former image as champion of the law. Shedding the guise of absolute ruler, guardian of the rights and welfare of the population, the last two tsars tried instead to resume the role of patriarch, personal and religious leader of the nation. They ap­ pealed to national feeling and tried to appear close to the common people. But these products of the international culture of royalty were poor candidates for personal or charismatic leadership. Rather, their reactions to threats were defensive and retaliatory. Embat­ tled, the Russian autocracy in sure and fatal steps took leave of its legal system and relied increasingly on force. Elevating itself 8

R. S. Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness, Chicago 1976, p. 284.

[110]

Michael Confino beyond legality, it subverted the claims to obedience upon which its power ultimately rested.9 In this case the Western European judicial ‘implant’ in the body of the Russian political regime — an ‘implant’ which could not be either entirely rejected or fully adopted — evolved into a disrupting element for autocracy.10 The second rubric of Western influences that led Russia towards totalitarianism includes Western ideas in general and Marxism in par­ ticular. The main thrust of this well-researched topic seems so clear that it needs no further elaboration here. However, for the sake of fairness towards most of the proponents of this view, one of this argument’s features should be explicitly mentioned. For these scholars and thinkers, it is not the specific content of one or another set of ‘Western ideas’ that had a crucial influence on Russia’s evolution once these ideas penetrated into her intellectual and social life. The true importance of the ideas stemmed from the very fact of their being non-Russian and alien to this particular national, intellectual, and social environment : Voltaire, Rousseau, Fourier, Blanqui, Louis Blanc, Dar­ win, Marx, or Comte — their ideas as such (and the differences between them) did not matter so much ; what mattered was their being alien, and that was also their common denominator in Russia. This common denominator led to the main social function which these ideas (or system of ideas) performed there, namely a deep alienation of the intelligentsia, the ‘natural’ recipient of this kind of Western 9 Ibid., pp. 288-289. Another odd phenomenon which obtained from this state of things was the following : The inability to deal with the judicial process cost the government dearly not only in the political arena. The government, indeed, was defenceless in confronting the courts on their terrain, as Valuev sug­ gested, though not merely because of the court statutes. The state proved clumsy and incompetent in the defence of its interests in civil cases against the treasury as well. The plaintiffs would hire the best lawyers, while the fiscal interests received at best perfunctory and weak defence. Nor did the government appear concerned to protect its legal position. Rather, it held to the old conceptions of power, even when they no longer worked. Thus the form of official contracts and agreements, often of enormous length, did little to secure the state’s interest, but the officials of the treasury administration retained the old view. They regarded themselves not as contracting parties, obliged to observe the conditions of agreements, but an authority [vías?] whose commands must be obediently accepted (p. 284). 10 In this respect the experience of Prussia and Japan was completely dif­ ferent ; see Wortman, op. cit. (n. 8 ), p. 284.[Il]

[Ill]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ‘commodity’ ; an alienation from Russian realities, from the state and from society. (Once this alienation occurred, it was immaterial, for all practical purposes, whether that happened in the name of social Darwinism’, of Manást-like determinism, or of Blanquist-type voluntar­ ism.) As a result, the Russian intelligentsia was living in the abstract world of Western ideas instead of in the concrete world of Russian affairs, which it chose to ignore ; as a scholar put it not long ago, ‘they [the members of the intelligentsia] had no other life than ideas’, and theirs was a ‘most sweeping, abstract, and intransigent denial of the real in the name of the ideal’.11 Under the tsars this led them to revolution ; and after the revolution, it led to totalitarianism. For the pake of completeness, I should also add that this interpretation appears to me as maybe one of the most hard dying myths in Russian history, and certainly as the most popular and worn-out stereotype in Russian historiography. Following this first critical remark, we may pursue and raise now the more general question : what are the limits and limitations of the explanation based on ‘Russian’ and ‘Western’ roots ? One of its defi­ ciencies lies, as this could be noticed, in the frequent lack of a clear dividing line between what is Russian and what is Western. And above all — when ? Indeed such a dividing line is often difficult to draw because of the fact that around 1900, Westernization, that is modern­ ization, was a process which had been going on in Russia for more than two hundred years. In this case the question to be addressed is : for how long does a Western device (technique, or idea) remain ‘West­ ern’ after its introduction into a nation’s life and into a society’s activity ? In fact, we face here the same problematics (and mechanism) as in the classic historical topic of innovations and the dissemination of innovations. To put it in a very simplified way : in this process (whatever the innovation), after an initial opposition to its adoption, the usual pattern is that yesterday’s innovation becomes today’s routine and tomorrow’s obsolete tool (device, or idea). In the same way, yes­ terday’s Western borrowings are today’s Russian habits ; and yesteryear’s Western techniques and ideas have become, within ten, twenty, or fifty years, part and parcel of Russian culture, politics, and know-how. Heavy industry and chemistry may serve as one example, military craft and futurism in art as another. At bottom, the process in Russia was 11

M. Malia, ‘What is the Intelligentsia ?’, Daedalus (Summer 1960), p. 451 ; this is an example taken out of many, and the opinion is uniformly shared by most scholars in the field. For a detailed discussion of this issue see my ‘On Intellectuals and Intellectual Traditions in Eighteenth- and Nine­ teenth-Century Russia’, Daedalus (Spring 1972), pp. 117-149.

[112]

Michael Confino not essentially different from the pattern of innovation, absorption, and rejection that obtained in other European countries. The issue of Western borrowings and of the influx of Western elements in Russia has to be seen as a dynamic process of assimilation (which includes also partial rejection or shifts), and not as a short-lived and mechanical transfer : the story does not end when a Western technique or idea reaches Russia ; it then only begins. Another great limitation of the ‘Western cum Russian roots’ explanation lies in its being deeply a-historical, in the sense that it does not integrate and does not account for the historical circumstances in which these (Russian and Western) elements could eventually mix in such a way as to create the ‘totalitarian’ phenomenon. Further, as this view does not take into consideration the time element, so it does not (and can­ not) distinguish between sufficient and necessary conditions. And finally, this explanation does not provide even a hint on the crucial issue of how the parts (the ‘roots’) relate to the whole. Historiographically, this explanation in toto reminds me very much of the tale of Prince Charming and the Sleeping Beauty. We are presented with a series of elements — Russian messianism, so h o rn o stautocracy, together with Western techniques and ideas — but we do not know when and how they will move and be activated (which is, after all, the heart of the matter in history and in historical writing). They lie dormant, so to speak, waiting for some external factor to bring them to life, or rather to awake them. If I may pursue this metaphor, it seems that this complex of ‘Russian’ and ‘Western’ roots can be com­ pared to the Sleeping Beauty : they are there, asleep like her, waiting for some kind of prince to awake them and set them in motion. In fact this kind of historical explanation not only can be compared to, but indeed follows the general pattern of the tale of, the Sleeping Beauty. As we well know, in the version of Charles Perrault (I am leaving aside here, for the sake of brevity, the extremely interesting versions of Basile and of the Brothers Grimm) the story falls into two parts : the first part ‘ends with the prince’s awakening Sleeping Beauty and marrying her’ ‘followed by a second part in which we are suddenly told that the mother of Prince Charming is really a child-devouring ogress who wishes to eat her own grandchildren’.12 Hence our his­ toriographical fairy tale mirrors Russia, with all her attributes, native and Western alike ; the prince who awakes her is Lenin ; later on, his ideology (playing the mother’s role) will lead to a child-devouring totalitarian regime. In fact, most historical interpretations of Russia’s 12

B. Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment — The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, New York 1977, p. 229.

[ 113 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After evolution towards a totalitarian regime follow precisely this pattern ; so also do the interpretations based on a rigid deterministic approach, and foremost among them the official Soviet historiography. This brings me back from the world of enchantment to that of more tangible realities, namely to the specific social and political features related to the roots of Soviet totalitarianism. III.

The Historical Setting

Among these features, and becoming particularly prominent for the twenty-five years or so preceding 1917, there are several which should be singled out in view of their importance (without implying, however, that they were some sort of causa finalis, although they certainly had a role as causa efficiens) .13 (First, Russia was not simply, as usually described, an overwhelmingly rural country with an acute agrarian problem (meaning high rates of rural over-population plus low rates of agricultural modernization, lead­ ing to a severe shortage of land in spite of emigration abroad and in­ ternal migration to the urban centres and Siberia). In fact, it seems possible to assume (particularly in the light of recent research) that Russia’s agrarian problem was of such magnitude that it had no in­ stitutional or economic solution, in the sense that the regime lacked the institutional tools and the economic means to solve this problem.14 Stolypin’s land reform in 1907-1911, the boldest attempt of the tsarist government in this field, fell short of its own relatively modest goals; it would not have progressed much farther even without Stolypin’s assassination in 1911 or the outbreak of the war in 1914 unless the government had chosen to resort to some sort of quasi-terroristic ex­ propriation of hundreds of thousands of peasants.15 It should also be pointed out, though, that quite ironically (and tragically) none of the political parties in Russia at that time, including the opposition parties, had a realistic or applicable policy for achieving some real progress in the condition of the peasantry ; real progress could certainly not be expected from such grand ‘agrarian programmes’ as nationalization (of the land), communalization, socialization, or privatization ; nor would 13

14 15

As defined from the outset, it is not the purpose of this paper to deal with the possible effects of the February Revolution and the Bolshevik coup of October 1917 in shaping the Soviet totalitarian regime. These topics are dealt with separately in other articles in the present volume. This situation of ‘no-solution’ can be compared to the agrarian conditions existing today in countries like India and Egypt. This interpretation of mine should not be understood in any way as a sort of justification of Soviet collectivization and its inhumane and barbarous methods and results.

[114]

Michael Confino it result from prosecuting the slogan ‘confiscation of gentry lands’ for the sad and simple reason that, even if all the gentry lands had been Confiscated, there would not have been enough of them to satisfy the needs of the peasantry. Second, Russia was a country undergoing a rapid process of industrial­ ization, with all the strains and burdens that such a process brings upon the population. These burdens included not only economic and fiscal hardships but also psychological stresses resulting from abrupt changes in life styles, habitat, work, and family relationships. Third, it was a country in which had developed a deep state of tension between the ruling powers and the existing political structure, on the one hand ; and, on the other hand, the new social groups and strata (the new professions, the technical intelligentsia, the managerial class, the workers, engineers, businessmen) and the new centres of political power. These new centres included also the whole spectrum of political parties, movements, and ideologies, from the extreme right (the Black Hundred and the Union of the Russian People) to the extreme left .(the Anarchists), through the many shades of conservative, conser­ vative-liberal, plain liberal, moderate socialist, populist, and radical socialist currents. In this respect the Russian political scene fits perfectly well within the European pattern ; to think of it merely in terms of a merciless struggle between the so-called forces of revolution and the ‘reactionary autocracy’ is, to say the least, an over-simplification of the political realities in Russia in the last quarter of a century before 1917.16 Moreover, within the political process and orientations there existed also strong pressures towards various kinds of representative rule : first, on the level of local self-government, bodies of the zemstvos ; second, on the national level, as expressed in the Duma. To be sure, 16

It is the contention of several scholars that in this political spectrum the liberal-constitutional forces were relatively weak (and anyway had no roots in the Russian political tradition and no chance of furthering a liberal-constitutional regime), while the revolutionary forces were much stronger and had a greater vitality. This contention, even if it were cor­ rect, does not invalidate our analysis concerning the European pattern followed by the political spectrum. In addition, the view of these scholars is at best a speculation which rests mainly on hindsight derived from a kind of logical (but a-historical) reasoning according to which the liberals were weaker because they lost, and the Bolsheviks stronger because they won (in 1917) ; note also that in this reasoning the ‘revolutionary forces’ are subtly replaced by the ‘Bolsheviks’, to the exclusion of Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, and other historical (and historio­ graphical) ‘losers’.

[115]

Totalitarian Democracy and After these pressures generated conflicts : between the central government and the zemstvos ; between the autocracy and the political parties on issues like the scope of the Duma’s powers and competence ; and also, as already mentioned, conflicts like the one between the regime and its own appointed judicial system. However, these conflicts cannot serve as an indicator of a weakness of the forces striving towards repre­ sentative rule, but, on the contrary, are an illustration of their strength and vitality. These were, very schematically, the main social, economic, and political features of Russia when she was entering what has been usually de­ scribed as an era of mass society and of the ‘politicization’ of the masses ; rapid communications and transportation ; technological revolutions brought about by the application of a wide scale of scientific discoveries and inventions ; the widening of the European state system into the global world ; and, finally, an era deeply marked by the Great War. Historically speaking, the critical factors in Russia’s development, and the decisive ones for the understanding of her eventual evolution towards a totalitarian regime, operated at the juncture of two sets of constellations : the Russian socio-political conditions and the dynamics of change in the wider European and global sphere.17 The historical situation obtaining in Russia by the merger of these two constellations of processes and events has been diff erently viewed by students of this period, but their views fall mainly into two schools of thought in Russian historiography. IV.

Russia’s Future and Beyond

One school of thought assumes that had there been no world war, a constitutional regime of the Western type would have emerged in Russia from the inevitable collapse of autocracy. The other school holds that liberalism and constitutionalism had not (and autocracy had no longer) a base solid enough to withstand the combined strains of industrializa­ tion, the agrarian problem, and three years of war and military de17

Conventional historical wisdom has it that anyway these two constellations are usually concomitant and synchronic, and consequently the analysis offered here is almost an exercise in tautology. But this is not so. Thus, industrialization is not necessarily synchronic or linked with the advent, for instance, of mass society and rapid communications. Enclosures à la Stolypin and industrialization à la Witte occurred in England long before the emergence of mass society ; in France industrialization took place without enclosures, without an agrarian crisis, and even without a massive and painful rural exodus. These synchronizations or lack of synchronizations make an enormous difference, and underline the historical specificity of the Russian case.

[ 116 ]

Michael Confino feats.18 The corollary is, obviously, that if there was no chance for a liberal-constitutional regime, then some form of dictatorship was bound to succeed autocracy : a fascist-like one or a Soviet-totalitarian one. It should be pointed out, indeed, that as a matter of historical fact, the idea of dictatorship was not completely alien to that time and place. Thus, in 1905 Sergei Witte offered the tsar, as a way out of the crisis, the alternative of an elected Duma within a constitutional-type mon­ archy or a military dictatorship. Another example gives a glimpse of the public mood : in August 1917 General Kornilov’s differences with Kerensky and the Provisional Government gave way to widespread rumours of an imminent military dictatorship. Finally, in October that same year there took place the successful coup which was intended to bring about the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat (not of the party, or of the General Secretary), although there is still an ongoing debate as to whether the Soviet totalitarian regime began in 1917, in 1924, or later. To conclude. In this author’s contention deterministic approaches are inadequate for helping us to understand these historic events and processes, whether these approaches are defined as ‘historical laws’, ‘destiny’, or ‘the will of God’ ; neither are they adequate if, for instance, they are offered under the guise of the crude socio-economic determinism of the Soviet historians or of the more subtle ethno-psychological deter­ minism of Berdiaev. Russia could have taken one road or another : towards a liberal-constitutional regime or a dictatorial-totalitarian one. To the great misfortune and sufferings of her people Russia took the way of a ‘totalitarian democracy’; however, when this happened, the turn had the form and essence of a specific historical event and evo­ lution, occurring in a specific nation, at a specific time, and in specific historical circumstances. The modest lesson which may be drawn from the Russian experience js not one of the inevitability of evil. It rather provides an example of the many variations of the pattern towards totalitarianism. For totalitarianism has emerged among different peoples by quite different ways ; it can happen anywhere, and no nation is immune and protected against it, whatever this nation’s past, historical experience, cultural values, and political traditions. And whatever its illusions and beliefs. 18

Note also the existence of a ‘doomed-even-without-war’ thesis in Western historiography, and its Soviet twin according to which a revolutionary situation was already ripe in July 1914, and the effects of the war were not to cause the revolution, but to delay it. Nothing in the shape of sound historical evidence comes to substantiate either interpretation.

[ 117 ]

The Historical Setting of German Totalitarianism by

MOSHE ZIM MERMANN The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

A lthough

the

term

‘ t o t a l i t a r i a n i s m ’ is widely used,

both in German research and in the German self-search on its origins and implications, the term ‘totalitarian democracy’ as formulated by Jacob Talmon remains marginal there. With respect to the last twenty years this could be attributed to the quasi-sociological tendency of German historical research. However, it cannot be denied that the Talmonian term was treated in Germany with a certain indifference from the first because of its denotation and because of the specific connotation of the original term totalitarianism. Our first, though not original, question should therefore concern the effectivity and applicability of this term to our purpose, which is to trace the con­ tours of the historical setting for what is called German totalitarianism. I.

The Limits of Conceptual Applicability

Totalitarianism as a term is a typical example of the limits imposed on the historian who looks for a generalization from the realm of social sciences. He encounters a specific term or a specific phenomenon and tries to subordinate it to a general denominator, and so ends up as a captive of the semantics of the generalization. The Nazi phenomenon, which was not an isolated one in the 1930s, needed an applicable gener­ alization ; this generalization was called totalitarianism, and Nazism was actually its criterion and definition. For instance B. Malinowski’s definition of totalitarianism,1 which goes back to the late 1930s, is nothing but a synonymous definition of Nazism. Later the tables have been turned : totalitarianism has become the definition and criterion 1 B. Malinowski, Freedom and Civilization, New York 1944, as compared to M. Greiffenhagen, ‘The Concept Totalitarianism in Political Theory’, in : E. A. Menze, Totalitarianism Reconsidered, New York-London 1981, pp. 52-53.

[ 118 ]

Moshe Zimmermann by which National Socialism, among other phenomena, is measured. Therefore the way the question is formulated now is : to what extent was National Socialism totalitarian ? One of the main deficiencies of the term totalitarianism is that, like other sweeping historical generalizing terms, it is supposedly scientific but actually political. From the 1930s on, people looked for a term that would serve as a common denominator for the then existing Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, a term that would express the special new attributes of this ‘other kind’ of government and social organization. If the Axis powers had remained the only foe of the West, perhaps the common, negative term used for this purpose would have been Fascism. But since after World War I it was the Bolshevik threat that scared the West most, the Western world had to look for a semantic solution to its fears ; it had to find a term that would include the USSR, Germany and Italy in contrast to its own con­ ception of self-determination, and so it adopted the term ‘totalitarian­ ism’. Here the West tried to learn a lesson from World War I : for the first three years of the war the Allies were in a dilemma because they could not trace a clear demarcation line between the battling camps. Among those who wanted ‘to make the world safe for democracy’ Russia remained until March 1917 an uneasy handicap for which they did not find the appropriate semantic solution. Now, in the 1930s, the term totalitarianism provided the desired demarcation line between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. This trend was reinforced after 1945. Ever since, this designation has become an alibi used by political theorists in the West, and even more so by the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany. There the term totalitarianism (or, according to the different political dogmas, Fascism) became a cover for those who had an unclear conscience and could use it in a way that moderated the Nazi phenomenon and blurred its historical uniqueness. Totalitarianism as used in West Germany became more and more a description of the (East)-Berlin-Moscow axis. Already twenty years ago a well-known German political scien­ tist and historian pointed out that : ‘Unser Blick und unser Interesse sind so stark von . .. der Erfassung lebender Totalitarismen in Anspruch genommen, als dass wir uns noch mit dem. . . historisch vergangenen nationalsozialistischen Totalstaat in ähnlicher Weise zu befassen bereit fänden’.2 This evasive approach to its own history has nearly become the rule 2

G. Schulz, ‘Der Begriff des Totalitarismus und der Nationalsozialismus’, Soziale Welt, V III (1961), p. 120.

[ 119 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After in Germany nowadays, mainly in the so-called ‘popular histories’. Bol­ shevism is placed on the same level as Nazism, and beyond that, not only Lenin, but even German Social Democracy, are described as responsible for the ‘Aufbau des totalitären Einparteistaates’ of Hitler. This frivolous use of the term totalitarianism supplies the political alibi for those who need it and ruins every scientific value it may have held.3 We should therefore tread carefully when using terms like left and right, Fascism and totalitarianism in the context of the Germany of today and concerning German history. It goes without saying that after the first comprehensive descriptions of totalitarianism4 it was the writings of H. Arendt and K. Friedrich that created the criteria for what is called in Germany ‘Totalitaris­ musforschung’. Later they became, as usual, the object of criticism and revisionism. The flourishing research in this field created more confusion than system in analysing the Nazi phenomenon or German Communism, which are the core of this research. I do not think that in an exploration of the historical setting of German totalitarianism I should delve into this discussion. Those who are interested in a thorough analysis of the term totalitarianism, especially from the point of view of the German politologist and sociologist, may follow the scholastic research of Jänicke in this matter.5 As for myself, I tend very strongly to accept the stress on the difference between Bolshevik and Nazi phenomena (and also between German Nazism and Italian Fascism) when observed through the prism of totalitarianism.6 Nevertheless, it is impossible today to accept the term German totalitarianism only in its ‘original’ meaning, in the framework of National Socialism alone. The German Democratic Republic (DDR), and even certain elements in West Germany’s political behaviour, should be assessed in accordance with the term ‘German totalitarianism’, without of course falling into the pitfall of ignoring the uniqueness of the Nazi phenomenon. .5 Here I refer to the brochure Sozialismus, Nationalsozialismus, Faschismus, published by the Hans Seidel Stiftung, Munich 1980. 4 S. Neumann, Permanent Revolution — The Total State in a World of War, New York-London 1942 ; F. Neumann, Behemoth — The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, New York 1942. 5 M. Jänicke, Totalitäre Herrschaft, Anatomie eines politischen Begriffes, Berlin 1971. Cf. Totalitarismus und Faschismus — Eine wissenschaftliche und politische Begriffskontroverse, Inst, für Zeitgeschichte, Vienna 1980 ; Menze, op. cit. (n. 1) ; H. Goetz, ‘Totalitarismus — Ein historischer BegrifT, Schweitzerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, X XX II (1982), pp. 163-174. 6 On the other hand, the distinction made by R. Aron, as if Soviet totalitar­ ianism is constructive while Nazi totalitarianism is only destructive is un­ acceptable ; see R. Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism, New York 1968.

[120]

Moshe Zimmermann In order to talk intelligibly about the historical setting of German totalitarianism a definition, even though a general one, is imperative. Apparently Friedrich’s definition (including the criteria of an official ideology, one party and one leader, terrorist police, communication monopoly, arms monopoly and centrally directed economy)7 is a con­ venient one, but as it includes also so-called ‘secondary factors’ I prefer to resort to Talmon’s (sometimes merely implied) definition that in­ cludes the ‘one truth’ (i.e. the messianic element), the subordination of all human existence to politics, and the contradiction between freedom and centralization (including economic centralization). To this we may add the conception that the group, not the individual, constitutes the historical and political unit. These elements of the definition are clearly to be traced in both kinds of German totalitarianism, in Na­ tional Socialism and in the DDR form. Yet the doubt expressed by Talmon himself as to the applicability of the term totalitarian democ­ racy when describing these phenomena can only be shared by the later observer. ßtill, in order to come to a meaningful use of the term, we have to fefer also to its genesis in German terminology. The term totalitarian was bom outside Germany in the mid-1920s, but was closely connected with the National Socialist rise to power, both through the mouthpiece of Hitler — Goebbels — and through the writings of Carl Schmidt. The latter stressed what to me seems to be central even today : the conflict pnd contradiction between political and social pluralism and the tota­ litarian state, between liberal minimalism and anti-liberal maximalism. The regime that was actually founded in 1933 very soon neglected the limited ‘total’, or ‘totalitarian state’, in favour of the totalitarian society that, as stressed above, was totally politicized. Therefore it is unimportant whether one talks about the totalitarian state, the totali­ tarian party or the totalitarian leader. II.

German Totalitarianism and the ‘Periphery of the West*

Since the 1930s the process of transforming the term totalitarian into a scientific tool has emphasized a most crucial element in its evolution, namely the confrontation between West and non-West. This element explains why the subject of totalitarianism is so central from the con­ temporary-political as well as from the historical-research point of view : vulnerability to totalitarian tendencies has been mainly the problem 7

C.J. Friedrich & Zb. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge (Mass.) 1956. Cf. K. D. Bracher, ‘The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism’, in Menze, op. cit. (n. 1), pp 19-21.

[121]

Totalitarian Democracy and After of societies on the ‘periphery of the West’, exposed to a strong ‘ra­ diation’ from Western doctrines. Without a virtual confrontation with the Western idea of freedom or without contact with Western-style modernization, there is no cause for totalitarianism as a new socio­ political response. It may be concluded logically that the roots of totali­ tarianism should be found in Western societies ; but as these societies are imbued with a political culture having strong liberal and demo­ cratic tendencies these roots become attenuated. In France for example, Robespierre was but an episode, but in the countries on the ‘periphery of the West’, from Germany to the East, or to the South, the clash between Western culture and the local form, and their different political traditions, has bred pure totalitarianism. From this point of view both types of German totalitarianism — National Socialism and the DDR form — serve as exemplars. The unique character of German totalitarianism may become even more prominent with the aid of the Talmonian terminology : totalitarian democracy is to be traced in the West with its (Atlantic) revolutionary tradition, or in the East since its socialist revolutions, rather than in the mid-European arena squeezed between East and West, and between two revolutionary traditions. According to the hypothesis of the ‘periphery of the West’ the his­ torical setting of German totalitarianism begins to emerge when the confrontation between Western liberalism and this periphery began. This is the same time that, according to Talmon, the first signs of totalitarian democracy were appearing within the West itself, i.e. in the eighteenth century. As I do not see National Socialism and totalitarian­ ism as overlapping terms, there is no danger that this hypothesis should become yet another suggestion for locating the starting point on the way to Hitler. In the eighteenth century the signs of what later became attributes of totalitarianism began to emerge. These signs are mainly connected with the functioning of the state and they prac­ tically led towards the modern welfare state, without taking the round­ about, liberal way that had characterized the Western world before its own discovery of ‘welfare’. Totalitarianism, in our case in Germany, was not a predestined development, but a possible, alternative, form for a society and government on their way from eighteenth-century absolutism to the twentieth-century welfare state. But where does this early welfare state connect with later totalitarianism ? The slogan of Frederick II ‘the king is the first servant of the state’, does not at first seem dangerous, and yet it has dangerous potentialities. This danger appears only in dialectic relationship with the blessing it may bestow on society. A close look at the instructions of Frederick William I to his General Directory (1722), for instance, or at the Prussian regula[122]

Moshe Zimmermann tions concerning financial state aid in times of need, or at the mecha­ nisms controlling the army and the administration, shows that the direction followed by Prussia from the eighteenth century to the twen­ tieth is more consistent than that of Western states, in which liberalism provided a more twisted road to the present. If we follow this develop­ ment in Prussia, or in some of the small states of Germany, Bismarck’s protective ‘social laws’ do not surprise us — for they are laws that, after all, impose the state on society in an unprecedented manner. From the point of view of the concept of the modem welfare state the Prussian legislation would have been a welcome development. Nevertheless it carried with it the seeds of totalitarianism. Between the notion of the king as the servant of the state and of the later, so-called neutral state serving its members, an ideal is created of a state of social perfection guarded by a neutral and efficient machinery at the expense of individualism and pluralism. This ideal was not compatible (to mention only one important implication) with the Western notion of the political party (which in the West is merely a legitimate tool of parliamentary politics). For those who believed in the state as a per­ fect and unbreakable whole, parties meant only the fragmentation of the whole, of the total. Many are confused by the riddle of German philosophy and its attitude to the state. Why were the upholders of enlightened individual liberty unable to erect defences against anti-liberal anti-pluralistic tendencies ? The key to the puzzle again lies in Germany’s position on what I have called the ‘periphery of the West’. The confrontation with France and its mission was an experience that forced German philosophers and politicians to measure their own political and social concepts against those of the West. Although these concepts and notions were frequently similar, the confrontation produced new and different meanings and connotations : ‘Western’ as against ‘German’ freedom, a French as against a German nation, and later ‘Western-intemational-Jewish so­ cialism’ as against ‘German socialism’, and so on. A prominent example is already to be found in Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation.8 Al­ though few of the German public read the works of these philosophers or listened to them at first hand, still the ideas postulated by Fichte, when popularized, were generally accepted in Germany. Special at­ tention should be paid to Fichte’s eighth lecture which states that the German nation is believed to be a unit that bridges between the indi­ vidual and the universe and at the same time between the individual and eternity. The nation is the only community that can make the 8

J.G. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation 1807-8, Leipzig-Vienna n. d.

[ 123 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After life of the individual meaningful beyond the short span of its lifetime, which is otherwise so meaningless. This assertion has an obvious totali­ tarian potential, as may be deduced also from other writings of Fichte and from the way his ideas were interpreted and implemented by most Germans after him. Now, when the conditions were created for the merging of the Prussian tradition of the protective state with the Fichtean tradition of na­ tionalism (supplemented by the necessary amount of state-impersonality in the Hegelian style), the totalitarian potential became a menace in reality. This happened right from the foundation of the Second Ger­ man Reich and was intensified by the three enormous challenges that confronted the West and its periphery : industrialization, the break­ through in natural sciences and the instruments of total war. Germany had to face these challenges in a uniquely difficult situation. There is no need to reiterate the well-known theses about the problems ac­ companying the change from the ‘Ständegesellschaft’ to ‘Klassengesell­ schaft’ within the process of industrialization. It is also well known that Germany had to exert itself more than any other state in order to survive World War I. The crucial epilogue to this greatest challenge was defeat — by the West. Since 1918, therefore, Germany could not rid itself of the urge to challenge this Western world, mainly by becoming its conscious cultural and political antithesis. As the political tendencies of Western civiliza­ tion were in the first place liberal and pluralistic Germany activated its totalitarian potential to achieve the opposite. It is possible to accept the assumption of a modem German historian that without the pressure of the German foreign policy the right would have taken over in Germany much earlier than 1933.9 Yet this may have led not to total­ itarianism but to a more traditional and conservative authoritarianism based on corporative Weltanschauung. This may have been a potential alternative in German history, yet it was only natural that the opposite happened and Western pressure, real or imagined, paved the way to National Socialist totalitarian reaction. It was also a reaction to Western features of the Weimar system, i.e. the organization of Ger­ many’s modem internal structure (while at the same time abusing the very progressive state-mechanism for this purpose ). Dahrendorf rightly stressed the contradictio in adjecto within National Socialism between its organic ideology and mechanistic implementation,10 because of which National Socialism could not be totally identified with the notion of ‘German totalitarianism’. But as the crucial element of National So9 H. Mommsen, Arbeiterbewegung und nationale Frage, Göttingen 1979. 10 R. Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland, Munich 1965.

[124 ]

Moshe Zimmermann cialism lies within the mechanistic, practical sphere, it may be described mainly as having a totalitarian effect, including its horrifying antiJewish terror machinery. The succeeding form of a German totalitarian system to present itself, namely that of the German Democratic Republic, may also be explained in terms of its confrontation with the West and its socio-political concepts. Here the fight against the West is not only the outcome of the dependence of the DDR on the anti-Western Soviet Union, but part of the genuine struggle of German anti-Westernism against the other Germany. For in this view the German Federal Republic, over­ come by this Westernism, has become part and parcel of the Western world thanks to an abnormal constellation. The later kind of German totalitarianism did not enter the conflict fought out by the previous kind of German totalitarianism because the new version had estranged itself from any organistic ideology. Here we have the ‘purer’ type of German totalitarianism, facing the ‘radiation’ from the West with as yet no signs of fatigue to be observed.11 On the contrary, even in the Western, i.e. Westernized, part of Germany an ever-increasing trend of anti-Western totalitarian ideology (called anti-Americanism) is flour­ ishing, drawing its spiritual nourishment from left and right extremism, rooted in both present and past German totalitarianism. III.

Religion and Region as Preconditions

While discussing German totalitarianism in the context of this sym­ posium two additional questions should be referred to briefly here : 1. If totalitarianism is to be regarded as a secularized messianism, does it have religious roots in Germany ? 2. Should not any thesis regarding German totalitarianism look for regional differentiations on the German political scene in order to verify its hypotheses and presumptions ? In regard to the first question, many have called Luther and Luther­ anism a root of German totalitarianism. This is, of course, incorrect. Luther and his Church could even have opened the way to pluralism because of the clear distinction they make between the political and the personal, between government and confession. But the reality of the twentieth century has transformed this distinction into a purely theore­ tical one. In the triangle God-man-state there is already one non­ existent factor, and when the conditions are created for the elimination of man as an individuum, in the framework of total war, national 11

Whether the DDR peace movement is a real challenge to the system is still an open question.

[ 125 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After community or the omnipotent single party, only one side of the triangle remains — the state and its politics which swallows everything. Luther was not a creator of totalitarianism, but within modern conditions he could not have prevented it. This and more : where Luther and his Church are radically swept away, as in the case of the German Demo­ cratic Republic, this is even more convenient for totalitarianism — both because the Church in general hampers state totalitarianism and be­ cause it represents an element of alternative totality. Protestantism and Lutheranism have to be evaluated on a comparative basis, measuring the roles of Protestanism outside Germany and of Catholicism inside Germany. It seems to me that this kind of evalua­ tion tends to prove how little relevance Christian traditions and in­ stitutions have to German totalitarianism in the modem age, even though they are central in explaining other trends in German history. The second question referred to above, whether regional variations in the German outlook may help to verify our thesis, is partially con­ nected to our previous question. Is it only a coincidence that the regions that held a non-Nazi majority as late as the elections of March 1933 were mainly the Catholic regions of western Germany (and partly the southern regions), i.e. constituencies of the Centre party? Is there a correlation between the behaviour of these constituencies and their more Western-oriented history ? There is no doubt that the precon­ ditions mentioned above for German totalitarianism did not exist equally in all parts of Germany. I have already stressed the role of Prussia in creating the German welfare state and the German totalsurveillance state. But even if we accept the assumption that Germany was considerably Prussianized, it must be stressed that regional differ­ ences in the approach to social organization were still important in the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. No doubt, Prussia had a clearly different character from that of the southern German states, and Dahrendorf has stressed emphatically that regional tradition as such is (and was) an obstacle in the way to totali­ tarianism. The liquidation of regionalism has been a common aim in the National Socialist state and in DDR totalitarianism, a charac­ teristic that distinguishes both regimes from Germany before 1918 and from the Federal German Republic of today. The latter has learned the lessons of the past and therefore supports regionalism as a guarantee of pluralism. The large amount of regional research carried out in Germany since World War II, in which much attention has been concentrated on the National Socialist experience, may help to locate and identify the German and non-German (local or European) elements of German

[ 126 ]

Moshe Zimmermann totalitarianism. Furthermore, the unique situation has developed in which pre-1945 Germany is now divided into (at least) two radically different state-systems, one considered totalitarian and the other West­ ern-liberal. This juxtaposition is a paradise for the historian or the social scientist searching for the specific German elements within the generalization called totalitarianism.

[ 127 ]

Political Traditions and Responses in Islam

by

H A VA L A Z A R U S -Y A F E H The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

gathering of historians and scholars I feel somewhat out of place, especially as I come from the philological tradition and lack the historical discipline and terminology. Yet, being primarily interested in the phenomena of religion, I feel, like so many nowadays, that we have to integrate our separate fields of studies not only in order to catch the broader implications of events and their real deeper meanings, but in order to understand even isolated, as it were, separate phenomena or cases. Let me add that I was very privileged in having several special private lessons from the late Jacob Talmon, not in any university classroom, but during the long walks he used to take in the beautiful Jerusalem park on the slopes around the Monastery of the Cross. There a small group of intellectuals, all afflicted with heart diseases (the ‘Herzl’ Club he used to call them) used to take their daily prescribed walk, and often met, quite unintentionally. He, of course, would do most of the talking, fascinating everybody with his enthusiastic, brilliant, analysis of events. They have all passed away. He was the last to go. May my short remarks be a humble tribute to the memory of the walks in the park. My basic position on the theme we are discussing is as follows : Islam, in many ways, may be considered a religious prototype of what Talmon termed, in the completely different political setting of modernized and secularized Europe, a ‘totalitarian democracy’. But, although in theory classical Islam never knew any dichotomy between Church and State and was concerned with all aspects of life, including the political sphere, it never really developed any theory of state or clear vision of a political structure.1 Only in modern times, under the tremendous impact of the A mong such

a distinguished

1 This, despite the well-known fact that several mediaeval authors dealt with

[ 128 ]

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh West, and especially at the moment of its rejection of the West, Islam (developed, and is still doing so, a distinctively political character. At this very moment of the so-called ‘Islamic revival’ we are witnessing its attempt to translate a general political mood, inherent in its tra­ dition, into the concrete demand of an Islamic state. To begin with I believe that one can safely state that totalitarianism and violence are basic, inherent characteristics of Islam from its very beginning, even though Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, has a highly developed moral ethos and an astonishingly rich variety of moral religious literature. Some recent theories explain this unique combination in Islam as the fusion of Jewish traditional values with the barbarian force of the ancient Arab tribes. In this combination the Jewish values, as it were, sanctified the use of force, whereas the bar­ barian forces backed these values and thus enabled them to spread and to conquer a large part of the world and make its inhabitants accept the basic notions of monotheism and a moral code in their Islamic version.2 In the Islamic Empire violence was from its very beginning sanctified not only in relation to the non-Islamic world (as in the well-known notion of Djihäd) . It was frequently used, in different ways, in internal conflicts as well, probably more so than in many other civilizations and perhaps with more religious rationale than elsewhere. To take one step further : there is, of course, no need to say that Islam, as a religious monotheistic civilization, is, and always was, completely totalitarian. But the extent of its totalitarianism is certainly extraor­ dinary, and so is perhaps its combination with some extremely in­ teresting characteristics of what may be called religious democracy. Thus, for example, we all know that Islam, like Judaism, has no hier­ archical clergy, and whoever acquires the necessary knowledge and skill may rise and become part of the large body of ‘ulamä, the religious scholars and leaders, whose legal decisions are all equally binding without any higher instance of law, or any approved codification of it having the final say. One small technical detail may illustrate the extent of the democratic aspect of Islamic classical law, taken from the political aspects of the divine law or with political philosophy; see, e.g., E. J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Mediaeval Islam — An Intro­ ductory Outline, Cambridge 1958. Yet, these writings remained marginal in Islam until modem times. On the historical dimension of this aspect of Islam, see P. Crone, Slaves on Horses — The Evolution of the Islamic Polity, Cambridge 1980. 2 See P. Crone & M. Cook, Hagarism — The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge 1977.

[ 129 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After the vast responsa (fatäwä) literature in Islam, which may have its roots in Jewish or ancient Roman law.3 In these responsa the muftis, experts in religious law, answer questions posed to them either by an individual or a qädi, judge, about any problem whatsoever. These res­ ponsa have the force of decisions of law, although they may contradict other fatäwä or other muftis. Moreover, in Islam, unlike in Judaism, the individual may ask several muftis the same question until he finally obtains the answer which best suits him, certainly a convenient and democratic way of enforcing the law. In this context mention should also be made of the well-known idea of idjmci, general consensus, as one of the four binding sources of the law in Islam. This consensus of the community is very hard to define, and it aroused great discussions among mediaeval Muslim authorities as well as among modern scholars of Islam.4 According to some, it is the expression of the consensus of the whole divinely guided Islamic community with regard to a certain belief or practice which has spread among the people. More often it is considered to express the unanimous consensus of the ‘ulamä, although never endorsed in the form of counpils and formal decisions but usually through their retroactive, silent agreement. In any case, this unique consensus as a source of law has a distinctive democratic character, and it is not surprising that it is constantly used in modern apologetic attempts to prove how demo­ cratic classical Islam really was. At the same time, however, there should be no doubt that Islam is a truly totalitarian ideology, perhaps even more so than most other reli­ gions or ideologies. It shares the common notions of a divinely inspired tradition, of Messianism and of belief in a world of reward and punishment to come. Like Judaism, it regulates every detail in man’s life through divine law, details regarding aspects of worship as well as all other ‘secular’ aspects of life, such as community life, marriage, work, penal code, food, dressing, entertainment. Yet Islam is total­ itarian mainly because, as von Grunebaum put it : While always devoted to improving the conditions of all its adherents it is nevertheless basically determined to refuse to ac­ cept man to any extent whatsoever as the arbiter or measure of things. God’s unintelligible will and decree are the only measure 3 4

H. Lazarus-Yafeh, Some Religious Aspects of Islam, Leiden 1981, pp. 85-86. See EI2 s.v. Idjmä ‘, and J. Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford 1964, pp. 30-31. For a more negative evaluation of the ‘democratic’ aspects of classical Islam, see F. M. Najjar, ‘Democracy in Islamic Political Philosophy’, Studia Islámica, LI (1980), pp. 107-122.

[130]

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh of things, and the complete surrender to his will is Islam’s do­ minant message.5 The stress put on the total absoluteness and transcendency of God not only has led to the well-known fatalistic outlook of Islam and to its denial of the principle of causality in history and even in nature but has also proved an inherent obstacle to its true understanding of the meaning of Western concepts like freedom, equality or democracy.6 Yet this basic attitude of what we may term ‘totalitarian democracy’ was never translated in classical mediaeval Islam into any clear theory of the state. It engendered a general mood, never a clearly defined political theory. The state as a political organization of the umma, Islamic community, was almost taken for granted by the ‘ulamä. They were only concerned with the application of the divine law to the body politic, and the khalifa!s main task, according to them, was to guarantee the adherence of the people to the law of Islam, and to defend them against heretics and unbelievers. The ‘ulamä of one of the greatest empires in the world, much like the sages of the small, dispersed Jewish people, preferred to deal with details of the divine lawwith regard to prayer, fasting, purity and impurity, or giving alms, rather than with political theory, or with the organization, administration and po­ litical structure of the state.7 G. von Grunebaum, Modern Islam — The Search for Cultural Identity , New York 1964, p. 55. See also his Islam and Medieval Hellenism — So­ cial and Cultural Perspectives, ed. D. S. Wilson & S. Vryonis, London 1976, VII, pp. 28-29 ; V III, p. 96. In a theological treatise by Al-Nashi’ alAkbar (d. 905), published by J. von Ess, this idea is expressed very clearly: ‘They [some of the Mu‘tazilites] thought that the law of Islam with regard to kingship arid slavery is different from that of all other nations, because the Prophet was not a king nor did he install a king over his people. They said that a king demands superiority and exclusiveness and this brings about religious corruptness and abolition of (God’s) com­ mandments, as well as the people’s approval of the king’s commands, which contradict those of the Qur’an and Sunna’; see Frühe MuHazilitische Häresiographie, Beiruter Texte u. Studien, Beirut 1971, p. 71. 6 See my ‘Three Remarks on Islam and Western Political Values — A Re-evaluation of the Modernist Movement in Islam’, Tel-Aviv University Colloquium on Islam and Government, 1979, Israel Oriental Studies, X (1980), pp. 187-194. Cf. also J. L. Kraemer, ‘Heresy versus the State’, Studies in Judaica, Karaitica and Islámica, Ramat-Gan 1982. Kraemer stresses the fact that heretics were considered in mediaeval Islam as rebels and as a danger to the state and the social order. 7 The explanations given for this astonishing phenomenon vary, of course, the simplest being that the Sunni ‘ulamä usually did not want to risk their almost complete integration into the political system. Even 5

[ 131 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After It is in this respect that modernization has brought about perhaps the greatest change in contemporary Islam. The impact of the West on Islam has been decisive in many spheres of life, as we all know. It has evoked many different kinds of responses and reactions, which oscillate from early spiritual assimilation of Western ideas to the final total rejection of the West, and has given rise not only to a vast literature of apologetics but also to many other expressions of deep frustration and humiliation, which paved the way for the contemporary so-called Fundamentalist Islamic revival. One of the most conspicuous features of this ‘return’ or revival of Islam is its political character. In fact, the demand for an Islamic state may be considered one of the very few basic common denominators shared by all the different phenomena of this revival, whether Sunni or ShTite, coming from the ‘ulamä or from other sectors of Islamic society. This demand usually covers only very vague notions about an Islamic state, and, as in the Middle Ages, still lacks detailed political theories or well-defined visions of the structure of the future state. Nevertheless, the contemporary explicit demand for an Islamic state, and the stress on the political aspect of Islam, seems to be new in Islamic history. This may designate a deep change in a civilization which had never before considered a political solution to be of any importance or meaning for Islam and its problems. Thus, paradoxically, it is in the rejection of the West that we can recognize most clearly its influence on Islam, because this rejection contains in itself a decisive change in the traditional outlook and a clear attempt to transform Islam into an effective political ideology. Nikki Keddi has already drawn our attention to the fact that the second generation of so-called poorer, bazaar classes in Islam did not slough off their traditionalist religious orientation as the result of their exposure to Westernized secondary and higher education, and did not move towards Western secularization and liberalism. On the contrary, and in a way quite unexpected by most people, the second generation of those classes, which make up the great majority of the population in Islamic countries, ‘find traditional Islamic ways still functional and a prolific $üfï writer like the famous Al-Ghazzàlï (d. 1111), who touched upon almost every sphere of life and took part in the literary genre of the ‘Mirrors for Princes’, propagated no political theory what­ soever. Only Mu‘tazilite scholars (as well as Shi'ites) seem to have dealt extensively with some political problems such as the well-known problem of ‘imämat al tnafdül (the permissibility of a ruler, who is inferior to a mem­ ber of his community, e.g., the first three caliphs versus ‘A li).

[132]

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh can get guidance, cures and consolation within their framework’.8 But, as they have greater access to Western education they find better ways, both technically and intellectually, to propagate their semi-traditional ideas ; and, one should add, they stress more and more the need for a political expression of their tradition, that is to say, they demand an Islamic state. As was mentioned already, the structure of this ideal state usually remains undefined, although Islamic writers referring to the subject like to stress the democratic and egalitarian aspects of early Islam. But one can perhaps say that the characteristics emerging from those vague descriptions depict some kind of totalitarian democracy, as we may see in the following excerpt from Al-Da‘wa, the journal of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood : We demand an Islamic nation, living a true Islamic life in politics, society, economics, education, culture and every other sphere of life. Islamic law does not restrict itself to the cutting of hands or flogging criminals. To neglect prayer is also a criminal act, and to eat in public during Ramadan is a criminal act, and so is the refraining from giving alms, taking interest, drinking, selling or transporting wine, opening public entertainment places and ac­ cepting taxes from these places, broadcasting [secular] songs on the radio and showing cheap exotic movies on the television, letting women dress indecently, and print heretic ideas in books and newspapers.. . We shall not be deceived any more. The Muslim people have a clear goal and will not settle for less than complete victory.9 The same holds true for Al-KhumeinFs ShFite concept of the Islamic state, which he expressed theoretically years before he came to actual power. The totalitarian aspect of his Islamic republic is definitely not the result of the internal or external pressures and circumstances he confronted after coming to power but is an inherent characteristic of his theory of the state. In his famous book The Islamic Government 8

9

See her article, N. Keddi, ‘Iran — Change in Islam ; Islam and Change’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, IX (1980), pp. 527-542, especially p. 529. See also M. Fischer, ‘Islam and the Revolt of the Petite Bourgeoisie’, Daedalus (Winter 1982), pp. 101-125; Saad Eddin Ibrahim, ‘Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Groups — Methodological Note and Pre­ liminary Findings’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, XII (1980), pp. 423-453. Al-da'wa, December 1976. Quoted also in my article mentioned above, n. 6.

[133]

Totalitarian Democracy and After he describes the totalitarian ruler as the personification of the ideal Muslim, harsh and unbending in enforcing the religious law, the sharVa, even on members of his own family : ‘We want a ruler who will not order us to do anything he himself has not done already, and who will not prohibit anything he himself has not abstained from .. .\10 These are his main demands from the future ruler, and in much the same vein Al-Khumeinï describes the ‘democratic’ aspect of his Is­ lamic state, when he explains that while in the West people are con­ demned to death for smuggling a few grams of heroin, the same West­ ern world considers eighty lashes of flogging for drinking wine a bar­ barous act : But, there is no doubt that most of the social evils are caused by drinking — such as road accidents, commiting suicide and even using drugs__ Nevertheless, they will not forbid wine, and the West still allows totally free commerce of th a t---- But woe unto Islam if a wine drinker is flogged eighty times. .. then they will raise their voices and cry out. ‘These are harsh laws, stemming from the roughness and rudeness of the Arabs’ . . . , while in effect these penalties are only meant to abolish evil and excesses from Islamic society.11 Al-Khumeinï is one of the few contemporary Muslim politicians who has also some sort of political theory, if not yet fully developed. This is the well-known idea of wiläyat al-faqlh, the theory that the religious leader is also the ideal executor of the divine law, the sharVa, and therefore the only legitimate ruler, at least in the absence of the im­ mortal Shi‘ite Imam. Without going into details of this theory or into the discussion still continuing between scholars on whether this idea of the religious sage as a ruler is original with Al-Khumeinï or has at least some roots in late Shï‘ite literature, one aspect seems to be worth­ while noting here. With Al-Khumeinï the political element has become central, and he denounces contemptuously those iulamä who deal ‘only with the details of purity and impurity’ and the like, and do not attempt to enforce true Islam through a state. In Islam every precept, even cultic practices such as prayer or the had) and ‘ashürä processions have social and political aspects. Islam arose mainly in order to found a just govern­ ment (huküma cädila) based on the divine precepts regarding financial, political, legal, educational and every other aspect. The implementation 10 11

Al-huküma al-islämiyya, Beirut 1979, p. 124. Ibid., pp. 14—15.

[ 134 ]

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh of these divine laws is impossible without an Islamic government and state. Therefore, the most urgent duty incumbent upon every Muslim is to strive towards the establishment of an Islamic government. The religious leader, as the embodiment of the legislative, executive and judicial authorities, has to lead this endeavour and rule the Islamic state once achieved, at least until the reappearance of the last Shï‘ite hidden Imam.12 Nowhere in the book will we find a fully detailed theory or description of the Islamic government and state.13 Perhaps those, as in the Middle Ages, are still considered unworthy of mention. But the stress on the political character of Islam and its need for a state seems to be quite new in Islam and worthwhile noting. Of course, many new questions will arise in this context. For example, why did this new consciousness take so long (more than one hundred and fifty years of Western impact on Islam) to emerge in the Muslim East ? Why did it come to the fore only in this last stage of rejection of the West ? Another question may raise the connection between Arab socialism and the new political awareness in Islam. S. N. Eisenstadt has already shown that socialism in non-European countries has ‘often tended to pick up some of the traditional symbols of collective identity, even at times to create such symbols, and turn them into rather central components of their political symbolism. Thus, the ideology of Arab socialism tended to emphasize the close affinity to some basic tenets of Islam — those of community and social justice’.14 Socialism in the Arab countries, as elsewhere, ‘developed all the major characteristics of a great tradition’ and, instead of ‘being a class struggle within a nation — became in­ ternational’.15 The West is always the capitalist, oppressive, exploiting tyranny whereas each Islamic country, irrespective of its regime and economic resources (Libya !), could represent the proletariat and ‘true’ democracy as it were. How will these concepts be integrated now into the new political awareness of Islam ? Will they change and in which ways ? One may perhaps already discern some signs of a contemporary 12

Despite the ShPite overtones there is no doubt that Al-Khumeini addresses Sunni ‘ulamü and people as well. See my ‘The Shi‘ite aspect of AlKhumeini’s Political Theory’, Ha-mizrah he-hadash (‘The New East’, Israel Oriental Society), XXX (1981), pp. 99-106 (in Hebrew). 13 See the detailed analysis of N. Calder, ‘Accommodation and Revolution in Imämi Shi‘i Jurisprudence — Khumayni and the Classical Tradition’, Middle East Studies, X VIII (1982), pp. 3-20. 14 S. N. Eisenstadt & Y. Azmon, Socialism and Tradition, Jerusalem 1976, p. 4. 15 Ibid., pp. 11, 16.

[ 135 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After return to the model of national, internal ‘class struggle’, at least among the radical Islamic groups, for instance in Iran or contemporary Egypt. But, this ‘class struggle’ also seems to have become more and more of a political struggle, wherein the rulers (formerly the Shah or Anwar al-Sädät, and now Al-Khumeini himself) represent once more the ex­ ploiting tyranny (whether truly or symbolically) whereas the radical groups always represent the ‘true democratic proletariat’. To sum up : little doubt can be cast on the fact that J. Talmon’s basic ideas and structure of thought apply to the contemporary Islamic scene as well. Yet some shifts of stress have to be made in order to take into account the inherent characteristics of Islam and its general religious mood, which are even more conducive to the modem pheno­ mena of totalitarian democracy than are those of secular, modern Europe. Modernization in the case of Islam was more of a catalysis, accelerating internal processes and bringing into the open latent exist­ ing tendencies. It has exerted perhaps its deepest influence in the political sphere at the moment of its rejection, through stimulating the political instinct in Islam and for the first time in its history intro­ ducing a demand for an Islamic state, a truly totalitarian democracy.

[ 136 ]

Totalitarian Democratic Hermeneutics and Policies in Modern Jewish Religious Nationalism by

U R IE L TAL Tel Aviv University

Introduction T w o d i v e r g e n t t r e n d s in Jewish religious nationalism in Israel are examined here — one of political messianism and one of political restraint. The first trend is characterized by the collection of articles entitled Erez nahala (‘Land Possessed as an Inheritance’), written by leading teachers and members of the Gush Emunim movement, among others.1 These postulate that the Six Day War brought about radical changes in both our physical and metaphysical status ; that the military vic­ tory was an astonishing and divine miracle ; that the end of days — the eschatological era of redemption — has already begun and is being realized here and now. In mystical terminology, through the con­ quest of the Land, Erez Israel has been redeemed from oppression by the sitra ahra (literally : the ‘other side’, or the ‘side of evil’) and has entered the realm of all-embracing sanctity. Through the war, the Shekhina, the Divine Presence dwelling among us, was elevated from the dust, for it too had been in exile. Hence, if we were to return one single piece of land to other nations we would be giving back control to the forces of evil.2 In this same strain, some of the leading 1 Erez-nahala — zekhutenu ‘al erez yisrael ( ‘Land Possessed as an In­ heritance— Our Right to the Land of Israel’), ed. Y. Shaviv, Jerusalem 1976, 143 pp. 2 Ibid., pp. 111-112, the late Rabbi E. Hadaya, ‘Is it Permissible to Return Conquered Territory — All or Part of It ?’ (from his article in No'am, I) ; see also Gedole ha-tor a 'al hahzarat ha-shetahim ( ‘Rabbinical Authorities on Return of the Territories’), Bene-Braq 1980, p. 126. This pamphlet, published without name of editor or publisher, includes the expressions of rabbis, Hasidic leaders, leaders of Agudat Israel, et sim., on the prohibition of returning territories to non-Jews ; some of the quotations seem to have been taken out of context.

[ 137 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After participants in Nequda, the journal of the settlements in the West Bank, interpret the latest campaign, the Peace for Galilee War, as another sanctified war, another religious duty,3 while Israel’s military presence in southern Lebanon is interpreted as evidence of the divine promise to the holy congregation of Israel to own ‘. .. every place ¡whereon the soles of your feet shall tread... from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast b e .. .’.4 The second trend expresses the attitude of religious Zionists, such as the members of the cOz Weshalom movement, who oppose the stand of the Gush Emunim, yet also accept the halakha as the unquestionable binding authority in Judaism. They conceive the religious law as liber­ ating the Jew from excesses of piety, zeal and ecstasy. They argue that, ultimately, the mystification of social and political reality, as pro­ pounded by Gush Emunim, is likely to retard the rational character of religious, social and intellectual life, as well as the growth of an open society and of a democratic state. They are apprehensive of the possibility of a totalitarian political authority which could easily arise from fanaticism, and they warn of danger to the moral character Nequda, Journal of the Settlements in Judaea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. See, e.g., Y. bin Nun, ‘Yesh gam milhama musariV ( ‘There Is Also a Moral War*), Nequda, No. 47 (3 September 1982), pp. 4, 5, 14. See also H. Segal’s interview of Rabbi S. Aviner: €Leromem et ha-ruah* (To Lift the Spirit’), ibid.. No. 48 (High Holidays Issue, 198J), pp. 4, 5. Cf. S. Arieli, Mishpat ha-milhama ( ‘The Rules of War’), Jerusalem 1971, especially the chapter : ‘The Wars of the State of Israel’, pp. 170 ff. 4 See Deut. xi : 24 ; Y. Elizur, *Ha-gam levanon hi erez-yisrael ?’ (Ts Leba­ non also the Land of Israel?’), Nequda, No. 48 (1982), p. 12. A sys­ tematic and dogmatic definition of ‘the holiness of conquered areas ac­ cording to Jewish Law’ in line with this trend is offered by Rabbi S. Goren in the light of the Six Day War : Accordingly for ‘. . . all areas and territories which were sanctified by the returnees of the Babylonian Exile . . . especially as regards the commandments that can be observed in the Land of Israel only . . . their sanctity . . . continues to be valid and binding for our days and the days to come . . .’. This approach is based on Maimonides’ Hilkhot terumot, chap. I, Rule 5, and also on ibid., Rule 2 : ‘. . . the Land of Israel. . . [denotes] each place conquered by a king of Israel or a prophet with the approval of the majority of Israelites, and this is called conquest by m a jo rity ...’ ; cf. Rabbi S. Goren, Tor at ha-mo*adim ( ‘The Teachings of the Festivals’), Tel Aviv 1964, p. 614. In the light of this approach, see the detailed treatise by Rabbi Y. Ariel on Trans-Jordan and the Golan in the halakha, Erez yarden wehermonim ( ‘Land of Jordan and the Hermons’), Golan Heights 1979, 42 pp. (espe­ cially ‘. . . the second sanctity — the conquest by Ezra and the generations that followed’, pp. 24 ff.) ; see there also the map of the areas settled by the returnees from Babylon, p. 26. 3

[ 138 ]

Uriel Tal of the society, and of the loss of political realism and civil responsibility should politics be mystically consecrated.5 The methodological point of departure used herein is similar to that used by Peter L. Berger in his studies of the social aspects of a theory of religion. He points out that one of the social functions of religion is the legitimization of situations ‘in terms of all-encompassing sacred reality’.6 Accordingly, situations of crisis, of tension, of threat to realities previously taken for granted and to the stability of one’s existence are often characterized by the experience of spiritual ecstasy. While spiritual ecstasy is usually thought of in terms of an individual phenomenon, in times of crisis entire societies have been known to ex­ perience it. When crises, such as natural catastrophes, social upheavals or wars, give rise to the use of violence, it is frequently *... accompanied by religious symbolizations’ interpreted in mystic, ecstatic and often (as Thomas Luckmann would have it), self-imposed totalitarian forms of political culture. At this point, Berger emphasizes that these observations do not imply a sociologically deterministic theory of religion ; nor do they constitute a behaviouristic over-simplification claiming that any religious system applied to social and political institutions is nothing but the reflection of socio-political needs. Rather, if religion functions as a consecrating agent for social and political structures, those structures turn into 5

6

Platform of ‘Oz Weshalom (9 paragraphs) ; see also selected paragraphs of the ‘Platform’ in ‘Oz Weshalom, No. 3, pp. 15, 16; M. Unna, ‘Mi qovea‘ *adifuyot le’umiot?’ ( ‘Who Determines National Priorities?’), in: Yedi‘on ha-hug ha-ra‘yoni-medini lezionut datit (Bulletin of ‘Oz Weshalom — Re­ ligious Zionists for Strength and Peace ; henceforth : Yedi‘on), No. 9 (November 1977), p. 9 (reprinted from Ha-zofe, 11 October 1977) ; U. Simon, ‘Ha-hitnahalut bihuda uveshomron — behina musarit-datit’ ( ‘The Settlement in Judaea and Samaria — a Moral-Religious Examination’ ), in Yedi'on, No. 10 (1978), p. 4 ; M. Breuer, 'Ha-ma’avaq leshalom wehamahane ha-dati’ ( ‘The Struggle for Peace and the Religious Camp’), in Yedïon, No. 16 (1978), pp. 8-12. On the impact of these issues on parents of members of the religious Zionist youth movement Bene ‘Aqiva, see, e.g. : Yedion, No. 19 (JuneAugust 1979), pp. 4-15 ; ibid.. No. 21 (November-December 1979), pp. 3, 4 ; also ‘Amudim, the journal of the Religious Kibbutz, Vol. XXVII, No. 402 (1979), pp. 223-226. Cf. J. O’dea-Avi'ad, ‘The Messianic Prob­ lem’, reprinted from the Jerusalem Post, in : Yedi‘on, No. 16 (SeptemberOctober 1978), pp. 18-19. See also Z. Yaron, ‘A Criticism of “Messianic” Policy’, in : ‘Immanuel, No. 4 (1974), pp. 105-108. P. L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy — Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, N.Y. 1967, pp. 44-47. See also P. L. Berger & T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality — A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Penguin ed., Norwich 1979, pp. 122 ff.

[ 139 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After totalities, into non-democratic or anti-democratic forms of political behaviour. Berger points out that the interrelationship of society and politics, on the one hand, and of consecrating religion, on the other, is a dialectical one. Accordingly, in a particular historical development, a social process is the effect of religious ideation, while in another situation, the reverse may be the case. This last point is of great significance in the study of the two dif­ ferent and opposing trends in religious Zionism — that of political messianism, which conceives of the State of Israel as a meta-historical phenomenon realized in concrete history, and that of political demo­ cracy, which conceives of the State of Israel as a historical phenomenon symbolizing, inter alia, meta-historical values. If human activity and the individual amidst social reality are conceived not merely in terms of reacting functions, but also as acting factors — initiating, forming, conditioning their concrete Lebenswelt as the social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz emphasized7 — we may assume that the dichotomy, if not schism, between these trends cannot be explained in terms of their social background only. Indeed, the social background — ethnic origin, social stratification, age group, economic status, profession, education and cultural milieu — of the members of both trends is practically identical. Hence, one of the major factors creating the split between these two camps may be what Berger calls ‘religious ideation’. Or, it may be defined as the hermeneutical interpretation of the same religious norms according to different, sometimes opposing, interpreta­ tions, which are chosen, applied and accepted by the believer. The ability to develop alternative explications of the same source and then to accept the yoke, the consequences, is perhaps one of the major strengths of halakhic Judaism. A significant example is the drastic difference of positions taken by Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli and the late Rabbi Zevi Yehuda Kook.8 JVhat then is the historical meaning of the State of Israel as under­ stood by religious Zionists ? What is the function of time and space in political realities ? Is our time — our era — one of eschatological A. Schutz, ‘Some Structures of the “Life World” ’, in : Collected Papers, III, The Hague 1966, pp. 118-139. See also M. Natanson, ‘Alfred Schutz Symposium — The Pregiveness of Sociality’, in : D. Ihde & R. M. Zaner (eds), Interdisciplinary Phenomenology (Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, No. 6 ), The Hague 1977, pp. 109 ff. 8 H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode — Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Tübingen 1965, pp. 290 ff. See also J. Bleicher, Herme­ neutics as Method — Philosophy and Critique, London-Boston—Henley 1980, chaps 4, 11. 7

[140]

Uriel Tal fulfilment or even of apocalyptical salvation ? Or are we in the realm of historical time ? Is the sacrosanctity of space, the domain in which the State of Israel expands, dependent on politically fixed boundaries, or are territorial boundaries conceived in terms of historical, hence, changing space ? 9 Political Messianism By its own self-definition, the messianic trend is radical and uncom­ promising. It can be found in the Gush Emunim, among large sections of the religious Zionist youth movements, public schools, high school yeshivot, student bodies, military units of yeshivot, settlers in the territories, and members and supporters of movements such as Greater Erez Israel, the Tehiyya political party, and others.10 This trend interprets time in terms of a metaphysical fulfilment. The meaning of time is explicated in rabbinic interpretations of the dif­ ference between this world and the messianic age. The Babylonian sage, Mar Shmuel, asserts (tractate Berakhot 34b) that the only dis­ tinction between this world and the messianic age is ‘political sub9

U. Tal, ‘The Land and the State of Israel in Israeli Religious Life’, in : Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly, 76th Annual Convention, XXXVIII, New York 1976, pp. 1-40. See also idem, ‘Historical and Metahistorical Self-Views in Religious Zionism’, in : Self-Views in Historical Perspective in Egypt and Israel, ed. S. Shamir, Tel Aviv 1980, pp. 89-99. 10 Morasha (‘Heritage’), IX (Winter 1975), especially the part ‘The Redemp­ tion of the People and the Land’, pp. 8-65. The following are examples of self-expression typical of this movement : Rabbi S. Aviner, €Sha€ar ha-arez* (‘Section : The Land’) in : Arzi ( ‘My Land’) (Journal for the Study of the Living Relationship between the People of Israel and their Land in our Generation), No. 1, ed. Y. Baharav, Jerusalem 1982, pp. 7-34 ; Gush emunim — Tokhnit-av lehityashevut bihuda weshomron ( ‘Gush Emu­ nim — Basic Plan for the Settlement of Judaea and Samaria’), n.d., p. 41 ; and Gush emunim — Haza*a letokhnit hityashevutit bihuda weshomron ( ‘Gush Emunim — A Proposal for a Settlement Plan in Judaea and Samaria’), Jerusalem (Summer 1979), p. 6. On Gush Emunim in its beginnings, see €Al emunim, ed. B. Gal, Jerusalem 1976, pp. 3-38 ; also Sefer erez yisrael hashelema ( ‘The Greater Palestine Book’), ed. A. Ben ‘Ami, Movement for Greater Palestine, Tel Aviv 1977, Part One : ‘Israel’s Right on Its Land’, pp. 38 ff. ; Part Two : ‘Security and Foreign Policy’, pp. 155 ff. ; Part Three : ‘Demography and the Zionist Revolution’, pp. 308 ff. See the following most helpful studies on the Gush Emunim movement : Z. Ra‘anan, Gush emunim (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1980, 229 pp., with supplements ; A. Rubinstein, Miherzl €ad gush emunim uvahazara ( ‘From Herzl to Gush Emunim and Back’), Tel Aviv 1980, 180 pp. ; D. Rubinstein, Mi VAdonai elai — Gush emunim ( ‘On the Lord’s Side — Gush Emu­ nim’), Tel Aviv 1982, 197 pp.

[ 141 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After jugation’, or the ‘subjugation of the exiles’, meaning that the mes­ sianic age is a historical and political concept which lends itself to embodiment in concrete reality. It is not primarily a cosmic concept. As Maimonides emphasized, in the era of political redemption the King Messiah should not be expected to perform wonders (Hilkhot melakhim xx:3). It follows that cosmic, drastic changes in the order of creation, the universe, and nature which are prophesied for the final stage of redemption do not refer to the messianic age, and should not be expected at the current stage of political messianism, for they are related to a distant, unknown future in the world to come (cf. tractate Sanhedrin 99a). Therefore, according to Rabbi Shlomo Goren’s Tor at ha-mo‘adim,11 which seems to be a major source for this trend’s orthodox political philosophy, such prophecies of cosmic redemption are not yet relevant to our time ; rather our political, military, concrete, worldly situation constitutes the beginning of the messianic age. Hence, according to Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, we are already in the era of the Revealed End, and *... we affirm the absolute certitude of the appearance of the redemption now. Nothing here is in the realm of the secret or hidden’. Ezekiel’s prophecy, ‘O mountains of Israel ye shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people of Israel, for they are at hand to come’, renewed and reaffirmed in the eschatological yearn­ ings of talmudic sages (as in tractate Sanhedrin 98a), is— according to Rabbi Aviner and a growing number of political believers — being realized before our eyes. For indeed the agricultural settlement in our Land is generously bearing fruit.12 The thrust of this approach is that the mystique of the redemption 11 12

S. Goren, Torat ha-mo'adim, op. cit. (n. 4 ), pp. 542-551. Rabbi S. Aviner, 'Ha-realism ha-meshihi1 (‘The Messianic Realism’), in : Morasha, IX, p. 63 ; see also his essays in Arzi, No. 1, op. cit. (n. 10). Here, as elsewhere, Aviner reflects the attitudes of Rabbi Z. Y. Kook who said : ‘. .. People speak of the beginning of the redemption. In my opinion this is already the middle of the redemption . . . ’ According to Z. Y. Kook, the return to Zion, its conquest and settlement and the ‘. .. Kingdom of Israel being rebuilt anew . . . this is the revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven . . .’. Reprinted in the collection of essays Tora umelukha — 'al meqom ha-medina bayahadut ( ‘Law and Kingdom — On the Position of the State in Judaism’), ed. S. Federbusch, Jerusalem 1961 (henceforth : Tora umelukha), pp. 102-103. In the same spirit, Y. Hazani too quotes Z. Y. Kook’s Lintivot yisra’el ( ‘On the Ways of Israel’), Part Two, p. 159 : the State of Israel in our days is indeed the State foretold by the Prophets, among other reasons precisely because of the prominent place secularism fulfils in the process of salvation; see Nequda, No. 37 (18 December 1981), p. 8.

[ 142 ]

Uriel Tal has become tangible, concrete, and actual rather than covert. The commencement of the messianic age is revealed in the conquest of the Land, political sovereignty and the ingathering of the exiles ; only later will eschatological changes take place on a cosmic scale. Hence, our days should be understood in light of the Exodus from Egypt and the conquest by Joshua, for then too the events took place in a natural way, inaugurating the times of redemption through victorious war­ fare.13 Another interpretation of redemptive time is related to the talmudic sage Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba who said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, ‘All the prophets prophesied only concerning the messianic age’. This concept is now interpreted as a significant step forward in political messianism, as it claims that all prophecies, including those about changes of a cosmic nature, relate to concrete redemptive times — which we have allegedly arrived at. Indeed, Rabbi Zevi Yehuda Kook and an ever-expanding number of disciples claim that since we are already in the New Era, in the era of personal salvation and national redemp­ tion, an existential political situation of totality, rather than of toler­ ance, has been inaugurated. This totality of holiness, which now engulfs all aspects of reality, was expounded in a symptomatic col­ lection of sermons called ha-ma‘alot mimacamaqim (published after the 1973 Yom Kippur War by Har Ezion Yeshiva) : We have to see the greatness of this hour in its biblical dimen­ sion, and it can be seen only through the messianic perspective... only in the light of the Messiah. . . . Why did the war of Gog and Magog come ? . . . after the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel the war can have only one significance : the purification, refining, and cleansing of the congregation of Israel.14 Torat ha-mo*adim> op. cit. (n. 4 ), p. 551 ; see also a parallel source : Rabbi Y. Shchepansky asserts that indeed all the wars, whether of the time of the Exodus from Egypt or in our own day, are part of the overall programme for redemption, the character of which is yet natural, ‘. . . that they conquer the land in a natural way, with weapons, so as to lift the people from dejection of slavery and subjugation, the result of which was the habit of stretching one’s neck out for his annihilators . . . . So as to breathe in him the spirit of courage and an ‘elevated Soul’, *Tora uge’ula' ( ‘Law and Redemption’), in : Tora umelukha, op. cit (n. 12), p. 108. 14 Y. Amital, Ha-ma*alot mi-ma*amaqim — Devarim besugiot ha-dor *al ha-teshu*ot we*al ha-milhamot ( ‘The Ascents Out of the Depths — Issues of our Generation on the Deliverances and on the Wars’), Jerusalem 1974, p. 21 (also cf. p. 22), and p. 28. Rabbi ‘Amital seems to have changed his mind recently ; see Y. ‘Amital, *Meser politi o meser hinukhi9 (‘A Political or an Educational Message’), in: Toraß çionut, shalom — qoveç

13

[ 143 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After The second category of historical self-understanding is space. Space undergoes an exegetical reformulation similar to that of time. It as­ sumes the form of and encompasses sanctified localities and neighbour­ hoods and venerated sites such as burial grounds, gravestones, walls, trees. It is the setting for events that took place in, or are believed to have taken place in, the holy, promised Land. In recent years, the interpretation of the holiness of space has tran­ scended the original halakhic meaning. According to the original mean­ ing (stated, for example, in Mishna tractate Kelim i : 6), the Land is holy because only there is it possible to fulfil the mizwot ha-teluyot ba'areç, i.e. to observe the religious and ritual laws concerning agri­ culture, socio-economic customs and ways of life related to rural eco­ nomy. Now, however, following ancient or mediaeval folklore and folkways, the Land itself becomes holy rather than merely pointing to a meta-space ; the space has actually become the incarnation of meta-historical holiness. Among the sources of inspiration and political justification for this concept are biblical traditions related to the patriarchs. We read in Genesis of Abraham passing through the Land to Shechem, or Moreh ; Sarah dying in Qiryat Arba‘ (‘Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron’) and being buried in the cave of Machpelah. Eventually the land, the fields, the caves, the trees, the rocks and ‘...all the borders round about’ were ' ... made sure unto Abraham for a possession’, and promised by the Lord ‘. .. unto thy seed’. According to this perception, those places have become a meta-historical reality. Once these primordial roots are uncovered, the sacrosanctification of place becomes a practical, political, not simply a theological, necessity.15 ma’amarim, Tenu‘at Netivot Shalom ( ‘Paths-of-Peace Movement’), Jerusalem 1983, pp. 3-8. See especially Rabbi Y. ‘Amital’s more detailed deliberations in : Alon shevut, ed. Yossi Eliav, Har ‘Ezion 1983, pp. 34—52. 15 Qiryat arba‘ hi hevron ( ‘Qiryat Arba‘ Indeed Is Hebron’) (Collection of Articles and Pictures on the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the Renewal of the Jewish Settlement in Hebron, Passover 1968 — Passover 1978), ed. M. ‘Ozeri, Be‘er-Sheva‘, n.d., p. 98. See also Alon more — ffidush ha-yishuv ha-yehudi beshomron ( ‘Alon More — The Renewal of the Jewish Settlement in Samaria’ ), Jerusalem, n.d. See also the reports on discussions and polemics among members of the Religious Kibbutz, such as in the aftermath of the conference entitled ‘Settlement — Foundation of Sovereignty’, organized by the action com­ mittee of the Hebron Hill Settlements together with the secretariat of the Religious Kibbutz, in : ‘Amudim, No. 388 (1978), pp. 155 ff. ; M. Unna, ‘Settlement — Not Conquest’, ibid.. No. 390 (1978), pp. 221-223; the response by M. Yogev of Kefar ‘Ezion to D. Lazar, ‘Shilo is holier than Sa‘ad’, ibid., No. 403 (1979), pp. 264 ff.

[ 144 ]

Uriel Tal A systematic and dogmatic point of departure in this matter is found in Nahmanides’ notes to the fourth positive commandment of Maimonides’ Sefer ha-mizwot, the code enumerating the commandments, and his commentary to Numbers xxxiii : 53, 54 : ‘And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it’. Nahmanides teaches that \ .. we are commanded to take possession of the land... we should not leave it in the hands of any other people or allow it to lie waste’. The essence of this com­ mandment, in the words of Nahmanides, is ‘. .. that we are commanded to enter the land, to conquer its cities, and to settle our tribes there... for this is the commandment of conquest. . . ’. This source is currently cited as a binding normative authority in many studies, sermons and treatises, including the Independence Day prayerbook widely used by observant and non-observant Jews and, recently, in a most significant ruling of the Council of the Chief Rab­ binate headed by Rabbi Shlomo Goren and endorsed by Prime Minister Begin. Here, the oft-debated prohibition on withdrawal from the ter­ ritories and surrendering parts of the Holy Land once they are con­ quered is strongly emphasized. The council, in its session of March 1979, ruled that this prohibition rests on the biblical commandment lo tehonem. Deut. vii : 2 teaches that when the children of Israel were to have conquered the Land and dispossessed its inhabitants, they were commanded ‘thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them (welo tehonem) ’. Tractate ‘Avoda zara 20a ff., as well as Maimonides’ Hilkhot ‘ahum x : 3-6, the rules concerning rela­ tions with gentiles or idolaters, interpret this phrase in several ways, among them the one emphasized by the council ‘. .. You shall not give them a place of settlement on the soil’. Here, tehonem is derived from hanoh, to encamp, rather than from hanon, to show mercy. Referring to the ‘covenant between the pieces’ (Gen. xv) and the subsequent interpretations in tractates Bava hatra 191a,b, and ‘Avoda zara 53b, the council, led by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren and opposed by Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, added that the prohibition on ceding any of the occupied territories is derived from the fact that the possession of the Land is a divinely ordained inheritance. Hence Rabbi Goren and the council overruled the opinion that, even according to the Bible, parts of the Land could be surrendered to non-Jewish political powers, as with Solomon’s gift of twenty Galilaean cities to Hiram (I Kings), for in II Chronicles we learn the contrary — ‘. .. that the cities which Hiram had restored to Solomon, Solomon built them and caused the children of Israel to dwell there’.16 16

‘Communiqué to the Press’, by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, of 1 April 1979

[ 145 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Thus, according to this trend, a total and uncompromising sanctity rests upon the current boundaries ; we are in the era of messianic redemption, with the splendour and the glory and the total normative authority of eschatological salvation realized in our political situation. Political Restraint The opposing trend in religious Zionism argues that contemporary po­ litical reality should be understood by applying rational and socioethical self-restraint, and that this approach is precisely what the halakha, the rabbinic law in its historical unfolding, requires. The proponents of this second trend tend to be moderate and to urge compromise, so far as politics are concerned, for the sake of a historical rather than a meta-historical self-understanding. They are found in the ‘Oz Weshalom movement, among members of the renewed Tora We‘avoda, which hopes to revive the religious Labour Zionist tradition, among the religious kibbutz movement, among members of the recently founded Netivot Shalom (Taths-of-Peace5) movement and also within circles mentioned in connection with the first trend. A systematic point of departure, as Ephraim E. Urbach pointed out years ago,17 is the interpretation of the halakha as a factor which (No. 213/79) ; ‘Communiqué to the Press’, by the Council of the Chief Rabbinate, on the decision of 28 March 1979 ; ‘Communiqué by the Council of the Chief Rabbinate’, presided over by Chief Rabbi Goren, of 23 May 1979 (No. 612). See the declaration by Chief Rabbi the Rishon Lezion ‘Ovadia Yosef on fHahzarat shetahim lema€an ha-shalom le3or ha-halakha3 (‘Returning of Territories for the Sake of Peace in the Light of Jewish Law’), of 27 August 1979 ; cf. Jerusalem Post (22 August 1979 ; 23 August 1979 ; 5 September 1979) ; see also Rabbi Yosef’s Radio Decla­ ration according to Ha’arez (15 September 1978). A most informative source is the list of rabbinic declarations, decisions and rulings, on ‘Our Right to the Temple Site’ ; on the absolute sanctity of ‘Holy Places’ ; on the ‘Prohibition on Returning Territories of the Land of Israel to non-Jews’ ; on the belongingness of Judaea and Samaria to the Land of Israel ; on ‘Prayer for the Wholeness of the Land of Israel’, in: Me’orot (Quarterly of the Israel Chief Rabbinate on Issues of Jewish Law, Legend, Ethics and Judaism), Vol. I, No. 1 (1980), Jerusalem, pp. 122 ff. See also an instructive example of political exegesis of the prohibition (Lo tehonem9 ( ‘and show no mercy to diem’ or ‘do not allow them encampment’) : Y. Mizrahi, ‘Israeli Sovereignty over the Land of Israel’ in the pamphlet Qiryat Arba€ hi hevron> op. cit. (n. 15), p. 13. 17 E. E. Urbach, 'Mashmatutah ha-datit shel ha-halakha3 ( ‘The Religious Significance of the Jewish Law’), in : €Al yahadut wehinukh (‘On Judaism and Education’), Jerusalem 1967, pp. 127 ff. This essay has been reprinted in a number of publications such as €Erkhe ha-yahadut ( ‘Values of Judaism’), a collection of lectures, Mahbarot lesifrut, Tel Aviv 1963, pp. 24 ff. See also E. E. Urbach, ‘Who Is a Hero ? — One Who Turns His Enemy

[ 146 ]

Uriel Tal throughout history has freed Judaism from an excess of ecstasy or ascetism, from political romanticism, from the totality of time and space structured as myths. Accordingly, it is now argued that a mys­ tification of political circumstances cannot but disrupt the peace pro­ cess in the Middle East. While the sanctity of the Land is firmly main­ tained, territorial boundaries are to be conceived as historical pheno­ mena, as results of political and strategic as well as moral considerations, and hence if necessary, subject to change. From these primary assumptions a restraining policy condemning ex­ tremism as being contrary to the spirit of true Judaism is being derived. The ‘Oz Weshalom movement, in its published Principles — and ac­ cording to its leading members such as Moshe Unna, Uriel Simon, Yosef Walk — advocates territorial and political concessions rather than fanaticism and radicalism.18 Ethical rather than militant criteria are emphasized due to the belief that prolonged imposed rule over ethnic or religious minorities such as the Arab population of the Land of Israel cannot but distort the democratic and ethical foundations of Jewish society. The personal and moral integrity of the rulers them­ selves, of our youth, is at stake. Hence compromise, strongly com­ mended in Items 3 and 4 of the Principles, is understood as a religious value, as kibbutz member D. El‘azar has shown referring to the Tal­ mudic explication in tractate Sanhedrin 6b on Zechariah’s saying : ‘. .. execute the judgement of truth and peace in your gates’. Com­ promise as a peaceful solution to conflicts of interest was commended in several strict halakhic juridical matters (Hilkhot sanhedrin ii : 7 and the Shulhan ‘arukh, Hoshen mishpat xii : 2). As Uriel Simon points out, Abraham practised compromise in order to make peace between his shepherds and those of Lot. The adoption of this policy for the into His Friend’, paper delivered at a Symposium on the Israel-Arab Conflict, Jerusalem, January 1970, in : Petahim, No. 3 (13) (1970), pp. 5 ff. See also one of the educational attempts at teaching constructive social values in the framework of Jewish Law: Tora wa’avoda — leqet meqorot uma’amarim (‘Judaism and Labour— A Collection of Sources and Essays’), collected and edited by Y. ben Ya‘aqov, Kefar ‘Ezion 1979 (50th Anni­ versary 1929-1979), pp. 129 ff. The volume includes essays critical of the Tora wafavoda policies as well, such as by Rabbi Y. Ariel Stiglitz, pp. 124 ff. See also M. Breuer, ‘Ha-ma’avaq leshalom weha-mahane ha-dati’, op. cit. (n. 5 ), pp. 8-12. 18 See above, n. 5, and also Principles 3 and 4. One of the earlier expressions of this attitude has been given by P. Rosenbliith, ‘Lemahutah shel medina datif (‘On the Nature of a Religious State’), Gvilin — Lemahshava datit le’umit (‘Leaves — for Religious National Thought’), No. 1 (May 1957), pp. 13-16.

[ 147 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After sake of peace was rewarded by God’s reconfirmation, in Genesis, of Abraham’s right to the whole of the Land.19 Also, as Mordekhai Breuer has pointed out,20 from a strict halakhic point of view there is no justification for the argument against terri­ torial compromise if this would indeed seriously enhance the peace process in the Middle East and thus the prospect of saving lives. Building his hermeneutical elaboration on authorities such as Rabbi Avraham Yizhaq Kook and Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, Breuer shows that the lo tehonem clause, the prohibition on giving or selling land in Erez Israel to non-Jews, does not necessarily extend to the act of surrendering territories, especially if political and military experts are convinced that such an act may help to avoid bloodshed. More­ over, in contrast to the late Rabbi Zevi Yehuda Kook, and to Rabbis Avraham Kahana-Shapira and Ya‘aqov Ariel Stiglitz, who ruled that the conflict between Jews and Arabs is subsumed under the case of ‘religious persecution’ which categorically calls for martyrdom, Breuer warns against the abuse of that motive. He says that inciting true believers to undertake unnecessary hazards simply out of zealous pas­ sion and ecstasy should be avoided. Referring to major halakhic au­ thorities such as Maimonides’ Hilkhot eavoda zara v : 2,3,4, Breuer argues, as does Rabbi Yishai Yovel,21 that the Jewish-Arab conflict js hardly motivated by what the halakha calls ‘religious persecution’, the attempt of non-Jews (in this case, Muslims) to force Jews to trans­ gress their law and/or to convert (here to Islam). Hence from the Shulhan ‘arukh. Yore deea § 157, we infer that what is required in this conflict is not blind martyrdom but rather a readiness to compro­ mise, albeit with a firm stand on the Jews’ right to the Land of Israel. U. Simon, ‘Religion, Morality and Politics’, in: Forum (Winter 1978), pp. 102-110. See also Simon’s warning against * ... the danger of false Messianism’, ‘Biblical Galling — Conditional Promises’, in: Petahim, No. 2 (32), Jerusalem (1975), p. 24. 20 ‘Af sha'al mizwa min ha-tora* (*Not an Inch Less than According to the Law’), Jerusalem 1978 ; the booklet includes questions by M. Unna and responses by Rabbis S. Yisraeli and H. D. Halevy, and an essay by Dr M. Breuer, pp. 10-16. See also Rabbi A. Lichtenstein, ‘Reaffirming National and Israeli Pride — An Open Letter to the Prime Minister*, in : Tora, zionut, shalom, op. cit. (n. 14), pp. 9-12. Cf. the polemics between A. A. Weingurt and M. Breuer on the issue of returning territories of the Land of Israel to non-Jews, in : Ha-ma'ayan, Vol. X V III, No. 4 (Jerusalem 1977/8), pp. 1-29. 21 Rabbi Y. Yovel, 'Hitnahalut — ya’avor we’al yehareg’ ('Settlement — Let one transgress [the law] yet [do] not be killed’), in : Morasha, No. 9, p. 29 (cf. pp. 26-30). 19

[ 148 ]

Uriel Tal It is this understanding of the calling to fulfil the halakha in a socioethical way which leads these religious Zionists to a historical rather than a meta-historical concept of time and space. Time is interpreted in the spirit of Maimonides’ restraining teachings about the messianic era. Accordingly, the sages and the prophets await the days of the Messiah (Hilkhot melakhim xii : 3) neither that they might rule over the world, nor that they might lord it over other nations, but rather *... that they might be free to engage in the study of the Tora and its wisdom’, thus establishing a better society firmly built on the Law. This means that moral and intellectual achievements, not the exercise of military might over a huge non-Jewish population, will eventually inaugurate messianic time. The same criteria, and more, are applied to space. Nahmanides’ fre­ quently quoted critical comment on Maimonides, *... we shall not leave it in the hand of others. . . ’, is not necessarily and exclusively to be applied to maximal boundaries. As Rabbi Yishai Yovel points out, a variety of boundaries for Erez Israel, the Promised Land, are to be found in the Scriptures, teaching us that it is not the changing poli­ tical boundaries but the Land itself which is holy.22 For example, according to Genesis, the boundaries of Canaan at the time of the sons of Noah and their generations are not those promised to Abraham and his descendants at the ‘covenant between the pieces’ (x : 19 ; xv : 18-21), and both of these differ from the boundaries promised to the children of Israel in the desert, according to Exodus (xxiii : 31); or prior to entering the Land, according to Deuteronomy (i : 7 ; xxxiii : 2-4). There is also a discrepancy between the various promises in the Pentateuch and those for the End of Days, according to Ezekiel (xlvii : 13). None of these boundaries coincides with those the tribes were to inherit by lot, according to Numbers (xxxiv : 2-12), nor are they the same as those of the inheritance and settlement found in Joshua (xii) or Judges (iii, iv). And none of these boundaries even compare with those of the second inheritance at the time of Ezra 22

Ibid., pp. 28, 29. On the entire issue of the borders of the Land of Israel, their religious significance and historical and political development, see two significant publications by the Israel Defence Forces: “Al erez yisra’el ligvuloteha’ ( ‘On the Land of Israel According to Its Borders’) in : Mahanayim, No. 127 (1972) ; *Erez yisra’el bayahadut’ (‘The Land of Israel in Judaism’), in : Seqira hodshit ( ‘Monthly Survey’), No. 4—5 (April-May 1979), Chief of Staff, Chief Education Officer, pp. 1 ff. ; 37 ff. ; 43 ff. On the position of the Gush Emunim trend see Y. Elizur, ‘Ha-gam levanon hi erez yisra’el’? ( ‘Is Lebanon also the Land of Israel?’), in: Nequda, No. 48 (1982/3), pp. 10 ff.

[ 149 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After and Nehemiah or in the days of King Yannai and Agrippa I. Rabbi Yishai Yovel agrees with others, some of whom support policies quite different from his in matters of religion and state relations, that ac­ cording to Maimonides (Hilkhot terumot i : 5) the second inheritance is legally binding rather than the first. If so, Rabbi Yishai Yovel con­ cludes, Samaria, for instance, would not be included in the halakhically fixed boundaries, since it was not conquered by those who returned from Babylonia and was only briefly held by the Hasmonaeans. These religious Zionists are not alone in opposing the essential features of political extremism.23 They oppose the attribution of absolute sanctity to phenomena that are essentially historical and subject to tempor­ ary change, such as territorial boundaries. They are against the blurring of rational and critical thought by an excess of political romanticism and pious sermonizing. They are against taking a personal mystic experience — no matter how rich and elevating it may be — and transferring it to political events as this may lead to undemocratic and totalitarian policies, confusing coercion with freedom, indoctrina­ tion with education, and the flaring up of national radicalism, both secular and religious, with democratic national policy. Forms of Political Messianic Experience — The Conceptual Framework The advocacy of political messianic attitudes and policies reflects a relatively new phase in the development of Zionism and therefore attention will be especially focused on this trend in the last section of this treatise. First, it is necessary to keep in mind that the authors of these articles —- the members of religious Zionist movements and of Gush Emunim, the religious members of the Tehiyya party and of the Greater Palestine Movement, the religious settlers in Judaea and Samaria, teachers in religious schools and yeshiva high schools — do not constitute a monolithic bloc. Among them can be found various approaches to the Land and the State of Israel ; some may even be changing their minds, 23

Y. Arieli, ‘Historical Attachment and Historical Ri"ht\ in : Forum (Winter 1979), Nos. 28-29, pp. 90-101 ; N. Rotenstreich, ’Tizkoret ‘at ribonut’ (‘A Reminder on Sovereignty’), in literary supplement of Yedi'ot aharonot (8 November 1974) ; as to the critical and phenomenological approach of the author to the entire issue, see Rotenstreich’s significant study *Oçma udemutah (‘Power and Its Image’), Jerusalem 1963, pp. 94-123. See also Sipuah o shalom ( ‘Annexation or Peace’), a collection of articles on the future of the administered territories, Tel Aviv, December 1967, 40 pp. ; see especially the contributions by S. Yizhar, S. Har-Even, B. ‘Evron, A. Elon, M. Unna. Cf. A. Plascov, ‘A Palestinian State ? Examining the Alternatives’, Adelphi Papers, No. 163, London 1981, pp. 13-59.

[ 150 ]

Uriel Tal especially when confronting the problems of their relationship to the Arab population or when pondering the latest war.24 Also, it is important to keep in view, when studying their writings, that some believers tend to be reluctant to reveal their innermost creeds, convictions and feelings to the general public or to the noninitiated. This reluctance is found not only among believers with ro­ mantic or mystic inclinations, as one would probably assume, but also in the realm of halakhic discourse, especially where religious moti­ vations have political implications25 24

See above, n. 14 ; cf. also H. Porat’s criticism of Rabbi ‘Amital : IJ. Porat, 9Matai en holqim kavod lerav ?* ( ‘When Does One Not Do Honour to a Rabbi-Teacher?’), in : Nequda, No. 50 (22 November 1982), pp. 6, 7. On the varieties of opinion among Gush Emunim members, see, e.g. : Rabbi M. Levinger, ‘We and the Arabs’, in: Nequda, No. 36 (27 November 1981) , pp. 8-11, 15 ; I. Tor, ‘A Remedy for a National Mental Disease’, in : Nequda, No. 39 (5 February 1982), pp. 8, 9 ; E. Sadan, ‘To Establish Once Again the Jewish State’, in : Nequda, No. 35 (30 October 1981), pp. 6, 7, 9, 11 ; Y. Hazani, ‘The Jewish State was Established in 1948’, in : Nequda, No. 37 (18 December 1981) ; Rabbi S. Aviner, ‘Under Certain Circumstances It Is Necessary to Act Forcefully’, in : Nequda, No. 38 (15 January 1982), pp. 6-7. A significant example of differences of opinion among Gush Emunim members is the following group of articles : Rabbi Y. Shaviv (the authorship was erroneously ascribed to Gideon Erlich), ‘Go Turn to the Jewish Law’ (the Hebrew words for ‘go’ and €halakha*, i.e. Jewish Law, share the same root), in : Nequda, No. 45 (16 July 1982), pp. 16, 17 ; Y. Segal, ‘Indeed Do Go to the Jewish Law’, in : Nequda, No. 47 (3 September 1982) , p. 7 ; U. Dasberg, ‘There is No Moral War’, in : Nequda, No. 49 (22 October 1982), pp. 19, 20, 21. A voice against hatred and contempt towards the Arabs was raised by Miriam Shilo, ‘Thou Shalt Not Hate’, in : Nequda, No. 34 (8 September 1981), pp. 16, 17. As to the varieties of opinion among the Religious Kibbutz members, see the polemics following the talk of Rabbi S. Aviner to I.D.F. officers, summary of which appeared in Arzi, No. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 4-13 ; cf. especially the contributions by A. Shapira in : *Amudim, No. 443 (1982), pp. 48-49 ; and ‘Reacting to Rabbi Aviner’, ibid.. No. 444, pp. 89-93 ; also ‘The People of Israel and the Land of Israel’, ibid.. No. 445, pp. 131-139. Shapira disagrees with Aviner’s assertion that ‘. . . even if there is peace we ought to initiate a war of redemption in order to conquer it [the Land] .. .’. See also the source selection by Uriel Simon entitled ‘On Jewish Ethics of War’, in his essay ‘Shedding of Blood — Legal and Ethical Perspectives’ ( ‘Oz Weshalom Publication Series, No. 2), pp. 10-16. 25 Rabbi S. Aviner ‘ “...that they may not understand one another’s speech...” ’, in : Nequda, No. 27 (17 April 1981), pp. 6, 7. Aviner, interviewed by H. Segal, stated : ‘Heaven forbid that we should delete verses from the Tora which show that Lebanon is indeed part of the Land of Israel, and that he who was killed in the latest war died on Israeli soil, kissing sacred

[ 151 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Thus, some of the spiritual leaders of Gush Emunim advocate de­ emphasizing — for the time being — their conviction that southern Lebanon is simply the land of the tribes of Naphtali and Asher and therefore belongs to greater Palestine not less than any other place in Israel.26 They are also playing down, at this time, their feeling that, in the light of the organic union of Israel, the Land and the People, the liberal idea of equal rights, independent of ethnic or religious affiliation, can hardly be applied in a Jewish state. Civil rights should be granted to non-Jews only if and when they acknowledge the Noachian Laws according to their Judaic source. Also, they suggest that the non-Jew should be entitled to civil rights only as a ger toshav, that is, a sojourner, a stranger in the Land who has renounced paganism and observes the seven Noachian Laws, and provided only that the non-Jew wishes to be an Israeli citizen \ .. because of a tremendous admiration for the greatness and holiness of our nation’, or if he shows \ .. acknowledgement of the great mission of the people of Israel’. The non-Jew should not be granted the status of a ger zedeq who is a proselyte of righteousness and who would therefore be entitled to rights and duties equal to the Israeli Jew.27 And, finally, there are those who hint at their conviction that *... the continuation of our existence in the Land is dependent upon the emigration of the Arabs’ for, as we read, ‘they have no place here’. Hence, in wartime one should not differentiate between warrior and civilian for both are Israel’s enemy.28 In short, the people of Israel are ground. But, as we said, one should not say things that are unacceptable. A call for the annexation of Judaea and Samaria, on the other hand, is indeed acceptab le...’, in : Nequda, No. 48, op. cit. (n. 4 ), pp. 4, 5. On the necessity not to reveal in public all that the Jewish Law commands in matters such as the conquest of the Land, its borders, etc., according to Gush Emunim interpretation, see especially Rabbi Y. H. Henkin, ‘Halakhot shelo lefirsum’ ( ‘Jewish Laws Not To Be Publicized’), in : Nequda, No. 50 (12 November 1982), pp. 14, 15. 26 See Nequda, No. 48, pp. 4, 5 ; see also the detailed argumentation accord­ ing to which the holiness of the Land of Israel embraces also the territories of Transjordan, Lebanon and probably even more, Y. Elizur, ibid., pp. 10—13. 27 I. Tor, ‘A Remedy for a National Mental Disease’, in : Nequda, op. cit. (n. 24), pp. 8, 9 ; cf. Rabbi M. Levinger, ‘We and the Arabs’, op. cit. (n. 24), pp. 8, 9, 11, 15. 28 As above, the essay by I. Tor ; see also Y. bin Nun, ‘There Is Also a Moral War’, in : Nequda, op. cit. (n. 3 ), p. 14. An entirely dif­ ferent religious Zionist approach to the Arab population is shown by Rabbi S. Raphael, ‘The Rights of the Minorities in Israel According to Jewish Law’, reproduced with some omissions in the booklet Hahzarat shetahirn — zekhuyot mi'utim ( ‘The Return of Territories — Minorities’ Rights’) ( ‘Oz Weshalom publications. No. 3 ), pp. 11-14.

[1 5 2 ]

Uriel Tal commanded to be holy — not to be moral or humane according to ordinary criteria. The moral teachings which have been accepted by mankind, in principle at least, do not commit the Jew for he was chosen to be beyond them.29 In order to discern some of the emotive and noetic forms in which hermeneutics like these are made possible, it should be kept in mind that political messianism is not limited to the realm of personal, com­ munal or sectarian salvation. Rather, we are facing a historical process called by Jacob Talmon ‘the new dispensation’ amidst a modern society. In this divine order of worldly affairs, religion and society are totally interdependent so that politics, just as religion, tends ‘to em­ brace all walks of life’. Therefore, the secular state is capable of restor­ ing theocracy to its ancient glory, to its total authority.30 We are presently facing the emergence of highly articulated and consciously conceptualized forms of consecration of the Land, the Nation, the State, the Wars — in fact of everything and everybody Jewish. A total and all-embracing sacredness of reality — a ‘mystical realism’ — has become a growing factor in Israeli life, education and politics. This development has a dualistic structure for, while the Gush Emunim trend bestows mystic meaning upon reality, it is not entirely devoid of practical rationality ; while it enflâmes emotions, it is not entirely devoid of sobriety ; though it incites to enthusiasm, it does not ignore the tactical need for temporary restraint. It bestows a sense of holiness upon everything and hence even embraces secularism, not on its own merits but as an integral part of God’s creation, to be redeemed and converted once the true light is seen and acknowledged by all secular­ ists. Mystical realism, then, constitutes an organic union unfolding in the process of redemption, here and now. The mystic component of the union is said to be experienced in reality, while reality is said to be experienced in the mystique of being. Both are to be sensed in living action, in the joy of the mizwa — of the devotional fulfilment of a total normative commitment ; in the daily renewed experience of the 29

30

Y. Zuckerman, ‘The Realization Ambushes the Faith’, in : Nequda, No. 43 (21 May 1982), pp. 18-22. The metaphysical interpretation of the holiness of the Jewish people in the teachings of Rabbi A. Y. Kook has been transformed into a political strategy by his son, Rabbi £evi Yehuda, and his disciples : accordingly, the State of Israel is exempted from ordinary, moral commitments, for the Jews’ ethics are bound by a unique and exclusive relationship to God, totally different from universal ethics ; see, e.g., Nequda, No. 47 (3 September 1982), pp. 4, 5. J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism — The Romantic Phase, London 1960, pp. 65 ff.

[ 153 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After miracle of creation, but equally in the harshness of fear, suffering, pain, sorrow and death ; in the devastation — yet also splendour of the sanctified wars of Israel. One of the major expressions of the duality of ‘mystical realism’ is found in the intertwinement of the need for personal growth with the commitment to national expansionism. Both reflect a deeply felt urge to escape from a sense of confinement ; both are seen as a means to achieving a closer, truer, more authentic participation in the cosmic dimensions of one’s concrete existence ; both embody the act of the purgation of the soul and of the purification of the Land ; both sym­ bolize the union of time — the messianic future realized now — and space — the political sovereignty over greater Palestine realized here. Eternity is reflected in current time while cosmology is reflected in the settled Land. The conquest of wider borders actually realizes the overcoming of limitations of time, while the bestowal of eternal holiness upon the present realizes the absolute consecration of the soil, and of historical or sanctified sites. The individual, the pious, the devoted, is seized by rapturous zeal, yet also by a sense of bliss, joy, happiness or overflowing light and radiance ; his entire being longs to fuse in a glorious communion with his peers, his congregation, community, settlement, movement, people and nation. At the same time, divine inspiration emanates from the Land. The Land embodies God’s sublime presence with overpowering clarity, with beauty and in glory. Yet, one is not stricken dumb with amaze­ ment, nor is one overwhelmed by awe and rapture. Rather, this is an activating, invigorating and exciting ecstasy, an exaltation and rapture of ultimate union with the Land, the Nation and Jewish statehood. Thus, the realm of secularism is by no means neglected. On the con­ trary, it is only through natural vitality, through the enjoyment of exuberant health, through the participation in the cosmic energy that pulsates in all comers of the world — everywhere — and mainly in the holiness of the Land that the divine purpose can be realized. Profane action and divine creation, physical power and divine might, warfare and waging the war of the Lord, have now become forms of worship and sacrifice not less than the ordinary ritual ceremonies. It is at this point that the term ‘possession’ also acquires its dual meaning ; the devotional settler on recently conquered land is possessed by his messianic zeal, his zeal transforms the conquest into redemption, and temporary borders into eternal horizons — thus realizing the notion of erez nahala, of possessing the Holy Land by inheritance. The structure of cognition and articulation of this kind of mystic realism, evoking Jacob Talmon’s perceptive statement about the language typical

[ 154 ]

Uriel Tal of ‘messianic nationalism’, imparts a ‘social slant’ to theological modes of thinking. Accordingly, religious political messianism functions as ‘. .. a system of social and moral truths expressing God’s thinking. . . and when embodied in institutions, constitutes the Kingdom of God’.31 Indeed, the cognitive form of Zionistic political messianism is structured quite similarly ; it constitutes a duality of intuitive knowledge and practical rationality. While the main source of knowledge, belief and intuition is above pragmatic reasoning, its realization requires the use of pragmatism and, to some extent, discursive thinking. Thus, the cogni­ tive dualism is expressed in the immediacy of experience, the illumi­ nation of insight, the intimacy of participation in divine creation, the confidence in revelatory apprehension on the one hand, and the bestowal of total holiness upon all aspects of statehood, including power, violence, warfare and the rule over non-Jewish populations, on the other. For the political messianists, the knowledge of divine purpose, re­ vealed to the initiated and manifested in all worldly affairs, is accepted as the primary mode of political consciousness. This source of knowledge conditions — or controls, or if necessary, substitutes for — all other sources such as logical discourse, factual, experiential knowledge, and even a priori transcendental and critical cognition ; hence the total superiority and indisputable normative authority that this trend claims. As a result, a process of meaning reversal has taken place. The symbol has been transformed into substance and the substance has been elevated to the realm of the sacred. Political hermeneutics interpret symbolic as well as prophetic texts literally, and are uncompromising in the meaning they derive not only from halakhic texts but from literary, legendary, poetic and edifying texts which had not previously enjoyed legally binding authority. Moreover, the symbol participates in the concrete object to which it previously referred, so that the difference between matter and form, material and spirit, sign and signified, past and future, intrinsic and extrinsic, perception and imagination, mundane and spiritual, essential and accidental is dissolved ; the hidden meaning is revealed and the apparent revelation is concealed in everything. This entire framework embodies the new position in which the political messianist finds him­ self. The pious, devotional believer no longer stands at a distance in respect to himself, to the Land, to the Nation or to the State ; he ceases to accept the multiplicity of meanings and the complexity of existence. An all-inclusive totality reduces every phenomenon to its singular level 31

Ibid., p. 233.

[ 155 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After of signification, creating a feeling of absolute certainty and divine justifi­ cation, of joy and peace amidst an agonizing historical reality of antag­ onism, conflict and warfare. Closing Remarks — On the Contextual Framework In contemporary historical, political and religious thought there is a growing tendency to link social reality and theology. A significant cur­ rent in this development, especially in recent years, has been ‘political theology’, which in itself includes a variety of trends. Semantically all are derived from one root, from the original expression as voiced by Terentius Varro, which is discussed in Augustine’s City of God. Struc­ turally, political theology takes mythic forms, contrary to the forms of critical rationalism on the one hand, or sheer metaphysics on the other. Both language and form create the framework for the interpretation of the political community in terms of a divinized polis, even though its functions as such are secular, earthly, and concrete. Thus a dialectic structure evolves whereby secular socio-political needs are sacralized while sacral, religious values are incorporated in secular, this-worldly affairs. On this basis, political theology in our days has developed several systematic and dogmatic teachings.32 Some theologians consider the renewed term ‘political theology’ a suitable framework for the awaken­ ing Third World and the protest movements against racial, ethnic, economic or sex discrimination. This trend is sometimes called ‘revo­ lutionary theology’, for it accords political theology the character of a liberation movement. For example, in Paul Lehmann’s The Transfigu­ ration of Politics, religion should not be confined to the individual or to society, nor to intellectual historicism or critical demythologization, but should be politically involved, expressing civic and socio-ethical re­ sponsibility. Others, such as Herbert W. Richardson and M. Darrol Bryant, con­ sider political theology as a dialectical context for the constitutional separation of church and state, as opposed to the accepted historical interrelationship of religion and society. These dialectics brought about a ‘civil religion’ which enables a democracy to function in the light of sacred, social values, rooted in what Jonathan Edwards, back in the first half of the eighteenth century, called ‘America as God’s King­ dom’. 32

S. Wiedenhofer, Politische Theologie, Stuttgart-Berlin-Köln-Mainz 1976, pp. 31—68; H. Peukert (ed.), Diskussion zur ‘Politischen T h e o lo g ie Mainz 1969 ; A. Kee (ed.), The Scope of Political Theology, London 1978, chaps 1, 2.

[156]

Uriel Tal Still another trend — elaborated by Jürgen Moltmann and Johann B. Metz — considers political theology, in addition to its liberating func­ tion, as expressing a lesson to be learned from the historical experience of the Third Reich, an experience that was critically termed by Eric Voegelin on the eve of World War II, ‘political religion’.33 As Jacob Talmon has shown, this entire development in the modern era is rooted in historical movements which at one and the same time prepared the ground for rationalism and irrationalism, political self-restraint and political messianism — that is, the Enlightenment, national Roman­ ticism, and social Utopianism. In the light of the interdisciplinary symposia on Religion and Political Society, held in Europe in 1970 and in Canada in 1974, which dis­ cussed ‘. .. the Enlightenment conceptions of rationalism and freedom... as principles for guiding political philosophy and theology today’,34 the dilemma of political theology may be summed up as follows : if re­ ligion is to be conscientiously relevant, it must be involved in socio­ political life. On the one hand, since the authority of religion is divine, and thus absolute, introducing religion into socio-political affairs fre­ quently brings about the absolute sacralization of those affairs. As a result, political religions emerge which transform the categories of history — time and space — into categories of political myth. Thus, time and space transcend history with its concrete, empirical past and present, projecting politics into a future structured as the fulfilment of the past and as the realization of primordial, archaic myth. History is now understood as time and space reborn — hence, as meta-history.

The author regrettably passed away while this volume was in press. He had read and approved the proofs.

33 34

J. Moltmann et al., Religion and Political Society, New York-Evanston-San Francisco-London 1970, pp. 49 ff., 95 ff. Ibid., Preface.

[ 157 ]

Traditional Constraints on Totalitarianism in Japan by

B E N -A M I S H IL L O N Y The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

traced the development of totalitarian democracy back to the intellectual explosion of the French Revolution, and fol­ lowed its ramifications since then. Although he did not deal specifically with Asia, his assumption was that totalitarian democracy could develop only in those countries which shared the heritage of the French Re­ volution. Yet, the most extreme cases of totalitarian democracy in recent decades have occurred in East Asia, in the form of Chinese Maoism, Kim IISung’s regime in North Korea and the Khmer Rouge interlude in Kampuchea. This does not contradict Talmon’s assumption, for all these regimes are legitimate heirs of the French Revolution by virtue of their having paid allegiance to Marxism-Leninism. They triumphed when traditional modes of behaviour were destroyed by a lingering war or by foreign oppression. I would like to discuss here why Japan a developed Asian country where traditional values were still strong, did not provide the proper breeding ground for the development of a totalitarian regime. J. L. T

almon

I.

The Beehive Image

This argument may sound strange to those whose image of pre-1945 Japan is that of a huge beehive, where the individual had no signi­ ficance and where everyone acted as if he had been programmed or brainwashed. This image of Japan as a totalitarian society is based on two misconceptions. First, there is the widely held view of tra­ ditional Japan as a homogeneous, conformist, ritualistic and even mechanistic society, in which all subjects blindly obeyed the emperor and the state. For those with this perception, Japan did not have to become totalitarian, because it had been a totalitarian society all along. The second erroneous basis for Japan’s image is its record in the 1930s

[ 158 ]

Ben-Ami Shillony and 1940s. A country that entered into an alliance with Hitler and Mussolini, that suppressed democracy at home, oppressed other Asians abroad, and launched a surprise attack on the two great democra­ cies — the U.S. and Britain — could only be viewed as totalitarian, practising an oriental version of European fascism, or, as Michael Confino said in the Russian context, as Genghis Khan with the tele­ graph. These labels of totalitarianism and fascism have become so widespread that many Westerners as well as Japanese still use them freely. Let us first try to establish whether traditional Japan was a totalitarian society. Here one must admit that, in some respects, it did indeed look more totalitarian than the pre-modem West. Japan lacked the Graeco-Roman heritage of democracy, republicanism and respect for the individual ; it did not inherit the Judaeo-Christian dualism of church and state ; and it did not come in contact with the Reformation spirit of questioning authority. As in China, the individual in Japan was meaningful as part of a group, be it the family, the clan or the class, and morality was based on social obligations rather than on transcendental laws. In Confucianism, which was the accepted political philosophy of East Asia for more than two millennia, the rulers were considered the parents of the state, deriving their legitimacy from heaven and not from their subjects. As such, their authority was unlimited and they were res­ ponsible not only for law and order but also for the morals of their subjects. The concept of privacy, the sacred domain of the individual into which no others have the right to intrude, was not developed in the East. The authorities had the right to intervene in every sphere of the individual’s life. For the 250 years of the Edo period, from the beginning of the seven­ teenth until the middle of the nineteenth century, Christianity, the major religion of the West, was outlawed in Japan, and its followers were liable to the death penalty. The authorities were vigilant in investigating those who were suspected of clinging to this heresy, and a strict censorship was maintained to prevent any revival of the ‘evil creed’, which had flourished quite freely in the sixteenth century. The Japanese emperor was not only a Confucian father figure and sage-monarch, but a Shintö semi-god and the high priest of the supreme deity, the sun goddess, as well. Thus, so far as Shinto was concerned, there was no separation between church and state. Geography and history strengthened these seemingly totalitarian trends. ¡Cut off from the mainland by a considerable span of water, the Japanese did not have the opportunity to mingle with foreigners.

[159 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Thus, while they were spared foreign conquests, they also missed the ethnic and linguistic diversity which develop from close contacts with other peoples. As a result, Japanese society has remained ethnically, linguistically and culturally more homogeneous than most other so­ cieties. In such a society, dissent from conventional modes of behaviour has been strongly discouraged. II.

The Anti-totalitarian Tradition

Yet, traditional Japan was not a totalitarian country because there \vere strong anti-totalitarian elements to counterbalance these trends. The first of these elements was religion. From the sixth century, the Japanese embraced two different religions simultaneously : their native Shintö and the imported Buddhism, which in time became the more important of the two. Buddhism, which originated in India and reached Japan via China and Korea, is fundamentally an individualistic reli­ gion, in which salvation and punishment are meted out on an indi­ vidual basis in the form of reincarnation. Contrary to Judaism, Buddhism does not recognize chosen peoples, holy lands, national retributions or collective responsibility. Consequently, there is less pressure for conformity in Buddhism than there is in the monotheistic religions of the West. Also, unlike the Western religions, Buddhism was never a monolithic creed in Japan. Jt was always divided into numerous sects, each with its own beliefs, rituals and holy texts. Indeed, the differences between these sects were quite often greater than those between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Nevertheless, the different Buddhist sects did not fight with each other as did the Western religions. Some of them engaged in missionary activities, but they coexisted peacefully with each other, as well as with the various Shinto sects. In fact, a believer in Shinto could be an ardent Buddhist at the same time, and many Shinto shrines also served as Buddhist temples. Even the emperor himself, a Shintö semi-god and high priest of the sun goddess, was often a devout Buddhist, and some emperors even became monks and entered monasteries. In other words, the Japanese were traditionally free to believe and worship as they liked, and except where Christianity was involved, matters of belief were not considered to be subjects of political im­ portance. Unlike governments in the West, the Japanese authorities did not consider it part of their duty to impose religious conformity. Thus, there was no official religion. Although Shintö rites were per­ formed by the emperor, and the government encouraged the building of temples and shrines, there was never one official or orthodox religion.

[ 160 ]

Ben-Ami Shillony Japan did not have a pope to stand up against the emperor, but neither had it a pope who suppressed heretics. Christianity was banned on political and not theological grounds, for the Western dogmatic religion was regarded as a threat to both the authority of the government and the sovereignty of the state. The law specified a creed which should not be followed, but it did not specify the creed that had to be believed. If we regard totalitarianism, as Talmon did, as a modem, lay form of religious dogmatism, a political, all-embracing ideology imposed by the authorities, then it is understandable why totalitarianism developed in the Christian or post-Christian West and not in the cultural milieu of Japan. Another anti-totalitarian element in traditional Japan was feudalism. Japan was a feudal society from the latter part of the twelfth until the middle of the nineteenth century. It was divided horizontally into strict classes, and vertically into different domains, each with its own rules, duties and privileges. Individuals did not belong to a mass state, but to their particular class and domain. Power was not concentrated in one hand in this feudal society, but was diffused among various centres. There was also a balance between the central government and the various domains, as well as between the different classes. Although the warrior-bureaucrat class of samurai monopolized the political, military and administrative functions, its members were not allowed to engage in such important occupations as agriculture, trade and manufacture. As a result, the samurai, being dependent on fixed incomes, were often poorer than the so-called lower classes. The emperor was always the divine sovereign in theory, but in the feudal order of things he was relegated to the marginal position of a sacred figurehead. Secluded in his palace, he retained his privilege of granting legitimacy to the actual rulers, but did this in full obedience to whoever ruled the land. Nor were the military rulers, the shoguns, absolute rulers, for they too had to accommodate themselves to the complex feudal structure. The fact that Japan did not pass from feudalism to absolute monarchy, as did the countries of Western Europe, meant that it lacked the sort of budding, Hobbes-type totalitarian­ ism which existed in some West European countries on the eve of the modern period. III.

Modernization Induced Rather than Enforced

In 1868, fourteen years after its doors were forced open by the West, Japan underwent a great political transformation in the form of the [1 6 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Meiji Restoration. Feudalism and isolationism were then scrapped and the West replaced China as the ideal model. The restoration inaugurated the industrialization and modernization processes which paved the way for Japan’s rise to the status of a world power within a few gene­ rations. This major transformation was accomplished without resort to totali­ tarian methods. Although nineteenth-century Japan was not a demo­ cracy, modernization was induced rather than enforced. While the government encouraged the transfer from traditional to modem modes of production, it left the actual realization to private enterprise. The Meiji Restoration was revolutionär)' in its far-reaching economic and social results. Within a few years almost all hereditär)' distinctions had disappeared and the country was developing along the lines of the most modern Western societies of that time. Yet the restoration lacked the messianic message that would render it a revolution in the Talmonian sense. The Meiji leaders did not claim to be saving mankind or building a new kind of man. Their goal was a pragmatic one : to make Japan into a rich and strong country. There was no ideological blueprint, no ‘ism’ involved. Far from being discarded, tradition was put to new uses for promoting the new goals. Instead of overthrowing the emperor, as was done in other revolutions, the new government reinstated him as the sacred monarch of the modern state ; and feudal loyalties were given new life in the factories and the barracks. Unlike the process in other developing societies, Japan’s modernization was not achieved under charismatic leadership. Charisma belonged to the emperor, who remained a mere figurehead, while the real leaders acted as a group. Japan had no Mao, Nehru, Lenin, Atatürk, BenGurion or Nasser. This lack of a powerful popular leader, while in accordance with Japan’s political tradition, was in opposition to what one would expect from a totalitarian society. The Meiji Constitution, which remained in force until 1947, was not a democratic document. It placed sovereignty with the emperor, and circumscribed human rights by making them subject to public needs and state security. But, neither was it a totalitarian document. It estab­ lished the principle of government shared by the emperor and an elected assembly, and it recognized for the first time that there was such a thing as individual rights ; it was quite elastic in that it could accom­ modate both the liberal Japan of the 1920s and the militarist state of the 1930s. The expansionist policy of Japan, which began with the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and culminated in the attack on Pearl Harbor ten [162]

Ben-Ami Shillony years later, strengthened the anti-democratic tendencies. In the pre-war decade, party cabinets were abolished, the parties themselves were dissolved, freedom of the press was suppressed and dissenters were persecuted. The political suppression of the left was officially called ‘thought con­ trol’ and the branch of the police responsible for carrying out the func­ tion was known as the ‘thought-control police’. While these words sound harshly totalitarian in English, what they signified to the Japanese at that time was the suppression of the so-called dangerous ideologies, like communism and anarchism, in a situation quite reminiscent of the suppression of Christianity during the Edo period. IV.

The Failure of Totalitarianism in Wartime Japan

The alliance with Hitler in 1940 and the outbreak of war in 1941 accelerated the anti-democratic tendencies. Fully exposed to the in­ fluence of her allies, Japan adopted additional trappings of the totalitar­ ian state. Controls were placed on the economy, education was re­ structured to serve the aims of the war, mass youth and women’s asso­ ciations were set up, huge rallies were held and fiery slogans were posted in public places. Yet, even then Japan only seemed to resemble a totalitarian state. Poli­ tical power was still diffused among bureaucrats and military men, and there was no single towering leader as there was in Germany or Russia. General Töjö, whom the West considered to be Japan’s dictator, could not dictate to the other ministers in the cabinet, and had to step down when he came under criticism, as did his wartime successor General Koiso. Indeed, Japan was the only major belligerent in World War II to undergo two orderly changes of government while still in the war. Also, in contrast to totalitarian countries, there was no mass party in wartime Japan. No new party emerged to take the place of the ones which had disbanded, and the former politicians remained in their par­ liamentary Diet seats, passing laws, approving budgets and listening to reports. Nor did a new political doctrine, or ‘ism’ arise. As at the time of the Meiji Restoration, the goals continued to be pragmatic and nationalistic, not messianic or universal. The only supranational objective was the liberation of Asia from domination by the white man, and even this was quickly eroded by the desire to set up an East Asian empire. The wartime oppression inside Japan was relatively mild when com­ pared with that in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or Kuomintang China. The Japanese were harsh conquerors abroad, but obeyed the rules at home. Thus, there were no political executions during the war.

[163 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Opponents and critics were harassed, but only very few were kept behind bars without trial. There were no purges and no concentration camps ; and when the war ended, there were only 2,500 political prisoners in Japan, a mere 0.003 percent of the whole population.1 According to Talmon’s definition of totalitarianism, that it is a school of thought claiming to possess the sole and exclusive truth in politics and bent on realizing a messianic paradise on earth,2 totalitarianism did not exist in wartime Japan, despite the alliance with Hitler and Mussolini. This was because the traditional Japanese modes of thought and behaviour blocked such tendencies. Thus the same tradition, faulted for obstructing true democracy in Japan, turned out to be even more effective in obstructing totalitarianism. Only a period of prolonged devastation or turmoil on the scale that occurred in China, or a long oppressive occupation as suffered by Korea and Vietnam, could sweep away the traditional restraints and create the revolutionary circumstances favourable to a totalitarian re­ gime. But, fortunately for Japan, it has been spared that fate. Even the allied occupation, which lasted until 1952, was liberal, well-intended and short. The vast modernization and democratization that have taken place since 1952 are believed to have inoculated Japan against any resurgence of totalitarian tendencies. Yet it can also be argued that this same process may have swept away some of the traditional constraints that acted to prevent totalitarianism in the past. Whether we argue it one way or the other, this is no longer the problem of Japan alone, but of the industrialized democratic West, of which Japan has now become, for good or for bad, a central member.

1 B.-A. Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, Oxford 1981, chap. 1. 2 J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London 1952, pp. 2-3.

fl64]

PART THREE

THE VARIETIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND UNDER DIFFERENT REGIMES

Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian Democracy Revisited by

G E O R G E L. M O SSE The Hebrew University, Jerusalem The University of Wisconsin

No shepherd and one herd ! Everybody wants the same : whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue

Jacob Talmon published The Rise of Tota­ litarian Democracy, a book of vast influence among historians which introduced a new concept into our political vocabulary. It is time to re-examine this concept, taking the opportunity to look once more at the change from monarchical to modern politics. The Enlight­ enment and the French Revolution created totalitarian democracy as Jacob Talmon saw it : their concepts of utopia, popular sovereignty, and the primacy of man in the natural order, led to the abolition of those very liberties which they had promised to protect. Tracing the ‘genealogy of ideas’ of totalitarian democracy, Talmon tells us, provides an opportunity for stating some conclusions of a general nature. The most important lesson to be learnt from this inquiry is the incompati­ bility of an all-embracing and all-solving creed with liberty.1 Though this statement comes at the end of his book, it points to its very be­ ginning where the collision between liberal-pragmatic democracy and totalitarian democracy is said to be at the root of the crisis of modern times.2 He published his book in 1952 when fascism had been defeated, only to give way to the menace of Bolshevism, or so it seemed. The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy was concerned with the conF orty years

ago

1 J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London 1952 ( = The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, Boston 1952, referred to here as Rise). See Rise, p. 253. 2 Rise, p. 1.

[ 167 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After tinuity of political thought : tracing from the past those forces which led to the defeat of parliamentary government in the present. The emphasis upon the genealogy of ideas tended, however, to blur the profound change which came over European politics at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The French Revolution began a new age of mass politics, a visual age and one of the spoken word rather than one centred upon the printed page, the traditional vehicle of political thought. To be sure, the rise of the popular press provided an effective means of political propaganda, but such journalism was geared to produce an immediate effect and had few ties with traditional political thought. Political movements now had to project themselves upon the largely illiterate or semi-educated masses, whose newly roused political consciousness had to be taken into account. They were moved by what they could see and touch, by politics as a drama which gave them a feeling of political participation. We witness a change, slow but sure, from written to iconographical language.3 A new political liturgy was in the making, a new political style which articulated itself through festivals, rites and symbols, adapting traditional religious liturgy to the needs of modern politics. More often than not, the new political style was accompanied by political journalism which helped to project politics as a drama (and which both Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini were to practise later). The new politics emphasized style : politics was transformed into a civil religion. Here the age of the French Revolution did disrupt traditional politics, taking into account the rising political consciousness of the masses. Such was the foundation of anti-parliamentarianism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the result of changes in the historical situation — a new reality — rather than of a system of ideas like the Enlightenment, which was used to support liberalism and parliamentary government as well as the anti-parliamentary tradition. Jacob Talmon came from a British tradition concerned with cohesion as against disruptive change, a tradition recaptured superbly in his essay on Lewis Namier. The so-called orderly unfolding of English liberties was his paradigm, and he shared with Lewis Namier the trauma of revolution, perceiving it as the enemy of liberty.4 This point of view was certainly arguable, and yet it tended to homogenize the anti-parliamentary tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth cen­ turies. The tradition varied, just as the history of constitutionalism was not cut from one cloth. 3 E.g. S. L. Gilman, Seeing the Insane, New York 1982. 4 J. I.. Talmon, The Unique and the Universal, London 1965, p. 308.

[168]

George L. Mosse The term ‘totalitarian’ not only obscured different anti-parliamentary traditions but also the nature and significance of the new political style. Yet eventually parliamentary governments themselves annexed the new politics for their own purposes, and totalitarian democracy as expressed through a liturgy of politics intruded upon the paradigm of repre­ sentative government. The fear of mass politics has informed the use of the concept of totalitarianism ever since Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Such a fear has blocked consideration of the new politics as more than just a means of manipulating the masses for the purposes of keeping the dictator in power. The con­ tention of Montesquieu that tyranny depends upon the isolation of the tyrant from his subjects was accepted by Hannah Arendt and her successors.5 The very opposite prevails in modem times. The dictator must reflect the wishes and hopes of his people and must share their attitude towards life. The dictator and the people do not confront each other. Instead, the new political style mediates between them, taking the place parliament occupies in the liberal state. Through rites and festivals, myths and symbols, the people are drawn into active par­ ticipation. To millions this was the true democracy and the use of the pejorative term ‘totalitarianism’ merely serves to obscure this fact. Through the use of the new political style as an expression of democracy, Italian fascism and National Socialism were able at first to maintain a consensus, however tenuous, and to paper over for several years their social and economic failures. Moreover, mass terror, said to be an integral part of totalitarianism, was not at first used by fascist regimes. To be sure, there was much intimidation, some of it through welldirected acts of individual violence. But this was not mass terror, and for the most part, the early years of fascism in power represented merely the climax of patterns of conformity basic to bourgeois society, a way of life fascism claimed to protect. The freedom advocated by bourgeois liberalism presupposed a consensus without which no society could function. But this consensus, while requiring a minimum of conformity in politics, relied upon a much more rigid conformity in manners and morals to maintain an ordered society. Nevertheless, the continuation and the heightening of established patterns of conformity were inter­ preted as produced by terror, part of the thesis that such regimes were imposed upon the innocent population. What Jacob Talmon called ‘totalitarian democracy’, then, was a new political style, an alternative to parliamentary government, which met the exigencies of modern 5

S. J. Whitfield, Into the Dark — Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism, Philadelphia 1980, p. 99.

[ 169 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After politics through its ability to integrate the masses and to provide the proper mediation between the government and the people. ^The roots of totalitarian democracy lay in the French Revolution, inspired by certain philosophes. Yet the relationship of totalitarian democracy to the religious revival of the eighteenth century is crucial as well, because of what it can tell us about the kind of freedom his­ torians who used that concept recognized and what freedoms they chose to ignore, and the insight this can give us into liberal attitudes to politics and society. For in pietism and evangelism we find the same un­ questioning submission to authority as in Jacobinism, the identical effort to make the private public and to set standards of behaviour which must be observed and about which there could be no argument. ,The religious revival and not just the Jacobins, in Jacob Talmon’s words, reduced everything to matters of morality and education.6 Be­ cause the parallels between the Jacobins and the religious revival are ignored, it is possible to condemn the restrictions which the Jacobins put upon individual freedom, and to accept the restrictions imposed by evangelism and pietism. Thus political freedom which the Jacobins suppressed was seen as individual freedom tout court, and the moral restraints imposed by evangelism and pietism were accepted as proper — or better, as taken for granted — a part of the very fabric of society. Thus political freedom was accompanied by authoritarian attitudes towards individual behaviour advocated by pietism and evangelism. The concept of respectability was as great a restraint upon in­ dividuality as the commitment to virtue of the Jacobins. Perhaps even more so, for here there was no idea of progress, no trust in the perfectibility of man, but rules of personal behaviour laid down for all time and every place. The very secularism which is condemned as leading to totalitarian democracy left more room for individuality than the morality decreed by John Wesley or the German pietists. Such respectability became an integral part of our society, and the line drawn between the normal and abnormal was and is taken for granted. Liberals tended to regard political freedom as identical with all other freedoms, thus legitimizing the restrictions upon the individual imposed by society, if not by parliaments.7 From this point of view Jacob Tal­ mon’s English paradigm is closer to the Jacobin model than he would have cared to admit. Though we might agree that the liberal idea of political freedom did provide the best protection for liberty yet invented, the presupposition in favour of this freedom above all others 6 7

Rise, p. 95. G. L. Mosse, ‘Nationalism and Respectability’, Journal of Contemporary History, XVII (April 1982), pp. 221-246. [170]

George L. Mosse once again homogenizes the anti-liberal tradition. Liberals accepted the denial of liberty based upon evangelism and pietism and blamed the loss of freedom upon revolution. Yet there was an important difference between evangelism and pietism, with their roots in the Reformation, and the newer doctrine of the Jacobins. Evangelism and pietism, like the Reformation itself, were indifferent to the form of political government, while Jacobinism at­ tempted to control all aspects of life. The Jacobins reached out towards the totality of existence. The integration of the masses into the political system required encompassing the political, aesthetic and behavioural as­ pects of human existence. Politics was supposed to provide a fully furnished house, where, to quote one popular German novel, ‘every­ thing stands or lies in its accustomed place. .. one is immediately at home’.® Especially in times of grave crisis, the liberal division between politics and other spheres of life proved ineffective : politics in such cases could no longer be defined through elections or political debate, but became an attitude towards life. Both nationalism and Marxism adopted such modern, as against traditional, politics. Moreover, unlike pietism or evangelism, the new politics sought the devil on earth : it persecuted all those whom it thought to be different. To be sure, the religious revival also persecuted those who differed in manners and morals from the established norms, but at least it con­ tinued to believe in the possibility of conversion. Yet conformity was demanded by both these movements which served in large measure to define and legitimize modern politics and society. The division between politics and life was basic to liberalism. It was founded upon the contract theory of government as against popular sovereignty. The fear that politics might become all encompassing, a Continuous Republic of Virtue of the Jacobins, underlies the concept of totalitarianism and totalitarian democracy. The new political style was totalitarian in the liberal meaning of the word : it attempted to integrate individualism and collectivity, per­ sonal and national renewal. These were contradictory aims which, for liberals, meant submission to authority. Clearly, such a democracy did not provide that equilibrium between social and political forces which, as Jacob Talmon tells us, Robespierre had exchanged for commitment to a dictatorship of virtue.9 Yet those who accepted the new democracy saw it as balancing liberty and authority through integration with a higher and immutable force, be it reason, the nation or nature. 8 9

Quoted in : G. L. Mosse, Man and Masses, New York 1980, p. 40. Rise, p. 95.

[ 171 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After The religious revival of the eighteenth century and the new civil religion provided restfulness in the midst of change. Indeed, the civil religion was committed to historical continuity and served to bridge any disruption caused by the revolution. The Jacobins did not represent themselves to the French people as a break with the past but as a national revival based upon historical models. The revolution did not necessarily seem as disruptive to contemporaries as it did to later historians. Take the Tree of Liberty as one example : its planting was the rite of a new beginning closely tied to history and nature. The tree, so Mona Ozouf writes, was not only a symbol of liberty but of con­ tinuity and stability as well, the ‘ancient tree of the nation’.10 Here the Tree of Liberty, as a much-vaunted symbol of revolution, was analogous to the tree as a national symbol. To be sure, the Tree of Liberty was also a symbol of change as it grew and spread its branches. Yet this was an organic growth, not a sudden disruption, one similar to the tree as a symbol of the organic growth of the nation. Moreover, the tree was a revolutionary symbol opposed to violence ; its planting was a sign that the use of force and reprisals had ended.11 The organic was always emphasized. Thus during the revolution much was made of sunsets and the changing seasons, reminiscent of older folk festivals. The Jacobins knew instinctively what Gustav le Bon, so much later, labelled the conservatism of crowds. Revolutionary festivals imit­ ated the sacred, replacing the void left by the Church, sometimes quite literally. Thus is was decreed that a female Statue of Liberty should be set up in Notre Dame in place of the Virgin Mary.12 The price paid for this transference of Christian to civil religion was a homogenization of humanity. Rousseau had asserted that no citizen could stand apart from such rites : participation in festivals would purify men and prevent the corruption of government.13 Solidarity purifies, not because it exalts man himself in the tradition of the Enlightenment, as some revolutionary theory might make us think, but instead, through the use of myth and symbol man becomes part of history and nature. Such a political style was ready-made for national­ ism. The symbols of the Jacobins were universal : liberty, the republic and reason, but it was the nation which gave aim and direction to the revolutionary rites.14 Nationalism annexed the new political style and M. Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire, Paris 1976, p. 300. Ibid., p. 294. A. Aulard, Christianity and the French Revolution, New York 1966, p. 106. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Government of Poland, Indianapolis 1926, pp. 8, 15. 14 Ozouf, op. cit. (n. 10), p. 338.

10 11 12 13

[ 172 ]

George L. Mosse used it in order to mediate between the nation and its people. Nationalism, rather than the Marxist left, was the inheritor of Jacob­ inism. Jacob Talmon himself was of two minds here : The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy stressed the similarity between Jacobinism and the thought of Karl Marx ; both disrupted the existing order. However, in Talmon’s Political Messianism, published eight years later, revolu­ tionary nationalism entered into this heritage.15 All nationalism was a revolutionary force at the beginning of the nineteenth century, yet, like the new politics, it did not present itself as a disruption of the existing order but rather as the revival of a usable past. All nationalism, quite unlike Marxism, appealed to a pre-industrial past. We saw how Jacobinism sought out a usable past : the new political style itself was not given to modern symbols ; even the Goddess of Reason was usually dressed in ancient garb. While Marianne was at first scantily dressed, a tomboy symbolizing the new order as against the old, another Mari­ anne dressed in ancient armour or mediaeval dress made her ap­ pearance during the revolution and was destined to triumph as the symbol of the nation.16 Nationalism was the first modem mass move­ ment, yet it appealed to a tranquil past. The radical nationalist right was not only aware of the political im­ portance of the masses, but emphasized the integrative function of the ‘religion of patriotism’. This is what P. Déroulède, the leader of La Ligue des Patriotes, at the fin de siècle meant when he wrote that politics was the principal means of dissolving all distinctions among men.17 Such ideas of equality attracted former Communards and Blanquists to the radical right. They had always opposed the élite politics of banquets and speeches, and had sought a populist political style. As heirs of the Jacobins they joined the radical right because its political style seemed to continue this democratic and revolutionary inheritance.18 For them, as for the Jacobins, the nation concretized and expressed the general will. They continued that nationalization of the masses exemplified by the Jacobins. Their successors were the fascist movements. Hitler and Mussolini were influenced by Gustav le Bon’s classic analysis of the new politics, as they attempted a more thorough nationalization of the masses (this phrase itself was coined by Adolf 15 16 17 18

J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism., London 1960, pp. 513 ff. M. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle, Cambridge 1981, pp. 16 ff. Cited in : Z. Sternhell, La Droite Révolutionnaire, Paris 1978, p. 81. P. H. Hutton, ‘Popular Boulangism and the Advent of Mass Politics in France’, Journal of Contemporary History, XI (1976) pp. 85-106 ; idem, The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition — The Blanquists in French Politics 1864-1893, Berkeley 1981, passim.

[ 173 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Hitler) ,19 The long speeches and the banquets, which had been retained by the far right side by side with the new political style, were dropped, and the new politics reigned supreme. Fascism has been called the revolt of the senses against political philo­ sophy.20 By the use of the political style we have analysed, it pro­ vided not only for stable government but also for personal fulfilment. Politics in a mass society assumed a therapeutic function which liberalism and socialism were unable to meet. Thus the young fascist Robert Brasillach, speaking in 1935 during the crisis of the post-war world, deplored that France was ‘without public rituals, religious sensuality, a Germanic unleashing of sexual frenzy. .. a passion for race and native soil, gigantic parades of a sombre ... beauty’.21 He found all that France lacked at the Nürnberg Nazi party rallies : a fully furnished house which provided an outlet for his sensual passions through the beauty of politics. His attachment to race and soil made sure that these pas­ sions did not escape into wide, empty and frightening spaces but moved instead within a well defined landscape in which he could find shelter and be at home. The unleashing of sexual frenzy was caught up and tamed : it did not threaten the fabric of bourgeois society which the new politics, nationalism and fascism were sworn to uphold and support. The climax of the new politics came from the right and not from the left. Most important socialists liberalized their Jacobin heritage instead. When, for example, Jean Jaurès came to write his History of French Socialism he praised Babeuf and Robespierre, not as forerunners of totalitarianism but as confirming his own socialist humanism. Through­ out the nineteenth century French socialists distinguished the French Revolution and Marxism from the Jacobin Terror.22 Totalitarian demo­ cracy on the left was largely confined to Stalinism, in any case a mixture of bolshevism and fascism, and it was the radical right with its nationalism which was the true heir of totalitarian democracy, as exemplified through the new political style. Indeed, Marxism failed to accept the new politics. The rationalism of Enlightenment proved too strong, and gave Marxism a lasting commitment to didacticism, which nationalism was able to avoid.23 To be sure, eventually the new political style informed most politics ; 19 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Munich 1934, pp. 369-377. 20 W. R. Tucker, ‘Politics and Aesthetics — The Fascism of Robert Brasillach’, Western Political Quarterly, XV (1962), pp. 605-606. 21 Ibid., p. 609. 22 A. Gerard, La révolution française — Mythes et interprétations 1789—1970, Paris 1970, pp. 76-77. 23 G.L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, New York 1975, chap. 7.

[ 174 ]

George L. Mosse in the age of mass politics even representative government could, not do without it. French Republicans at the fin de siècle used festivals as a weapon against the authoritarian regime of Napoleon III, while the Third Republic found itself reviving a political liturgy because, as Gambetta put it (not unlike Rousseau himself), ‘a free nation needs national fêtes’.24 The spread of the new politics, once the expression of Jacobinism, demonstrates that the concept of totalitarian democracy was to a greater or less degree part of the imperative of mass politics. Preoccupation with formal political thought, at the expense of the new political style, has led to an undue emphasis on liberalism as an un­ changing reality supposedly exemplified by English institutions. Because most modem political movements used the new political style in order to integrate the masses, it is important to understand its function in largely replacing traditional political thought. Not only has the concept of totalitarianism stood in the way of such an under­ standing, but so has the myth of pragmatism in politics encouraged by historians who have contrasted the common sense of England and the United States with the intellectualism of the continent of Europe. ‘In our political life’, Daniel Boorstin wrote in 1953 about the United States, ‘we have been like Molière’s M. Jourdain, who was astonished to discover that all his life he had been speaking prose’.25 The American in contrast to the French Revolution, he goes on to tell us, was a revolution without dogma, reaffirming ancient British institutions.26 Boorstin’s praise of American politics was similar to that which sees British history as a seamless web — to Namier’s conception of politics. Such analyses, for al their rejection of systematized political thought as well as the new political style, are themselves designed to support con­ servative and nationalist positions. That America failed to produce important political thought, as Daniel Boorstin wrote,27 is no proof of political pragmatism. Instead, it de­ monstrates once more how preoccupation with traditional political thought has prevented a proper analysis of mass politics. The United States eventually pioneered in the political uses of television and ad­ vertising, which, while attempting to capture the myths and symbols accepted by and acceptable to the masses, soon became of vital im­ portance in the quest for political power by political parties and their candidates. Surely the United States made a vital contribution to the 24 25 26 27

G. Rearick, ‘Festivals in Modern France — The Experience of the Third Republic’, Journal of Contemporary History, X II (1977), p. 438. D. J. Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics, Chicago 1953, p. 2. Ibid., p. 94. Ibid., p. 2.

[ 175 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After new political style. Far from rejecting the new politics it extended the Jacobin heritage. The title of Murray Edelman’s book about America, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (1967), is nearer to the truth than Daniel Boorstin’s Namierite conception of history. For all that, individual nations differed in how much use they made of the new politics, depending upon their political landscape. Where liberalism was strong, the attempt was made to combine the new political style with the maintenance of political freedom or, indeed, to ignore the new politics altogether, surely one reason for the decline of liberalism. Conservatives, while at first declining the use of the new political style as revolutionary, made full use of it after World War I in their attempt to become a mass movement.28 Those like the socialists who shared a rational heritage in the tradition of the Enlightenment opposed the human passions necessary to the very existence of the new politics. National socialism at the fin de siècle entered fully into the new politics and transmitted them to the twentieth century. The analysis of political style rather than systems of belief helps us to understand this genealogy and the historic significance of what Jacob Talmon called totalitarian democracy. Such criticism does not detract from the basic importance of Jacob Talmon’s discovery, even though one might not agree that the Enlight­ enment was to blame, and disagree with the use of the term totalitar­ ianism itself and the concentration on Marxism as its heir. Extending the analysis of totalitarian democracy beyond formal political theory gives it a new importance detached from liberal preconceptions. The new political style had come to stay, and so had the anti-parliamentary tradition of the nineteenth century, so closely linked to modem na­ tionalism. Given the pervasiveness of this new politics, and of nation­ alism itself, how can we save a humanistic core ?29 That was a task Jo which Jacob Talmon devoted so much of his life in the almost desperate effort to reconcile political freedom and the new forces of mass politics. Perhaps it is now time to extend the liberal definition of freedom even to those moral and behavioural restraints which liberalism has sanctioned. The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, written so long ago, raised a central problem of modem politics. Any analysis of Jacob Talmon’s concept can merely deepen our perceptions of the perils of modernity and serve to raise even higher the obstacles which have to be overcome in order that man can live in freedom through the exercise of his critical mind. 28 29

G. L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, New York 1964, chap. 13. S. Drescher, D. Sabean & A. Sharlin (eds), Political Symbolism in Modern Europe, New Brunswick 1982, p. 9.

[ 176 ]

Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian Democracy Revisited Comments on George L. Mosse’s Paper by

YARON EZRAHI The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

I a m i n g e n e r a l a g r e e m e n t vith George Mosse in taking issue with two principal aspects of Jacob Talmon’s work on totalitarian democracy. The first concerns the tendency, inherent in Talmon’s use of the concept of totalitarian democracy, to homogenize modern, non-parliamentary mass politics and blur the distinction between mobilizing the masses through terror and mobilizing the masses through the employment of symbols and rituals which evoke public enthusiasm and emotional identification. The second concerns the need to go beyond Talmon’s analysis of political ideas and their status as causes of historical developments to examine the roots of what Mosse calls the ‘new political style’ which has evolved in response to the inadequacy of parliamentary techniques for channelling political participation in modern mass society. The new political style, according to Mosse, consists of alternative techniques which draw largely upon nineteenth-century popular festivals. I should, nevertheless, like to take issue with two aspects of Mosse’s argument. First, it seems that his concept of the ‘new political style’, although is adds to our understanding of important aspects of modem totalitarianism, also tends to homogenize various forms of mass po­ litics. While he correctly criticizes Talmon for failing to distinguish between different forms of anti-parliamentary traditions, Mosse’s own concept of the new political style tends to blur the distinctions between techniques of mass politics in anti-parliamentary and parliamentary traditions. Mosse regards the use of rites, festivals, myths and symbols in the ‘new politics’ as a necessary result of the need to engage and mobilize the illiterate crowds of the modern mass society. But, just as the concept of secularization needed refinement and further ela­ boration in order to account not only for the similarities but also for

[ 177 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After the important distinctions between the secularization of Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Jews, so the concept of the new style of mass politics requires further differentiation and elaboration to distinguish between the mass politics of political movements such as fascism, socialism and liberal democracy. Without such further elaboration, Mosse’s observations concerning the extension of the patterns of the new style of mass politics to the United States, for instance, imply what I believe to be an untenable con­ vergence thesis. Referring to the American uses of television ‘to capture the myths and symbols accepted by and acceptable to the masses’, Mosse claims that the United States has made a vital contribution to the new political style. Far from rejecting the new politics, he observes, the American experience ‘extended the Jacobin heritage’.1 He points to Murray Edelman’s studies of the symbolism of American politics to back this observation. But obviously the differences between Nazi and liberal-democratic utilization of techniques of mass politics is not merely, as Mosse argues, ‘in how much use they made of the new politics’ but in the very meaning and texture of the symbols and rituals employed. While the decline of political discourse has marked the mass politics of both fascism and modern liberal democracy, there is a great dif­ ference in the slogans, the iconography and the thematic foci of the mass rituals and festivals in the two political contexts. While the Nazi spectacles stressed military parades, uniforms and the emotional speech of the Fuehrer, in the United States what has been typically ritualized is the contest between rival leaders and the façade, if not the content, of informed public discussion. In his studies of local legislatures in the United States, Murray Edelman notes the tendency of ritualistic appeal to scientists and experts which creates the impression of rational deliberation, even after decisions have al­ ready been taken on other grounds. ‘It is especially revealing’, he observes, ‘that the legislatures assume it to be essential that the form of rational discussion be maintained even when almost no one, inside or outside the legislature, is paying attention to the content of the argument’.2 Don K. Price has observed that in America the ‘unwil­ lingness to take the answer from established authority leads to a tre­ mendous use of research as a basis of decisions at all levels’.3 This condition has also encouraged the symbolic-ritualistic use of 1 See G.L. Mosse, ‘Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian Democracy Revisited’, above, pp. 175 f. 2 M. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Urbana 1967, pp. 136-137. 3 D. K. Price, Government and Science, New York 1962, p. 27.

[ 178 ]

Yaron Ezrahi research to legitimate decisions even when the actual implications of research findings for decisions are ignored.4 As I have observed else­ where, the symbolic-ritualistic function which the reference to research or investigation committees has acquired in America is ‘similar to the mediaeval practice of linking important decisions to precedents and prophecies from the Holy Scriptures’.5 The public gestures which are meant to anchor political decisions in the authority of rational knowledge and technical expertise have been reinforced in the United States by the tendency, noted by Edelman and others, to deplore ‘blatant emotionalism in electoral, legislative and judicial argument’.6 It is equally important, of course, that the televised mass political ‘festivals’ in the American democracy occur characteristically on the occasion of the national conventions of the two major parties, bringing to a climax the highly procedurally disciplined elections of their res­ pective presidential candidates. The fact that large crowds actually participate in the political festivals of totalitarian and liberal demo­ cratic states, and that many millions of spectators observe them from a distance, should not obscure the thematic differences in what these spectacles enact and celebrate. Such important variations in the thematic foci of public rituals are, of course, only part of the picture. No less significant are differences in the techniques of mass political mobilization and their impact. I concur with Mosse’s general observation that the use of visual ex­ perience and visual communications is a fundamental characteristic of the modem style of mass politics.7 But again, the Nazis and the liberal democrats draw upon deeply different cultural traditions in enlisting visual sense experience to social purpose. While the Nazis used the plastic-visual arts to concretize the themes of their politics and evoke emotional identification with the symbols of national will and power, the liberal democrats typically appeal to science as a model of dispassionate, rationally controlled use of the eye to construct a mirror of visible reality common to all individuals. Science therefore 4

5 6 7

Y. Ezrahi, ‘The Authority of Science in Politics’, in : Science and Values, ed. A. Thackray & E. Mendelsohn, New York 1974 ; idem, ‘Utopian and Pragmatic Rationalism — The Political Context of Scientific Advice’, Minerva, Vol. X V III, No. 1 (Spring 1980), especially pp. 124-128. Y. Ezrahi, ‘The Political Resources of American Science’, Science Studies, I (1971), p. 122. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, op. cit. (n. 2 ), p. 137. See also J.H. Billington’s references to the political uses of music, in ‘Rival Revolutionary Ideals’, above, pp. 64 f.

[ 179 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After furnishes a usable intersubjective standard for validating claims of speakers and instrumentally justifying the conduct of actors. The political appropriation of art and aesthetic experience by the Nazis drew upon a tradition which viewed art as a unifying force and a potential remedy for a humanity both shaped and degraded by the progressive conquests of scientific reason and materialistic ethic. ‘It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom’, wrote Friedrich Schiller at the end of the second of his series of letters, On the Aesthetic Education of Man.89 For Schiller, art was more a retreat from, than an instrument of, politics. His concept of freedom was not meant to engage art through exclusion of the intellect but merely to balance the intellectual faculty by the gratification of the senses and the employment of the imaginative faculty. But the appeal to art was at the root of the Nazi concepts of political participation and ‘healthy’ culture. Thus Hitler could claim at the party convention of 1934 that, among the two dangers facing national-socialism, one is to be found in such ‘saboteurs of art’ as the ‘cubists, the futurists and the Dadaists’.9 By contrast, in the British liberal-empirical tradition it was art which was usually relegated to the sphere of passions and fiction and typically regarded with suspicion as divisive, whereas science was considered as the painstaking construction of an orderly reality, and regarded as a means for inducing consensus and unification. Modem appeals to science and technology in the liberal-democratic state therefore evoke the spirit in which Bishop Sprat was talking when he described the Royal Society as an association of men who prefer the ‘union of eyes’ to the dangerous ‘glorious pomp of words’.10 For Hobbes and Ben­ tham, it was precisely the evocative force of poetry which made it suspect in the sphere of politics. Science was the underlying authority behind the preference for assertive over emotive language. When Hitler, and John Dewey in another context, claim it to be necessary to discipline the use of the eye in politics in order to guard against deception, they extend the new political style in altogether different directions. In the context of mass politics, the respective cultural paradigms of art and science integrate vision and politics in different ways and with different implications. It is necessary, then, to investigate such differences in the style of mass politics in order 8 9 10

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Second Letter, New York 1965, p. 27. Cited in B. Hinz, Art in The Third Reich, New York 1979, p. 35. Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (1667), ed. J. I. Cope & H. W. Jones, St Louis (Washington University Press)-London 1958, pp. 107, 62.

[ 180 ]

Yaron Ezrahi to establish whether, and to what extent, modem conditions con­ tribute to the convergence of political forms or, as I tend to believe, to their differentiation. For, despite the degrees of convergence of political forms, the divergent political traditions have also evolved different responses to the conditions of mass politics. These responses have not only sustained, but even extended, and added, new dimen­ sions to long-standing diversities. My second point, therefore, is the suggestion that, precisely because the new political style seems to have taken such different forms in dif­ ferent political systems, it is unwarranted to argue together with Mosse that in the modern mass society the new political style is largely a substitute for the role and influence of political thought. Such dif­ ferences as have been noted in the ritualizing of political authority when resorting to the divergent symbolic languages of art and science are not unrelated to alternative, implicit or explicit, political ideas of human nature, civic virtue and freedom. Modem conditions may have changed the cultural contexts and forms in which political ideas and preferences are articulated but not the fact of their persistent rele­ vance. I suspect that the convenience of placing passionate mass politics outside the realm of political thought and regarding it as a necessary consequence of modem circumstances may be affected by the odium which the fascist trauma has imparted to the role of emotional and aesthetic experiences in politics in our century ; it may constitute an over-reaction to the fascist politics of enthusiasm. The democratic political tradition has cultivated, nevertheless, its own non-instrumental conceptions of politics as a domain of self-expression and self-realiza­ tion. The pervasive contemporary notion of democratic participation as the instrumental exerting of influence on government decisions tends to obscure this point. Perhaps the remedy for the over-simplified dichotomy between ra­ tionalist, instrumental democracy, and the various forms of its sup­ posed degeneration into the politics of terror or ‘enthusiasm’, is to recognize a pluralist liberal-democratic variant of non-instrumental politics. As it lacks a vision of collective secular salvation, this variant, while it can engage the objective and aesthetic faculties of Homo civicus, need not necessarily lead to collective fanatic enthusiasm. It can be consistent with symbolic, self-expressive gestures that de­ nounce claims of collective public authority and assert the primacy of the individual self and a concomitant preference for local, rather than national, political engagement. In a society in which, as Robert Cole put it, the ‘self becomes our [181]

Totalitarian Democracy and After transcendence’,11 the primacy of selfhood over peoplehood may allow for the aesthetization of politics as a licence for the expression of non-repressive individualism rather than unrestrained collectivism ; this would be consistent with the sense of the humanistic rather than Nazi interpretation of Schiller. While I am ready, then, to grant Mosse’s point about the need to go beyond political theory to examine the sources of modem mass politics, my argument stresses first the need to differentiate between the al­ ternative cultural and symbolic forms of mass politics, and second the need to return to the domain of political thought in order to discern these variants and place them in relation to alternative tra­ ditions of democratic and anti-democratic ideas of politics and order.

11

R. Coles, ‘Civility and Psychology’, in : ‘The End of Consensus', Daedalus (Summer 1980), p. 140.

[ 182 ]

Totalitarianism and Tyranny by

M I C H A E L WALZER The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey

O r w e l l ’ s 1984 was published in 1949, Arendt’s Origins of Totalitar­

ianism and Talmon’s Origins of Totalitarian Democracy both came out in 1951, Friedrich and Brzezinski’s Totalitarian Dictatorship and Auto­ cracy in 1956. It was obviously a time when minds were focused on the central phenomenon of the twentieth century, and a period of theoretical creativity coincided with one of intense political and ideological conflict. These writers, and many others too, addressed themselves to theoretical issues, but they also participated, willy-nilly, in the conflicts of their own time, and their theories were quickly adapted to ideological use. When Talmon’s book was reprinted as a paperback in the United States in 1960, its publishers presented it as a guide to ‘the headlong collision between liberal and totalitarian democracy which constitutes the world crisis of today’.1 I doubt that the description was accurate then any more than it is now. For one thing, the Soviet Union was no kind of democracy in 1960 ; nor is China, say, in 1982. In both these cases, a personal dictatorship of surpassing brutality gave way after a time to a brutal oligarchy. In neither case was the rule of the people a serious possibility. Nor were (or are) all the countries on the other side of the ‘headlong collision’ usefully characterized as liberal. The cold war is not a struggle between a good and a bad kind of democracy, and it is not in any simple sense a struggle between liberty and dictatorship either. In fact, the argument of Talmon’s book, and of the others too, did not hang on these simple distinctions. Talmon used the phrase ‘totali­ tarian democracy’ in order to suggest that the Stalinist dictatorship and, I suspect he would also say, the party oligarchy that followed it, were 1

J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, New York 1960, back cover.

[ 183 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After a dictatorship and an oligarchy of a radically new kind. The distinction that is crucial to his work is between totalitarianism and tyranny. ‘Modem totalitarian democracy’, he wrote in 1951, ‘is a dictatorship resting on popular enthusiasm, and is thus completely different from the absolute power wielded by a divine-right king or by a usurping tyrant’.2 Completely different, something new under the sun, the terrible creation of our own contemporaries. Talmon went on to argue that this creation had its intellectual origins in the Enlightenment of the eigh­ teenth century ; its full realization, however, came only in the twentieth. This argument too, as we shall see, can be turned to ideological uses, but at least it is a deep and interesting argument. For it does not take the theoretical acumen of a Talmon or an Arendt, or the political sensitivity of an Orwell, to contrast the constitutional democracies of the West with regimes like those of Hitler and Stalin. It is harder to distinguish between totalitarian dictatorships and oligarchies on the one hand and all previous forms of unfree politics on the other. The history of unfreedom, after all, is very long. Most states, through most of human history, have been unfree, and still are. And the forms of unfreedom are many and various. Still, it is hardly surprising that writers in the middle years of the twentieth century should think that the political world had changed utterly and that a monster regime had been bom — a regime, moreover, that had no known forebears. Tal­ mon set off on its evolutionary trail. My own concern here is with its structural characteristics. How are contemporary totalitarian regimes different from historical tyrannies ? Three things above all mark the difference as it is described in the litera­ ture of the 1950s. The first is the political mobilization of the masses, which Talmon identified with democracy and nationalism though he also looked for analogies in the earlier history of religious zeal. Popular enthusiasm takes as its focus God, or the nation, or the people itself. In any case, it generates a kind of power that dictatorships and oli­ garchies could not achieve so long as they drew only a small élite into the political arena. And then, second, mass mobilization invests the power it creates with a new and far-reaching sense of purpose, which Talmon called ‘political messianism’ because it suggested the possibility of reaching the end of days through sheer political wilfulness. Popular enthusiasm makes for radical ambition. At least, radical ambition is attributed to the people by publicists and ideologues who claim to speak in their name. Finally, enthusiasm and ambition give rise to a systematic effort to transform every aspect of social life and then to an all-out 2

Ibid., p. 6. [184]

Michael Walzer war against the enemies of transformation. For the sake of this war, it is necessary to control everything, to wipe out not merely opposition, but every form of difference, recalcitrance, hesitation, and private doubt, for all these impede the mobilization of the people and postpone the end of days. Hence the Nazi gleichschaltung, the top-down coordination of every sphere of social life : economy, politics, education, religion, culture, and family. And hence totalitarianism itself, a word that perfect­ ly sums the three characteristics: a total war for an ultimate trans­ formation, in which everyone is mobilized as friend or foe. Compared with this account, all previous tyrannies are meant to look, and do indeed look, like petty thuggery. There is a kind of innocence in just wanting power. As Talmon says of Hobbes’s Leviathan-state: ‘it is a static framework, with no element of purpose in it, except that of maintaining order__ It contains no ideal’.3 The Hobbist sovereign aims to hold on to power and the peace he brings is a by­ product of this limited ambition. I do not think that it was the purpose of any of the original theorists of totalitarianism to celebrate Hobbist sovereignty, but the celebration is probably a natural step once the contrast between totalitarianism and tyranny has been described as they described it. Today, there is a group of American writers who make old-fashioned tyranny seem positively benign. Since it is not even touched by ‘messianism’, since it does not seek any sort of social trans­ formation, it does not bring with it the great upheavals of totalitarian politics, and its human costs, so we are told, are hardly worth noticing.4 But that is to make political life a great deal more clear-cut than it is. In fact, the tyrants of earlier ages, and the ‘authoritarians’ of the con­ temporary world, were not and are not either petty or benign. It was the peace they brought, after all, that was once called the peace of the grave. Seizing power and staying in power can both be a brutal business. Aristotle certainly understood this when he advised the tyrants of his own time on how to maintain their position : break up traditional patterns of association, cut off the natural leaders of the people, sow distrust and mutual suspicion.5 It is not, in its way, an unambitious programme, and it does not support the radical distinction between tyranny and totalitarianism. Consider for a moment some classic, characteristic examples of political brutality : ( 1) The Roman proscriptions of the late republic and early empire, when the political élites of the city were systematically slaugh3 4 5

Ibid., p. 263. See Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards, New York 1982, pp. 23-52. Aristotle, The Politics, 1313a-1314a. [185]

Totalitarian Democracy and After tered, first by one republican faction, then by another, and finally by the early emperors and their henchmen, seeking not total but absolute power. (2) Early modem absolutism, also pre-totalitarian, whose cruelty is nicely exemplified in Henry V III’s response to the great peasant revolt of the 1530s, called the Pilgrimage of Grace : he ordered ‘such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet’ by hanging, drawing, and quartering ‘as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter’.6 (3) The Zulu terror of the Emperor Shaka, which has been powerfully evoked in Victor Walter’s well-known study and sounds indeed like a primitive totalitarianism, except that none of the three characteristics that I listed above are present.7 (4) Colonial repression, as in the early years of Belgian rule in the Congo, an example in which Arendt finds her own version of the origins of totalitarianism, but from which, again, the elements of mobilization and messianism are entirely missing.8 (5) The recent history of Argentina with its large-scale ‘disappearances’, a revival of the ancient proscriptions, justified by a perverse (and supposedly anti-totalitarian !) idealism but without any element of social trans­ formation. Do these examples help us distinguish the special features of the new politics ? Maybe they do, but they also raise questions about the political and moral value of the distinction. What was awesome and frightening in the 1940s and early 1950s was the sheer success of totalitarian regimes, the number of victims above all, and then the intensity of control, the virtual absence of opposition, the social range of the terror. In earlier and more familiar tyrannies, some people were terrorized and others not ; the worst effects were limited to some part of the population or to some region of the country or to outsiders and conquered lands. In this sense, nazism, with its focus on the Jews, was more traditional than Stalinism, which seemed to threaten everyone. Here was proscription, fear and repression on a new scale. Some writers thought that the new scale was made possible by a new technology. But the two-way television set of Orwell’s 1984 is a perfect example of the sort of machinery that totalitarian regimes have not in fact required. Perhaps radio and television facilitate mass mobilization and the dissemination of the messianic faith (one-way is enough). But this is too easy an account of the triumph of Hitler and 6 7 8

Quoted in L. Stone, ‘Terrible Times’, The New Republic, 5 May 1982, p. 28. E. V. Walter, Terror and Resistance — A Study of Political Violence, New York 1969. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York 1951, chap. 5 and 7.

[ 186 ]

Michael Walzer Stalin, and no account at all of the failures of their heirs. The real explanation lies, as Talmon thought, in a history of mass movements and their ideologies, a history, however, not of democratic but of undemo­ cratic or anti-democratic mobilizations. Today, thirty years after Talmon first wrote, we have to extend that history and try to understand regimes that are something less than awesome (and ideologies that are something less than messianic). How does totalitarianism today compare with the old forms of tyranny ? I want to describe the reality of totalitarian politics, not the theorist’s ideal type. Hitler and Stalin, at least briefly, approached the ‘ideal’ — not the coming of the messiah but Satan’s triumph — and so they encouraged theoretical idealization. But I want to attend more closely to the epigones of Hitler and Stalin, the men who have come after, the heirs and imitators. A central feature of political messianism is that it is supposed to produce a new age, a new politics, a new kind of human being. It is not only the leaders of totalitarian movements who insist on this outcome, but the enemies too, and among the enemies all those contemporary writers who most heavily stress the distinction between totalitarianism and ordinary tyranny. Tyranny, they say, is a temporary and an unstable politics ; ‘authoritarian’ regimes come and go ; but totalitarianism is a long dark night. Perhaps the night is less long than they think. The place to begin is with the mass movement. Totalitarianism is more clearly a kind of movement than a kind of state. It requires agitation, disturbance, crisis, constant activity. Political messianism is an impossible creed without a lively sense of the end of days. The movement cultivates that sense in the course of its struggle for power and cannot relinquish it afterwards. In power too it requires permanent revolution or per­ manent war, else enthusiasm flags and the new regime, committed in principle to total transformation, is itself transformed into something less than total.9 Perhaps it was for this reason that Talmon ended his final volume with the Bolsheviks and the Nazis on the brink of victory, in 1917 and 1933, even though he had originally promised to carry the story into ‘our own days’. An account of the movement-in-power, and certainly an account extended to 1980, would have led to conclusions not so much different from, as beyond, those to which he was committed. The movement becomes the movement-state, and for a while it carries on its war against its own people or against foreign enemies. But the war cannot be sustained, and, what is more important, it cannot be exported. 9

See Z. Brzezinski, The Permanent Purge, Cambridge (Mass.) 1956.

[187]

Totalitarian Democracy and After It follows from the centrality of the movement that totalitarianism is not exportable. Political movements are by nature local phenomena. Messianist ideologies can be carried to new countries, but unless they are naturalized there, unless they become the basis of indigenous move­ ments, they will produce nothing but a sectarian politics. Political messianism does not spread by individual conversion ; nor does it follow the sword. Totalitarian regimes can acquire an empire, as the Russians have done in Eastern Europe, and they can insist upon the supremacy of the movement or party in the lands they conquer. But they cannot evoke in other countries the popular enthusiasm that the struggle for power generated in their own, and they cannot reproduce the discipline made possible by mass mobilization and genuine commitment. What Czeslaw Milosz called ‘the captive mind’ was no doubt real enough in Poland in the years about which he wrote (his book appeared in 1953), but only among communist party members and leftist intellectuals.10 In the population at large, apathy and sullen resentment were more likely mental states. The governments of Eastern Europe, especially after the East German rising of 1953, the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the Czech spring of 1968, the rise and fall of Poland’s Solidarity union in 1980-1981, all look like old-fashioned tyrannies, ruling by brute force, not even their own brute force, and concerned above all with holding on. Here totalitarianism is indeed like democracy, for we commonly say of democracy too that it cannot be exported ; it requires a local base. This is true enough for democracy, but it is, I think, even more true for totalitarianism. The conditions that make democracy possible — a capacity for independent political activity, a degree of tolerance for other people’s independence — aren’t all that common in human history. But the mobilization of masses of people outside of and in opposition to traditional social structures, the widespread excitement and ideological enthusiasm upon which totalitarianism depends, are probably even more rare. And they are certainly harder to sustain over time. If democracy cannot take root and survive as an ‘alien’ creed, it is even less likely that communism or nazism can do so. Totalitarianism is always brutal, but if it is not indigenous, it is nothing but brutal : not ‘a dictatorship resting on popular enthusiasm’, but simply a dictatorship. A second feature of the reality of totalitarianism went almost entirely unnoticed by the early theorists, except for George Orwell. It has been stressed in a recent article by Robert Tucker, the biographer of Stalin.11 10 11

C. Milosz, The Captive Mind, New York 1953. R. Tucker, ‘Does Big Brother Exist ?’ in : I. Howe (ed.), 1984 Revisited — Totalitarianism in our Century, New York 1983.

[188]

Michael Walzer Not the movement only but also the leader of the movement is central to totalitarian success. There is no political messianism without a false messiah. I am not sure how to account for the importance of the leader. A variety of psychological theories would provide at least the beginnings of an account, but I shall not attempt to sort them out. Certainly, the role that Hitler, Stalin, Mao (and Fidel Castro too, though he seems to fit as easily into the pre-totalitarian role of the caudillo) have played in their respective parties and regimes requires more theoretical attention than it has been given. Orwell’s Big Brother captures their importance exactly. For all the ideological and even scientific pretensions of totali­ tarian movements, mass mobilization and popular enthusiasm seem alike to depend upon personification and personal charisma. The most radical experiments in social transformation, the total wars against national and class enemies, have consistently coincided with the most intense periods of personal rule and with the most extravagant cult of the personality. And the death of great leaders has brought (in each of the cases we know) not so much a succession crisis, for there has never been a true succession, but a relaxation of total control. This is a partial relaxation : Stalin and Mao have heirs, if not successors, and the institutional arrangements of their regimes are more or less intact. But surely the spirit is gone. The end of days is little more today than a rhetorical flourish. Ideological zeal is a sign only of loyalty now and not of conviction. Corruption and cynicism are common at every level of society. About China’s leaders we know very little, but the leaders of Russia look very much like old-fashioned oligarchs, heavy, suspicious, uninspired, brutal, and, like their counterparts in the empire, holding on. Is Russia today a totalitarian state ? One way to answer this question is to talk in terms of a Weberian routinization : the messianic reign has been postponed, not forgotten ; the party has settled down for the long haul ; working for the cause has been transformed from a calling into a career. But I think that an argument of this sort misses the main point. Christianity after its routinization was still a vibrant faith. For all the weight of its new institutions and the frequent corruption of its clerics, its central theological doctrines were still capable of inspiring passionate belief, disinterested conduct, artistic and intellectual creativity. No one can say that of Soviet Marxism today. I suppose it is not entirely inconceivable that there could be a movement of secular messianist revival or even a communist Reformation. But neither of these seems at all likely. The truth is that none of the totalitarian creeds has been rich enough or resonant enough to sustain popular enthusiasm or official rectitude, even in some modulated form, for very long. Perhaps no

[ 189 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After this-worldly creed can survive the survival of this world. Totalitarianism is uniquely dependent upon a quick and complete success. And that suggests that the totalitarian movement and the movement-state may not be capable of routinization but only of decay. Russia today is a dictatorship resting on popular apathy, the hollow shell of a totalitarian regime. The oligarchs are still brutal, and political opposition is still a dangerous and a lonely business. There is no space for dissent or debate, no space for a free intellectual or cultural life. Bureaucratic and police control are probably more strict than in most historical and contemporary tyrannies. But whether this is an after-effect of the Stalinist terror or some more lasting feature of failed totalitarianism remains unclear. The officials of the regime believe, and they are probably right, that their power can only be prolonged by upholding the apparatus of the movement-state — gleichschaltung, parallel hierarchies, mass organi­ zations, secret police, and so on — even if none of these serve any ‘higher’ purpose, even if the movement-state does not move. Hence no political or cultural thaw can ever usher in a genuine spring. Still, in describing the regime of the oligarchs it is hard to strike the apocalyptic note so easily struck in the 1950s. One can imagine internal crises, struggles for power, large-scale proscriptions, great cruelties still to come, but the ideological zeal and the idealized savagery of the Stalinist years look now like a moment in history and not like an historical era. The moment can be repeated in new places, as it has recently been repeated in Cambodia, but it cannot be sustained. I suspect that this conclusion was implicit in the earlier literature on totalitarianism, just as it is inherent in the phenomenon itself. When Hannah Arendt wrote that totalitarianism was the total exercise of power and that it reached its perfection in the death camps, she must have understood that the society of the death camps is a temporary society.12 A regime that systematically murders its own people is in one respect at least like a utopian community whose members are pledged to celibacy : neither one of them can last indefinitely. Orwell thought that the movement-state could sustain itself by a permanent war against external enemies, even if the war was largely imaginary, a matter more of propaganda than of actual combat.13 But our own cold war, though it has some of the features he describes, does not seem to generate the necessary enthusiasm. This was, I think, foreseeable even in 1949, given the exhaustion that followed upon World War II and the longing 12 13

Arendt, Origins, op. cit. (n. 8 ), pp. 437 ff. G. Orwell, 1984, New York 1949, Part Two, Section 9.

[ 190 ]

Michael Walzer for ‘normalcy’. And so the question ought to have been posed early on: what comes after totalitarianism ? So far as we can now see, the answer is the regime that I have called failed totalitarianism, the hollow shell, the brutality of limited purposes. In a certain sense, failed totalitarianism is one of the most common forms of the modern state. For it is not necessary to go through a nazi or Stalinist terror in order to achieve it. One can simply imitate the secular messianist creed and the political apparatus it requires. Failure is instantaneous, built into the social conditions of the imitative effort. The faked ideologies, the secret police, the single-party states that proliferate throughout the third world : these are imitative regimes, the work of political leaders who have the necessary ambition but not the true calling for totalitarian politics, and who are not in fact capable of transforming the traditional structures of their societies. Following Veblen, we might say of them that they enjoy the two great advantages of coming second : they (and their countrymen) escape the trauma of social transformation and they inherit the most advanced, which in this case means the most decayed, form of the politics they imitate. The result is one or another variety of old-fashioned tyranny, dressed up in fascist or communist clothing and acting out haphazardly some aspects of fascist or communist ideology. A mixed regime, new but not importantly new : and that suggests perhaps the future of those totalitarian states whose failure is more authentic. It may be useful to distinguish between the moment of totalitarian terror and the regime that makes that moment possible. In our minds and memories, the moment is (and should be) eternal : we can never forget it or give up trying to understand how it happened. But the regime has a short life, and I do not think we will succeed in under­ standing it if we assign it a permanent place in the classic typology of regimes. It is one of the forms that tyranny takes under modem condi­ tions, that is, against a background of urbanization, economic develop­ ment, nation-building, and large-scale warfare. It is marked by a sense of secular possibility that we can recognize as a central feature of modernity — but by so extravagant a version of this sense that it is doomed to failure. And failure brings with it what we can recognize, again, as a central feature of pre-modern tyranny : the rulers aim above all at maintaining themselves and serve no ‘higher’ purpose. They repress their enemies, control their subjects, and look only for some marginal improvement in the domestic or international position of their countries. They are simply the tyrants of our time, doing what tyrants have always done. Failed totalitarianism, both in its authentic and in its imposed and [191]

Totalitarian Democracy and After imitated versions, may be one of the relatively stable forms of con­ temporary tyranny. For its leaders, like the leaders of the absolutist regimes of the early modem period, have been relatively successful at building institutions and creating a cohesive élite. But it would be a mistake to imagine that these regimes are exempt from internal and unplanned transformations. That popular resistance is still possible has been demonstrated repeatedly in Eastern Europe, and the most recent events in Poland suggest also that the ultimate failure of the movement-state may lead to a military takeover. The situation is not all that different from that which prevails in pre-totalitarian tyrannies, which are also open to unplanned transformations. There, moreover, mass movements and charismatic leaders are always waiting, as it were, nourished by oppression, struggle, and popular longing. Indeed, totalitarian terror seems more likely to figure in the future of oldfashioned tyrannical regimes than in the future of failed totalitarianisms. The line that marks off these two is hard to draw, and to insist upon its central importance does not serve any useful political or moral purpose. More accurately, that insistence has come to serve a dangerous purpose, providing an apologia for what is currently called ‘author­ itarianism’. As I have already said, that apologia was no part of the original theory, whose terms were fixed by the Holocaust and the Gulag. Talmon and his colleagues were driven to explain what looked indeed, though not in the sense of the messianist faith, like the end of days. We, however, must come to grips with the return of tyranny after the failures of messianism. The dominant fact about our world today is the dominance of repression, terror, torture, censorship, prop­ aganda— all of a most traditional kind, though the traditionalism is sometimes masked by ideological pretension. Tyranny has turned out to be the true heir of totalitarianism. I suspect it is also its nursing mother. Those who defend traditional tyranny because it is not totali­ tarian have failed to grasp the deep affinity between what they defend and what they decry.

[192]

Totalitarianism and Totality A Response to Michael Walzer by YIRMIYAHU YOVEL The Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

T h e r e i s n o d o u b t t h a t tyranny is tyranny wherever it is en­

countered. The attempt to draw a distinction between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ sort — to call it ‘authoritarianism’ versus ‘totalitarianism’, or any other pair of academic-sounding words put in the service of political propaganda — has little theoretical footing and a rather transparent mask. Its role is ‘ideological’ in the sense of rationalization ; supplying an excuse-justification to power politics in terms of current morality, and trying, once again, to extend a verbal bridge over the gap be­ tween the deep moral sense of the American people and the ‘realpolitical’ role of their state as a superpower. I am, therefore, quite in agreement with Professor Walzer’s main argument. Russian tyranny under the communists had its precedent in the times of the tsars — then, incidentally, also with messianic over­ tones, although no ‘totalitarianism’ can be imputed to tsarist Russia. Today, Poland is another case of a state with a left-wing despotic regime which is not, however, totalitarian in the classic sense. Is General Jaruzelski better or worse than the generals who led the polit­ ical terror and tyranny in Argentina ? Is he a totalitarian ruler ? Or perhaps a left-wing authoritarian ? I would not blame Polish freedomactivists if this kind of vacuous question is not very much on their minds. My aim in the following remarks is to go into quite another dis­ tinction, one which is, I think, significant and called for. Totalitarianism has been associated with the concept of ‘Totality’ — which came to the philosophical foreground with Hegel (following Spinoza). By the same association, Hegel has been seen as a forerunner of totalitarian politics, if not advocating it himself. I think that an analysis of the Hegelian concept of totality is needed ; and that, when performed, it will show that ‘totality’ and ‘totalitarian politics’ are diametrically op­ posed and mutually exclusive.

[ 193 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After There are several ways of approaching the Hegelian concept of totality. A totality is all of the following : an organic system ; the result of a self-particularizing universality ; a true ‘subject’ ; an actual individual ; a synthesis of the rational ‘essence’ and empirical ‘exist­ ence’ ; a mutual recognition of free subjects within a social system embodying their rational essence. These are only a few of several possible descriptions, all either logically equivalent or stressing different variations of the same basic structure. Within the limited scope at my disposal, I shall not, of course, cover them all. The Logical Paradigm A totality, in Hegel, is not an aggregate, but a principle of unity which particularizes itself into a diversity of forms, all embodying this prin­ ciple and giving it actuality. Each member is related to all the others by the mediation of this principle ; and the latter is nothing but this interrelatedness of all members. The principle of unity is not applied to the system externally, but is immanent to the system and signifies nothing else but the inner dynamics which governs and connects the particulars and is embodied and actualized in them. Each of these abstractly ‘two’ sides, the universal and the particular, or the prin­ ciple of unity and its diverse particularization, exists only in its other and by this other’s mediation ; it is the other moment which brings the first back to itself as actual. In other words, both are mutually constitutive within a dynamic system — the totality. This is also what saying that a totality is an ‘organic’ system roughly means. Hegel construes an organism as a dialectical system, in which every particular member derives its meaning and subsistence from the function it fulfils within the whole ; but this also means : it derives from it its uniqueness, particularity, selfhood (fiirsichsein) and eventual freedom. The particular is not lost or engulfed within the system it makes possible — provided that the latter is adequate to his rational essence and not alien from it. A system in which the particular is effaced or obliterated is not a totality (it is perhaps totali­ tarianism), or rather, it is a false totality, an ‘abstract’ one which does not conform to the true concept of the totality. The latter requires, as a sine qua non logical condition, that the universal and unitary moment be constituted through actual individuals, whose free self­ hood is being made possible, and is actualized, through their partici­ pation in the unity which they in turn make possible and constitute. Dialectical mutuality, or constituting one’s own self through the media­ tion of one’s other — a principle valid for both moments of the [194]

Yirmiyahu Yovel system, the particular and the universal — is definitive of a totality in Hegel’s sense. This can also be seen by the logic of the ‘Concept’. A totality is the typical structure of the Hegelian Concept. In saying above that it is a ‘subject’, we have said nothing different — for the Concept has equally the logical form of a subject and of a totality, both signifying the same basic structure in Hegel’s dialectic. The subject, or ‘self’ (Ich), is according to Hegel’s logic a paradigm of a Concept — that is, of a dialectical totality. This totality is a singular being — a true, or actual, individual, constituted as the dialectical inter-constitution of the universal and the particular. A universal by itself is just as abstract, non-rational, and therefore oppressive as a particular in itself is illusory, and is equally non-rational and abstract. Only by their inter-media­ tion can each attain concrete being and rationality. The self-particu­ larizing universal, which ‘returns’ to itself, in a movement of dual negation, from this ‘other’ which is the particular — which has been found not to be an absolute ‘other’ but rather one in which the uni­ versal can become itself rational and actual — renders what Hegel also calls a ‘concrete universal’ ; this is the Concept — or a totality. A totality, as Kant already saw and defined it, is a singular item, the synthesis of universality and particularity. Hegel adds that this synthesis is dialectical — that is, each side reconstitutes itself through the other and has no true standing or meaning outside this relation. Political Implications Applied to more concrete questions, this pure logical model renders the very opposite of totalitarianism. A person is rational only in so far as his free subjectivity recognizes the rational character of norms, precepts, social institutions, etc. Not only does it have to see its own essence reflected from them but — this is Hegel’s addition to Kant and the Enlightenment — this free subjectivity itself is constituted as a result of this dialectical circle, or dual negation. A free society, in which I can recognize an extended embodiment of my rational essence, is itself a precondition for me to possess such rational essence and to have it actualized — that is, to be myself an actual individual (which in Hegel’s terms also means : rational). Unless I can draw this element from my social and historical environment, I am doomed to be alienated, abstract, not really rational — whatever the con­ tents of my consciousness and the inner thoughts and a priori under­ standing I may have. But the opposite equally holds true : if I, the particular individual, do not recognize the rationality and adequacy of the social norms

[ 195 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After and powers, as explicating and at once as constituting my rational actuality, then there is no actuality — or rationality — in the social institutions themselves, just as, unfortunately for me, there will be no actuality and rationality in me, the critic. The situation will be one of ‘abstraction’ on both sides : an ‘abstract’, alienated particular, seeking in vain the imprint and counterparts of his abstractly rational consciousness in the social world, and an equally ‘abstract’ society con­ fronting him. And if this society imposes upon me by force a universal system which my rational self must reject, and in front of which it feels threatened by repression and obliteration, then the system itself is not rational, that is, it is not a true totality, whatever the objective principles which its institutions claim to embody. Totality thus means a rational system in the Hegelian sense just described. The situation we have analysed — where neither I nor the social system is rational or actual — means that no totality exists ; the moments of the alleged totality fall apart, and instead of mutually constituting each other they become abstract opponents, interfering, hindering and alienating each other. This ‘detotalized totality’, or rather, this anti-totality — a situation where a true totality fails to be formed (and an abstract distortion takes its place) — is where ‘totalitarianism’ can find its logical place in Hegel’s system. Just as totalitarianism is the opposite of a dialectical totality, an abstract and distorted caricature of it, so the current association of Hegel, given his logic, with the concept of totalitarianism is a distortion and a caricature. The identification is much too pre­ valent, much too suited to the anti-Hegelian bias in both the Englishspeaking and the communist world, where the concept of an ‘abstract totality’ has become the practice. Perhaps the recognition of this division can render some historical lesson. In Hegelian terms, the Russian-governed bloc is run as a false totality, where abstract universality rules, and the Western-capitalist world functions as a false totality (closer to an ‘aggregate’), where abstract particularity has the upper hand. The lesson we may draw is that, if a false totality is our lot, then falling into abstract universality is by far the more dangerous and oppressive alternative : here, there is no symmetry or mutuality.

[ 196 ]

Aux sources de l’idéologie fasciste: La révolte socialist contre le matérialisme by

ZEEV STERNHELL The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

D e s l e s premières années du vingtième siècle, la révolte contre le matérialisme constitue un aspect essentiel de la montée de la droite révolutionnaire. Cette révolte s’exprime par le refus du libéralisme et du marxisme, elle entraîne aussi bien l’extrême-gauche contestataire que la droite nationaliste, et permet finalement la jonction d’un certain socialisme éthique et spiritualiste avec le nationalisme radical. Le syndicalisme révolutionnaire en France et en Italie jette les bases de cette forme de révisionnisme qui affirme l’échec du déterminisme marxiste et amorce un processus de dépassement du marxisme, fondé sur le refus du côté matérialiste et mécaniste du système. Au lendemain de la Grande Guerre, les non-conformistes de la nouvelle génération socialiste s’engagent dans cette même voie : c’est ainsi que de Sorel, Michels, Lagardelle et Arturo Labriola à Henri de Man et à Marcel Déat, cette variante du socialisme se métamorphose profondément. En effet, ce révisionnisme idéaliste devient comme un effort de régéné­ ration morale de la société dans son ensemble et de sauvetage de la civilisation, beaucoup plus qu’un mouvement de libération de la classe ouvrière. Tel qu’il est conçu par ses contestataires et ses révoltés, le socialisme n’est pas seulement la création d’une classe bien déterminée de la société moderne, mais aussi un effort idéologique vers un ordre humain différent. C’est ainsi que le renouveau spiritualiste et éthique qui est une né­ cessité pour le marxisme du début du siècle, tout comme il le sera dans les années trente, constitue un tournant crucial. En permettant de concevoir le socialisme indépendamment de la classe ouvrière, il rend possible un socialisme sans prolétariat. Chez les syndicalistes ré­ volutionnaires, chez les non-conformistes de l’entre-deux-guerres, le socialisme semble être de nature plus pédagogique qu’économique et donc logiquement indifférent à l’antagonisme des classes. Il en résulte,

[ 197 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After en dernière analyse, que la relation entre socialisme et proletariat n’est pas essentielle. De même que tous les mouvements ouvriers ne sont pas socialistes, tous les socialistes ne sont pas prolétaires et le socialisme n’appartient pas nécessairement à une structure sociale donnée. Il existe un socialisme de toujours, un socialisme «éternel» répéteront les hom­ mes de la génération de l’entre-deux-guerres, un socialisme pour tous les hommes, pour tous les temps. Dès le moment où, comme jadis les syndicalistes révolutionnaires, ils perdent la foi dans les vertus révo­ lutionnaires du prolétariat, ils se tournent vers la seule force historique encore susceptible de servir d’agent de régénération morale et de trans­ formation sociale : la nation, et ainsi la transition logique du syndi­ calisme révolutionnaire au socialisme national s’opère de façon natu­ relle. Dès qu’il est clair que le prolétariat ne possède ni les moyens, ni l’énergie, ni la volonté de jouer le rôle de sauveteur des valeurs héroï­ ques, il est remplacé par ce qui apparaît être la grande force montante, la nation, dans toutes ses classes rassemblées. Progressivement pointe l’idée selon laquelle le facteur révolutionnaire, celui qui abattra finale­ ment la démocratie libérale, est la nation et non le prolétariat. En même temps que Sorel, parviennent à cette conclusion les syndicalistes révolutionnaires en Italie : ils se jettent dans la guerre avec ardeur, non par ferveur patriotique, comme on le pense souvent, mais parce qu’ils voient en elle une machine révolutionnaire. Or, la guerre cons­ titue un conflit entre nations et non pas entre classes : c’est ainsi que la nation devient l’agent privilégié de la révolution et le syndicalisme révolutionnaire italien, la colonne vertébrale de l’idéologie fasciste. Loin d’être une aberration, ce processus est d’une logique sans faille. En effet, ce courant est axé avant tout sur un violent antimatérialisme qui conduit simultanément à une révision éthique et spirituelle du marxisme : les syndicalistes révolutionnaires seront les premiers, en ce début de siècle, à se dresser contre le matérialisme, contre tout maté­ rialisme — non seulement libéral et bourgeois, mais aussi marxiste et prolétarien. Dès lors, même quand il ne restera plus grand’chose de marxiste chez ces hommes venus de la gauche et de l’extrême-gauche, l’horreur de la vie bourgeoise et la haine d’un monde bassement maté­ rialiste persisteront à jamais. Sorel, Lagardelle, Hervé, Michels et les) syndicalistes révolutionnaires italiens, auront ainsi parcouru un chemin qui ne manque pas de logique. La génération de l’entre-deux-guerres n’échappe pas à ce mécanisme. Une logique sans faille unit les thèmes du Congrès de Heppenheim, tenu en 1928, au cours duquel de Man présente l’essentiel de ses idées, au Manifeste du Parti Ouvrier Belge du 3 juillet 1940. En effet, dans cet exposé du socialisme éthique, le professeur de Franc-

[ 198 ]

Zçev Sternhell fort affirme avec force que « les valeurs vitales sont supérieures aux valeurs matérielles » et que « la volonté socialiste ne peut donc être déduite de causes données dans le milieu capitaliste, et particulière­ ment de la lutte d’une classe pour l’intérêt et le pouvoir w.1 C’est bien cela aussi qui l’amène à déclarer aux militants du socialisme belge au lendemain de la défaite : En liant leur sort à la victoire des armes, les gouvernements démocratiques ont accepté à l’avance le verdict de la guerre. Ce verdict est clair. Il condamne les régimes où les discours rempla­ cent les actes, où les responsabilités s’éparpillent dans le bavar­ dage des assemblées, où le slogan de la liberté sert d’oreiller à l’égoïsme conservateur. Il appelle une époque où une élite pré­ férerait la vie dangereuse et rapide à la vie facile et lente et cherchant la responsabilité au lieu de la fuir, bâtira un monde nouveau. Dans ce monde l’esprit de communauté prévaudra sur l’égoïsme de classe, et le travail sera la seule source de la dignité et du pouvoir. L’ordre socialiste s’y réalisera non point comme la chose d’une classe ou d’un parti, mais comme le lien de tous, sous le signe d’une solidarité nationale, qui sera bientôt conti­ nentale sinon mondiale.2 Ici on touche au fond du problème. De Man, Déat et les néo-socia­ listes, Paul Marion et d’autres communistes qui iront au Parti Po­ pulaire Français de Doriot, abandonnent certes le marxisme mais non point leurs velléités révolutionnaires et leur soif de régénération. Leur révolution sera désormais une révolution éthique, une révolution spi­ rituelle, une révolution politique et nationale. Ce sera le cadre con­ ceptuel classique d’une révolution fasciste, le point de rencontre idéal autour duquel se réuniront, une fois de plus, les anciens socialistes, les nationalistes et anciens maurrassiens : à Sorel et à Berth unis à Barrés et Valois dans les salles de rédaction de L’Indépendance et des Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon font pendant dans les années trente les révisionnistes combattant le même adversaire aux côtés de Drieu La Rochelle, Brasillach ou Thierry Maulnier. L’antimarxisme conduit les socialistes éthiques, les modernistes à ou­ trance, les planistes, tous les tenants d’une économie dirigée, à la rencontre des néo-nationalistes dans leur combat commun contre le matérialisme. Que ce matérialisme prenne le visage de la démocratie libérale ou du marxisme n’a finalement que fort peu d’importance : 1 2

H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, Paris 1974, p. 435. H. de Man, «U n manifeste du P.O.B. », La Gazette de Charleroi (3 juillet 1940), p. 4.

[ 199 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After dans les deux cas il s’agit du même mal bourgeois. Ce mal est eco­ nomique, politique, social, mais il est avant tout moral. Car les con­ testataires, les syndicalistes révolutionnaires, tout comme les tenants du socialisme éthique des années trente, sont avant tout des moralistes : Sorel et Michels avant 1914, de Man et Déat dans l’entre-deux-guerres, s’attaquent avant tout au matérialisme — à celui de l’ordre bourgeois et libéral comme à celui de l’orthodoxie marxiste mécaniste ou encore à celui de l’opportunisme pratiqué par la social-démocratie. En ce sens, l’évolution de Sorel, de Lagardelle, de Berth, de Labriola et de Michels est d’un intérêt prodigieux car elle anticipe sur celle de la génération de 1930 et donne une dimension nouvelle à tous les cou­ rants du non-conformisme socialiste des années trente. Au lendemain de cette « révolution dreyfusienne » en qui il avait mis tant d’espoir parce qu’il y voyait, avant tout, un affrontement à caractère moral, Sorel menace l’ordre existant non seulement d’une « catastrophe matérielle », mais aussi d’une « catastrophe morale ».3 La notion de « catastrophe morale » qui sous-tend toute sa pensée, est capitale pour la compréhension de l’idéologie et surtout de l’in­ fluence de Sorel. Car si Sorel vient au marxisme, c’est parce qu’il est préoccupé depuis le début de son cheminement intellectuel par la décadence, par les facteurs qui entraînent la fin d’une civilisation et ceux qui, au contraire, permettent une régénération et un nouveau départ. Très vite, il s’en prend à la vulgarisation marxiste pour son matérialisme, pour ses simplifications, pour sa méconnaissance de ce qu’il considère être le marxisme authentique, le marxisme de Marx tel qu’il le définit aussi bien avant qu’après l’Affaire Dreyfus et où le facteur moral est toujours présent : la responsabilité, les engage­ ments libres, le statut de l’individu comme sujet de l’histoire. C’est pourquoi il souligne toujours « le caractère éthique de la lutte des classes »,4 « l’élaboration morale qui alimente la lutte des classes »,5 le « progrès éthique »6 sans lequel il n’est pas de socialisme. Chez Sorel « l’esprit éthique pénètre complètement la révolution » :7 quelques années plus tard, dans Réflexions et dans La décomposition du mar­ xisme, cette idée prendra les formes bien connues de la grève géné­ rale, de la violence prolétarienne génératrice d’un monde nouveau. 3 4 5 6 7

G. Sorel, « Bases de critique sociale », Matériaux d’une théorie du pro­ létariat, Paris 1921, p. 171. G. Sorel, « L’éthique du socialisme”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, VII (Mars 1899), p. 286. Ibid., p. 291. Ibid. Ibid., p. 289.

[200]

Zeev Sternhell Mais l’éthique du socialisme que Sorel élabore au temps des Réflexions est assurément déjà fort loin du marxisme, même si l’on adopte comme critère une définition minimaliste de celui-ci. Il s’agit ici, en fait, déjà d’un autre socialisme, un socialisme qui n’a que fort peu en commun avec la tradition rationaliste du dix-huitième siècle à laquelle se rattache le marxisme. Ce socialisme nouveau est déjà imprégné d’un profond pessimisme, «cette doctrine sans laquelle rien de très haut ne s’est fait dans le monde »,8 cette « métaphysique des moeurs » qui est véritablement « une conception d’une marche vers la délivrance ».9 Comme Barrés, Sorel s’inspire de Hartmann et de Pascal, il flétrit tous les aspects de l’optimisme rationaliste : la philosophie grecque ou la théorie des droits naturels.10 A la conception rationaliste des droits naturels Sorel oppose la théorie des mythes : les mythes sont des « systèmes d’ima­ ges » que l’on ne peut décomposer en leurs éléments, qu’il faut prendre en bloc comme des forces historiques.11 « Quand on se place sur le terrain des mythes, on est à l’abri de toute réfutation » dit Sorel :12 un échec « ne peut rien prouver contre le socialisme ».13 La grève générale est un mythe, elle doit être considérée comme un ensemble indivisé ; par suite aucun détail d’exécution n’offre aucun intérêt pour l’intelligence du socialisme ; il faut même ajouter que l’on est toujours en danger de perdre quelque chose de cette intelligence quand on essaie de décomposer cet ensemble en partis.14 Le socialisme devient ainsi un travail de préparation, un facteur de mobilisation, une source d’énergie. C’est en fait au problème fonda­ mental que l’on revient, celui sur lequel s’était penché Le Bon,15 celui que de Man appellera le problème des mobiles, celui encore qui sera au centre de la pensée de Déat : comment faire marcher les hommes pour changer le monde ? C’est pourquoi les réalisations immédiates n’importent guère : ce qui compte c’est la conception du socialisme 8 G. Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence ( l i e éd.), Paris 1950, p. 13. 9 Ibid., p. 17. Voir aussi pp. 18-24. 10 Ibid., pp. 24-28. 11 Ibid., p. 33. 12 Ibid., p. 49. Voir aussi p. 46. 13 Ibid., p. 50. 14 Ibid., p. 185. Voir aussi p. 189. 15 II convient de rappeler ici que Sorel avait été un des tout premiers à saluer la sortie de Psychologie des foules. Voir son compte-rendu dans Le devenir social, 1ère année, no. 8 (novembre 1895), pp. 765-770.

[201]

Totalitarian Democracy and After comme un « mouvement créateur ».16 Sorel en appelle longuement au Bergson des Données immédiates de la conscience17 pour dire « que le mouvement est l’essentiel de la vie affective » : c’est « en termes de mouvement qu’il convient de parler de la conscience créatrice ».18 L’idée de la lutte des classes remplit cette fonction, elle est en fait un mythe dont le but est de préserver un état de tension continue, de scission et de catastrophe,19 un état de guerre larvée, de guerre morale de tous les jours contre l’ordre établi. C’est à cette condition seulement que l’oeuvre des socialistes, cette « oeuvre grave, redoutable et sublime m,20 remplira sa fonction historique : abattre l’ordre bour­ geois, libéral et démocratique, briser non seulement ses structures po­ litiques et sociales, mais ses valeurs morales et ses normes intellec­ tuelles. A l’idée de Justice, cette «nuée », comme dit toujours Maurras, « ce vieux cheval de retour, monté depuis des siècles par tous les rénovateurs du monde privés de plus sûrs moyens de locomotion his­ toriques»,21 comme dit Rosa Luxemburg, Sorel oppose l’idée de grève qui est un « phénomène de guerre » : c’est pourquoi « la guerre sociale à laquelle le prolétariat ne cesse de se préparer dans les syndicats, peut engendrer les éléments d’une civilisation nouvelle, propre à. un peuple de producteurs».22 Mais qu’adviendra-t-il de ces espoirs de régénération le jour où le prolétariat ne répondra pas à l’attente de Sorel, quand l’auteur de Réflexions sur la violence parviendra lui aussi à la conclusion de Croce selon laquelle « le socialisme est mort » ?23 Qu’adviendra-t-il de sa recherche, de ces formes sociales et intellectuelles capables de se dresser G. Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence, op. cit. (n. 8 ), p. 41. Ibid., pp. 40-43. Voir aussi pp. 186—188. Ibid., p. 43. L’influence de Bergson sur Sorel est frappante : toute son oeuvre de la première décennie du siècle en est imprégnée. Voir notam­ ment De l’utilité du pragmatisme, Paris 1921, pp. 357-451, consacré à l’analyse de L’Evolution créatrice, ainsi que la longue étude de cette oeuvre majeure de Bergson faite dans Le mouvement socialiste en octobre et dé­ cembre 1907 (nos 191, 193) et en janvier, mars et avril 1908 (nos 194, 196 et 197). 19 Ibid., p. 279. 20 Ibid., p. 202. Voir aussi p. 315. 21 R. Luxemburg, «Démocratie industrielle et démocratie politique», Le mouvement socialiste, no. 11 (15 juin 1899), p. 640. 22 G. Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence, op. cit. (n. 8 ), pp. 434—435. 23 Sorel cite Croce dans son «Avant-propos» écrit en 1914 aux Matériaux, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 4. De 1895 jusqu’à sa mort, Sorel entretient une chaleu­ reuse amitié avec Croce. Il lui écrivit 343 lettres qui furent publiées entre 1927 et 1930 (J.J. Roth, The Cult of Violence — Sorel and the Sorelians, Berkeley 1980, pp. 9, 281). 16 17 18

[202]

Zeev Sternhell contre la décadence du monde moderne le jour où, comme Croce encore, il dira que Marx avait «rêvé une épopée magnifique a24 mais que ce n’était qu’un rêve? Vers qui se tournera-t-il quand il pensera que ce «prolétariat héroïque, créateur d’un nouveau système de va­ leurs, appelé à fonder, à très bref délais, sur les ruines de la société capitaliste, une civilisation de producteurs» n’existe nulle part, que « la révolution annoncée par Marx est chimérique » ?25 La réponse est fournie par L’Indépendance, par le projet avorté de la Cité fran­ çaise, cette revue socialiste-nationale que voulait lancer Sorel, par les Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon et par cet Avant-propos aux Matériaux d’une théorie du prolétariat où la nation et la tradition émergent comme les seules forces créatrices de morale, les seules aptes à en­ diguer la décadence. Le cercle est ainsi fermé et l’on revient aux thèses fondamentales de son premier livre, Le Procès de Socrate. Au terme de cette évolution, Sorel pourrait, comme Barrés, évoquer « la fumée de toutes ces batailles perdues qui obscurcit l’horizon ». La plus grande de ces batailles fut celle pour le marxisme. C’est à l’issue de cette tentative de sauvetage du marxisme que Sorel glisse vers une synthèse de populisme et de nationalisme où le culte de Jeanne d’Arc se mêle à l’antisémitisme le plus primaire. Sorel a tenté de faire revivre le marxisme sous une forme nouvelle, modernisée, adaptée aux réalités économiques et sociales de l’époque. Il a en fait accepté l’analyse de Bernstein sur l’évolution du capitalisme, il a as­ sisté à l’agonie de l’orthodoxie en Allemagne et en France, et il a aimé le syndicalisme révolutionnaire, cette forme de révisionisme gau­ chiste de l’époque qu’il considère alors comme la dernière planche de salut du système dans son ensemble. Si cette tentative de modernisation et de sauvetage a pour effet de préserver le vocabulaire marxiste, notamment la notion de lutte des classes, le sens véritable des concepts de base du socialisme change radicalement. En effet l’étiquette n’indique plus, aux temps des Ré­ flexions sur la violence, la nature du contenu. L’idée de la lutte des classes sert désormais à définir une idéologie où le vitalisme, l’intuition, le pessimisme et l’activisme, le culte de l’énergie, de l’héroïsme et de la violence prolétarienne, créatrice de morale et de vertu, remplacent le rationalisme marxiste. Le marxisme est un système d’idées encore bien enraciné dans la philosophie mécaniste du dix-huitième siècle. Le révisionnisme sorélien, lui, remplace les fondements rationalistes, hégéliens, du marxisme par la nouvelle vision de la nature humaine 24 25

Ibid. Ibid.

[203 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After que prêche Le Bon, par l’anticartésianisme de Bergson, par la révolte de Nietzsche, par les dernières découvertes de la sociologie politique de Pareto et de Michels. Ce glissement vers la droite est d’autant plus naturel que le socialisme éthique de Sorel, volontariste, vitaliste et antimatérialiste à souhait, utilise le bergsonisme contre le scientisme et n’hésite pas à s’attaquer à la raison parce qu’il « est dans la nature du rationalisme d’éliminer, autant qu’il peut le faire, les puissances psychologiques qu’il rencontre sur son chemin b.26 Ce socialisme est avant tout « une philosophie de l’action qui donne la première place à l’intuition »,27 il est fondé sur le culte de l’énergie et de l’élan. Il ne résistera pas aux secousses provoquées par la découverte qu’avait faite Le Bon et le génération de 1890 : le prolétariat n’est lui aussi qu’une foule, et la foule est conservatrice. Pour l’ébranler, il lui faut un mythe : et quand il de­ viendra clair que le mythe de la grève générale et de la violence prolétarienne est sans effet parce que le prolétariat n’est pas capable de remplir son rôle de facteur révolutionnaire, il ne restera plus à Sorel qu’à abandonner le cadre conceptuel du marxisme et à rem­ placer la notion de prolétariat par celle de nation. Ce processus sera achevé avant la guerre et sans aucun rapport avec elle. Tout comme cela sera le cas, pour Lagardelle, pour Michels, pour Arturo Labriola, et plus tard, pour Déat ou pour de Man.28 Les tenants de cette forme de socialisme n’ont besoin du prolétariat qu’aussi longtemps qu’ils le croient capable de remplir sa fonction d’agent révolutionnaire. Quand ils parviendront à la conclusion que le prolétariat vient définitivement de battre en retraite, ils ne le sui­ vront pas dans ce repli. Leur socialisme restera révolutionnaire, alors que celui du prolétariat aura cessé de l’être : entre le prolétariat et la révolution, ils choisiront la révolution, entre un socialisme prolétarien mais modéré et un socialisme sans prolétariat mais révolutionnaire, leur choix s’arrête sur la révolution non prolétarienne. A ce choix ils sont bien préparés par leur conception du socialisme. C’est ainsi que s’avançant sur la voie ouverte par Sorel, tout comme de Man, Arturo Labriola, mais aussi comme Spengler, le syndicaliste révolutionnaire Michels est formel : « Il n’est pas vrai » dit-il, « que le système capitaliste en enfantant non le prolétariat, mais une nouG. Sorel, «Avant propos», Matériaux, op. cit. (n. 3 ), p. 35. H. Lagardelle, «Le syndicalisme et le socialisme en France», Syndica­ lisme et socialisme (Discours prononcés au Colloque tenu à Paris le 3 avril 1907), Paris 1907, p. 8. 28 Voir Z. Sternhell, Ni droite, ni gauche — L'idéologie fasciste en France, Paris 1983, chaps IV-VI.

26 27

[204 ]

Zeev Sternhell veile forme de prolétariat, ait donné la vie au socialisme. Le socia­ lisme, comme idéologie, a existé avant lui w.29 On peut en conclure que le socialisme est capable d’exister à la rigueur sans prolétariat et qu’il n’est pas nécessairement lié à un système de production. Ainsi se forge une conception de socialisme éternel, d’un socialisme idéal qui n’a besoin du prolétariat qu’aussi longtemps que celui-ci est un facteur de changement politique et social qui soit aussi un facteur de régénération morale. Ce socialisme se veut créateur d’une nouvelle civilisation, aussi différente que possible de la tradition bourgeoise. Lagardelle écrit : J’avoue d’ailleurs que, même si les rêves d’avenir du socialisme syndicaliste ne se réalisent jamais — et nul de nous n’a le secret de l’histoire — il me suffirait, pour lui donner toute mon adhé­ sion, de constater qu’il est, au moment où je parle, l’agent essen­ tiel de la civilisation dans le monde.30 Tout s’écroulera quand surgiront les premiers doutes quant à la ca­ pacité du prolétariat à remplir le rôle que lui assigne la première génération du socialisme éthique. La seconde génération, celle des révisionnistes de l’entre-deux-guerres, forte de l’expérience qui avait abattu derrière Sorel, Berth, Lagardelle, Labriola, tous les syndica­ listes révolutionnaires aussi bien en France qu’en Italie, n’accorde dès le début qu’une confiance limitée au prolétariat. Si la première géné­ ration perd progressivement sa foi dans les facultés messianiques du prolétariat, la seconde génération n’hésite même plus à faire état de son scepticisme et à construire tout son édifice idéologique sur le pos­ tulat implicite selon lequel, pour se réaliser, le socialisme n’a besoin ni du prolétariat ni du capitalisme. Très vite il s’avère que puisqu’il ne dépend ni d’un moment historique, ni d’une couche sociale, mais d’une certaine série de valeurs, le socialisme peut non seulement être national, mais aussi être indépendant des réalités politiques et sociales, de la nature d’un régime et des rapports de forces au sein d’une société. Détaché des réalités historiques, conçu seulement en termes d’une aspiration étemelle vers la justice — comme chez de Man, Arturo Labriola, Spengler mais aussi chez André Philip — ou conçu, comme dans le cas du socialisme révolutionnaire, en termes de « durée », d’é­ nergie tendue vers un objectif qui ne sera peut-être jamais atteint, 29 30

R. Michels, «Controverse socialiste»», Le mouvement socialiste, no. 184 (Mars 1907), p. 282. H. Lagardelle, « Le syndicalisme et le socialisme en France », op. cit. (n. 27), p. 52.

[205 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After de mouvement qui ne sera peut-être jamais mis en marche, ce so­ cialisme peut aisément aller à la dérive. Car, contrairement aux ap­ parences, rien en fait n’est moins réel, moins tangible que le syndi­ calisme révolutionnaire : l’idée de la grève générale, dit le directeur du Mouvement socialiste, est « une opération spontanée de l’esprit » à laquelle «il n’y a ni date ni plan à assigner».31 Ce socialisme qui se veut pratique, où il n’y a pas de place « pour les rêveries utopiques », qui ne se définit qu’en termes de lutte des classes et qui ne saisit la classe ouvrière que « dans ses formations de combat w,32 nécessite uni­ quement un état de tension permanente, générateur d’une claire vo­ lonté de confrontation. « Il suffit », dit Lagardelle, « que les facultés guerrières du prolétariat soient sans cesse tenues en éveil et qu’il ne perde jamais l’énergie aventureuse qui fait les conquérants».33 Ce qui compte donc c’est l’affrontement « entre deux mondes qui ont de la vie une notion contraire b.34 Le but de l’action révolutionnaire est de « renouveler le monde »3536et la classe ouvrière est la seule qui puisse le faire parce qu’elle est la seule à pouvoir « s’isoler dans ses cadres naturels», la seule à pouvoir rester vraiment «étrangère à la société bourgeoise » et à refuser « la substance intellectuelle de la bourgeoisie b.38 Pour Robert Michels, la signification du syndicalisme révolutionnaire est la même : l’essentiel est de « produire une psychologie de révolte morale »37 qui entraîne le prolétariat et lui donne « cet idéalisme ré­ volutionnaire qui peut seul le conduire à la victoire ».3® Il faut couper le prolétariat de ce « socialisme verbal et lâche »,39 de « cette organi­ sation bureaucratique, hiérarchique et pesante » qui « l’éloigne de tout effort mâle, de tout acte héroïque w.40 L’importance du syndicalisme révolutionnaire réside dans « l’union grandiose de Vidée avec la classe ».41 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., pp. 50-51. H. Lagardelle, «Avant-propos», Syndicalisme et socialisme, op. cit. (n. 27), pp. 3-5, 8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., pp. 4-5. R. Michels, « Le syndicalisme et le socialisme en Allemagne », Syndicalisme et socialisme, op. cit. (n. 27), p 26. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 23. Cf. même formule dans R. Michels, «Controverse socialiste», op. cit. (n. 29), p. 280.

[206 ]

Zeev Sternhell Michels se sert de cette formule — et de cette idée — à de nombreuses reprises pour clamer son refus du matérialisme historique, pour dire « que le seul égoïsme de classe » ne suffit pas à atteindre un but révolutionnaire.42 Le changement intégral de la société actuelle ne peut se faire que par un mouvement ouvrier qui possède ces « éléments éthiques qui élèvent le brutal égoïsme de classe. .. à la hauteur de la nécessité morale » d’un tel changement.43 Un exemple concret qui illustre ce qu’il veut dire est celui des ouvriers de Krupp : « l’egoïsme économique des masses ouvrières occupées par Krupp doit nécessaire­ ment les conduire au militarisme n.44 En effet, plus Krupp accumule les commandes d’armes, plus les salaires des métallurgistes des usines Krupp auront tendance à augmenter. « Sans une bonne dose de sen­ timent éthique » qui leur fait percevoir le devoir de leur solidarité avec les camarades des autres industries, ces ouvriers seraient perdus pour la conception de lutte de classe révolutionnaire. Il en résulte que «le facteur économique est impuissant sans le coefficient de la péda­ gogie morale ».45 La preuve la plus frappante de l’impuissance d’une classe ouvrière et d’un parti socialiste qui ne connaissent pas « la soif morale w46 est fournie par l’état déplorable dans lequel se trouve le plus grand parti socialiste du monde, celui qui a 400.000 adhérents et qui obtient aux élections générales plus de voix que tous les autres partis réunis. Cet « innombrable prolétariat inconscient et aveugle », qui n’a jamais reçu d’éducation « socialiste et morale », qui ne possède aucune « vo­ lonté courageuse de l’action » ne constitue qu’une des lugubres conséquences d’un matérialisme historique mal com­ pris. A force de prêcher tous les jours la stricte dépendance des sentiments et des idées de l’homme de la fatalité économique, on est arrivé, en fait, à nier l’éternelle vérité que la volonté et l’éner­ gie peuvent, elles aussi, exercer une forte influence sur nos actions et parfois même en contradiction avec les exigences matérielles de la vie.47 Pour faire progresser le prolétariat, il faut donc l’éduquer. Il faut créer une « imité idéologique w48 et ce rôle revient aux intellectuels. 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid. Ibid. R. Michels, « Les dangers du parti socialiste allemand », Le mouvement socialiste, no. 144 (décembre 1904), p. 202. Ibid., pp. 199-200, 202. R. Michels, «Controverse socialiste», op. cit. (n. 29), p. 286.

[207 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Contrairement à Sorel et à Berth qui se mettent, pour un temps très limité il est vrai, à l’école du prolétariat, Michels, lui, même au coeur de sa période socialiste révolutionnaire, pense que « le mouvement ouvrier ne saurait exister sans une troupe d’intellectuels lui servant d’éclaireurs ».4950 II développe alors un élitisme qui l’amène à penser que le mouvement ouvrier « est absolument impuissant à se passer des intellectuels »®° car seuls les intellectuels sont capables d’inculquer au prolétariat l’habitude de faire usage de sa volonté, eux seuls sauront le préparer à son rôle révolutionnaire en lui communiquant le senti­ ment du but final. Ils sont aussi les seuls qui puissent, sur les traces d'Engels, faire comprendre au prolétariat que le milieu politique dé­ mocratique est le plus propice à toute action de classe révolutionnaire.51 Le prolétariat a besoin d’un « milieu libre » où il n’y aurait qu’un « seul obstacle au développement des forces prolétariennes : l’igno­ rance — à vaincre — des masses».52 Cependant, il est important de bien comprendre que si le prolétariat, dans l’esprit de Michels, a besoin de la démocratie, celle-ci n’est pour lui qu’un moyen, un simple outil. Le mouvement ouvrier a besoin de liberté, liberté d’expression, de propagande, d’organisation. Mais s’il a besoin de liberté, il n’a pas besoin des mécanismes du régime. Par­ tout en Europe, dit Michels, « le parlementarisme tue le socialisme envisagé sous ses aspects les plus profonds, en lui substituant un socia­ lisme politicien unilatéral w.53 L’Allemagne est l’exemple de la pire des situations : l’atmosphère de liberté y manque, le peuple n’en a pas l’habitude et ne semble pas toujours en éprouver le besoin, cependant la corruption du socialisme par le parlementarisme y fait rage. Le parti socialiste sombre dans l’opportunisme le plus vulgaire, les Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin ne forment qu’une petite minori­ té.54 Toutes les compromissions, toutes les démissions sont bonnes pour 49 Ibid., p. 283. 50 Ibid. 51 R. Michels, * Le Congrès des socialistes de Prusse », l e mouvement socia­ liste, no. 149 (février 1905), pp. 250-251. Michels cite Engels qui écrivait dans La critique sociale, à Turati, en 1892 : « Marx et moi depuis quarante ans, nous avons répété à satiété que la république démocratique est la seule forme politique, à l’intérieur de laquelle la lutte entre la classe ouvrière et la classe capitaliste puisse se généraliser pour atteindre enfin à son but, qui est la victoire complète du prolétariat» (p. 250). 52 R. Michels, «Les dangers du parti socialiste allemand», op. cit. (n. 46), p. 212. 53 Ibid., p. 201. Voir aussi p. 203. 54 R. Michels, « Le socialisme allemand après Mannheim », Le mouvement socialiste, no. 182 (janvier 1907), pp.7-9, 13.

[208 ]

Zeev Sternhell s’assurer encore quelques voix et encore quelques sièges : la faillite du « radicalisme socialiste » en Allemagne est complète.55 Mais les dangers de la démocratie libérale guettent tous les partis socialistes d’Europe et ils sont partout les mêmes. De plus, il faut y ajouter la tentation d’avoir une organisation pour l’organisation,56 la volonté de jouir des biens acquis : « avoir des caisses bien remplies et à l’abri de toute inquiétude », dit Michels.57 Cet « amour de la paix pour les caisses»58 est doublé d’un défaut immanent à toute organi­ sation, à toute représentation.59 Ici s’exprime déjà, non plus le militant socialiste révolutionnaire, mais le futur auteur de Partis politiques : les dangers qui guettent toute organisation, tout système représentatif sont ceux-là mêmes que subissent les syndicals. Les masses ne se re­ présentent pas elles-mêmes dans les moments décisifs des grèves : ce n’est pas le parti qui engendre l’embourgeoisement et la déviation, mais l’organisation en tant que telle. Le grand problème à résoudre consiste donc à trouver une solution au fait que le syndicat «porte lui aussi en soi son antinomie cruelle ».60 Quelques années plus tard, Michels parviendra comme Sorel à la conclusion que le prolétariat ne sera jamais un facteur révolutionnaire et que le socialisme est par conséquent impuissant à changer le monde. En ce début du siècle il croit encore qu’« un révisionnisme révolution­ naire », un courant se basant essentiellement sur « la plus nette rigi­ dité des principes... et sur la volonté courageuse de l’action offen­ sive »,61 c’est-à-dire sur une éthique volontariste et vitaliste, parviendra à briser l’inertie et le conservatisme des masses. A la veille de la guerre, Michels comme pratiquement l’ensemble du syndicalisme révo­ lutionnaire, se rend à ce qui lui semble être l’évidence : le capitalisme ne creuse pas entre la bourgeoisie et le prolétariat un fossé suffisant à engendrer la révolte ouvrière. D’autre part, il devient clair dans son esprit que les lois sociologiques qu’il vient lui-même de reconnaître et qui régissent le comportement de tous les hommes et de toutes les organisations rendent illusoire tout espoir de faire du prolétariat cet agent révolutionnaire dont avaient rêvé les syndicalistes. Quand aura disparu la foi dans le prolétariat, il restera encore une 55 56 57

58 59 60 61

Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 20. R. Michels, « Le Congrès syndical de Cologne », Le mouvement socialiste, no. 158 (juillet 1905), p. 314. Ibid. R. Michels, «Controverse socialiste», op. cit. (n. 29), p. 282. Ibid. R. Michels, «Le Congrès des socialistes de Prusse», op. cit. (n. 51), p. 251.

[209 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After chose du syndicalisme révolutionnaire : la volonté de briser la démo­ cratie libérale. « Le socialisme n’est pas un dérivé de la démocratie » dit Arturo Labriola, au nom du syndicalisme révolutionnaire italien, en s’adressant aux participants du Colloque de Paris.62 Trois ans plus tard, Labriola et Michels collaborent déjà avec Enrico Corradini, le théoricien du nationalisme italien, à la fondation d’une revue où s’organise la convergence des syndicalistes révolutionnaires et des na­ tionalistes.63 Dirigée par Paolo Orano, La lupa sort en octobre 1910. Peu de temps après, Labriola sera l’un des plus fervents partisans de la guerre de Lybie, et contribuera, à travers l’interventionnisme, à jeter les bases du mouvement fasciste italien. Il n’est peut-être pas sans intérêt de rappeler que c’est à l’Avanguardia socialista qu’un jeune syndicaliste révolutionnaire du nom de Benito Mussolini fit ses premières armes. Pour lui le socialisme, dit son bio­ graphe, fut aussi et avant tout un état d’âme : le socialisme c’était l’action et c’est à travers la revue hebdomadaire de Labriola que Mussolini, en exil en Suisse, s’associe au bouillonnement intellectuel A. Labriola, « Le syndicalisme et le socialisme en Italie », Syndicalisme et socialisme, op. cit. (n. 27), p. 10. Arturo Labriola représente avec Leone, Panunzio, Lanzillo, auteur de la première biographie de Sorel publiée en 1910 en italien, et bien d’autres encore, les soréliens d’outre­ mont. En Italie, dans la jeunesse universitaire, les théories de Sorel, entremêlées d’éléments italiens, avaient pris racine. Les partisans de Sorel se recrutaient surtout parmi des jeunes universitaires, spécialistes d’éco­ nomie politique et de droit. A beaucoup d’égards, Sorel a été suivi en Italie bien plus qu’en France. En décembre 1902 Arturo Labriola fonde une revue, Avanguardia socialista, qui devient très vite le centre de l’ac­ tivité intellectuelle du syndicalisme révolutionnaire italien. Labriola joue alors le rôle de porte-parole de l’extrême-gauche du mouvement socialiste qui s’oppose à la politique réformiste de Turati. On consultera de Labriola de cette époque, plus spécialement, Riforme et rivoluzione sociale, Lugano 1906 (1ère ed.), Sindicalismo et riformismo, Firenze 1905, Storia di died anni (1899-1909), ainsi que ses articles dans la revue syndicaliste II Divenire sociale fondée en 1905 par Enrico Leone et dans Pagina Libere, revue qu’il dirige entre 1907 et 1910. Un excellent précis de l’histoire du syndicalisme révolutionnaire en Italie se trouve dans Gian Biagio Furiozzi, Il sindicalismo rivoluzionario italiano, Milano 1977. Voir aussi du même auteur Sorel e Vitalia, Messina-Firenze 1975, ainsi que Alceo Riosa, Il Sindicalismo Rivoluzionario in Italia, Bari 1976. Les travaux de Leo Valiani sur le socialisme italien de cette époque sont particulièrement importants : Il Partito socialista Italiano nel Periodo della Neutralità, Milano 1977, et « Il Partito socialista italiano dal 1900 al 1978 », Rivista storica italiana, vol. 75, no. 2 (juin 1963), pp. 269-326. 63 Voir E. Santarelli, « Le socialisme national en Italie : précédents et ori­ gines », Le mouvement social, no. 50 (janvier-mars 1965).

62

[210]

Zeev Sternhell de l’extrême-gauche italienne.64 A VAvanguardia socialista collaborent alors Pareto, Croce, ainsi que les hommes de la génération suivante — Sergio Panunzio, Angelo O. Olivetti, Paolo Orano et Agostino Lanzillo — que l’on retrouvera à La lupa, puis plus tard engagés dans la campagne de Tripoli et finalement réunis autour de Mussolini. Cette convergence d’idées se fait en Italie en même temps qu’en France, bien avant la Grande Guerre et avant même l’expédition de Tripoli : c’est la logique d’une situation et d’un cheminement intellectuel et non pas une conjoncture extérieure qui se trouve à l’origine de cette syn­ thèse nouvelle. L’activisme, la volonté de se jeter dans la bataille, de façonner le monde et de faire l’Histoire, conduisent aussi bien les syndicalistes ré­ volutionnaires que les nationalistes à l’assaut de l’ordre établi : dans le domaine politique, l’objet de leur vindicte ne peut être que la démo­ cratie libérale. En ce début de siècle, la démocratie libérale est devenue le gardien de l’ordre existant, la véritable citadelle du conservatisme. C’est pourquoi un Lagardelle accueille avec une telle joie toutes les expressions d’antidémocratisme prolétarien. « Certes j’avoue », dit-il, « que cette désaffection des travailleurs français pour l’Etat devenu républicain me paraît le fait culminant de l’histoire de ces derniers temps ».65 Car ce qui a permis “au prolétariat de rompre avec la démocratie, c’est l’épreuve même de la démocratie».66 Dans «le désarroi des consciences » qui suivit l’Affaire, la participation ministérielle apparut aux militants ouvriers comme la conséquence naturelle de la socialdémocratie :67 le syndicalisme révolutionnaire s’est dressé à la fois contre la démocratie libérale et contre « son succédané le socialisme parlementaire », et il substitue « Vaction directe qui est le principe du syndicalisme »,68 l’action révolutionnaire et guerrière, à « l’atmos­ phère débilitante de la paix sociale ».69 C’est ainsi que le mouvement syndicaliste devient plus encore un agent de progrès moral que de progrès économique. 64

65 66 67 68 69

R. de Felice, Mussolini il rivoluzionario 1883-1920, Torino 1965, pp. 42-43. Voir aussi l’excellent ouvrage de J.A. Gregor consacré au jeune Mussolini : Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism, Ber­ keley 1979, pp. 23 et seq. H. Lagardelle, « Le syndicalisme et le socialisme en France », op. cit. (n. 27), p. 36. Ibid., p. 37. Ibid., pp. 37-38. Ibid., pp. 44-45. Ibid., p. 53.

[211]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Dans un monde où le goût de la liberté est perdu, dans un temps qui n’a plus le sentiment de la dignité, il fait appel aux forces vives de la personne humaine et donne un exemple permanent de courage et d’énergie.7071 Le socialisme éthique développe ainsi une profonde aversion pour la démocratie et le libéralisme, pour les libertés bourgeoises, les vertus bourgeoises et le mode de vie bourgeois. Par contre, les nouvelles théories élitistes trouvent un écho profond au sein de l’aile marchante du socialisme, celle qui oppose à la social-démocratie les théories de l’action directe et auprès de l’avant-garde ouvrière, cette minorité consciente et activiste qui mènera le prolétariat à la révolution. Au socialisme qui prêche la conquête du pouvoir par le suffrage universel, au socialisme embourgeoisé et apprivoisé, au socialisme acceptant les mots de passe et les règles du jeu de la démocratie libérale, le syndi­ calisme oppose la violence révolutionnaire d’une élite prolétarienne. C’est ainsi que l’extrême-gauche socialiste implante le mépris de la démocratie et du parlementarisme en même temps que le culte de la révolte violente conduite par des minorités conscientes et activistes. Cet élitisme à outrance — pour le militant syndicaliste Pouget, nul ne doit « récriminer contre l’initiative désintéressée de la minorité », encore moins «les inconscients» que, à côté des militants, ne sont que des « zéros humains »T1 — cet élitisme à outrance ne manquera pas de se rencontrer avec celui de Pareto et de Michels pour se tourner finalement le lendemain de la guerre contre le socialisme. Ces éléments élitistes se retrouveront dans la pensée d’Henri de Man, de Bertrand de Jouvenel et de Marcel Déat : en vérité ce sera là une des voies essentielles de leur transition vers le fascisme. L’élan révolutionnaire devient ainsi fonction de foi et de volonté, et non plus d’une conscience de l’évolution historique. Il est nourri de l’idée guerrière, du culte de valeurs héroïques, du refus de la médio­ crité bourgeoise et de la révolte contre un monde nourri de la philo­ sophie des Lumières et des principes de 1789. Ce moralisme anti­ matérialiste — à la fois antilibéral et antimarxiste — refuse une société fondée sur « cette conception atomistique et purement mécanique où l’homme n’est plus qu’un simple porteur de marchandise »,72 c’est pourquoi le socialisme tout comme le patriotisme exigent la destruction de la démocratie. Quant à la démocratie, corruptrice des moeurs, non 70 71 72

Ibid. E. Pouget, La confédération générale du travail, Paris 1909, p. 35. J. Darville (E. Berth), «Satellites de la ploutocratie», Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon (septembre-décembre 1912), p. 194. [212]

Zeev Sternhell seulement elle « postule la vie facile, les agréments, les commodités de l’existence, une liberté anarchique, la réduction du temps de travail, l’accroissement indéfini des loisirs »,73 mais encore elle est « par nature hostile à l’organisation ouvrière»74 et, par conséquent, «le plus mau­ vais terrain qui se puisse trouver pour une véritable lutte des classes».75 C’est ainsi que les syndicalistes révolutionnaires, à l’instar des socia­ listes, accusent la démocratie de fausser les clivages naturels, les réalités sociales, de privilégier les luttes idéologiques par rapport à la situation objective des hommes dans les rapports de production. Ce qui, en fin de compte, ne peut avoir pour effet que d’assurer la pérennité du système, celui de l’exploitation capitaliste soutenue et affermie par la médiocrité d’une civilisation décadente, par la bassesse d’un optimisme vulgaire, par l’écran de fumée d’un débat idéologique vide et grossier. Dans un classique du socialisme national, Edouard Berth résume, fin 1912, le désespoir et la révolte des soréliens. Il flétrit « l’ignoble posi­ tivisme » dans lequel « la bourgeoisie semble avoir réussi à entraîner tant l’aristocratie que le peuple»76: «le pessimisme, l’utilitarisme et le matérialisme nous rongent tous, nobles, bourgeois et prolétaires. .. ».77 En écoutant le syndicaliste révolutionnaire Berth, allié à cette époque aux hommes du nationalisme intégral, on croirait avoir sous les yeux un texte de Gentile : le philosophe italien ne voyait-il pas, lui aussi, dans le fascisme avant tout une révolte contre le positivisme ? Ce positivisme qui engendre le « régime de l’or, régime essentiellement niveleur, matérialiste et cosmopolite », et qui livre la France « à ce qui constitue l’essence et la quintessence du matérialisme bourgeois, au juif agioteur et bancocrate ».78 Dans le même ordre d’idées, Berth 73 74 75 76 77 78

A. Vincent, « Le bilan de la démocratie », Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon (mars-avril 1912), p. 102. J. Laurent, «L e cri du jour», Terre Libre (15-30 mars 1910). J. Darville, « La monarchie et la classe ouvrière », Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon (janvier-février 1914), p. 10 ; voir aussi pp. 27-32. J. Darville, « Satellites de la ploutocratie », op. cit. (n. 72), p. 195. p. 195. Ibid., p. 202. Ibid., pp. 195-196. Et plus loin : Ainsi a-t-on « pu voir successivement le socialisme et le syndicalisme passer à Israël et se faire les défenseurs de cette idéologie nauséabonde et pestilentielle, dont le malthusianisme, l’anti-catholicisme et l’antinationalisme forment toute la substance. . . et il semble, en vérité, que le peuple n’aspire plus qu’à ce bien-être du rentier retiré des affaires, qui se désintéresse complètement de tout ce qui n’est pas le mouvement de la rente, qui vit dans la terreur de toute perturbation sociale ou internationale et ne demande plus qu’une chose : la paix, une paix stupide et béate, faite des plus médiocres satisfactions matérielles ».

[213 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After s’insurge contre « la décadence bourgeoise », contre le « pacifisme tout bourgeois » qui inocule « au peuple naissant la corruption de la bour­ geoisie finissante »,79 La décadence bourgeoise lègue au peuple « un Etat hypertrophié, produit d’une démocratie rurale et urbaine, qué­ mandeuse et famélique... », elle engendre «la stagnation universelle » au sein de laquelle le prolétariat emprunte « à la bourgeoisie décadente ses pires idées ».®° Car finalement, « décadence bourgeoise, décadence ouvrière, décadence nationale, tout se tient »”.81 Pour enrayer les effets de la décadence, il n’est aujourd’hui comme hier qu’une seule solution : la guerre. « La guerre » dit Berth, « n’est pas toujours cette ‘œuvre de mort’ qu’un vain peuple de femmelettes et de femmelins imagine. A la base de tout puissant essor industriel et com­ mercial, il y a un fait de force, un fait de guerre».82 La guerre assure l’essor de la civilisation et, avec elle, se trouve posée la question de l’Etat et de la Nation.83 Le disciple de Sorel cite Proudhon — « la guerre c’est notre histoire, notre vie, notre âme tout entière » — et Arturo Labriola qui pense lui aussi que « le sentiment de l’indépendance nationale, tout comme le sentiment religieux, mène aux manifestations les plus incroyables du sacrifice â.84 Seule la violence pourra sauver le genre humain de « l’embourgeoisement universel », « de la platitude d’une paix éternelle ».85 Au cours de l’entre-deux-guerres, la révision du marxisme s’identifie avec le nom d’Henri de Man. Telle qu’elle s’exprime dans l’oeuvre de l’auteur belge, cette attaque du marxisme est un aspect fondamental de la révolte idéaliste des premières décennies de notre siècle. Dans ce sens la pensée d’Henri de Man poursuit et développe celle de Sorel. Elle trouve un profond écho dans le néo-socialisme français, et même un début d’exécution dans l’action politique d’un des leaders de la SFIO, Marcel Déat. Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus, publié en 1926, aura un énorme succès : traduit en treize langues, ce manifeste du révisionnisme qui vient annoncer la fin de l’utopie socialiste et du rêve d’une révolution prolétarienne, fera de son auteur le théoricien le plus discuté de la décennie. Ce livre a un objectif fondamental : il préconise tout simplement « la liquidation du marxisme w.86 Car, « pour pouvoir dire après Marx, je 79 Ibid., p. 198. 80 Ibid., pp. 201-202. 81 Ibid., p. 201. 82 Ibid., p. 202. 83 Ibid., p. 203. 84 Ibid., pp. 204-205. 85 Ibid., p. 206. 86 H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit (n. 1), p. 35.

[214 ]

Zeev Sternhell dois d’abord dire contre Marx»,87 écrit de Man, et pour vaincre cette erreur qu’est devenu le marxisme, « il ne faut pas revenir sur elle, il suffit de la dépasser».88 Finalement, il comprend très bien que tout cela devra aboutir un jour « à une synthèse nouvelle w,8990 fondée sur l’attaque des racines mêmes du système : « le déterminisme économique et le rationalisme scientiste »." Pour de Man, toute vérité est fonction de son époque. Le marxisme, comme n’importe quel autre système d’idées, était conditionné par les circonstances de l’époque où il est né. Ces circonstances ayant radicale­ ment changé, la conviction selon laquelle le marxisme a cessé d’être vrai est devenue un élément de la vérité de notre époque.91 Le point de départ de cette critique du marxisme est ce qu’Henri de Man appelle, « la théorie des ‘mobiles’ de Marx », celle « qui fait dé­ couler l’action sociale des masses de la connaissance de leurs inté­ rêts w.92 Chaque thèse économique et chaque opinion politique ou tactique de Marx, dit-il, reposent sur l’hypothèse que les mobiles de la volonté humaine sont dictés en premier lieu par l’intérêt économique. C’est bien cette “connaissance des intérêts économiques comme fonde­ ment de l’activité sociale »93 qui constitue la base de ce que de Man considère comme la réalisation la plus importante et la plus originale du marxisme : « fonder une doctrine qui reliât en une conception uni­ que l’idée du socialisme et l’idée de la lutte de classe w.94 C’est ainsi que Marx permet de s’attaquer aux fondements juridiques et moraux de l’état social actuel en partant des « mobiles d’intérêt et de puissance conditionnés par le milieu capitaliste chez les ouvriers industriels )>.95 Voilà pourquoi le fondateur du socialisme scientifique pouvait se ré­ clamer d’une nouvelle justification du socialisme, ancrée, contrairement à l’utopisme, dans l’observation causale et de ce qui est.96 Finalement, poursuit de Man, l’hédonisme économique qui est à la base de la notion 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96

Ibid., p. 354. Ibid., p. 351. Ibid., p. 354. H. de Man, Après-coup, Bruxelles 1941, p. 191. H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 420-421. Voir aussi H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, Paris 1933, p. 50 : « Nous devons nous libérer du marxisme, non pas qu’il ne fût point à la hauteur de sa tâche, mais parce qu’il l’a accomplie ». H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 49. Ibid. H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 20. Voir aussi, même thème, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 49. H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 20. Ibid.

[215 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After marxiste de classe, de l’intérêt de classe et de la lutte de classe, le déterminisme qui permet de ne pas se soucier du processus psycholo­ gique par lequel les nécessités économiques se transforment en objectifs humains,9798 confèrent au marxisme son caractère « anéthique ».** C’est là que réside, selon le théoricien belge, l’essentiel de la faiblesse du système. Pour Marx, l’idée du socialisme lui-même est « suscitée » par la lutte de classe, c’est-à-dire par une conséquence nécessaire du capitalisme, elle ne serait donc pas le postulat d’un jugement de valeur. Le socialisme ne viendra pas parce qu’il est juste mais parce qu’il est nécessaire, parce qu’il sera le résultat de la victoire nécessaire du pro­ létariat dans sa lutte de classe.99 C’est ainsi que l’on n’a plus besoin de raisons pour justifier le socialisme, la connaissance des causes suffit. Et la grande question qui se pose alors, selon de Man, est de savoir si le socialisme peut fonder sur la théorie causale de Marx ce qu’il veut et ce qu’il doit être. Pour sa part, la réponse est claire : le socialisme ne peut être que le fait de décisions morales qui reposent sur un fonde­ ment antérieur à toute expérience historique.100 La conclusion découle donc d’elle-même : il faut au monde moderne non pas un socialisme rapiécé et réformé, mais un socialisme totale­ ment nouveau, un socialisme qui puisse « nous émanciper de cette dé­ pendance de l’homme à l’égard de ses moyens techniques et économi­ ques d’existence »,101 un socialisme qui « renonce à la position marxiste fondamentale de la détermination de toutes les idéologies par la classe à laquelle on appartient »,102 un socialisme qui cesse de parler des causes pour s’interroger sur les jugements de valeur.103 Ce socia­ lisme nouveau peut prendre les formes d’une « conciliation entre le marxisme et le socialisme éthique »104 : il faut préserver, « ce qui reste vivant de Tanticapitalisme marxiste »,105 sans oublier que le socia­ lisme, c’est beaucoup plus que l’anticapitalisme.106 Car, dans tout socialisme il y a « une impulsion — l’effort vers un ordre social équi­ table — qui est éternelle »,107 qui participe autant de la mentalité socialiste que des ressorts spirituels de la bourgeoisie à ses débuts. On 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 317. H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 21. Ibid., pp. 21, 23. Ibid., pp. 28-29. H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 350. H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 127. Ibid., pp. 32, 37-38. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 178. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 157.

[216 ]

Zeev Sternhell ne peut mieux désigner cette impulsion, dit de Man, que par l’expression d’« humanisme ».ll08 C’est pourquoi le socialisme est défini par de Man comme une « mani­ festation variable selon les époques, d’une aspiration étemelle vers un ordre social conforme à notre sens moral ».108109 De Man reprend sou­ vent cette définition, en la complétant chaque fois. Le socialisme, dit-il ailleurs, « est toujours justifié. .. par des normes morales pour les­ quelles on réclame une validité universelle... tout socialisme est une morale appliquée aux choses sociales, dans laquelle les principes moraux sont plus ou moins expressément empruntés à l’état des croyances dans la civilisation de l’époque ».110 Ou encore, le socialisme, c’est « la subordination des mobiles égoïstes aux mobiles altruistes w.111 Et finalement : « à l’origine de toute conception socialiste existe un juge­ ment moral né de la foi ».112 Ce qui fait qu’en réalité il s’agit d’une « façon de sentir et de penser aussi ancienne et aussi répandue que la pensée politique elle-même »J113 C’est ainsi que s’exprime dans l’entre-deux-guerres la révolte idéaliste au sein du socialisme européen, et c’est alors qu’apparaît un socialisme tout à fait libéré du marxisme. Considéré comme totalement indépen­ dant de son moment historique, des forces de l’économie et des struc­ tures sociales, conçu par conséquent comme indépendant du capita­ lisme, le socialisme apparaît comme «un courant profond, puissant et étemel »114 dont l’histoire « commence au moins avec Platon, les Esseniens et les premières communautés chrétiennes ».115 Cette histoire se poursuit avec les mouvements populaires communistes du Moyen Age et de la Réforme, elle passe par les utopies de la Renaissance, du dix-huitième et du dix-neuvième siècles pour en arriver aux mou­ vements de masses du vingtième siècle.116 Il en résulte que chez d’au­ tres classes sociales aussi le besoin peut se faire sentir d’adopter le socialisme, ou qu’à l’inverse, le prolétariat peut, lui, dans une situa­ tion donnée, abandonner le socialisme. II importe de souligner ici que la notion de socialisme éthique, de socialisme «éternel» est très répandue entre 1920 et 1935. De Man 108 109 110 III 112 113 114 115

H. de H. de H. de H. de H. de H. de Ibid. H. de H. de 116 H. de

Man, L'idée socialiste, Paris 1933, p. 341. Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 419. Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 17. Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 176. Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 59. Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. citi. (n. 1), p. 176. Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 9. Voir aussi, Man, L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), pp. 374-376. Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), pp. 9-10.

[217]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ne pouvait ignorer Spengler : or c’est l’historien allemand qui, des le lendemain de la Grande Guerre, annonce : « nous sommes tous socialistes, que nous le sachions et le voulions ou non. Meme la re­ sistance au socialisme porte la forme socialiste ».117 Justement, le socialisme dont parle Spengler est « le socialisme éthique », c’est-àdire, « le maximum, accessible en général, d’un sentiment de la vie vue sous l’aspect de la finalité >).118 Précisant sa pensée, il écrit un peu plus loin : « Le socialisme éthique n’est — en dépit de ses illu­ sions de premier plan — pas un système de la compassion, de l’huma­ nité, de la paix et de la sollicitude, mais de la volonté de puissance ».119 Ce socialisme qui, préparé par Fichte, Hegel, Humboldt, « avait son temps de grandeur passionnée vers le milieu du XIXe siècle », est parvenu à sa fin au vingtième siècle : c’est alors qu’à « une philo­ sophie éthique » a été substituée « une pratique des questions écono­ miques du jour».120 De Man s’engage sur cette même voie et sa conclusion est que c’est le marxisme qui porte la responsabilité de cette situation. Aussi, son combat pour un socialisme éthique au nom du socialisme de toujours, est-il non seulement une lutte contre le marxisme, mais encore un effort pour remplacer le marxisme par un autre socialisme. C’est au nom d’un socialisme éthique que le futur président du Parti Ouvrier belge enclenche son processus de glisse­ ment vers la droite qui l’amènera, quelques années plus tard, à saluer les succès nazis : assurément ceux-ci représentent la plus belle victoire jamais remportée sur le matérialisme. Un autre exemple frappant est le cas d’Arturo Labriola. C’est à VAvanguardia socialista que se forge, dans les toutes premières années du siècle, la violente opposition au réformisme de Turati, précédant en cela d’une génération la lutte d’Henri de Man contre Vandervelde ou l’assaut de Déat contre la vieille SFIO de Léon Blum. Vingt ans plus tard, après avoir versé pendant la guerre, comme de Man et Déat, dans le nationalisme militant, et à la veille de revenir en Italie mussolinienne en signe de solidarité avec son pays parti à la conquête de l’Abyssinie, Labriola, alors en exil à Paris, reconnaîtra le caractère très particulier qui fut celui du syndicalisme révolution­ naire italien. « Nous considérions le socialisme plutôt comme un ins­ trument de la transformation du pays, que comme un but valable

117 O. Spengler, Le déclin de l’Occident, Paris 1931 (trad, française par M. Tazerout), vol. 2, 1ère partie, p. 558. 118 Ibid., p. 559. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., p. 561.

[218 ]

Zeev Sternhell par lui-même »,121 écrit-il, précisant bien que : « notre point de vue était strictement italien ; peut-être même un peu nationaliste >>.122 En 1932, Labriola publie à la Librairie Valois un autre livre au titre suggestif : Au-delà du capitalisme et du socialisme. Il y prêche lui aussi la doctrine du socialisme étemel : « toutes les sociétés que l’his­ toire a connues ont été le théâtre de manifestations du socialisme ».123124 Du monde antique à Moms et Campanella et jusqu’au socialisme moderne, on constate « dans le développement de la pensée socialiste une continuité que nous n’avons pas le droit de repousser.. . »iai Ainsi donc, «le socialisme est vieux» :125 il est «vieux comme doctrine, il est vieux, terriblement vieux comme mouvement : il est vieux com­ me aspirations »,126 mais de plus il apparaît « qu’une relation entre capitalisme et socialisme n’est absolument pas établie ».127 C’est pour­ quoi « si le socialisme, dans ses idéaux, son mouvement et sa politique n’est pas un produit du phénomène capitaliste, tout le problème de la signification du socialisme se trouve remis sur le tapis ».128 Il existe ainsi tout un courant dans le socialisme des années 1930 pour qui il peut y avoir un socialisme sans Marx, un socialisme sans ca­ pitalisme, un socialisme indépendant de toute considération de classe véritable, un socialisme qui ne veut être qu’une aspiration vers « une société juste, une société fraternelle ».129 Pour de Man, alors le représentant le plus important de cette école, la valeur du marxisme se trouve beaucoup plus dans sa contribution à notre connaissance du capitalisme que dans ce qu’il a réellement apporté au socialisme,130 car le socialisme n’est pas « à proprement parler un produit du capitalisme », mais plutôt une « disposition hu­ maine » caractérisée par « une certaine fixation du sens des valeurs juridiques et morales » que l’on ne peut comprendre qu’en remontant aux expériences sociales du régime féodal et de l’artisanat, à la morale du christianisme et aux principes de la démocratie.131 Il ne s’agit donc pas simplement d’un problème de salaires ou de distribution de la 121 A. Labriola, L’Etat et la crise — Etude sur la dépression actuelle, Paris 1933, pp. 281-282. 122 Ibid., p. 279. 123 A. Labriola, Au-delà du capitalisme et du socialisme, Paris 1932, p. 281. 124 Ibid., p. 16. Voir aussi p. 15. 125 Ibid., p. 22. 126 Ibid., p. 15. 127 Ibid., p. 17. 128 Ibid. 129 H. de Man, L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), p. 374. 130 H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit (n. 91), pp. 48-51. 131 H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 54—55.

[219 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After plus-value, mais d’un vaste ensemble de raisons qui produisent « un complexe d’infériorité sociale » et qui posent un problème de cul­ ture.132 Le mobile essentiel du mouvement ouvrier, dit de Man, « est l’instinct d’auto-estimation », il est « une question de dignité au moins autant qu’une question d’intérêt ».133 Dans l’esprit d’Henri de Man, ce qui est déterminant n’est pas le fait de vendre sa force de travail, mais les conditions sociales spéciales dans lesquelles s’accomplit cette vente : le manque de propriété et de protection sociale, l’instabilité du mode de vie, l’insécurité de l’emploi, le travail sans joie, l’état de dépendance à l’égard des chefs d’entreprises.134 En d’autres termes, au moment même où l’on parvient à instaurer des conditions de vie, un régime économique et des rapports sociaux qui assurent au prolétariat et à tous les autres travailleurs la pro­ priété, la stabilité, la sécurité de l’emploi et la dignité, le socialisme, tel que l’entendent les militants des partis affiliés à l’Internationale, n’a plus de raison d’être. La chose est d’autant plus évidente que l’au­ teur d‘Au-delà du Marxisme définit le socialisme « comme le produit d’une volonté personnelle, inspirée par le sentiment du bien et du droit» :135 le socialisme «existait avant le mouvement ouvrier, même avant la classe ouvrière »,1361378et il ne naît pas « d’une lutte de classe victorieuse ».13T La pensée socialiste, comme toute pensée, prend sa source, selon de Man, dans une quantité presque infinie de réactions émotives différentes qui sont d’origine intellectuelle, éthique et esthé­ tique : «les idées », dit-il, « sont l’oeuvre de personnalités et non le résultat d’un parallélogramme de forces sociales...».133 Dès que sa réflexion a mûri, elle emprunte la voie devenue classique depuis la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, celle d’une conception du socialisme qui n’implique aucune sorte de changement structurel dans les rapports économiques et sociaux, et dont l’objectif est non pas la révolution mais une « société fraternelle », un ordre social basé sur les « instincts altruistes » de « l’homme réel ».139 En effet, l’idée selon laquelle « le concept de l’exploitation est éthique et non économique »,140 joue un rôle capital dans la poussée de la Ibid., p. 68. Voir aussi p. 192. Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 192. Ibid., p. 214. Ibid., p. 50. H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 90. Voir aussi pp. 23, et 91-92, ainsi que Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 331. 138 Ibid., p. 51. 139 H. de Man, Au delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 124. 140 Ibid., p. 329. 132 133 134 135 136 137

[220]

Zeev Sternhell philosophie fasciste avant et après la Première Guerre Mondiale. Cette idée est à la base de la négation des « conceptions mécanistes et maté­ rialistes qui ont mis obstacle », chez le prolétariat, « au développement éthique de son sentiment de solidarité».141 De Man considère comme historiquement et psychologiquement indéfendable et même pratique­ ment nuisible, une doctrine qui cherche à fonder la solidarité ouvrière sur l’intérêt de classe :142 l’intérêt de classe « ne crée pas de mobiles éthiques»143 et le socialisme ne saurait combattre l’égoïsme bourgeois par le matérialisme et l’hédonisme ouvriers.144 L’influence de Sorel, le premier à lancer une véritable révision du marxisme qui touche les assises mêmes du système et qui ose dire son nom, est ici manifeste. Les syndicalistes révolutionnaires de France et d’Italie avaient tracé très exactement la voie dans laquelle s’engage de Man. Avant lui et comme lui ils avaient parlé en termes de mythes, de symboles de croyance qui viennent précisément répondre à ce que toute cette école de pensée considère comme l’élément fondamental de la politique : le « besoin de croire des masses ».145 Tous les phé­ nomènes que visait la critique d’Henri de Man — le déterminisme, l’opportunisme, le réformisme, la bureaucratisation, l’embourgeoise­ ment, le verbalisme utopique, la méconnaissance de valeurs humanis­ tes — sont précisément ceux contre lesquels s’étaient dressés les ré­ voltés du début du siècle. Leur critique aussi a été une critique fonc­ tionnelle conçue à partir de leur engagement dans le socialisme, et eux aussi sont parvenus à la conclusion que c’est la doctrine elle-même qui porte la responsabilité de ces erreurs. Sorel, Michels, Lagardelle, Arturo Labriola, avant de Man, avaient lié la décadence des mouve­ ments politiques de gauche et leur doctrine. C’est ainsi que le trait-d’union véritable qui unit la pensée de Georges Sorel et d’Henri de Man est cette forme de révisionnisme qui consiste à vider le marxisme de son contenu matérialiste, déterministe et hé­ doniste et à le remplacer par diverses formes de volontarisme et de vitalisme. Sorel fut le premier à vouloir corriger le marxisme, im­ plantant au sein d’un système conçu comme fondamentalement mé­ caniste et rationaliste, une vision du monde volontariste et une ex­ plication nouvelle de la nature humaine. Les forces profondes sont, selon Sorel, celles de l’inconscient et l’humanité marche à coups de 141 142 143 144 145

Ibid., p. 123. Voir aussi p. 125. Ibid., p. 126. Voir aussi p. 121. Ibid., p. 126. H. de Man, L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), p. 435. H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 149. [221]

Totalitarian Democracy and After mythes et d’images.146 Tout comme Sorel avait fait passer la psycho­ logie de Le Bon dans ses Réflexions sur la violence, de Man fait appel à Freud : « la racine de tous nos actes plonge dans nos instincts » écrit-il,147 en reprenant une formule qu’une génération plus tôt avait déjà illustrée Barrés. Il fait simplement écho aux hommes du tournant du siècle : « au principe de la formation de l’idée se trouve un cou­ rant émotionnel et affectif...».148 Plus loin on semble entendre Va­ cher de Lapouge, le darwiniste social qui avait été, lui aussi, socialiste : La conscience morale... est une impulsion de la sub-conscience. Elle repose sur un sentiment de solidarité avec l’espèce, qui est aussi profondément enraciné dans notre organisation physique que l’instinct grégaire ou l’instinct maternel chez les animaux.149 Cependant, de Man ajoute à son analyse une dimension supplémen­ taire qu’avait ignorée la génération de 1890 : les mêmes sciences expérimentales qui apportent la preuve de la dépendance de notre vie spirituelle et des processus de la conscience à l’égard des instincts, mettent en évidence le fait que les forces les plus puissantes de l’hom­ me sont les instincts moraux. C’est ainsi que dans le subconscient de l’homme vit un besoin invincible de considération et d’estime de soimême :150 selon l’auteur belge, la psychologie permet ainsi de conclure au socialisme sur une base véritablement scientifique. La psychologie vient ainsi corriger, compléter et parfois même, en le vidant de son contenu matérialiste, remplacer le marxisme. Dans la psychologie de Man a trouvé finalement une méthode qu’il pouvait opposer avec succès au matérialisme historique. Une dizaine d’années plus tard, en faisant le bilan de son action, il sait que dans la psychologie il avait découvert une méthode « qui fait découler l’idéal conscient du mobile subconscient, la doctrine de la volonté, le but du mouvement et l’idée de la souffrance ».1S1 Même si l’on accepte l’idée selon laquelle l’utilisation de la psychologie so-

146 G. Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence, op. cit. (n. 8 ), pp. 173-185. 147 H. de Man, L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), p. 287.. De Man connaît aussi Le Bon : Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 205, ainsi que Bergson qui avait joué un rôle si important dans la formation intellectuelle de Sorel : L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), pp. 412-416. 148 Ibid., p. 32. 149 Ibid., p. 288. 150 Ibid., sur la place de la psychologie dans le socialisme, voir aussi Le so­ cialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), pp. 53-54. 151 H. de Man, Après-coup, op. cit. (n. 90), p. 194.

[222]

Zeev Sternhell dale par de Man est d’inspiration éthique,1® même si c’est son aspi­ ration morale qui le conduit vers ce type d’analyse et de conclusions, il n’en reste pas moins qu’il s’agit chez lui d’une démarche qui con­ tribue puissamment à la cristallisation de l’idéologie fasciste : faire émaner « la doctrine de la volonté » et « le but du mouvement » re­ présente bien le sens de la révolution intellectuelle que symbolise le fascisme. Déjà en écrivant Au-delà du Marxisme, de Man est parfaitement conscient du fait que la méthode « qui cherche derrière les mobiles de l’intérêt économique les causes psychologiques plus profondes qui les inspirent. . . sape par la base. . . non seulement l’interprétation marxiste du mouvement ouvrier, mais aussi l’interprétation marxiste de l’économie politique ».152153 On touche ici du doigt le problème car­ dinal : au marxisme, cet « enfant du XIXe siècle », porteur du prin­ cipe de « la causalité mécanique »,154 de Man oppose « le volontaris­ me syndical » ;155 face à un système caractérisé par « les expressions : déterminisme, mécanisme, historicisme, rationalisme et hédonisme éco­ nomique »,156 il présente comme solution de remplacement une « science socialiste » qu’il appelle « pragmatique, volontariste, plura­ liste et institutionaliste ».1S7 Ceci implique, et de Man ne manque pas de l’évoquer, une conception qui remonte à Proudhon qui, selon lui, était en fait beaucoup plus prolétarien dans sa conception de la révo­ lution que ne l’était le marxisme. Ce n’est pas l’effet du hasard si la démarche d’Henri de Man est une fois de plus si proche de celle qu’avait illustrée Sorel. Le principe de la révision du marxisme par l’introduction d’éléments volontaristes, vitalistes, antimatérialistes, conduit aux mêmes résultats. En fin de compte, on obtient une idéologie qui se veut toujours socialiste mais dons le sens change très profondément. «Ce qu’il y a d’essentiel dans le socialisme, c’est la lutte pour lui », écrit l’auteur d’Au-delà du Marxisme.1S8 Ce qui compte vraiment dans le socialisme c’est le 152 M. Grawitz, «Henri de Man et la psychologie sociale», Revue européenne des sciences sociales et Cahiers Vilfred Pareto, vol. 12, no. 31 (1974), pp. 76, 84-85. 153 H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 381. Voir aussi sur la psychologie freudienne, pp. 160-161, 168-137, sur Adler et Jung. 154 Ibid., p. 290. 155 Ibid., p. 380. 156 Ibid., p. 48. 157 Ibid., p. 384, sur le thème de la volonté, voir aussi pp. 298, 380; L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), p. 469. 158 H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 402. Voir aussi L’idée socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), p. 470.

[223 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After mouvement et si l’on veut réellement aller de l’avant, il faut « dire tout simplement : au commencement était l’action ».ls9 II faut aussi, une fois pour toutes, en finir avec « la théorie de la supra-structure », avec la supposition « que les idées ne ‘reflètent’ simplement que des intérêts »,159160 il faut dire bien haut que « la jouissance égoïste sépare les hommes, le sacrifice les unit »161 et que finalement « le but de notre existence n’est pas paradisiaque mais héroïque ».162 Aucun idéo­ logue fasciste n’a dit mieux. Certes, l’antimatérialisme et l’antipositivisme, tout comme les autres formes de la négation de l’ordre établi, ne conduisent pas nécessaire­ ment à une révolte de type fasciste. Le socialisme éthique n’aboutit pas toujours à une réaction antimarxiste, qui tout en conservant le langage incendiaire des révolutionnaires de gauche, considère déjà la nation et non plus la classe comme le facteur essentiel du changement dans le monde. Cependant, il est certain que cette volonté de «dé­ passer le marxisme, en substituant au matérialisme historique une méthode d’analyse psychologique, bref en recherchant derrière les faits économiques les réalités psychiques qu’ils expriment »,163 consti­ tue l’une des voies royales du glissement de gauche à droite et d’ex­ trême-gauche à l’extrême-droite. Cela ne s’est pas produit chez André Philip mais cela s’est vérifié chez Sorel, Berth, Michels, Arturo Labriola et Henri de Man. Le fait que Sorel se soit, pendant la Grande Guerre, tenu à l’écart du bourrage de crâne qui sévissait au temps de l’Union Sacrée ou le fait que Berth soit passé, au lendemain de la Révolution soviétique, à l’extrême-gauche, ne change rien à l’affaire. Certes, Arturo Labriola, après avoir puissament contribué à la mon­ tée de la vague fasciste en Italie, se retrouve dans les années trente au centre-gauche ; cependant le reste du syndicalisme révolutionnaire ita­ lien constituera jusqu’à la fin — sur le plan de l’idéologie — la co­ lonne vertébrale du fascisme italien. Que Labriola ait à un certain moment battu en retraite ne minimise en rien sa contribution à la mise en marche de ce mécanisme. Georges Valois lui-même se situe dans les années trente à l’aile gauche du mouvement socialiste. Pour certains soréliens, le glissement de gauche à droite est incontestable­ ment une voie à deux sens, pour d’autres, c’est un chemin sans retour. Mais les motivations de tous ces hommes sont toujours les mêmes et 159 160 161 162 163

H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 390. H. de Man, IJidêe socialiste, op. cit. (n. 108), p. 388. Ibid., p. 435. H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 402. A. Philip, Henri de Man et la crise doctrinale du socialisme, Paris 1928, pp. 49-50.

[224]

Zeev Sternhell c’est bien cela qui éclaire la nature du phénomène : tous sont à la re­ cherche, pour paraphraser Michels, de cette « union grandiose » de l’Idée révolutionnaire avec la grande force révolutionnaire du mo­ ment. Le syndicalisme révolutionnaire avait fourni l’Idée, il n’avait pas trouvé de masse sociologique capable de mettre cette idée en action. La recherche de cette « union » avait constitué la véritable histoire du proto-fascisme : elle constitue toujours dans l’entre-deuxguerres, l’essentiel des préoccupations des socialistes éthiques, les plus authentiques héritiers du syndicalisme révolutionnaire. Telle est aussi la voie empruntée par Marcel Déat, un des grands espoirs du socialisme français des années trente. Le révisionnisme de Déat — son ouvrage majeur, Perspectives socialistes, paraît en 1930 — s’inscrit dans la lignée classique des moralistes qui, depuis Sorel, Michels et Lagardelle, sont toujours les premiers à formuler, d’une façon ou d’une autre, les critiques les plus acerbes du marxisme. «L’histoire, pour les marxistes purs» écrit Déat, dans un texte qui semble parfois couler de la plums de Sorel, « est étrangère à toute considération morale et l’évolution ne dépend que des rapports de force engendrés par l’économie ».164 Déat se joint à « l’énergique protestation » d’Henri de Man contre « cette insuffisance de la psy­ chologie marxiste », il s’élève contre la prétention marxiste d’« énon­ cer des lois » : le matérialisme historique est nécessairement limité dans le temps et il ne vaut que pour Père capitaliste, où tout est subor­ donné à la recherche du profit, où toutes les valeurs centrales autour desquelles est axée la vie psychique et consciente des institutions, vont se polariser autour des rapports économiques. La volonté socialiste tend à sortir de l’ordre social actuel et à créer un monde où le matéria­ lisme historique ne serait plus vrai : Déat dénie au marxisme « le droit de fournir la clef de l’histoire universelle ».165 Cette révolte contre le matérialisme s’appuie sur la nouvelle vision de la nature humaine que développe, depuis le tournant du siècle, la psy­ chologie sociale. « Les mobiles des masses sont essentiellement d’ordre émotif », dit de Man en reprenant la vieille formule de Gustave Le Bon.166 Voilà pourquoi, tels les « moutons de Panurge », les masses « sentiront toujours le besoin d’emboîter le pas à un chef, qui repré-

164 M. Déat, « Le socialisme spiritualiste », L’étudiant socialiste, no. 2 (novembre 1930). Il s’agit d’une conférence donnée à à la semaine d’études d’Uccle, organisée par les étudiants Belgique. 165 M. Déat, «Notes pour l’action», La vie socialiste (21 juillet 166 H. de Man, Au-delà du marxisme, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 45.

[225 ]

6ème année, cette époque socialistes de 1928), p. 10.

Totalitarian Democracy and After sente à leurs yeux tout ce qu’ils voudraient être ».197 Le processus d’iden­ tification du moi avec un moi idéal est dans la nature des choses, tout comme est la différence sociale entre les chefs — avec le statut qui est nécessairement le leur — et les masses. C’est donc pure fiction que d’es­ sayer de voir par exemple dans les chefs d’un parti socialiste, de simples représentants de la volonté de leurs membres.1 6716816970Il s’ensuit que toute société, indépendamment de ses structures, et toute organisation, ont besoin de chefs. Une société socialiste ne sera pas différente, elle aura sa hiérarchie, ses hommes forts et ses inégalités naturelles. En un sens, de Man reprend le rôle qu’avaient tenu Pareto, Mosca ou Michels au début du siècle : tout comme les fondateurs des sciences sociales qui avaient si profondément ébranlé les assises de la démocratie parlemen­ taire, l’auteur belge met en cause la possibilité d’existence d’une so­ ciété socialiste où les rapports entre les hommes seraient différents de ceux qui prévalent dans la société capitaliste. L’importance essentielle qu’accorde de Man aux facteurs psychologiques, aux motivations indi­ viduelles, à tout ce qu’il y a d’immuable dans la nature humaine, di­ minue considérablement les différences entre une société socialiste et une société qui ne serait pas socialiste. Il en est de même pour ce qui est du thème de l’égalité : « le désir d’égalité et le besoin d’inégalité, loin de s’exclure, se conditionnent mutuellement ».16® Tout comme il est un « désir d’égalité », il y a « le besoin d’inégalité »17° et ce qui pousse les masses avec le plus de force vers le socialisme, c’est le «besoin instinctif et immédiat des classes inférieures de diminuer l’inégalité sociale ». Cette « revendication so­ cialiste d’égalité » est à la fois « la représentation compensatoire d’un complexe d’infériorité » inhérent à la condition ouvrière171 et le pro­ duit de « l’instinct d’auto-estimation » de l’homme occidental.172 Ce­ pendant, ses instincts sociaux exigent en même temps, selon de Man, que chaque société « ait une classe supérieure » qui puisse fournir l’exemple d’un état désirable : c’est pour cette raison psychologique qu’«aucune société n’est possible sans aristocratie».173 Cette aristo­ cratie peut prendre des formes très diverses : le gentilhomme européen ou le mandarin de la Chine ancienne, ou encore le dirigeant commu167 Ibid., p. 109. 168 Ibid., pp. 144-145, 185. Voir aussi p. 366 où de Man fait appel aux analyses de Robert Michels. 169 Ibid., p. 107. 170 Ibid., p. 350. 171 Ibid., p. 101. 172 Ibid., p. 107. 173 Ibid.

[226 ]

Zçev Sternhell niste soviétique, ne sont que des aspects différents du même phéno­ mène.174 En dernière analyse, (d’infériorité sociale des classes labo­ rieuses» ne repose ni sur un manque d’égalité politique, ni sur les structures économiques existantes, «mais sur un état psychologique» provenant d’un sentiment chronique d’insécurité et, surtout, de leur propre croyance en cette infériorité.175 D’autre part, il devient de plus en plus évident que tout en menant une lutte d’intérêt contre la bour­ geoisie, les ouvriers considèrent l’existence burgeoise comme enviable et désirable, et à mesure qu’ils gagnent sur elle du terrain, ils devien­ nent plus semblables à leurs adversaires.176 Voilà pourquoi il n’existe pas de culture prolétarienne. Celle-ci n’est qu’une revendication, produit de l’hostilité contre la culture bourgeoise qui caractérise le socialisme des intellectuels, elle n’est pas le fait des ouvriers. Le mode de vie de la bourgeoisie exerce une très grande in­ fluence sur le prolétariat : le désir d’être convenable détermine aussi l’acceptation par le monde ouvrier des normes morales des classes pri­ vilégiées.177 La spécificité prolétarienne n’est donc qu’un leurre, une invention de théoriciens : le marxisme lui-même n’est-il pas la création d’un « rat de bibliothèque, étranger aux choses de la vie pratique et surtout de la vie ouvrière » ?178 Le marxisme pour de Man n’est jamais autre chose que ce que fut la démocratie pour Maurras : une nuée. Un élitisme très prononcé constitue ainsi un aspect majeur de cette révision du marxisme : de Man a horreur de la bourgeoisie — il ne manque pas d’affirmer que l’atmosphère de la société bourgeoise lui est « devenue irrespirable »179 — mais en même temps il sait que dans certains domaines, la formation du goût par exemple, il ne peut y avoir normalement d’ascension individuelle, « mais ascension à travers les générations au cours desquels on hérite de la culture, comme de la propriété >).180 Alexis de Tocqueville n’aurait pas parlé autrement, mais l’auteur de La démocratie en Amérique n’avait pas la prétention d’être socialiste. Il est vrai que Michels professait lui aussi les mêmes idées, tout comme Mosca et Pareto. Quand une telle forme d’élitisme vient se greffer sur une négation plus ou moins poussée aussi bien du parle­ mentarisme que des valeurs bourgeoises, sur le mépris des moeurs en régime de suffrage universel, le résultat ne peut guère faire de doute. 174 175 176 177 178 179 180

Ibid. Ibid., p. 103. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., pp. 220, 233-234. Ibid., p. 350. Ibid., pp. 426-427. H. de Man, Le socialisme constructif, op. cit. (n. 91), p. 115.

[227 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Finalement, ce socialisme nouveau débouche sur des conclusions qui ne peuvent guère surprendre : la lutte des classes est remplacée par l’intégration des classes et la solidarité nationale, la notion d’« antica­ pitalisme » remplace celle de « socialisme », le corporatisme devient la colonne vertébrale de l’organisation sociale, et une économie dirigée est coiffée par un Etat autoritaire d’où sont bannies les faiblesses de la démocratie libérale, notamment le parlementarisme.181 La démoli­ tion du marxisme engendre une nouvelle conception de l’Etat, au service d’une révolution dirigée faite au nom de la nation dans son ensemble. Convaincu que l’aspiration vers un pouvoir fort est profondément en­ racinée dans la nature humaine, Déat propose au socialisme « de capter à son profit l’idée d’ordre, l’idée d’autorité, l’idée de nation ».182 Tout cet ensemble idéologique s’exprime, dans les années trente, dans le planisme qui vient en fait remplacer le socialisme. En effet, pour Déat, pour de Man, pour tous les révisionnistes, le planisme constitue « un socialisme nouveau », à la mesure de la crise certes, « mais bien plus encore » c’est un effort « de sauvetage spiri­ tuel ».183 Pour Georges Roditi, directeur de L’homme nouveau, revue par excellence du néo-socialisme, aucun doute n’est permis : « le pla­ nisme qui triomphera sera un planisme national, étranger à l’esprit matérialiste... ».184 L’antimatérialisme constitue l’essence de cet effort de rénovation, de moralisation des rapports économiques et sociaux : concrètement, cet effort se traduit en termes de corporatisme. Le père du planisme est le premier à faire une longue apologie du corporatisme. Disciple de Pirenne, de Man commence par se pencher sur « l’analogie entre le corporatisme médiéval et le syndicalisme mo­ derne »,185186il s’applique à réhabiliter « un mouvement, qui, pendant des siècles, avait été créateur et progressif ».18e L’épanouissement du régime corporatif ne coïncidait-il pas avec l’apogée de la phase humaniste du Moyen Age, époque que l’Histoire considère comme digne de com­ paraison avec la plus belle période de la civilisation antique.187 Mais cette floraison fut suivie par plusieurs siècles de décadence et, à la veille de la Révolution française, les corporations, qui au Moyen Age 181 Voir Z. Sternhell, Ni droite, ni gauche — L’idéologie fasciste en France, op. cit. (n. 28), chaps V et VI. 182 M. Déat, « Retour sur nous-mêmes », La vie socialiste (13 avril 1935), p. 2. 183 M. Déat, «L e planisme et la tradition française», L’homme nouveau, no. 12 (1er janvier 1935) (non paginé). 184 G. Roditi, « Du néo-marxisme au néo-socialisme », L’homme nouveau, no. 14 (1er mars 1935). 185 H. de Man. Corporatisme et socialisme, Paris-Bruxelles, 1935, p. 5. 186 Ibid., p. 4. 187 Ibid., p. 6.

[228 ]

Zeev Sternhell cherchaient à permettre à tous les ouvriers l’accession à la maîtrise, remplissaient une fonction exactement opposée. Vinrent les révolutions, et le corporatisme, après avoir été corrumpu par le capitalisme naissant, a été extirpé, à l’aube du dix-neuvième siècle par le capitalisme triom­ phant.188 De Man essaie de démontrer que le plus grand ennemi que le capi­ talisme ait jamais rencontré fut le corporatisme. Un corporatisme qui n’a jamais cessé de représenter des intérêts de classe et qui agissait alors précisément comme le mouvement syndical contemporain, un corporatisme dont l’un des soucis principaux fut d’empêcher le régime capitaliste de se développer. Et le chef socialiste de montrer encore, qu’à l’époque du corporatisme à l’état pur, il n’y avait au sein des métiers, aucun antagonisme d’intérêts comparable à celui qui s’est déve­ loppé en régime capitaliste.189 Finalement, de Man reprend l’idée qu’avaient défendue, depuis le début du siècle, La Tour du Pin et les hommes de l’Action française, et plus particulièrement la tendance sociale conduite par Finnin Bacconnier : la Révolution française, en se réclamant de l’anticorporatisme, visait à rendre impossible toute or­ ganisation ouvrière autonome.190 C’est donc contre cette révolution bourgeoise et libérale, symbole de la victoire du capitalisme, que s’affirme le corporatisme. L’organisa­ tion corporative recommence à se développer, au dix-neuvième siècle, sous l’égide du syndicalisme et du socialisme : « après que le capitalisme eut tué le corporatisme, le socialisme l’a ressuscité »,191 De Man s’ap­ plique à montrer que « l’idée syndicale et l’idée corporative, loin de s’exclure se conditionnent mutuellement »,192 et il emploie le terme de « socialisme corporatif » qu’il considère comme l’équivalent du « syn­ dicalisme sorélien ».193 Le cercle est ainsi bouclé et la nouvelle génération néo-socialiste, celle qui est déjà pleinement fasciste, ne manque jamais de fonder son refus du socialisme orthodoxe sur la critique de la conception « matérialiste de l’homme et de l’histoire » : « par ce qu’il a d’inhumain et de re­ poussant », le marxisme a «stérilisé le mouvement ouvrier». L’un des représentants les plus typiques de cette génération, Georges Roditi, directeur de la revue néo-socialiste U homme nouveau, reproche tou­ jours au marxisme son « fatalisme scientifique, son manque de sens 188 189 190 191 192 193

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. 7. pp. 11-16. p. 7. p. 8. p. 25. p. 29.

[229 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After hiérarchique » : finalement, il lui oppose « l’état d’esprit socialiste et national ».194 Ainsi prend corps une alternative totale au libéralisme et au marxisme, considérés tous deux comme des systèmes matérialistes et des systèmes de guerre civile permanente. En effet, dans l’esprit des syndicalistes révolutionnaires du début du siècle, tout comme, vingt ans plus tard, pour les adeptes d’un nouveau socialisme, le prolétariat cesse d’être une force révolutionnaire et le marxisme n’apporte plus de réponse aux problèmes du monde moderne. Cette perte de foi dans la vitalité et les capacités du prolétariat, jointe à une dénonciation, sans arrière-pensée, des principes de base du mar­ xisme et de la social-démocratie, cette volonté de faire vite en usant de toute la puissance du pouvoir politique sans procéder aux change­ ments structurels, cette nécessité de composer avec l’ordre social exis­ tant parce qu’on s’est résigné à le considérer comme immuable et na­ turel, ce remplacement du marxisme par un socialisme national, cette substitution, aux vieilles velléités révolutionnaires du marxisme, d’une économie dirigée, organisée, rationalisée, conduisent, par la logique interne des choses, au fascisme. Ainsi, dans les années trente, le fascisme apparaît très souvent comme le seul système de pensée qui se situe véritablement dans la logique du vingtième siècle. C’est pourquoi le manifeste publié le 3 juillet 1940 par le président du Parti ouvrier belge ne constitue ni une rupture ni une aberration, mais plutôt l’aboutissement d’un cheminement idéologique continu. Il en est de même pour Déat. L’ancien député socialiste de Paris milite, à l’heure de la collaboration idéologique avec le nazisme, pour un « socialisme national » sachant « redécouvrir la notion biologique de la race » et fondé non seulement sur un « ajustement d’intérêts entre classes rivales plus ou moins arbitrées par l’Etat » mais sur la « subor­ dination de tous à l’ensemble ».195 Cependant, pour en arriver là, il faut abattre l’ennemi principal dont la nature ne varie jamais : « le libéralisme économique, qui est un matérialisme bourgeois auquel [fait] pendant le matérialisme ouvrier du marxisme, tous deux incontestable­ ment fils du rationalisme )).196 C’est ainsi qu’au cours de la dernière année de guerre, alors que les armées alliées s’avancent déjà vers le coeur du continent européen, les révoltés poursuivent toujours le même combat contre le matérialisme et ses sous-produits : le libéralisme, le capitalisme, le marxisme et la démocratie. Depuis les dernières décennies du siècle passé, cette lutte 194 G. Roditi, «D u néo-marxisme au néo-socialisme», L'homme nouveau, no. 13 (1er février 1935). 195 M. Déat, Pensée allemande et pensée française, Paris 1944, pp. 107—111. 196 Ibid., p. 63.

[230 ]

Zeev Sternhell contre le matérialisme devait saper la légitimité morale de toute une civilisation. Cette idéologie de contestation et de révolte préconise une révolution de l’esprit et de la volonté, des moeurs et des âmes. Elle propose non seulement des structures politiques et sociales nouvelles, mais aussi un nouveau type de relations entre l’homme et la société, entre l’homme et la nature. En période de croissance économique, d’abondance, de paix et de stabilité, cette idéologie n’a qu’une prise limitée sur la réalité sociale. Mais en temps de crise aigüe, la puissance de rupture d’un tel système de pensée se manifeste ostensiblement ; il alimente alors des mouvements de masse d’une force destructice peu commune. Dans un monde en détresse, le fascisme apparaît aisément comme une volonté héroïque de dominer, une fois encore, la matière, de dompter, par un déploiement d’énergie, non seulement les forces de la nature, mais aussi celles de l’économie et de la société.

[231 ]

Ideas, Political Intentions and Historical Consequences — the Case of the Russian Revolution by BARUCH K NEI-PAZ The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways ; the point [however] is, to change it (Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach” ). There is no straight and easy road to the city of modernity. Whatever the road chosen, there will be many marshes and wastes on either side, and many wrecked aspirations will lie there rusting and gathering dust. And those who arrive at the city will discover it to be quite different from the destination which they and their ancestors originally sought (Edward Shils, Political Development in the New States). Culture has its principal source in the use of the word ‘if , in counterfactual speculation (Stuart Hampshire in the London Review of Books).

T h e w o r k of Jacob Talmon was at once so comprehensive and

exhaustive in scope and subject-matter that there is hardly a theme in modern history that it did not touch upon — and illuminate — in one way or another. But the huge dimensions of his writings were held together by an unswerving preoccupation with what he considered to be the unique feature of the modem era, namely the direct impact of social theories, ideas and ideologies upon historical events and developments. In all that he wrote there was an incessant endeavour to unravel and explicate this impact ; and what emerged from his pen may be described in summary fashion as a chronicle of both the scope and the limits of ideas in modem history — their enormous success, if judged by the political action they unleashed, their equally enormous failure if judged by the historical consequences they gave rise to. In what follows, I wish to pursue, within the framework of a Talmon-like view of things, this paradoxical role of ideas in our times, as it is exemplified in the case of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. *

Some prophecies, when taken seriously, can be self-fulfilling ; others,

[232 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz for the same reason, can be self-defeating. Still others can be an uneasy, if fascinating, combination of both. This article is about the latter, or — to put it somewhat cryptically for the moment — about the manner in which beliefs concerning the future can determine the future, only for the future to be subsequently undermined by the very instruments and processes that brought it into being. I hope the con­ crete historical meaning of this will emerge in what follows. But the reader with an ear for the ironic dialectics of history will already have noticed that, in one sense, the above is a variation on an old theme, namely, the ubiquitous phenomenon of ‘unintended conse­ quences’, a phenomenon sometimes expressed popularly in the form : ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’. And, indeed, this theme will appear in this article. However, the main thrust of what I propose to argue is somewhat more complex. It is not unlike that additional, obverse phenomenon which Albert Hirschman identified in his inquiry into the arguments employed by European social thinkers in support of a capitalist future ‘before its triumph’. Here is how Hirschman described this phenomenon : On the one hand, there is no doubt that human actions and social decisions tend to have consequences that were entirely unin­ tended at the outset. But, on the other hand, these actions and decisions are often taken because they are earnestly and fully expected to have certain effects that then wholly fail to ma­ terialize. The latter phenomenon, while being the structural ob­ verse of the former, is also likely to be one of its causes ; the illusory expectations that are associated with certain social deci­ sions at the time of their adoption help keep their real future effects from view.1 Two complementary phenomena should therefore be kept in mind throughout this article : the one, unintended but realized consequences (or effects) ; the other, intended but unrealized consequences. Where­ as Hirschman unravelled these in the context of the intellectual roots of European capitalism and modernization, I take as my subjectmatter the intellectual roots of non-European, i.e. non-capitalist, mo­ dernization in this century, specifically that type of revolutionary modernization associated with political regimes identifying themselves as Marxist or Communist — though because of the limitations of 1 A. O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests — Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph, Princeton 1977, pp. 130-131. The emphases appear in the original quotation.

[233 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After space I will deal here only with the Russian-Soviet case.2 Proceeding from the intellectual roots, more precisely some social theories of great force which prevailed in the nineteenth century, I attempt to trace, firstly, the manner of their integration into a Weltanschauung and ideology which had clearly identifiable predispositions towards a certain view of political action and of the uses of political power — primarily as an instrument for fulfilling historical prophecies deemed desirable of fulfillment — and, secondly, the subsequent emergence of that power in the image of the preconceptions about it. I then raise what might be called the ‘irony of ironies’ —- conditions created or fulfilled for promoting a future that cannot come into being precise­ ly because those conditions have been fulfilled. A substantial part of this article is thus taken up with the explication of ideas from the point of view of their implications for political action. In the course of the subsequent analysis of consequences, I resort to a number of counterfactual historical speculations — a tactic that will not be to the liking of all social scientists or historians. I quite appreciate the dubious, some would say utterly disreputable, status of such intellectual games or exercises (sometimes dubbed the ‘Cleo­ patra’s nose’ theory of history). But since the perspective adopted, and argued, in this article is non-structuralist (as concerns, in par­ ticular, the study of modem revolutions) and seeks to show the impact of volitional elements — ideas and beliefs, decisions and actions, in­ dividuals and what I shall call the autonomy of politics — upon the making of not a little of contemporary history, the employment of counterfactuals is both irresistibly convenient for indicating where such elements made a difference, and enlightening for making ex­ plicit causal connections that otherwise too often remain implied but unarticulated in historical and political analysis. If nothing else, this way of proceeding might have the advantage of making manifest the issues involved in the manifold relationships that bind social theory, ideology, political action and political power. It is, of course, notoriously difficult to establish a causal relationship between the realm of ideas and that of social change, between ideo­ logies and voluntary choices, on the one hand, and political develop­ ments or historical outcomes in general, on the other. Moreover, no 2

This article derives from a wider research project, on the relationship between social theories, ideologies and modem politics, in which other historical cases will also be traced. I am grateful to the participants at a seminar of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, where a first version of this article was originally presented.

[234 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz one would dream — least of all this writer — of discounting the fact that societies evolve, or that social conditions come into being, in ways which cannot be attributed to any specific human intentions or delib­ erate choices or ideological predilections ; and that, therefore, much in the world we inhabit can only be explained, if at all, in the socio­ logical terms of collective and structural interactions — social relations, say, or structures of property or class or organization, or the dynamics of group behaviour, or the functions of institutions — the overall impact of which has no conscious begetter. But the structuralist per­ suasion has gone too far, in the manner of a production of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Curiously, its claims remain unabated even in an era of politics which, in some parts of the world at least, has been characterized by the unprecedented scope of politics, of po­ litical power and of ‘politicians’ for wilfully transforming societies and social structures. ‘Revolutions’, we are told by structuralist literature, ‘are not made ; they come’.3 I believe this to be a misunderstanding of the character of modern politics in societies such as Russia or China where revolutions were very definitely made and in a manner strikingly deriving from ideas, intellectual preconceptions, actions and goals that can be historically traced. Such ‘revolutions of backward­ ness’ or, what is but the obverse of that, ‘of modernization’ are poli­ tical phenomena par excellence and, as such, within the realm of both ideational and political explanation.4 A non-structuralist and anti-determinist perspective raises the question of the historian’s or social scientist’s attitude towards those alternatives which his analysis may reveal to have been historically possible. This is a sensitive issue and, as concerns the subject-matter of this article, once was engulfed by the calumny and polemics of academic cold wars. For my part, I make no judgement, either ethical or ‘scientific’, as to the relative preferability of the various ‘roads to the city of modernity’ that may have been available ; for all one knows, they may have been equally good or equally bad or worse. As a matter of fact, given what we now do know about a multitude of roads or ‘development strategies’ adopted, the one thing that is clear is that 3 4

T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions — A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, Cambridge 1979, p. 17. B. Moore, Jr.’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy is the best and the most sophisticated of structuralist analyses of revolutions ; yet even here the subject and role of ideas and ideologies hardly impinge upon the book’s vast historical sweep. For a critique which touches on this point see L. Stone, The Past and the Present, Boston—London 1981, chap. 5.

[235 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After the price of social change, slow or rapid, moderate or radical, is always high, some would say horrendous, no matter what economic principles of social organization are implemented.5 But even at the risk of ap­ pearing callous, the historian or social scientist still has a right to indulge his ironic demeanour (which, however, should not be confused with the cynical). Aside from the fact that it is quite possibly the only unmitigated reward of the profession, there is no real alternative to hindsight. At any rate, since the ironic leitmotiv of this paper is that it is unwise to be wise before the event, one need make no apologies perhaps for attempting to be wise after the event. What follows, therefore, is written very much in the company of the owl of Minerva, a species of fowl about which Hegel said that it ‘spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk’. Not inappropriately, Hegel is precisely where our story needs to begin, for, in an already ironic sense, he is its original begetter. I.

eThe Algebra of Revolution’ : Theory, Practice and the German Connection

On the face of it, nothing seems so far-fetched as to begin a discussion of our subject with, of all people, Hegel, an abstruse and contem­ plative soul if there ever was one, and one, moreover, who has been safely dead for a century and a half. But, on the principle that one should never underestimate the distance that philosophical ideas may travel, and where they may end up, once they leave their begetter’s armchair, I beg the reader’s patience for a moment until a reasonable case can be made for this, the beginning of the German connection. Actually, the Problematik — as the Germans inimitably call it — which we are about to enter was created by another abstruse and contemplative German philosopher, Kant, who had unleashed a major crisis of intellectual angst in Germany when, in various works published during the last two decades of the eighteenth century, he proclaimed that theory, or reason — by which he meant scientific knowledge of the world — was irrevocably severed from practice — the realm of ethical judgements and political choice and action. Practice, in other words, stood outside the scope of scientific certainties. This is not the place to describe how Kant effected this rift ; nor is its validity or otherwise relevant to our purposes ; but the gist of his 5

The literature on this subject is now a vast industry ; but see the excellent recent survey of the record of both various development theories and development models in E. Hermassi, The Third World Reassessed, BerkeleyLos Angeles, 1980.

[236 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz shattering — for such was its impact — message was that human behaviour was doomed to remain an epistemological dilemma. One may regret in retrospect that well enough was not left alone — since Kant also tried to work out an independent basis for practical, that is, ethical, reason — but Hegel, writing in the immediate postKantian era, would have none of Kant’s dichotomy. Agitating over the admittedly schizophrenic character of the human world created in Kant’s philosophy, Hegel determined to put together what had been so majestically torn asunder. Once again, it hardly matters for our purposes whether the awe-inspiring edifice he subsequently erected is convincing as philosophy. What does matter, historically, is, firstly, the counter-Kantian message it conveyed which was that the world was one after all ; that this unity was made possible through mind — or human self-consciousness — itself, which was ‘presupposed’ by physical phenomena ; that science, ethics and politics belonged to the same epistemological domain ; that, moreover, reason or rationality, and ineluctable progress — in the sense of increasing freedom — could be seen to characterize the march of history ; and that, above all, far from there being a gulf between theoretical knowledge and political practice, the two emerged to be in harmony when history was contem­ plated ex post facto. What matters even more in our context is, secondly, that this view of things had a profound impact upon a whole genera­ tion of German philosophers of the 1830s and thereafter, who, acutely conscious of the backwardness of Prussian social and political develop­ ment when compared with post-revolutionary France, perceived in it the prospect for turning philosophy into an instrument of political change.6 A prescient Russian radical of the time, Alexander Herzen, the father of Russian socialism and an early convert to Hegelianism, noted that Hegel’s philosophy was the stuff of which an ‘algebra of revolution’ could be made. And so it was, eventually, though the Hegelian legacy was not initially unambiguous, as witness the rise of both Right and Left Hegelians. The former, taking Hegel literally to mean that what was, was rational — that is, desirable — defended the Prussian state whatever its seeming backwardness (and thus, not surprisingly, found it easier 6

It is of some interest to note that Hegel’s most magisterial work on the themes here alluded to, The Phenomenology of Mind, was completed in 1805, just as Napoleon was defeating the Prussians at Jena, where Hegel was living and thinking at the time. Needless to say, despite the historical role which Napoleon assumed from the point of view of the Hegelian philosophy of history, Hegel’s admiration for him could hardly be unmixed.

[237 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After to get university posts). The latter, however, interpreted Hegelianism as a critique of that which existed, a critique that pointed in the direction that society must move if it were to become rational and desirable (equally not surprisingly, these ‘Leftists’ had insurmountable difficulties in getting university appointments). They were also plagued, it must be admitted, by Hegel’s ubiquitous owl of Minerva which seemed to rule out the predetermination of the future (as opposed to its determinacy in retrospect). But the seed for a radical critique of society had been sown, and such thinkers as Feuerbach, Ruge and Bauer were determined to bring it to fruition.7 They took it as far as it could go within exclusively German philosophical traditions, which lacked, as yet, a conception of the newly emerging wonder : social science. Fortunately, in the meantime things were also happening on the in­ tellectual front in France, where the eighteenth-century Enlighten­ ment, transcended by the French Revolution, was emerging in the form of a nineteenth-century scientific creed. While the Germans, in other words, were inventing radical philosophy, the French were bring­ ing forth radical social science. Whatever the logic of this division of labour, the fact is that the two developments could prove to be easy bedfellows — if only a perceptive and daring matchmaker were to take the initiative. We shall turn to him in a moment, but looking now at the French connection, at, amongst others, such figures as Saint-Simon, Comte and even the less rigorous Proudhon, we find the following cluster of ideas coming together : that social forces and economic organization are fundamental in history ; that societies are subject to certain laws of development ; that these laws are in prin­ ciple discoverable ; that to discover them one must create and employ the tools and concepts of a theoretical science of society (thus the ‘social sciences’) ; that, thus discovered, these laws reveal the history of mankind to be, above all, a history of progress ; that this progress periodically unravels itself through the instrumentality of revolution — revolution being the harbinger of a new world ; and that, finally, this new world could be rationally planned and organized in a way com­ patible with the well-being of all.8 7 8

On these and other Left-Hegelians, see D. McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, London 1969. For a manageable selection of Saint-Simon’s writings, see the Selected Writings, edited by F.M.H. Markham, Oxford 1952. Comte’s and Proud­ hon’s writings are readily available in various individual editions. See also J.L. Talmon, Political Messianism, London 1960, and F. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris, Cambridge (Mass.) 1962.

[238 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz The linkage of the idea of progress with that of revolution, initially forged in practice during the shattering events of 1789 and after, when the possibilities of a rational reconstruction of society reached such obsessive dimensions, was to remain during the first half of the nineteenth century one of the most powerful of themes. It would constitute the foundation of the alliance between the new social sciences and politics, between thinkers and doers, between those in each category who so breathlessly anticipated the dawn of a new world. The centrality during this period of the idea of revolution as the key to the future is so clearly evident and so well known that it need hardly be belaboured ; it will suffice, by way of summarizing its per­ vasiveness, to quote the following : From 1789 on, seekers for this new world hopefully looked on every revolution as the magic wand that would effect a basic change and, when the morning after revealed that nothing basic had changed, immediately resolved to try again, more radically. Thus 1789 was followed by 1792 and 1796 ; the July Revolution of 1830 by the uprisings in 1832, 1834 and 1839 ; the February Revolution of 1848, by the June revolt of the same year ; and the dreamed-for democracy and universal suffrage by the call for ‘social dictatorship’.9 The call for ‘social dictatorship’ was that of one Karl Marx, of course, in whom the ‘connections’ we have sketched — with the judicious addition of British empiricism and economic science — came together and from whom there would extend a somewhat convoluted yet clearly discernible line to the twentieth-century ‘revolution of backwardness and modernization’. It is, I believe, impossible to over-estimate the profound significance, both intellectually and politically, of this con­ joining of various strains in this one man. Straddling the world of reactionary Germany, where he was born and educated, post-revolution­ ary France, where his ideas began to take shape, and industrial-parlia­ mentary Britain, where he created ‘Marxism’ and where he died, Marx brought forth what George Lichtheim once called the ‘grandiose synthesis’ : ‘He alone did what [other thinkers of his age] all set out to do but failed to accomplish : he fused philosophy, history and economics.. .’10 It was perhaps the greatest fusion in the history of

9 10

G. Niemeyer, ‘Marx’s Impact on European Socialism’, in : N. Lobkowicz (ed.), Marxism and the Western World, Notre Dame—London 1967, p. 202. G. Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism, New York 1969, p. 185.

[239 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After intellectual labour, and one whose powers today, a century since Marx’s death, still cast their charms seductively. As everyone knows, Marx stood Hegel on his head ; but he did this without abandoning some central Hegelian notions and by confronting head on the ‘theory-practice Problematik’. Anyone who doubts the centrality of Hegel in the shaping of Marx’s outlook need only look at the manner in which in the latter’s work there is a love-hate rela­ tionship towards Hegel — always a sure sign of influence.1112 But this is by now so widely recognized that it need not be pursued here ; instead I want only to stress one aspect of the Marxian synthesis of Hegelian philosophy and French social theory, namely the linking of a theory of history to a theory of action, a notion known as the ‘union of theory and practice’. I referred earlier to the problem in Hegel of the owl of Minerva, to the apparent incapacity of thought to com­ prehend history except retrospectively. Although Hegel believed in the necessarily rational evolution of history, such rationality, while working through individuals — or ‘world-historical figures’ — was not, in his view, consciously grasped by them at the moment that they made history. Thus there existed a rift between intentions and con­ sequences, however fortunate the latter always turned out to be. ‘Those who make history’, Hegel hits been paraphrased as having warned, ‘do not understand it, and those who understand it do not (and should not) make it’.13 Read this way, the Hegelian dialectic left social theory suspended in contemplative limbo. But what if the material forces of historical development — and the laws according to which they operated — could be discovered (as French social science claimed to do) ? If one could indeed identify, as Marx was now to claim, the universal factors that governed historical change — class, property relations, social conflict, and so on — then there was no reason in principle why social theory could not be a guide to action, why those who understood history could not (and should not) make it, and why, concomitantly, those who made history should not understand it and in the making of it resolve theoretical problems (i.e. through action itself). If, moreover, social ‘laws’ were to reveal that all hitherto existing societies were subject to a problem, that of economic scarcity, which was now becoming susceptible to resolution through scientific and technological advance, then the role of social 11

12

On the Hegelian themes in Marx’s thought, see, for example, R. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, Cambridge 1961, and S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge 1968. S. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge 1972, p. 234.

[240 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz theory was also to point in the direction of the new, ‘post-scarcity’ society. In brief, Marx arrived at the conclusion that social thought, or contemporary philosophy—the distinction now was purely aca­ demic — was in the unprecedented position of ‘overleaping its own age’, of ‘jumping over Rhodus’, by postulating, on the basis of his­ torical analysis, the necessary character of the new era — one which, fortunately, turned out to be of unlimited human possibilities. We are here, so it would appear, in the sphere of eschatology, not to say futurology ; but the practical significance of Marx’s chiliastic con­ victions is that they allowed him to claim a radical, transforming role for social thought — as in the famous eleventh ‘Thesis on Feuer­ bach’ — and to link it logically to political action. Thus the con­ joining of self-comprehending thought and self-assertive action would put an end once and for all, so Marx believed, to the dichotomy be­ tween intentions and consequences, between what men believed they were creating and what they actually created ; it would unite, for the first time, the subjective and objective realms, that of human activity and that of the hitherto invisible ‘social forces’, the one consciously transforming the other. The final act in the era of ‘prehistory’ would thus constitute a leap from dialectical, ironic and tortuous progress to self-determined, intended and non-antagonistic progress, a leap that necessarily took place in the midst of catastrophic, revolutionary events as the new sought to break ‘out of the womb’ of the old. It matters little, in retrospect, that Marx’s choice of the human agent for this leap, the ‘universal’ proletariat, would prove to be an unfortunate one : it was an agent who would be loath to take up the role Marx entrusted him with ; but this was, as it turned out, a tactical question which could be — and was — to be resolved in other ways.13 Of course, there is a great deal more that one can say about Marx’s ‘synthesis’ and not a little of it would raise contradictions and, at least, alternative ways of interpreting him. The argument as to ‘what Marx really meant’ has now gone on for a century and more and still it shows no signs of abating — to judge by the tomes produced on the subject in this or any other year. Like all great system-builders, Marx could be, and became, all things to all men — not to say a man for all seasons. This Problematik will never be settled, any more than, say, the problem of Hamlet, as of the Prince of Denmark, will ever be resolved. Fortunately, this issue is of interest only in the context 13

It is impossible to list all those works by Marx relevant to this discussion,

but an early (1846) work, The German Ideology, is of central importance, as are the so-called ‘Paris Manuscripts of 1844’.

[241 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After of textual exegesis ; it matters little as far as the history of Marxism is concerned, and that, precisely, is what will concern us here. That is to say, in attempting to trace a connection between the revolution in ideas that took place in the first half or so of the nineteenth cen­ tury in Europe and the revolution in politics in the first half of the twentieth outside Europe, it is immaterial what the ‘true essence’ of Marx was — even assuming there to have been such a thing ; it is enough to show what it is that moved so many intelligent and deter­ mined men to choose to identify with him and what it is that they understood him to mean. This approach might be unfair to the memory of Marx (though the connection between him and Marxism is cer­ tainly not fortuitous). But the point of our exercise is not the ex­ plication of the ‘founding father’s holy texts’ ; rather it is to follow the process whereby a certain type of social theory, having undeniably political pretensions, is turned into an ideology and from thence into a systematic way of acting upon the world. But before we turn to that, it will be of some subsequent use if, at this point, we nevertheless look briefly at what Marx had to say about the particular geographic terrain that we shall be dealing with, namely the non-European or — to use Marx’s own terminology — ‘Asiatic’ world. For most of his life, good Euro-centric that he was, Marx paid only marginal attention to matters outside the European domain ; and imperialism in his day was still a term associated with the Empire established by Napoleon in France.14 Nevertheless, even here the quantity of his writings — on China, on India, on Russia, on the Near East even — is impressive.15 Even more impressive is the fact that in these writings, perhaps more so than anywhere else — with one significant exception, about which presently — his mean­ ing is so consistent and forthright as to leave no room for differing interpretations. This being so, the following well-known passage from the Communist Alanifesto will suffice to summarize the point of view he was to hold to the end of his life : The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communica14

15

On the history of the term, see R. Koebner & H. D. Schmidt, Imperialism — The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960, Cambridge 1964. The most complete collection of Marx’s writings on the non-European world is in S. Avineri (ed.), Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, New York 1968. For his writings on Russia, see P.W. Blackstock & B.F. Hoselitz (eds), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels — The Russian Menace to Europe, London 1953.

[242]

Baruch Knei-Paz tion, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bour­ geois mode of production ; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.16 There could hardly be a more unequivocal statement of technological determinism, of the view that the ‘mode of production’ spills over into the realm of culture or ‘civilization’, of the ‘historical-materialist’ notion that a change in the economic base must necessarily create a particular kind of ‘super-structure’. I only note this in passing — on the basis of the above and other statements in Marx17 — as I do three other characteristics of his views on the ‘Asiatic’ world. The first is that change in that world could only be brought about by the impact of the exogenous European influence, specifically the importation of the principle of private property.18 The second is that whatever the human cost involved in ‘modernizing’ non-European countries, and whatever the vile intentions of the bourgeoisie, this was a cost worth paying, and thus, histoi'ically, the European bourgeoisie was performing a progressive mission.19 The third is that only in this manner could the world become ‘universalized’ and thus, presumably, one single arena for the international socialist transformation.20 There is, however, one exception in Marx’s writing to this scenario 16 17

18

19

20

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Moscow 1955, I, p. 38. As in another well-known observation by Marx : ‘The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future’ ( Selected Works, I, p. 450). The notion that the non-European world was unchanging, or had no internal forces of change, is another assumption that Marx took over from Hegel, particularly from the latter’s The Philosophy of History. Nothing could be more forthright than the following statement by Marx : ‘England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostán, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia ? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution’ ( Selected Works, I, p. 351). For a more extensive discussion of Marx’s views of backwardness, see B. Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, Oxford 1978, pp. 585-598.

[243 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After of the ‘bourgeoisification’ of the non-European ‘barbarians’. In the last decade or so of his life he took a particular interest in Russia — which he seems to have considered ‘semi-Asiatic’21 — and agitated a great deal over the character of the revolutionary prospects there. He never adopted a coherent position on this question ; but two elements stand out — firstly, that Marx did not reject a sequence of development in the case of Russia that deviated from the rigid ‘historical stages’ process whereby capitalism must precede socialism j22 secondly, that Marx raised the possibility, in principle, that a revolution in Russia could become a ‘signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other’.23 Following his death, such a view of the Russian future was even more unequivocally purveyed by Marx’s devoted friend, Engels.24 By then, that is in the 1880s, and until his own death in 1895, Engels was busy acting as the legitimate transmitter of the whole of Marx’s intellectual legacy. Less sensitive to philosophical and theoretical nuances but eternally dedicated to the purposeful dissemination of his master’s voice, Engels was the first of what would soon become a long line of latter-day St Pauls. Geoge Lichtheim has written that what was done to Marx’s thought at the hands of Engels and those who followed him was tantamount to nothing less than an ‘intellectual disaster’ ; but even he admits that ‘the transformation of Marx’s own naturalism into a meta-physical materialism was a practical necessity for Engels and his followers.... It was required to turn Marxism into a coherent Weltanschauung, first of all for the German labour movement and later for the [Russian] intelligentsia’.25 This develop­ ment was indeed bad for the reputation of philosophy ; but, as against this, it is only fair to point out that it did eventually change the world, which, if nothing else, says something about the role of philosophy in our times. II.

eFrom the Horses to the Mules’ : Russian Marxism

That a political ideology is, above all, a body of ideas goes without saying ; but so is a political philosophy, or a social theory. However, 21 22 23 24 25

The term appears in an article (Blackstock & Hoselitz, eds, signed by Marx but apparently written by Engels. See Marx-Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow 1953, Selected Works, I, p. 24. See Engel’s article of 1894 in Blackstock & Hoselitz (eds), G. Lichtheim, ‘On the Interpretation of Marx’s Thought’, (ed.), op. cit. (n. 9 ), p. 11.

[244 ]

pp. 133-138) pp. 376-379. pp. 229-241. in Lobkowicz

Baruch Knei-Paz I take the main distinguishing features of an ideology to be the follow­ ing : firstly, that it is an action-oriented system of beliefs, i.e., its ideas are so formulated and organized as to provide both a motivational and a programmatic ‘manual’ for a collective acting upon the world ; secondly, that its power of persuasion is not necessarily undermined by any internal logical inconsistencies or contradictions that it may contain. This second feature can be shown to have been borne out by historical experience.26 As to the first feature, it makes for a con­ ceptual distinction, in terms of goals, between ideologies and other forms of thought, so that an ideology, unlike the latter, is seen to have an aim beyond itself. Some social theories, even philosophies, may, of course, become action-oriented and may develop goals outside themselves ; but in that case they become ideologies, and that is precisely the point of what follows.27 In turning from German to Russian Marxism, the late John Plamenatz once wrote, ‘we leave the horses and come to the mules’. A cruel comment to be sure, but one can see what he meant ; and it could be made with equal force about Chinese Marxism as well, though, for reasons of space, I will here restrict myself to the earlier beasts of burden.28 What did those who became Russian Marxists see in Marx? Why did men who lived in a social and political environment so unlike the Europe of Marx find in his writings a message so attractive, and so powerful, and one that turned into so consuming a force in their lives ? At this stage I only note that we are dealing with men whose feet stood upon the primitive foundations of Russia, but whose heads were in the libraries and bookshops and intellectual currents of Lon­ don, of Paris, and of Berlin, a phenomenon characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia throughout the nineteenth century. I shall return to this later. As to the specific source of the intellectual attraction, two elements stand out. The first is the ‘scientific’ appeal of Marx’s ideas. 26

27 28

To give but one specific example : the contradictory, but undiminished appeal of the Nazi claim that Jews were, at one and the same time, both communists and capitalists. For a comprehensive discussion of the structure of ideologies, see M. Seliger, Ideology and Politics, London 1976. The following works — from a now vast literature — provide excellent material for the pursuit of this subject in the Chinese case : B.I. Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, Cambridge (Mass.), 1951 ; F. Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, BerkeleyLos Angeles 19682 ; J.B. Starr, Continuing the Revolution — The Political Thought of Mao, Princeton 1979. See also the collection of documents in Ssu-yu Teng and J.K. Fairbank (eds), China’s Response to the West, Cambridge (Mass.) 1979.

[245 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ‘The theory of Marx,’ wrote Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, ‘like Ariadne’s thread, led us out of the labyrinth of contradictions into which our thoughts had been driven. . ;29 and Martov, later to become the supremely conscientious leader of the Mensheviks, gave as his reason for converting to Marxism its ‘synthesis of subjective revolutionary ideals with the scientific cognition of the laws of social development’.30 The second element was the promise which Marxism seemed to convey that capitalism was both an inevitable and an ephemeral phenomenon. Paradoxically, at first the Russian Marxists ignored the historical loophole which Marx, and Engels, had provided in their speculations about the next stage of Russian development. All the original Russian Marxists — amongst them Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich — came from a Narodnik (or Populist) background where repugnance for an encroaching capitalism, for the increasingly dis­ orienting modem world, was the most common denominator. But they had become convinced that the inroads of capitalism in Russia could not be turned back ; and they attributed Marx’s deviation from his own ‘necessary laws of human development’ to his misunderstand­ ing of the social and economic viability of the Russian village commune upon which he seemed to base the prospects of socialism in Russia.31 They did not, to be sure, abandon their antipathy towards capitalism, towards the ‘horrors’ it introduced while destroying traditional modes of life. But such horrors are easier to stomach if they are seen to be a part of some majestic design in which evils are created the better to be eventually expunged. There was in this the fascination with the ‘dialectical’ idea— which some students of Marx have purported to trace to sublimated religious motives — that the road to heaven ran through hell. Moreover, the concomitant notion, that the coming of capitalism would modernize Russia, would pull her out of her debil­ itating backwardness, would plunge her into the crucible of Western, ‘universal’ history, could not but appeal to men who, like the nine­ teenth-century Russian intelligentsia in general, felt disgraced and frustrated by the perceived inferiorities of their country. But if Russian Marxism had remained committed to the notion that -9 30 31

Quoted in S.H. Baron, Plekhanov — The Father of Russian Marxism, Stanford 1963, p. 68. Quoted in I. Getzler, Martov — A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat, Melbourne 1967, p. 15. Marx at one point decided to make a systematic study of the Russian village commune, but he did not arrive at any final conclusions about its social significance. Plekhanov later showed why the growing capitalist commodity market was destroying the village commune.

[246 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz capitalism in Russia was inevitable, the movement may well have also remained but another footnote in Russian history. In the event, how­ ever, this notion was soon to be abandoned, if not doctrinally or explicitly, then in practice, by what came to be known as the Bolshevik faction of the movement.32 How can the adoption of the different notion, that capitalism could, and should, be side-stepped, be explained ? The answer to this lies, not surprisingly, in Lenin, despite the fact that in 1899 he had published a work which argued the emerging capitalist transformation of Russia,33 and that until 1917 he would subscribe, in principle, to the ‘orthodox’ view that the impending revolution in Russia would be a ‘bourgeois’ revolution.34 But this was doctrinal lip-service, which he dispensed perfunctorily while simul­ taneously creating the ideological and organizational base for a different development. This first emerged in the following historical context. In the same year that Lenin had published his work on Russian capitalism, Eduard Bernstein in Germany published his book on Evo­ lutionary Socialism. The latter would soon create a rift within the German Social-Democratic movement, and, eventually, two distinct camps, one committed to revolution, the other, identified with the ‘revisionist’ Bernsteinian persuasion, dedicated to the parliamentary road to socialism. A number of Russian Marxist exiles were present at the debate which Bernstein’s book unleashed and when, not long after, they returned to Russia, they reported on the controversy and appeared to identify themselves with the ‘revisionist’ position. They were soon dubbed the ‘Economists’ since they subscribed to the view that Russian Marxism should, at this stage, place emphasis on economic objectives, ameliorating the conditions of Russian workers, not on political ones, striking at the roots of tsarist power. The ‘Economists’ were a small and barely organized group, but Lenin, in his attack on them, turned them into a major threat to the future of Russian Marxism. He knew well that as a group they were ineffectual, but his choice of enemy was, as always, governed by considerations other than the dangers inherent in the ostensible target.35 The real target, as is clear from his most famous work, What is to be Done ? 32

33 34 35

In point of fact, the first to argue that capitalism could not take root in Russia was Trotsky, long before he became a Bolshevik ; see Knei-Paz, op. cit. (n. 29), chap. 3. The Development of Capitalism in Russia. It is only in the ‘April Theses’ of 1917 that Lenin explicitly dropped the notion of the ‘bourgeois revolution’. The ‘Economist’ controversy is most illuminatingly treated in L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, London 1963.

[247]

Totalitarian Democracy and After (published in 1902, but already prefigured in some shorter pieces of a year or so before), was the notion that social change could be attained incrementally and that political, revolutionary action was purely a question of tactical choice. It is in this context that he formulated two distinctly ‘Leninist’ ideas : the one, that the workers, the masses, were capable of achieving only ‘trade-union consciousness’, or a spontaneity of action that did not extend beyond immediately perceived economic needs ; the other, that only a special élite group of professional revolutionaries, the ‘educated representatives of the propertied classes — the intelligentsia’, could attain such ‘consciousness’ of the historical processes as would preserve the priority of the revolu­ tionary seizure of power. Implicit throughout What is to be Done ? was the view that the more capitalism took root, the less revolutionary did its victims — the workers— and opponents become ; that is to say, paradoxically, the militancy of the opposition to capitalism was inversely proportional to the latter’s strength. Contemplating the emer­ gence of ‘revisionism’ in Germany — Bernstein’s book had in the meantime been published in three Russian editions — Lenin could not but conclude that capitalism, the more it advanced — as it was, of course, doing in Germany — the more it became a threat to Marxism and to the prospects for revolution (though this, of course, is to paraphrase his more careful wording). From this it followed clearly that the time to seize power, now in the name of the workers, was before capitalism reached impregnable dimensions. This is not to say that Lenin henceforth ceased to believe that ultimately capitalism in Germany, as elsewhere, would collapse. But, in a sense, it is precisely this conviction which led him to conclude that since capitalism was doomed in the long run, there was no reason why it should not be done away with in the short run, nipped, so to speak, in the bud. What could possibly be wrong with giving history a helping hand ? III.

(The Modern Prince’ : From Ideology to the Autonomy of Political Power

Everyone — or nearly so — agrees that Lenin was a hard-headed realist, that he was not above manipulating theory for the sake of practice, that he was interested in theoretical questions from an instrumental perspective primarily, that he was an ‘ideologue’ above all. This is true enough, as is the ‘Russianness’ of his assimilation of Western ideas — Trotsky once said that ‘Marxism was reflected in Leninism like Aphrodite in a samovar’. Be that as it may, it must also be noted that Lenin was neither a cynic nor a nihilist, and the not infrequent

[248 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz portraits that paint him as a ruthless, unprincipled conspirator, in the image of some real nineteenth-century Russian nihilists, or such as were conjured up in some of Dostoevsky’s novels, do a gross injustice to his historical stature and significance. We will not understand him, or the phenomenon he represents, if we take him to have been a Mephistophelian figure. In fact, he was a true believer. His commit­ ment to Marxism and its ideals was complete and undoubting ; it was his philosophy of life and the source of his strength. He believed that Marx’s social theory was a science both for unravelling the laws of history and for acting upon them (it did not occur to him to be unfaithful to Marx and he quoted him copiously). He believed in the socialist future of a world emerging from the ‘pre-history’ of economic scarcity, and he was convinced that the forces of light were on his, and all the Marxists’, side. There remained only the matter of translating historical prophecy into political reality. It was he who, accepting the inevitability of the prophecy, proceeded to ask himself how best and most rapidly to fulfil it.36 Lenin’s What is to be Done?, it has often been noted, is to the twentieth century what Machiavelli’s The Prince had been in its time. The parallel derives not only from the fact that both works concern themselves with politics as action, but that they are so taken with the possibilities of politics as an autonomous sphere of action.37 However, where Machiavelli may be said to have been concerned primarily with power as an end in itself, in the case of Lenin the seizure and maintenance of political power, the activity of politics, has an end beyond itself, namely the volitional transformation of society, and through mass mobilization at that. It is in this sense that the political actor who emerges from What is to be Done? — as from other of Lenin’s works and from those of Mao Tse-Tung, for example, as well — is the ‘modern prince’, transcending and, in the twentieth century rendering obsolete, Machiavelli’s ruler. Moreover, in keeping with the social dimension of his mission, Lenin’s ruler is a ‘philosopherprince’, hardly of the contemplative type imagined in the Platonic state, but in essence performing the same functions as that ideal king. Though the contemporary rise of the intellectual — understood here as a man socially motivated by the force of ideas — was noted long 36

37

The parallels between Leninism, Calvinism, and Jacobinism have, of course, been often noted ; see, for example, M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints, New York 1970, pp. 300-320. On the autonomy of politics in Machiavelli, see G. Sartori, ‘What is Politics ?’ Political Theory, I, No. 1 (Feb. 1973), pp. 5-26.

[249 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After before Lenin, it was the latter who recognized the full political poten­ tial of the role and status of the modem intellectual. It is unneces­ sary to repeat here what was alluded to earlier, and what is in any case well known, namely the elements of élitism, vanguardism, militan­ cy, dedication, fanaticism even, which Lenin attributed to the intel­ ligentsia — the ‘educated representatives’ of the masses — elements which he considered indispensable to revolutionary politics, both be­ fore and after the seizure of power, and to the translation of social theory into political reality. Even more pertinent is the fact that Lenin grasped, more fully than anyone else before him, though in a manner reminiscent of certain Russian Populists, the special position of the intellectual in a backward society such as Russia. With his feet upon those primitive foundations, but his head in the stratosphere of modem Western ideas, the intelligent was so placed as to bridge the historical gulf separating the two worlds. The notion of jumping over epochs of development was thus implicit in Lenin’s conception of the revolutionary, and of the possibilities of revolution, when tied together with the notion of the ‘autonomy of politics’.38 This latter notion is one which, ostensibly, stands Marx on his head. And, indeed, Marx may well have disowned those who thus up-ended him. But it is not a wholly illogical extension, however extreme, of his own resolution of the ‘theory-practice’ Problematik, of the view that the point of theory is to change the world ; that while social development has its own unavoidable laws, it is concrete men who make them unavoidable ; that while history ‘happens’ it is men who make it happen. On this view of things, politics as an autonomous sphere of action becomes the conscious, volitional determination of social reality, not the blind, unconscious working out of reason. It is, in this activist sense, the paradoxical culmination of a deterministic conception of history. In practice, it appears as a realm that recog­ nizes no constraints outside itself, as lording it over society ; and the justification for this is purported to reside in the conviction that the political subsumes to itself the historical goals and processes of so­ ciety. This, of course, is to explicate Lenin’s autonomy of politics from the point of view of the logic that was inherent, if not explicit, in the nineteenth-century Marxian ‘synthesis’ of philosophical and political issues. In fact, it has nothing to do with determinism, or the necessary evolution of a specific form of historical change, any more than the 38

On the character of the Russian intelligentsia, see the various essays in I. Berlin, Russian Thinkers, London 1978.

[250 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz ‘spirit of capitalism’ had anything to do with predestination (except as a similar ideological pretext for action). On the contrary, nothing can be so self-determining in consequence, or so clearly dependent on the individual choices made by particular men seeking, or in, power. And nothing so attests to the scope of the political for wilfully transforming the future, in a direction that it might otherwise not have taken — as I will attempt to argue in the subsequent section of this article. Before doing that, however, a preliminary question must be dealt with : why did the phenomenon of revolutionary change, in the Leninist sense, take hold, and succeed, in backward societies such as Russia (and, later, China), while failing to bear political fruit in the ad­ vanced Western societies ? Does this fact not suggest that the auto­ nomous scope of politics is structurally related to the different character of societies ? Indeed, Lenin’s analysis of the hegemonic powers of Western capitalism was itself a kind of ‘structuralist’ analysis, though nowadays we could also explicate capitalism as a self-correcting social system, periodically, perhaps continuously, responding to the pres­ sures and demands for change and reform made upon it. Combining Lenin’s and contemporary political science analyses, it may be said that a social and political system is best adept at coping with internal opposition, its ‘rulers’ least obstinate in giving way to specific demands, when that system has already so fully established itself as to be ir­ reversible (albeit not undestroyable). Although here, too, I believe, emphasis must be placed on the way in which men act and react, on choices and decisions made, on the importance of events, there can be no doubt that relatively ‘stable’ systems are those in which structures are deeply rooted, however fragile they may simultaneously be in the context of the modern, post-industrial norm of permanent change. The survival of capitalism is indeed a sociological wonder, even if the turbulent times it has incessantly experienced suggest that political analysis is not yet as redundant as the structuralists would have us believe.39 Conversely, it is clear that revolutionary politics are more potently an independent force in conditions where the disintegration of the old society has not yet given way to the entrenchment of the new — as 39

On the place of political, as against sociological-structural, analysis and explanation, see, for example, G. Sartori, ‘From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology’, in : S.M. Lipset (ed.), Politics and the Social Sciences, New York 1969, pp. 65-100 ; and H. Eckstein, ‘On the Etiology of Internal Wars’, History and Theory IV, No. 2 (1965), pp. 133-163.

[251 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After in Russia before 1917. Societies, it may be said, are particularly vulnerable to revolutionary upheaval at that point in time at which they are in the very throes of socio-economic transition, when what Hannah Arendt and others have described as ‘mass society’, i.e. so­ cially and economically undifferentiated and unstratified society, comes into being. It is in such conditions that, as Lenin perceived, the auto­ nomous possibilities of politics - become most conspicuous. But that is precisely the point of the argument of this article — that revolu­ tionary situations, and revolutions, cannot be analysed in structural or non-volitional terms that preclude if not an infinite, then certainly a large, variety of outcomes. It is as much, or as little, a cause for wonder that some societies, as in England, survive the worst throes of industrialization with their political systems more or less intact, as that others, as in Russia, do not. The outcomes are never as obvious as in retrospect ; they are never self-evident in advance. But the political consequences of the Russian experience make no more struc­ tural sense that those of the English. Was either the February or the October Revolution at any time a foregone conclusion ? Can anyone entirely discount the possibility, for example, that the Stolypin re­ forms of the post-1905 period may have led to a different result if the tsar had not chosen to commit his country to the World War ? Following the events of February, the new Provisional Government could have adopted numerous alternative policies which may well have prevented its collapse. Even so, the triumph of the Bolsheviks, when seen from the perspective of the post-February situation, seems, if anything, incongruous, given the strength and distribution of the various social and political forces at the time. With the notable excep­ tions of Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolsheviks themselves did not place much hope in their own prospects, and it took all of Lenin’s powers of persuasion to convince his followers that their moment in history had arrived. The crucial importance of Lenin at this moment has often been noted, and even Trotsky, than whom no one was, in 1917, more convinced of the ‘inexorable Bolshevik logic of history*, ad­ mitted many years later that had Lenin not been present in Petrograd at the time ‘there would have been no October Revolution’.40 On the other hand, the very possibility of the Bolshevik option emerged as a consequence of the evolution of a specific attitude toward political power, of a specific conception of the uses of political power, of the ideological notion that history is created through the exercise of political power. Can we discount this element in explaining the 40

Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, London 1959, pp. 53-54.

[252 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz triumph of Lenin in 1917 ? This, however, has nothing to do with a conspiracy theory of history, for Lenin sought power not as an end in itself, but as an instrument for vindicating his and, as he believed, Marx’s views of history. As to the consequences of this use of the instrument of power as history’s helping hand, that is another matter, to which we now turn. IV.

‘Only Connect’ : Unrealized and Realized Consequences

Ideas, I have argued, have consequences. But how do we connect between ideological intentions and historical outcomes ? Since the latter so consistently emerge to be unrecognizable in the former, the connection seems tenuous to say the least ; and so it has generally been assumed that ideologies are mere rationalizations for, or in­ tricately constructed diversions from, the real stuff of politics. But why should the validity of the impact of ideas depend upon the successful reproduction of the reality dreamt of in the ideas ? Perhaps failure can attest no less to the historical role that ideas play ? One might, therefore, raise the following hypothesis : that ideas, precisely because they are taken seriously, may not bring about intended con­ sequences and, simultaneously, bring about unintended ones. This is to say, that they may indeed transform reality, though in a form unanticipated and one which it would not have assumed had the ideas not been consciously, and conscientiously, pursued. This is less mysterious than it may sound if we recall that ideas cannot be simply wished into reality ; they must be realized, if at all, through the in­ strumentality of organized political power. In the process, the latter becomes a kind of ‘intervening variable’ which itself acts upon reality, thus distorting the form it would otherwise, or ‘normally’, have. In the specific historical case before us, I have argued that the more seriously ideas were taken, the more intervening the political variable became — and the more distorted the reality ; so much so, in fact, that the original ideas may be said to have created conditions in which they could not be realized. If politics is the existential, volitional means through which men break into the circle of vicious natural — i.e. unconscious social — causality, then it is also the means through which they undermine the possibility of a necessary, or predictable, causality in social life. One way of observing the phenomenon just described is to ask what would have happened if no systematic attempt had been made to break into ‘normal’ social processes. Here, for example, is a counterfactual speculation to concentrate the mind : if the Bolsheviks had

[253 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After not broken into Russian history at that point in time at which they actually did, then the transformation of Russia — and perhaps of other backward societies subsequently influenced by the Bolshevik ‘demonstration effect’ — could well have proceeded in the manner which Marx originally predicted in the Manifesto and elsewhere, i.e. through the evolution of a capitalist mode of production ; but, of course, it is Marx’s prediction itself, understood as a prophecy seeking to fulfil itself, which was responsible for the Bolshevik break-in. This leads to the possibility of the following intriguing formulation : if Marx had not predicted the necessary emergence of capitalism, then capitalism — albeit clearly not as a faithful replica of the Western model, whatever that may be — would have emerged in such countries as Russia and China ; in the event, it did not emerge in these countries precisely because Marx did predict its emergence and because, as a consequence, Lenin — and in his wake others — drew from this prediction, and from the general Marxian view of the ‘union of theory and practice’, certain political conclusions about the way in which social development should be given a helping hand, a historical ‘push’. The argument here pursued is independent of the question whether or not Marx would have agreed with Lenin’s poli­ tical conclusions — ideas, to repeat, may have consequences that were hardly dreamt of in their begetter’s intentions and what counts, there­ fore, is how Lenin, and others, interpreted Marx. Nevertheless, it is convenient, though not gratuitous, to recall that Marx himself re­ vealed a Marxist-Leninist proclivity — because of his ideas ? — when, as pointed out earlier in this article, he raised the possibility of a revolution in Russia that would transcend a capitalist development.41 If the mind boggles at the sheer historical fantasy involved in this kind of speculation, the counterfactual that will now follow may well stupefy it entirely. Lenin was, of course, well aware of Marx’s statement, quoted earlier, that a revolution in Russia could become a ‘signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both comple­ ment each other’ (this had appeared in Marx’s 1883 preface to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto). The statement was originally received by Russian Marxists with mixed reactions since it was accompanied by some overly optimistic reflections by Marx on the future of the Russian village commune as a viable socialist institution, facilitating the transition to modem socialism in Russia. However, by the time of World War I, Lenin, like some others, 41

It should be remembered that Marx was here addressing himself to the practical problems of Russian revolutionary activity.

[254 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz contemplating the patriotic behaviour of the Western Social-Demo­ crats, had reached the unhappy conclusion that his 1902 fears were being vindicated, that the revolutionary working class movement in Europe had, for the time being at least, ‘sold out’ to, or been ‘bought off’ by the ruling classes ;42 and that, consequently, the revolutionary impetus must all the more shift eastwards. It is clear that by 1916, and certainly after October 1917, Lenin came to expect the revolution in Russia to become precisely the kind of ‘signal’ anticipated by Marx and that his decision to seize power in October was, in part at least, governed by this expectation ; to some extent, his policies after the Bolsheviks seized power can be explained as a ‘holding operation’ carried out in anticipation of the general socialist conflagration that, he believed, would soon engulf Europe, and Germany in particular.43 The conflagration, in the form of workers’ revolutions, did not erupt, of course. There are any number of reasons and explanations for this, and in what follows I do not wish to belittle their adequacy. I only raise the additional possibility that the Bolshevik triumph in Russia, far from encouraging or fomenting revolution in the West, may have been a contributing factor in undermining it. We know that the violent events of October 1917 and of the civil war that followed, the spectacle of a radical regime dispensing war communism in the huge, formerly reactionary Russian Empire, the ideological commit­ ment of this regime to ‘world revolution’ — that all these and other omens immediately engendered a state of siege in the West. National revolutions are international events, and the reaction to the October Revolution was not unlike that which had followed the French Revo­ lution more than a century earlier : a hysterical perception of real and imagined danger, a panic-riddled fear that the revolution and the revolutionaries would not stop at national boundaries. True, unlike the French Revolution, the Russian would for a long time prove to be, as a result of its internal social and economic weaknesses, actually far less aggressive towards the outside world.44 But one need only recall the dimensions of the ‘Bolshevik scare’, however realistic or not, to appreciate the sense of impending doom which gripped Western governments. And wherever this fear had greatest domestic justifica42 43 44

To explain the acquiescence of European Social-Democracy in the War, Lenin wrote in 1916 his Imperialism — The Highest State of Capitalism. See S.W. Page, Lenin and World Revolution, New York 1959. See B. Knei-Paz, ‘The National Revolution as an International Event : Reflections on the Past and Present, West and East’, Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, III, No. 1 (Fall, 1977), pp. 1-27.

[255 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After tion — as in Germany — the more so were such extreme instruments and policies resorted to as would forcibly do away with the internal expression of the revolutionary danger. One need not subscribe to the well-known, but exaggerated, thesis of Ernst Nolte that fascism arose in Europe primarily as a reaction to Marxism or communism, to admit the possibility that the perceived external danger was a contributing factor in the weakening of indigenous workers’ move­ ments, or at least a factor facilitating the rise to power of a Hitler.4546 With this in mind, I want to risk here too a counterfactual argument about the consequences of the ideas-politics connection traced in this article — to speculate, that is, about what might have been — em­ pirically untestable and unverifiable though it will always remain, of course. And so : if there had been no Bolshevik October 1917, the prospects of a ‘workers’ revolution’ in Germany would still have been far from certain, but they would surely have been better ; at the very least the indigenous communist movement would have been less omin­ ously perceived — it would have avoided, for instance, being branded an agent of Soviet foreign ambitions, and it would have been less vulnerable to right-wing hysteria, to the growing acquiescence in the use of violence against its members and activities, to the successes of the right in winning over anti-fascists terrified of the left-wing al­ ternative, to the nationalist appeal even among working-class sectors. Not for nothing did the Nazi party make anti-Bolshevism one of its most vociferous slogans. Without a Bolshevik Russia, and the dread of the future it came to represent, Nazism might have been just defeated and avoided in Germany. This is, to repeat, an unverifiable speculation ; but history is no more than a long series of individual moments at each of which numerous options appear, and there is no compelling reason why one option or another should be considered inevitable, though it may be possible to speak in terms of higher or lower probabilities. A different outcome — in itself only one possible option — at one point in the chain of moments must surely, however, affect the probabilities at a subsequent point. In thus reconstructing the past, in ‘predicting’ what might have been, causal historical con­ nections become more manifest.46 In the present case, one is tempted to conclude with the following irony about the ‘intervening variable’ of political power : the Bolsheviks after 1917 claimed that their revo45 46

See E. Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, New York 1969. See, in this connection, A. Bullock, ‘Is History Becoming a Social Science ? The Case of Contemporary History’, History Today, XXIX (November, 1979), pp. 760-767.

[256 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz lution had provided an impetus for revolution in the West, and that there could be no ‘final victory of socialism’ (these are Stalin’s words) in Russia without a socialist transformation in the West ; but perhaps we should say that there could not be a socialist transformation in the West with a Bolshevik regime in Russia. The reader sufficiently exasperated by these consequences derived from counterfactual speculation may now appreciate some real, or in prin­ ciple empirically verifiable, consequences. Of these there are many, but the most interesting concerns the results expected, and the results achieved, in the employment of political power — our ‘helping hand’ —for the fulfilment of the theoretical precept of economic, or technological, determinism. As the subject of Soviet modernization has frequently been analysed from virtually every possible perspective,47 I approach it here only from the point of view of the ‘autonomy of politics’ phenomenon raised earlier in this article. By way of quickly defining the initial Soviet intentions and expectations, I take, almost at random, the following statement by Lenin : If for the construction of socialism a certain level of culture is required... why should it not be permissible for us to begin by seizing by revolutionary means the preconditions for that certain level, and then afterwards, on the basis of the workers’ and peasants’ state-power and the Soviet order, advance further and catch up on the other [Western] nations ?48 Why not, indeed ? What possible difference can it make if moderniza­ tion, rather than being allowed to take its normal evolutionary course — as in the classical English case — is imposed from above, wilfully, deliberately by the use of ‘state power’ ? To Lenin, and to the greatest of all ‘revolutionary modernizers’, Stalin, the only difference was a positive one, namely that revolutionary modernization would shorten by an epoch the time required wholly to transform a backward society. That in the process there would be unimaginable horrors, such as must necessarily accompany the destruction of the peasantry in the name of industrialization, could be attributed by the Bolsheviks to the inevitable price that is paid for ‘progress’ wherever, and in whatever form, it takes place : had not Marx, and others, shown that the transition from feudal to bourgeois society similarly involv­ ed violence and suffering on a massive scale ? And, in retrospect, 47 48

For example, C.E. Black et al.. The Modernization of Japan and Russia, New York 1975. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Moscow 1964, XLV, p. 381.

[257 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After do not the means used in the Soviet Union justify themselves when the results are contemplated ? Revolutionary modernization has turned Russia into one of the few great industrial and military powers in the world ; it has implemented an enormous restructuring and re­ distribution of national wealth ; it has universalized mass education, harnessed all the wonders of modem science and technology, and made possible the national mobilization of human and other resources. It is an impressive record which, it would appear, attests to the ‘ad­ vantages of backwardness’ and to the actual scope of political power for transforming society.49 Yet it would also appear that every path of development has its own dilemmas and disadvantages which are associated with the historical methods and sequences of modernization.50 In the Soviet case — or in that of revolutionär)', non-capitalist modernization in general — it is now amply clear that change initiated from above, by almost ex­ clusively political means, has failed to advance beyond the stage of industrialization and has instead increasingly brought forth a ‘syncretic society’.51 The initial and continuous massive intervention of the state and executive power, its monolithic control of economic and social development, the employment of the highly ‘visible hand’, have cul­ minated in a social system that can only maintain itself through the still largely commanding and autonomous exercise of political power. Simultaneously, however, that power has become ineffective or even counter-productive from the point of view of its ability to generate ‘further advance’ — to recall Lenin’s words — in the sphere of economic growth and modernization. If at an earlier point it was able to release and mobilize potentially creative national forces long suppressed by traditional oligarchies, today it must itself suppress new forces in order to maintain its own supremacy. It must, in order to survive, strike down all independent manifestations of innovation ; but in so doing it must pay the price of social stagnation. The poli49

50

51

The idea that backwardness made for advantages, in that it allowed for a rapid jump into the modern era, was first argued by Trotsky. See, on this subject of ‘advantages’, A. Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, Cambridge (Mass.) 1966. On Marxism as a movement of modernization, see R. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea, London 1970, and A. Ulam, The Unfinished Revolution, New York 1960. On the importance of sequences, see R. Bendix, ‘Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered’, Comparative Studies of Society and History, IX, No. 3 (April, 1967), pp. 292-346. See F.G. Casals (pseudonym), The Syncretic Society, White Plains (N.Y.) 1980.

[258 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz tical system is thus counter-productive because by continuing to set itself above society — for reasons that now have as much to do with the priority of its own vested interests as with a once revolutionary ideology of power — it must subvert social goals to a lower order of priorities, which may never be reached. Since, however, no modern political system can long maintain itself without demonstrating its effectiveness in some important sphere of national ambitions, the emphasis on foreign goals presents itself as an alternative to domestic, social and economic, goals. This subject cannot be pursued here as it would involve us in a consideration of the present-day performance, and future prospects, of the Soviet economy.52 But if it were indeed established to be true that the Soviet political system has exhausted its potential for social transformation then the historical lesson would seem to be that the particular path of modernization chosen, in accordance with precon­ ceived ideological convictions, does make a difference by setting its own barriers to the fulfilment of goals once so axiomatically presup­ posed and anticipated. From this it only follows, once again, that the real consequence of giving history a helping hand is the non-fulfil­ ment of the prophecies for the fulfilment of which the helping hand was originally raised. The fact that men do, after all, make their own history is not thereby negated ; it is, on the contrary, merely reconfirmed — albeit tortuously — as is, however, the old, ubiquitous irony that, in the process of making it, they do not quite know what they do. But this, the reader may recall, was the point made by Hegel, with whom we began this story. Some Generalized Conclusions For the sake of facilitating the conceptualization of the relationship — in the context of certain historical events — between ideology, political power and historical outcomes, I offer the following sum­ mary of the argument of this article. 1. A revolution is the paradigmatic, the ‘purest’ example of politics as the collective enterprise of the deliberate, volitional human trans­ formation of reality. While the social conditions which lead to the creation of a revolutionary situation, to the possibility itself of revo­ lution, may in no small measure be traced through sociological analysis, 52

For an assessment of the Soviet economy since Stalin, see the relevant articles in S.F. Cohen et al. (eds), The Soviet Union Since Stalin, Bloomington 1980.

[259 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After the actual occurrence of a revolution, and the character it takes, are both unpredictable in advance and at best insufficiently explained ex post facto by such analysis ; rather it is political and ideational analysis, which concentrates on men as acting and thinking beings, that can best explain the making of a revolution. 2. The necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the deliberate, volitional transformation of reality, i.e. for an event such as a revo­ lution, is an action-oriented system of beliefs, a political ideology, which contains at least the outline of the blueprint for the new col­ lective reality that it is intended to create. Although all ideologies are action-oriented, revolutionary ideologies are more action-oriented than others since action, i.e. human, collectively purposeful activity, is the manner in which man has the clearest sense of inserting his will into, and breaking, what otherwise appears to be a vicious circle of natural social causality outside his control. 3. In the middle of the nineteenth century there emerged in Europe a social theory, soon to be known as Marxism, which, presuming to resolve the hitherto-seeming irreconcilability between contemplation and action, created the basis for an ideology of enormous force and intensity since it did away with the distinction between theory and practice, i.e. it turned theoretical activity into practical activity and practical activity into theoretical activity. On this basis alone it is possible to understand why such an ideology should be of particular attraction to intellectuals (or to an intelligentsia). 4. An ideology such as this, placing, as it did, so much emphasis on the future and its necessary character, by its very nature attributes to political power supreme importance and conceives of it as the primary collective instrument for the volitional transformation of reality. And, indeed, that is what political power is for potentially (the exercise of political power being something different from its mere possession). The more that power is used as such an instrument, the more au­ tonomous it becomes, i.e. unconstrained by non-volitional, structured habits of social life. 5. However, the more autonomous that political power becomes, the more it also intervenes in, and distorts, the kind of patterns of social evolution which may normally operate in social life ; and it thus both negates (for theory) and makes impossible (in practice) any necessary social causality or ‘laws of development and change’ which might otherwise have emerged in reality. In other words, what­ ever may have been the validity, or persuasive intellectual force, of

[260 ]

Baruch Knei-Paz such ‘laws’ in theory, they are refuted in practice by the very theory and ideology — Marxism in the present case — which held them to be valid. It is in this ironic sense that the ‘union of theory and practice’ may be seen to break down. 6. History is replete with examples of the phenomenon of ‘unin­ tended consequences’. But not all such consequences have their origin in clearly defined and evident initial political intentions or specified goals for the future, i.e. not all can be attributed to a set of intentions that were systematically and consistently acted upon. The methodical, unmitigated intention of realizing certain consequences, and the equally methodical implementation of certain policies in the belief that they will produce those consequences, paradoxically necessarily lead to the non-realization of those consequences, or, what is but the obverse of that, to the realization of unintended consequences. 7. But this is paradoxical only if we concentrate on ideology' (in­ tentions) outside the context of its instrument of implementation, i.e. political power. If, however, the two are considered symbiotically, both conceptually and historically, then we can perceive the political logic of the statement that unintended consequences can be directly attributed to intentions — in the sense that were it not for the inten­ tions (ideology) the unintended consequences would not have come into being. In other words — to put it in a manner that may now sound less cryptic or mysterious than it did at the outset — unin­ tended consequences are the products of intentions, and ideologies have a transforming impact upon reality even when they fail to realize their intentions. One way in which this phenomenon has oc­ curred in a specific historical case has been described in this article.

[261 ]

Totalitarianism and After in Communist Party Regimes by

RICHARD LOWENTHAL The Free University, Berlin, W. Germany

T h i s p a p e r a t t e m p t s to analyse why, and how, ‘totalitarian’ communist party regimes have tended in this century to transcend themselves — to destroy by their inherent dynamics one or both of their basic characteristics.

As ‘totalitarian’ I shall describe a regime that seeks to institutionalize a continuing revolutionary process j1 the centraliste, monopolistic party that has created such a regime by seizing power ; and the ideology of a utopian, total transformation of society that legitimates that party’s claim to rule as the indispensable instrument of such a transformation. The process of ‘institutionalized revolution’ is the necessary consequence of the seizure of power by a party inspired by such a utopian ideology or ‘secular religion’. Totalitarian regimes of the fascist or national socialist type, whose Utopia is the elimination of all legitimate conflict by the achievement of a world-wide state of perfect national or racial hierarchy, have ended not by self-transcendence but after a historically short time by self-destruction through war. Totalitarian regimes of the communist type, whose Utopia is the elimination of all social conflict by the achievement of perfect equality in a world-wide classless society, have in the course of a longer life span shown two separate tendencies to self-transcendence : the tendency of the revolutionary impulse to become extinct, and the tendency of the institutions of single-party rule to become more or less paralysed, if not destroyed, by the emergence of a form of personal despotism. The process of institutionalized revolution may thus be cut short in communist party regimes either by the running down of their revolu1 The definition of totalitarianism as the effort ‘to perpetuate and to in­ stitutionalize revolution’ was first given in S. Neumann, Permanent Revo­ lution, New York 1942, p. VIII.

[262 ]

Richard Lowenthal tionary dynamism or by the decay of their institutions — or by a combination of both. In either case, a ‘post-totalitarian’, though by no means democratic, regime may emerge. In what follows, the attempt will be made to illustrate the causes and forms of this self-transcendence of the process of institutionalized revolution in the two ‘classical’ cases of the Soviet Union and China. Yet before turning to this task, it seems appropriate to the author to clarify, however briefly, how he sees the relationship between the term ‘totalitarianism’ as he uses it and the late Jacob Talmon’s concept of ‘totalitarian democracy’. Prologue : The Relevance of ‘Totalitarian Democracy’ Jacob Talmon was primarily a historian of ideas and their impact on the actions of man. Recognizing the guiding ideas of the totalitarian movements of our times as specific forms of political messianism, he traced the origin of one tradition of political messianism to the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He showed how the radical wing of this Enlightenment, with Rousseau as its central figure, developed a concept of a ‘natural order’ of human affairs which it regarded as an absolute truth based on reason and accessible to all men of good will. Concomitantly it saw a moral obligation of men to establish that order of universal justice and happiness by political action. The political form for achieving that order could only be a democracy of political equals in which universal agreement would be achieved about a ‘general will’, in no way dependent on individual or group opinions based on subjective prejudices and interests. Talmon stressed the fundamental contrast between a liberal democracy, resting on the empirical principle of each individual’s right to defend his own imperfect opinions and limited interests and the need to reconcile them by compromises and majority decision, and such a ‘totalitarian democracy’, resting on the ‘general will’ imputed to the community as a whole by the philosopher. Talmon saw the French Revolution as the historical moment when the schism between those two contrasting forms of democracy had been demonstrated in action. The dictatorship of the Comité de Salut Public under Robespierre and St Just, which he also described as the dictatorship of the ‘Jacobin party’, had been the first attempt to put the secular religion of totalitarian democracy into practice. The actual impossibility of preventing the rise of ever-new disagreements about policy, viewed by the prophets of the regime as attempts to oppose the ‘general will’ interpreted by them, had led them to ever-new

[263]

Totalitarian Democracy and After efforts to continue the revolutionary process by means necessarily in­ cluding the extinction of their opponents by terror — a process that was only ended by their overthrow on the 9th of Thermidor. But in the prisons of the Thermidorian regime, the ‘Jacobin improvization’ had been followed by the ‘Babouvist crystallization’, when Babeuf and his fellow conspirators had expanded the concept of ‘totalitarian democracy’ in two directions : by including a communist type of economic equality as a central feature of the order of society to be achieved, and by stipulating the educational dictatorship of a vanguard party, created by its leaders for the explicit purpose of seizing total power and transforming society, as the only way of achieving it. In the later volumes of his trilogy, Talmon devoted a large part of his attention to other forms of political messianism, notably the na­ tionalist variety, and the developing clash between its representatives and the heirs of ‘totalitarian democracy’. But he also traced the direct line of that inheritance from Babeuf through Buonarroti and Blanqui in France, and further from Tkachev to Lenin in Russia, without neglecting the major contribution of Karl Marx in linking the com­ munist revolution to a predetermined place in the economic and social development of mankind, thus providing the secular religion with the equivalent of a sacred history. The Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 thus emerges as the ultimate outcome of a social and political philosophy that was first translated into political action at the Jacobin climax of the great French Revolution. My own central concern is with the theory and history of totalitarian revolutions and totalitarian political systems rather than with the underlying ideas as such, however much I recognize those ideas as one vital factor in the historical development in question. Much as I have admired, ever since the publication of Talmon’s first volume, his achievement in tracing the genealogy of what he has called ‘total­ itarian democracy’, I am no less impressed with the crucial différences between the courses taken by the French and the Russian revolutions. They are differences that cannot, in my opinion, be fully explained by a mere quasi-Marxist reference to the different stages of economic and social development at which they took place. The most obvious one of those differences is the fact that Robespierre and his associates did not succeed in institutionalizing a continuing revolutionary process. In their case the dictatorial and terrorist climax of the revolution was followed by Thermidor, Bonapartism and restoration, until the revolutionary cycle reached a certain conclusion with the establishment of the liberal regime of Louis Philippe in 1830. Looked at as a whole, the forty years’ cycle of the great French Revolution thus appears

[264 ]

Richard Lowenthal rather more comparable to the similar cycle of the English revo­ lution of the seventeenth century, which also had its dictatorial climax under Oliver Cromwell, than to the Russian revolution of our century,2 which established a communist party rule able to institutionalize the revolutionary process for decades and finally to survive the running down of the revolutionary impulse. One central reason for this difference appears to be the fact that the revolutionary dictatorship of the Comité de Salut Public was not a party dictatorship in the modem sense of the term : the Jacobin club was not a totalitarian party created for seizing power. It started as a loose grouping, uniting different political tendencies for dis­ cussion ; it became increasingly more militant in the course of the revolution, expressing the will of changing majorities, just as the elected national assemblies did ; it had no centralist control over the loosely affiliated clubs in the provinces.3 It was Robespierre’s conquest of the executive power of the state by the alliance of the Montagne deputies with the Paris Commune and its sections that made the Paris club his mouthpiece, and his centralization of that power through the Commissaires en Mission that turned the provincial clubs into his auxiliaries. When he lost power in the state, the clubs were unable to resist : it was only as a consequence of his fall that Babeuf and his friends drew the lesson of the need for a centralized party to seize power. The idea of the organized revolutionary vanguard arose as a dream of the defeated rearguard of the French Revolution. Talmon’s distinction between the ‘Jacobin improvization’ and the ‘Babouvist crystallization’ thus has an even greater relevance than he seems to have been aware of : the utopian idea of a perfect social order, the secular religion of a state of perfect justice and universal happiness is not sufficient to create a viable totalitarian regime and to institutionalize revolution without a centralized party organized for the conquest and retention of total power. It was such a party that enabled Lenin by its discipline to avoid a ‘Thermidor’ when he had to abandon ‘war communism’ and introduce the ‘New Eco2

3

The morphology of the democratic revolutionary cycle, as exemplified by Britain and France, is analysed in C. Brinton, The Anatomy of Revo­ lution, New York 1938, 1952. Brinton attempted to extend the analogy to the Russian Revolution, but his parallel clearly fails for the period following the 1921 consolidation of the communist party dictatorship. This account of the Jacobin clubs is based on C. Brinton’s earlier study, The Jacobins, New York 1930, though Brinton’s own emphasis is on the similarities with modern totalitarian parties rather than the differences from them.

[265 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After nomic Policy’ in the spring of 1921 ; and it was from this point that the Russian Revolution, instead of undergoing the cycle of the great revolutions of the West, became an institutionalized process under the first full totalitarian party regime. It was also only at that stage, in the course of 1921 and 1922, that Lenin’s Bolsheviks sup­ pressed the last hitherto tolerated remnants of other ‘Soviet parties’ which had sided with them during the civil war, thus establishing the first complete single-party system.4 But if the role of the ‘party of a new type’, the disciplined vanguard party deliberately created for the seizure and retention of total power, is indispensable for institutionalizing revolution under a totalitarian regime, it follows that a messianic vision of salvation on earth by revolution, a secular religion of a perfect social order, is not by itself sufficient even as an ideology for a totalitarian movement — so long as it does not point to the need for such a party. Indeed, so long as the messiah who is to bring salvation on earth is merely a philosoph­ ical concept or an objective social entity, such as the general will of the people, the nation, or the proletariat, the vision may well produce in the masses investing their hope in it an attitude of revo­ lutionary expectancy rather than a determination to prepare for revolutionary action. Only if the messianic vision is directed to a concrete political organization under a particular leader, only if the messiah is given an organizational and even a personal name, are we in the presence of an ideology that can motivate a truly totalitarian movement ; without this ingredient, a messianic secular religion should be properly described as merely pre-totalitarian, as containing a po­ tential still lacking a key element for totalitarian effectiveness. The most important example of such a pre-totalitarian secular religion is classical Marxism. There exists only a single document in which Marx toyed with the concept of creating a revolutionary party — after the defeat of the European revolution of 1848, in his March 1850 circular in the name of the Central Office of his Communist League, written during his temporary cooperation with Blanquist exiles in London.5 But a few months later Marx dissolved the league as having become hopelessly sectarian, and he never returned to those ideas. 4 5

For details, see L. Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, London 1955, particularly chaps. X, XI and XVII. The episode, including the temporary formation of a secret international alliance between Marx and the London Blanquists — the Société Univer­ selle des Communistes Révolutionnaires — is described and analysed in the political biography by B. Nikolaievsky & O. Maenchen, Karl Marx — Man and Fighter, London 1936, chap. XV, pp. 206-209.

[266 ]

Richard Lowenthal In all his further writings and political activity he clung to the view that his task was to analyse the historic forces making for the eventual overthrow of capitalism and to unite the workers’ movements of different countries in the understanding of this common goal, but to accept the forms of organization and struggle they had developed from their own experience and not to attempt to prescribe them : he saw himself as a prophet, but not as the leader and organizer of the coming revolution — not as the messiah. Classical Marxism, then, as distinct from later Leninism, remained a pre-totalitarian ideology, a unique mixture of important contribu­ tions to historical and social-economic analysis with a utopian secular religion enriched by the equivalent of a sacred history : it never became a totalitarian doctrine of salvation demanding the seizure of total power. It is because of the importance I attach to this distinction that I shall not make use in what follows of Jacob Talmon’s term ‘totalitarian democracy’. That term has, of course, the abiding merit of bringing out the significance of the eighteenth-century schism be­ tween liberal democracy and the idea of a ‘democracy’ based on a philosophically imputed general will, and its far-reaching consequences. But, in further analysing those consequences, it seems to me no less important to make a distinction between two trends in movements inspired by secular religions. On one side are those that are free of the belief in the salvational indispensability of an all-powerful party, movements that therefore remained in a pre-totalitarian stage and could eventually adopt an increasingly liberal-democratic outlook as their secular religion paled. On the other are the movements vesting their faith in earthly salvation in the creation of such an all-powerful party, and thus becoming truly totalitarian. It is with the problems of the latter in power, with their long-lasting success in institutionalizing revolution, and their eventual transformation by its effects, that the main part of this paper will be concerned. I.

The Process of Institutionalized Revolution 6

The revolutionary seizure of power by communist ‘parties of a new type’, as distinct from the imposition of communist rule from outside, has only taken place in underdeveloped countries. Contrary to the 6

The subject of sections I and II of this paper was first treated by me in greater detail in ‘Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy’, in : C. Johnson (ed.), Change in Communist Systems, Stanford 1970, pp. 33-116, where also the sources are fully documented. However, the present paper goes farther in dealing with the later stages of the process in China.

[267]

Totalitarian Democracy and After expectation of Marx, and also to the original expectation of Lenin, no ‘proletarian revolutions’ have been successful in advanced indus­ trial countries. This appears to be due in part to the fact that the industrial workers of such countries have even in times of severe economic and social crisis been more inclined to look for a political solution to the existing state machine than to risk turning the crisis into total chaos by upsetting the complicated organization of supply, transport, public health, etc., of a modem society with its intricate division of labour, as a mass insurrection might have done. In part it is probably due to the fact that the disaffected intellectual élites, who form the indispensable cadres of a totalitarian revolutionary party, typically arise in the situation of stagnation in the midst of disruptive change, characteristic of countries whose traditional way of life has been disrupted by the impact of the advanced capitalist world, but in which important social and political conditions for ‘catching up’ with that modem world are lacking. It is in such often prolonged crises of development that disaffected intellectual élites have again and again conceived of their own seizure of power, carried out by either a communist or a nationalist ‘party of a new type’, as the prescription for solving the vital problems of their country. By con­ trast, in successfully advancing countries, many formerly disaffected intellectuals, being no longer ‘superfluous people’, tend to be absorbed in the process of modernization — as happened, for instance, in France in the later part of the nineteenth century ; whereas a return of intellectual disaffection in the context of the quite different crises of the late twentieth century apparently tends to take the form of a profoundly pessimist withdrawal of cooperation rather than an op­ timistic activism expressed in a demand for total power. Among the ‘revolutionary mass movement regimes’7 coming to power in underdeveloped countries, those inspired by communist ideology differ from the start from the purely nationalist variety by a basic dualism of goals : beyond the limited goal of national modernization, they pursue the unlimited, utopian goal of achieving the classless society. To their leaders, the two goals appear at first as fully com­ patible : the overthrow of the privileged pre-capitalist classes and the elimination of the privileges of foreign capital are seen both as the first preconditions of national modernization and as first steps on the road to the classless society. At the same time, their Marxist

7

The term is Robert C. Tucker’s ; see the opening chapter in R. C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, New York 1963.

[268 ]

Richard Lowenthal concept of approaching Utopia by historical stages permits the com­ munists to tie the fulfilment of more radical, anti-capitalist demands to the progress achieved on the road of economic development : they are determined to force the pace of that development, but they know in advance that the achievement of the full utopian programme is only possible at the end of a long historical process. This does not mean, however, that the communists think from the beginning in terms of a whole series of more or less violent revolutions from above following the initial seizure of power by a revolution from below. They start with the naïve, but natural assumption that, once in control of the levers of power, they will be able to direct the further evolution of society in accordance with their vision of the laws of History — in stages, but without new major upheavals threatening the continuity of economic development. Lenin immediately authorized the distribution of the landed estates to the peasants ; but he at first did not wish to go beyond the introduction of ‘workers’ control’ in capitalist industry. It was the growing friction between workers and owners during the civil war that caused him to speed up industrial nationalization, originally intended only for a later stage, despite the obvious difficulty of replacing many of the dispossessed owners as managers. In more backward China, where the scarcity of qualified managerial and technical personnel was even more obvious, Mao Ze-dong at first gave all factory owners not directly tied to the former Guomindang regime a solemn programmatic promise of long-term toleration. Yet the strains of the Korean war led to the imposition of heavy capital levies as fines for ‘economic crimes’, and by the end of the ‘rehabilitation period’ in late 1952, a policy of transforming all private enterprise into ‘joint enterprises’ under state direction was announced, though most of the owners could still remain as man­ agers. Agricultural Collectivization The conflict between the communist regimes’ interest in steady eco­ nomic development on one side, their interest in total control and in an unhampered approach to Utopia on the other, appeared far more strikingly on the issue of agricultural collectivization. Lenin, after end­ ing the policy of requisitioning most of the harvest under ‘war com­ munism’, which had alienated the peasants and produced the famine of 1921, had tried under the New Economic Policy to give the peasants both freedom to sell their produce and security in possession of their land ; at the end of his life, he envisaged the ‘cooperativization’ of the

[269 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After countryside as a long-term aim to be achieved by persuasion and the incentive of common use of agricultural machinery which would by then be available in the quantities and quality required. But as agri­ culture recovered and part of the peasants became more prosperous under the NEP, a growing number of Bolshevik leaders became alarmed at the triplç threat that social differentiation among the peasants posed to the future of a classless society, to present party control in the villages where the ‘kulaks’ tended to become the natural leaders, and to the willingness of the peasants to sell their produce at low, statefixed prices while industrial goods remained scarce and expensive. In the winter of 1927/28, the urgency of the last factor convinced Stalin of the need for an anti-kulak policy which began with a partial return to forced requisitioning and culminated in massive forced collectivization — and in the famine of 1932/33. This new ‘revolution from above’, described as such by Stalin himself in 1938,8 was thus carried out at a terrible cost in human suffering and a lasting, heavy cost for the productivity of Soviet agriculture and the number of livestock, because experience had shown that the spontaneous develop­ ment of society created increasing obstacles both to the long-term, utopian goals of the regime and to the effectiveness of its present control. Again, the Chinese communists, acting in full knowledge of the hor­ rors of Soviet forced collectivization, intended as late as 1952 to spread their own collectivization over the three five-year plans. But again, a crisis of the state-controlled grain market during the winter and spring of 1954/55 caused Mao first to take emergency measures to tighten control and then to speed up collectivization dramatically, until it had been more or less completed by the end of 1956. To judge by the results, the Chinese communists succeeded at that time in reaching their goal by less disastrous methods than the Russians. But the very difference of conditions and personalities, of methods and results in the two cases, underlines the common logic of com­ munist party regimes, under which the double commitment to utopian goals and to total power necessarily collides with the tendency of a developing society to produce social differentiation again and again. It is this recurrent conflict, not a preconceived plan, that has caused those regimes to engage for prolonged periods in recurrent revolutions from above, unleashing a process of institutionalized revolution.

8

In the official ‘Short Course of History of the CPSU’, incorporated in Stalin’s collected works.

[270]

Richard Lowenthal Managerial and Technical Élites In the course of the further development of the Russian and Chinese communist regimes, no less typical conflicts between the utopian commitment and the needs of modernization have arisen over the recruitment of managerial and technical élites. After initial concessions to the scarce and indispensable bourgeois ‘specialists’ in industry, Stalin had found them reluctant to commit themselves to the un­ realistic targets of his first five-year plan that attempted to force the pace of Soviet industrialization parallel to that of collectivization ; he reacted with a campaign of intimidation and arrests for ‘sabotage’ and with the massive high-speed training of party officials and work­ ing-class activists to replace the suspects. As the first results were poor, Stalin gradually raised the training requirements while relaxing the requirements for working-class origin, and by 1934-1935 proclaimed the need for reconciliation with the ‘non-party intelligentsia’, regard­ less of whether they were survivors of the pre-revolutionary educated strata or products of the new training. But this tended to establish a dualism between a party élite of revolutionary veterans with ideolog­ ical commitment and a post-revolutionary technical and managerial élite without those traditions and with only tenuous links to the ruling party. Although an effort was made to get some of the newly trained managers and technicians to join the party, the inner-party standing of those who were not of proletarian origin remained for years pre­ carious. The threatening dualism was overcome only in the course of another ‘revolution from above’ — to wit Stalin’s blood purge of the late 1930s, which resulted in the massive liquidation of ‘old Bolsheviks’ in general and of the old generation of ‘red directors’ in particular, as well as of many of the young party volunteers quickly trained as managers and technicians in the early years of the first five-year plan. This is not to suggest, of course, that the blood purge was conceived only, or even mainly, as a way to solve this specific problem — there were other crucial motivations, which will be discussed below. But it is demonstrable that the purge was also deliberately used for this purpose : when it was over, the eighteenth party congress of 1939, by ending all discrimination against non-proletarian elements in the party statute, threw the party’s doors wide open to young, Soviettrained managers and engineers. The ruling party, from which the bulk of the utopian-oriented revolutionary veterans had been removed, now became the organ of a post-revolutionary, ideologically conform­ ist, but in the main modernization-oriented bureaucracy.

[271 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After In China, communist economic planning started in 1952 still in the shadow of Stalin’s example, but with a party of a very different character. The first five-year plan of that date provided not only for rigid bureaucratic centralization of industry, but for absolute oneman authority of the managers responsible to their bureaucratic superiors regardless of the fact that few managers were communists, even among those who had been trained after the revolution. It was the first session of the eighth Chinese communist party congress of 1956 that, after the success of collectivization, imitated the Soviets’ eighteenth party congress of 1939 in opening the party wide to ‘in­ tellectuals’,9 regardless of class origin. But under the impact of Soviet destalinization and the disgrace of the original chief planner, Gao Gang, the same congress reduced the powers of the central planning authorities in favour of ‘managerial responsibility under the leader­ ship of the [regional or local] party committee’ ; and when, in the following year, the wave of intellectual criticism let loose by the ‘Hund­ red Flowers’ Campaign’ convinced Mao that the confidence shown to the non-party intellectuals had been at least premature, an ‘anti­ rightist campaign’ to intimidate this stratum followed. In this context, the planning directive of the congress came to be interpreted as re­ quiring strict subordination of the managers to the party committees in all decisions transcending the barest routine. The Chinese com­ munist party, a mere eight years after the seizure of power and with­ out a Stalin-type purge, was then still much closer to its revolutionary origins than the CPSU more than twenty years after its seizure of power and after the blood purge. In this situation, the dualism between a party élite of revolutionary veterans and a managerial élite of post­ revolutionary technicians was thus to become much more sharply drawn than it had been allowed to develop in Russia — with the party veterans in a position of much superior power and much inferior economic competence. This is part of the background of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958, which combined the features of a new ‘revolution from above’ in the introduction of the ‘peoples’ communes’ in agriculture, carried out with many illusions, much violence and corresponding damage, and of an equally improvised campaign for a competitive raising of in­ dustrial targets by local and regional party committees over the heads of the managers. Some of the most damaging illusions and errors were corrected in the following years, to the detriment of the party’s authority ; but an overall admission of the wrongness of the utopian 9

Meaning all the literate strata.

[272 ]

Richard Lowenthal general line was avoided in the interest of preserving Mao’s personal authority, which nevertheless suffered within the leading party bodies. ’he 1960s thus began with an unresolved dualism of élites, in which a few of the old leaders and many younger party officials seem to have sided with the managers’ demand for rational modernization ; the utopian side was taken by the ageing Mao and a number of faithful veterans in the party and above all in the army. It was in that constellation that the shaken leader launched his last revolution from above — the Cultural Revolution of 1966. Conflicts over Wages Policy A further conflict between the utopian ideal and the requirements of effective modernization developed in both Russia and China over the respective roles of ideological propaganda, coercion and differen­ tiated material incentives for assuring economic performance. But the course and outcome of the conflict on this issue were even more widely different in the two countries than on the respective roles of pre­ revolutionary and post-revolutionary élites. In Russia, a firmly antiutopian decision on labour incentives was taken by Stalin as early as 1931, and though repeatedly revised in detail, was never abandoned in principle : in this field, Russia has never known a ‘revolution from above’. In China, Mao in his later years became increasingly com­ mitted to a utopian reliance on ideological rather than material labour incentives, and this became a major factor in the conflicts over both the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the ‘Cultural Revolution’. The Bolsheviks had never regarded an early radical levelling of wages to achieve equality as making economic sense in Russian conditions. In fact, they had to impose a drastic downward levelling during the initial period of ‘war communism’, when extreme shortages forced them to impose rationing for food and other basic needs on an equal basis, leaving hardly any room for differentiated material incentives. But after the end of the civil war and the war with Poland, Lenin quickly understood that such incentives could no longer be replaced by either ideological enthusiasm or requisitioning of labour under mil­ itary discipline ; and as both rationing and military control of the trade unions were abolished under the New Economic Policy, while skilled labour for the newly developing industries proved scarce, wage differentials grew steadily from 1922 to 1926. They then declined somewhat due to trade union pressure for raising the level of the lowest wages, and rather more drastically in the early years of Stalin’s first five-year plan, as forced collectivization led once more to massive [273]

Totalitarian Democracy and After food rationing while Stalin broke the relative autonomy the unions had enjoyed under the NEP, turning them into organs of ‘socialist emulation’ and open state coercion. The decisive turn came with Stalin’s attack on ‘petty bourgeois egali­ tarianism’ in mid-1931, when he, too, had recognized the limits of commanded enthusiasm. He decided to rely in the main on a com­ bination of coercive sanctions, such as the ‘labour book’ and the ‘comradely tribunals’ with the threat of deportation to labour camps in the background, coupled with wider differentiation of wages and even of rations. When rationing ended and life was supposed to be­ come happier after the completion of collectivization and the first five-year plan, the rise in food prices and the raising of norms for piece rates under the impact of the Stakhanov campaign made wage dif­ ferentiation even more effective. It was employed as a means of pres­ sure partly replacing open coercion rather than as an incentive in the usual sense of the term. Only after Stalin’s death did his successors realize that at the level of industrialization reached not only camp labour but excessively low wages for unskilled workers were harming the responsibility and care of the workers’ performance. In the Khrushchev era, the dis­ appearance of camp labour as a major sector of the economy, the raising of the minimum wage and a gradual reduction of wage dif­ ferentials in favour of the lowest-paid group, as well as the intro­ duction of a number of basic social security measures, marked the overcoming of the period of ‘primitive accumulation’. But the general character of a system of differentiated material incentives based on a rejection of ‘egalitarianism’ and a frankly non-utopian orientation has been maintained. Chinese communist wage policy started with a Stalinist rejection of ‘egalitarianism’ in favour of a combination of material incentives and coercion, including a weak position of the trade unions with compulsory arbitration and a ban on strikes. By 1952 wage differentials were generally increased and piece rates and technical ‘norms’ in­ troduced ; ‘emulation campaigns’ as a basis for the regular raising of norms followed, as did ‘comradely tribunals’ and the ‘labour book’ ; in fact real wages declined somewhat in 1954 and 1955 despite con­ siderable increases in productivity. By 1956, however, it was becom­ ing obvious that excessive reliance on coercion combined with poor material incentives was literally counterproductive. The party con­ gress of that year, held in the spirit of reconciliation after the success of collectivization, raised the general wage level by nominally 14.5 per cent while broadening the range of differential incentives but [274]

Richard Lowenthal limiting the role of piece work and payment by norms ; instead, bonuses for innovation, as well as overtime and hardship pay, were introduced in 1957. This more rational incentive system was explicitly based on ‘the socialist principle of pay according to work’. But it proved so attractive to the growing rural surplus population that, in order to reduce the influx into the towns in much greater numbers than the growth of industry could absorb, emergency measures lower­ ing the wages for new, untrained workers and lengthening apprentice­ ship had to be introduced before the end of the year. A sharp turn away from a realistic reliance on material incentives to a utopian reliance on ideological mass indoctrination came, however, as part of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ with the second session of the eighth party congress in May 1958, where the need to wean the working people from their ‘bourgeois’ concern for their material interests was expounded by Liu Shao-qi of all people. One first result was that work norms were raised to such extravagant heights that the piecerate system quickly became unworkable. As the Great Leap pro­ ceeded, the preference for time rates over piece rates became an integral part of its labour programme, along with such ‘moral in­ centives’ as honours for ‘model workers’ and banners for successful factories. Of course, the turn away from differentiated material in­ centives was far more radical in the new rural communes, where members now received most of their incomes — at first, some 70 per cent — in kind as equal rations under the ‘free supply system’. The results were such that by 1961, the ninth Plenum of the Central Committee once more recognized the need to offer more pay for more work during the whole period pending the achievement of full com­ munism, thus relegating Utopia to a distant future. Private plots and rural markets were restored, free supplies to commune members were restricted to 30 per cent of their incomes, and piece rates were once more stressed, though not generalized in industry. But by 1964, this return to material incentives was attacked in Mao’s ‘Socialist Education Campaign’, to be actually reversed during his Cultural Revolution of 1966. In the context of his bitter conflict with the leaders of the Soviet Union, and his attack on its alleged ‘capitalist degeneration’, the Chinese leader had convinced himself that this degeneration was rooted in the basic Soviet decision to rely on the motivations of ‘eco­ nomic man’, thus perpetuating the capitalist mentality. The alternative Mao had chosen for China depended on changing the basic motivations for the people’s economic effort by socialist education, away from selfish materialism to selfless service for the community: this radical change in the consciousness of the masses should no longer be ex-

[275 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After pected only as a result of the classless society: it was now seen as a precondition of its arrival. The whole period of the Cultural Revolution down to the death of Mao and the overthrow of the most fanatic supporters of his last decade, if we ignore its passing ups and downs, appears thus in one of its main aspects as one vast effort to change the working motivations of the Chinese people by changing their consciousness through one more revolution from above. II.

The Limits of the Revolutionary Process

The two tendencies to self-transcendence in the totalitarian process of institutionalized revolution, which we mentioned at the beginning of this paper, have manifested themselves and interacted in different ways and with different results in the two major communist regimes. In Russia, the revolutionary process has reached a definite limit after the attainment of the level of a modern industrial society: moderni­ zation has finally triumphed over utopianism. Parallel with that, the institutions of the regime have successfully survived the crisis of their operation brought about by a prolonged period of personal despotism, and have gradually achieved a remarkable degree of bureaucratic stability since Stalin’s death: the institutions created by a totalitarian revolution have thus lived on in a post-revolutionary, and in that sense post-totalitarian, period. In China, on the other hand, the struggle for or against the con­ tinuation of the revolutionary process has been inextricably interlocked with the attempt of the ageing Mao Ze-dong to establish a personal despotism, and with its profoundly destructive effects on the institutions of the regime. In the end, the institutions appear to have been restored up to a point and the revolutionary process halted after the death of Mao — with the goal of industrial modernization by no means fully achieved as yet, and the road towards it still appearing strewn with obstacles and threatened by further conflicts. The institutions created by a totalitarian revolution thus appear to live on in China without either having reached their developmental goal or continuing to serve their former revolutionary purpose, and their future stability is still uncertain. The Running Down of the Revolutionary Process in Russia We have seen that Stalin, at the height of his personal power and after carrying out first the forced collectivization of the peasantry and then the blood purge of political, military and economic-administrative élites by the most ruthless methods of revolutions from above, decided [276]

Richard Lowenthal both the issues of the future composition of the élites and of labour incentives by giving a clear priority to developmental over utopian considerations. Yet it would be quite wrong to conclude from that, as many observers have done, that Stalin had generally decided to turn away from revolutionary utopianism in favour of a policy of steady modernization by non-revolutionary, not to say conservative, methods. In fact, after a wartime interval, during which both ideological con­ cessions to patriotic and religious traditions and economic concessions to the collectivized peasants were forced on him by dire necessity, Stalin resumed the momentum. He spent the early post-war years not only expanding the territory of the revolutionary process to the countries that had, in Eastern Europe and North Korea, become parts of the Soviet power sphere, but also withdrawing the wartime con­ cessions at home by tightening both ideological control in general and economic control of the peasants in particular. More decisively, beginning in 1950, he engaged throughout the last years of his life in measures and preparatory discussions for a further revolutionary trans­ formation of Soviet agriculture. It is true, however, that he did not live to see the execution of his final programme, that his heirs abandoned it in favour of alternatives likely to require less violence and to cause less damage to continuous economic development, and that even those alternatives, as proposed by Khrushchev in particular, had finally to be renounced by their sponsor as experience showed their economic cost. In short, the running down of the revolutionary process had indeed begun in Stalin’s lifetime ; but it began in conflict with his intentions and ended in an admitted abandonment of further revolutionary transformation only eight years after his death, with the adoption of Khrushchev’s new party programme in 1961. The new initiatives for the further transformation of Soviet agricul­ ture had begun at the turn of 1949/50, directly after Khrushchev had been transferred from the Ukraine to the secretariat of the Cen­ tral Committee and in the context of his assumption of Politburo responsibility for agricultural policy. Andreev, his predecessor in that role, had proposed assigning permanent plots in the collective farms to small teams of workers so as to raise their sense of responsibility for their yield. The harsh rejection of this plan was based on the fear that this might strengthen tendencies to break up the collective farms altogether. It was quickly followed by Khrushchev’s proposal to ‘consolidate’ the collectives into much larger units which could make better use of machinery and be provided with the best managers. In fact, the number of collective farms was reduced by imposed [277]

Totalitarian Democracy and After mergers to one-half within a year and to little more than one-third within less than three years, without yielding the expected economic results. But the mergers improved party control by decisively raising the share of farms that had basic party units of their own. The ‘con­ solidation’ also formed the basis for Khrushchev’s more far-reaching proposal, launched a year later in January 1951, for resettling the peasants in neyvly-built ‘agrotowns’ in the centre of the enlarged units, which would offer them better cultural amenities but separate them from their former private garden plots and force them to accept smaller plots on the outskirts of the new settlements. But this proposal quickly encountered powerful opposition within the party leadership. Apparently there were both fears that shifting and reducing the private plots might undermine the peasants’ loyalty and productivity and worries that the building materials for such a gigantic operation could not be afforded. Eventually Stalin dropped Khrushchev as his agricultural adviser, and the project was rejected in a secret circular of the Central Committee. But Stalin did not drop the idea that a new social transformation of the countryside was needed. On the contrary, throughout 1952 he was engaged in working on an even more far-reaching project of his own, which was published on the eve of the nineteenth party con­ gress in his last pamphlet on ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’. Its successive sections, written at different dates, showed an increasing concern that the very fact of market relations between the collective farms and the state sector eventually ‘must lead to the rebirth of capitalism’, because it was based on the farms’ owner­ ship of their produce : to advance further in the transition to the higher stage of communism, it was necessary to replace those market relations by a form of centrally organized barter. By the end of September, on the eve of the congress, Stalin called for immediate, if gradual, measures in that direction. Now the idea of gradually replacing all market exchanges between city and country is clearly utopianism of an extreme degree of economic irrationality ; it would both have increased the notorious difficulty of calculating and comparing the collective farms’ production costs and incomes and facilitated their even harsher exploitation by the state. It was thus bound to reduce critically the peasants’ low incentives to work. One wonders whether objections to this new turn of the revolutionary screw arose within the Politburo. The congress did not deal with the proposal, and at its end Stalin’s hitherto so obedient Politburo was replaced by a much enlarged ‘Presidium’ with many new members. According to Khrushchev’s disclosure in his 1956 ‘secret

[278 ]

Richard Lowenthal speech’, Stalin was making preparations for another purge before the end of his life. It is conceivable that the despot was approaching the limit of his despotism as he was trying to overstep the limits of the institutionalized revolution. During the struggles for Stalin’s succession and for the restoration of the institutional primacy of the party over other machines he had used against it, both of which were eventually won by Khrushchev as first secretary of the party, the contenders vied in popular economic and social reforms rather than in new attempts at utopian-inspired revolutionary changes. Even after his victory in this contest was completed in 1957, Khrushchev in the following year concentrated on improving the peasants’ lot by selling them, mostly on credit, the inventory of the machine tractor stations whose services they had previously had to pay for with deliveries in kind, and by unifying the diverse types of prices for the sales of their produce to the govern­ ment. Both changes showed that Khrushchev had understood, in con­ trast to Stalin, that one of the prime conditions for greater agricul­ tural productivity was to make the expenses and income of the collect­ ive farms at last comparable in terms of the ‘yardstick of the ruble’. For the same reason, he tried in the following year to end the disin­ centive system, under which the collective farmers received their wages only as a share of the farm’s annual residual net income, by introducing fixed monthly cash advances corresponding to the monthly minimum wage of workers on the state farms — a plan that only failed because the kolkhozes lacked the funds needed to pay such wages. (The needed funds were only granted them from the govern­ ment budget by Khrushchev’s successors in 1966). But on the same occasion as he made this offer, at the twenty-first party congress in February 1959, featured as ‘the Congress of the Builders of Communism’, Khrushchev announced his own project for resuming the march towards Utopia. In the early post-Stalin years, the Soviet government had largely relieved the peasants’ private plots from tax and delivery obligations so as to encourage a quick increase in the output of animal foods. Now, he announced that this private sector would eventually have to disappear if the Soviet Union was to be transformed into a communist society. The peasants should be persuaded that it was to their own advantage to sell their private livestock to the collectives, where it would be more productive in big, collective stables, and to spend more of their time on communal labour. Having persuaded the Central Committee in the previous year to annul its earlier condemnation of his agrotown project, he now recommended this form of resettlement as a possibly decisive

[279 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After help in such persuasion, for which pilot projects should start at once. The collective farms themselves would have to bear the cost of making the agrotowns livable, but much of the work could be done by joint enterprises to be founded by several farms. In fact, the material conditions for persuading the peasants to give up private activities and rely on communal labour existed as little as the financial conditions for building the model agrotowns. All that existed was the machinery for a big propaganda campaign for a new turn of the revolutionary screw — less absurd in content than Stalin’s last project and relying less on violence than his previous ones, but no less risky in its economic effects. While the press reported success after success, both in the sale of private livestock to the collectives and in starting agrotowns, it gradually transpired that many ‘voluntary’ sales of private livestock had been avoided by previous slaughter. One ‘model’ regional official honoured for his achievements in the campaign committed suicide when his false reporting was discovered. (A fact disclosed only after Khrushchev’s fall in 1964 was that the first secretary himself had secretly subsidized the agrotown experiment in his home collective of Kalinovka.) Khrushchev tried to explain the bad news by blaming local party officials for having intimidated the peasants instead of relying on persuasion ; but, as time went on, it became obvious that progress towards Utopia could not be achieved by persuasion — only by using coercion and paying its economic price. By the time the draft for Khrushchev’s new party programme was published in 1961, in preparation for the twenty-second congress, it showed that a new choice between utopianism and modernization had been made, and this time in favour of the latter. True, the goals of merging collective and state ownership and of eliminating all signifi­ cant differences between town and country were still there, and so were the means — a voluntary reduction of the private plots and herds and the creation of agrotowns. But these means were no longer presented as operative tasks for party action ; they were now forecast as inevitable future by-products of a steady rise in productivity. The acceptance of the draft by the twenty-second congress thus meant nothing less than the renunciation of further revolutions from above in the party programme itself. Under Stalin, the use of state power to transform society had been a task for action, and the rise in the standard of living a vision for the future ; by 1961, only the raising of productivity and the standard of living was the task for action, whereas the further transformation of society had become a mere vision for the future. After the failure of three successive attempts to keep the wheels of the institutionalized revolution going — by

[280 ]

Richard Lowenthal Khrushchev in 1951, Stalin in 1952, and Khrushchev in 1959 — the oldest and most successful ruling communist party had recognized that, at the stage of development reached by industrial Russia, it could no longer afford the active pursuit of utopian goals. But it had also understood that, at this stage, such a pursuit was no longer needed to prevent a restoration of capitalism by new social differenti­ ation : henceforth that bogey disappeared from official Soviet docu­ ments. It is true that Khrushchev was evidently worried by the increasingly stable, real class differentiation of a post-capitalist, bureaucratic in­ dustrial society. It was above all the bureaucracy that had gained a new security and power from Khrushchev’s destalinization with its public reinsurance against renewed Stalin-type purges. Khrushchev had tried to limit this power in practice by his 1957 regionalization of the machinery of economic planning, and later by a project for transferring some of the functions of the ministry of agriculture to national and regional kolkhoz federations, but bureaucratic resistance within the party and government leadership proved too strong for that project to materialize. In theory, he criticized Stalin’s doctrine that the state must survive in a socialist society not only for its protection against external and internal enemies, which Khrushchev admitted, but also for allegedly indispensable economic and cultural tasks of socialist construction. The latter, Khrushchev claimed, could be gradually transferred to such social organizations as the trade unions and the projected kolkhoz federations, an idea apparently stimulated by his discussions with Tito. But in Russia, the bureaucratic ‘new class’ proved too strong for those ideas to bear any lasting fruit : in fact, the existence of this real class differentiation was never officially recognized. It was indeed a logical consequence of the extinction of the institu­ tionalized revolution that the 1961 party programme proclaimed that the Soviet Union was no longer a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, but a ‘state of all the people’. Whereas Stalin had justified his blood purge by talking absurdly of a ‘sharpening of the class struggle’ just when his own constitution had stressed the disappearance of all hostile classes and the equality of rights of the surviving productive strata, Khrushchev now had to deny the actual class character of the consolidated new bureaucracy. But, by accepting the end of the revo­ lutionary function of the party dictatorship, he inevitably raised the question of the legitimacy of its continued rule. Not content to base this legitimacy solely on the function of preserving internal unity in the face of a hostile outside world, as his successors eventually decided [2 8 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After to do, he tried by his party reform of November 1962, dividing the party organization into separate industrial and agricultural sectors, to make the party rather than the state administration appear as the driving force of economic growth and improvement ; but the operation proved both economically ineffective and politically offensive to the economic administrators, and contributed substantially to the grow­ ing bureaucratic discontent with Khrushchev’s ‘hare-brained schemes’ which led to his overthrow by the Central Committee in October 1964. It may be said that this event, unique in the history of ruling communist parties up to that time, marked the definite adjustment of the Soviet political system to the end of the period of institution­ alized revolution. The Attempt at ‘Uninterrupted Revolution’ in China In Russia, World War II had put a major interval between Stalin’s blood purge and the merging of the Soviet collective farms into larger units by Stalin and Khrushchev, followed by their abortive attempts at further social transformations of the countryside. In China, by contrast, Mao’s anti-rightist campaign of 1957 against the non-party intellectuals, which had left the party’s core of revolu­ tionary veterans intact, was promptly followed by a further major effort to transform China’s social structure under extreme pressure : the creation of the rural People’s Communes as part of the Great Leap Forward of 1958. The decision to merge all the collective farms of a rural district into a single multi-functional unit seems to have arisen from the need to stop the peasants’ migration into the cities, where industry lacked the capital for employing them. The basic concept was to put the rural surplus labour to work in low-capital industries on the spot as well as to draft it for public works serving transport and water control. But while the idea of using an over-populated agriculture for the creation of light industries based on ‘intermediate technologies’ was ingenious, in the actual formation of the communes the attempt was made to mobilize rural manpower not only for such light industries and public works, but also for the building of primitive steel furnaces, intense military training and time-consuming ideological indoctrina­ tion. That overreaching effort required in effect the militarization of rural labour under district-wide commands. It soon led to the massive breaking up of family households to mobilize woman power, to the liquidation of the peasants’ private plots as causing a harmful dis­ persal of labour, and to the replacement of the main part of the family’s cash incomes by equal rations in kind. [2 8 2 ]

Richard Lowenthál This orgy of an egalitarian military communism, based in part on the Chinese communists’ memories of the way they had assured col­ lective survival in their rural fastnesses during the civil war and the war against Japan, but now forcibly imposed on the entire peasant population, was justified as a revolutionary shortcut to the higher stage of communism under a new doctrine of ‘uninterrupted revo­ lution’. That doctrine, first publicly expounded by Liu Shao-qi at the second session of the eighth party congress in May 1958 and for­ mally embodied in the Central Committee resolution in December, was later generally attributed to Mao himself, probably with reason. It laid down that there must be no hiatus between the building of socialism and the transition to communism, just as there had been none between the seizure of power in Mao’s ‘New Democratic Rev­ olution’ and the subsequent transition to a socialist revolution. The revolutionary transformation of society in a communist direction must be an uninterrupted process. Accordingly, the new forms of com­ munal life and work could be interpreted as a step in accelerating that transition ; for a time, even the tight rationing system was hailed as an expression of the communist principle ‘to each according to his need’ ! The high tide of this utopian intoxication occurred in the months between the party congress in May 1958, when the communes were being prepared but not yet announced, and the Central Committee meeting in December, when the rapidly spreading experiments were both sanctioned and somewhat regularized. By then, it was admitted that fully equal distribution might only be possible after fifteen or twenty years and that full communism was even further off. In the following years, the managerial organization, the economic tasks and the wage system of the communes were all modified under the impact of economic disorganization, peasant discontent and Soviet criticism. But the principle that the communes were an important step on the road to communism was never renounced, and by 1960 ‘urban com­ munes’ were introduced as well, though not for the principal tasks of industrial production. The years 1961 and 1962 were characterized by a growing gulf between an increasingly pragmatic policy, geared to the needs of economic recovery, and a basically unrevised utopian ideology, reflecting a deadlock in the party leadership between the unrepentant utopianism of Mao and the increasingly developmental orientation of a number of other leaders. In 1964, after the open break with the Soviets, and while engaged in the ‘socialist education campaign’, Mao developed what amounted to a final version of his theory. He had now come to recognize that [2 8 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After achievement of full communism in China might take ‘five to ten generations or one or several centuries’. But he also concluded from the Soviet experience that the danger of a restoration of capitalism would continue throughout the period preceding the attainment of the final goal, becoming acute repeatedly at critical junctures. The reason for this danger, in his view, was the spontaneous reemergence of capitalist tendencies out of the unregenerated mentality of part of the people — the mentality of ‘economic man’ — as well as the ‘embourgeoisement’ of party and state bureaucrats who allowed those tendencies to flourish instead of fighting them. That, in Mao’s view, was what had happened in Khrushchev’s Russia, and the formulation in the CPSU programme that the dictatorship of the proletariat had ended there was an ideological expression of that process. A similar development in China could be prevented only by unremitting ideolog­ ical and political struggle against the capitalist outlook and all those who succumbed to it. This required in particular the struggle for the education of the young, designed to train ‘millions of revolutionary successors’, and also, as it came to be formulated in the Cultural Revolution, a struggle against ‘all persons in authority walking the capitalist road’. The Cultural Revolution, which was inaugurated by Mao in 1966 and did not really end before his death, was thus undoubtedly seen by Mao and the Maoists as yet another phase of their ‘uninterrupted revolution’. But, in contrast to previous phases, it was not primarily, and certainly not directly, aimed at transforming China’s economic structure, however much it affected the functioning of the economy. It began as an effort to transform the consciousness of the young generation, and was first directed at the country’s educational insti­ tutions. But the mobilized youth was soon incited to ‘bombard the headquarters’ — in other words, to attack the apparatus and the institutions of party and government, sparing only the army and a few central ministries. Because of the resistance that had arisen against his authority within the leading cadres of the institutions of party and state ever since the initial failures of the Great Leap Forward, Mao appears to have come to the conclusion that an uninterrupted revo­ lution, as he understood it, was incompatible with institutional bureau­ cratic stability. The approach of the limits of institutionalized revo­ lution led him, unlike the Soviet leaders, not to abandon continued revolution but to turn against the institutions of party rule.10 10

For my first interpretation of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on those lines, see R. Lowenthal, ‘Mao’s Revolution : The Chinese Handwriting on the Wall’, Encounter, London (April 1967). [2 8 4 ]

Richard Lowenthal For that reason, the significance of the last decade of Mao’s rule will be treated in this paper not in the context of the tendency to transcend the totalitarian process of institutionalized revolution by the extinction of the revolutionary impulse, but in the context of the tendency of its institutions to become paralysed by the rise of a personal des­ potism. III.

Leadership Conflict and Institutional Crisis

We have seen that the process of institutionalized revolution in com­ munist totalitarian regimes typically takes the form of conflicts be­ tween the policies conceived as the means to ensure the approach to Utopia and those required for successful economic modernization. It is only natural that in many cases such policy conflicts should find their expression in power conflicts between rival leaders within the ruling communist party. Power conflicts between leaders occur, of course, in many ruling parties, and there is no law that they must necessarily lead to the paralysis or destruction of the institutions of such a regime, whether communist or not. But it is difficult to regard it as a mere accident that in both the most powerful and long-lasting communist regimes — the two which alone have been studied in the present paper — such conflicts have issued in the attempt of one of the contending leaders to raise himself to the position of a despot able to ignore the institutions of the party, thus producing a profound and prolonged institutional crisis. In the case of Stalin, his effort to be­ come a despot above the party, carried out with terrorist methods of extreme ruthlessness, succeeded for the entire period from the begin­ ning of his blood purge in 1936 to his death in March 1953. The period of Stalinist despotism thus lasted in Russia almost as long as the whole preceding period of communist party rule after the October revolution. At the same time, it did not destroy the previously ruling party but merely deprived it of its primacy and turned it into one of a number of power machines at the service of the despot who could paralyse its leading organs and interfere with their decisions at will. As even the fiction of the party’s primacy was formally main­ tained as part of the legitimation of the despotic regime, the resto­ ration of its autonomy and primacy after the death of the despot proved possible in the course of a ‘crisis of succession’ lasting to the autumn of 1957. Mao Ze-dong’s effort to become a despot above the party had become fully visible with the beginning of his ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’. But the process here was carried out to a much lesser [2 8 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After extent by police terror and to a much greater extent by mass mo­ bilization. Mao never fully achieved his aim of uncontested and un­ limited despotic rule, and he probably caused the execution of a con­ siderably smaller number of people than Stalin in the course of his seizure of full despotic power. However, Mao for a time effectively destroyed the institutions of party rule. Relying chiefly on the army, first to mobilize the improvised mass movement of the youthful ‘Red Guards’ and later to try and control them, he produced a chaotic situation paralysing many governmental institutions as well. Though Mao tried to create new political organs in 1968—1969, first in the form of ‘revolutionary committees’ and later by rebuilding the party from above, he remained for years dependent on the military leaders, one of whom was finally accused of having tried to seize political power himself. In Mao’s last years decisions seem to have emerged from an Unstable balance of competing leadership groups not regulated by either institutional procedures or the authority of a despot. After his death, the party again emerged as the principal legitimate institution, but the consolidation of its new leadership took five to six years. An analysis of the dynamics and the aftermath of totalitarian com­ munist rule thus cannot evade the question why just some important communist party regimes — though not all communist party regimes — have produced this type of institutional crisis with a tendency towards personal despotism as a result of leadership conflicts, while nothing similar is known from either totalitarian regimes of the fascist type or democratic regimes with firmly established institutions. The answer seems to lie in the insufficiently clear arrangements made in com­ munist party regimes for leadership legitimacy and leadership suc­ cession. To that extent, the ‘democratic centralism’ as conceived by Lenin appears to be definitely inferior to both fascist dictatorship and western democracy. To understand this statement, it is necessary to realize the important difference between the role of the leader in ideologies of the fascist or national socialist type and that in communist ideology. In fascist re­ gimes, the leader is above the party from the start. Belief in his role is a central point in the ideology : in fact, the legitimacy of the regime is based on trust in the leader rather than in the party. What we have called personal despotism as a crisis phenomenon in the institu­ tions of communist regimes is the normal, or at any rate the ideal, state of fascist totalitarian regimes. Hitler was a despot who ruled with the party as one of his instruments, and Mussolini would at any rate have liked to be one — though he never quite succeeded. This similarity has even led such serious scholars as Robert C. Tucker, [2 8 6 ]

Richard Lowenthal Leonard Schapiro and John Wilson Lewis11 to suggest that the very term ‘totalitarianism’ should be reserved for regimes of this ‘fuehrerist’ type, those of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao. Yet from that starting point it becomes impossible to understand why Stalin per­ sisted, and Mao persisted at any rate most of the time, in vesting the legitimacy of his rule in the party, and why the party’s rule was restored in both Russia and China after the death of the despot. The crisis which created Stalin’s despotism in Russia and Mao’s at­ tempt at despotism in China could not occur in the fascist regimes, because they were already despotic. They might, of course, have pro­ duced a crisis of succession, if they had outlasted their founders — but in both cases regime and leader lived and died together. On the other hand, a democratic regime as we understand it has established procedures for the decision of conflicts and the change of leaders by majority vote ; within a particular government, a directly elected president or a prime minister leading the majority party may overrule his associates, but may himself be overruled by the electorate, or in the parliamentary system by a majority of its representatives. Resistance by a minority to government decisions that are backed by a majority has no legitimacy. But the communist doctrine of democratic centralism, as laid down by Lenin, legitimates neither the absolute power of the leader nor that of the majority : in certain conditions, its ambiguity legitimates leadership conflict. This is the historic root of the danger of such institutional crises as have occurred in the communist party regimes of both Russia and China. The Ambiguity of the Leninist Tradition In communist debates about the right way to exercise party leader­ ship, Lenin’s theory and practice on the subject — the ‘Leninist norms of party life’ — have long been regarded as the ultimate standard of orthodoxy. But right from the period of Lenin’s illness and death, the model has given rise to contradictory, yet equally well founded, interpretations. The difficulty is not due to the apparent ambiguity of Lenin’s formula of ‘democratic centralism’, which is intended both to describe and 11

Cf. Tucker, op. cit. (n. 7), pp. 4—6, 17-19 ; L. Schapiro, ‘Reflections on the Changing Role of the Party in the Totalitarian Polity’, Studies in Comparative Communism (April 1969) ; L. Schapiro & J. W. Lewis, ‘The Roles of the Monolithic Party under the Totalitarian Leader’, in : J. W. Lewis (ed.), Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China, London-New York 1970. [2 8 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After to veil a non-democratic relationship between the leadership and the rank and file of the party. It refers to an ingenious combination of an outward form of more or less democratic procedures in the election of delegates to the party congress and of members of the party organs, including the Central Committee, with a de facto monopoly of ini­ tiative for the top leadership through its right to ‘propose’ unop­ posed regional and local leaders, who in turn ‘propose’ the congress delegates who then elect the Central Committee. This kind of demo­ cracy in form and centralism in substance normally ensures the un­ questioned continuation of an established leadership, unless the leaders begin seriously to disagree among themselves. It was precisely for the latter situation that Lenin left no pat formula, but two opposite practical prescriptions developed for the needs of different periods in the party’s history. The first served for the build­ ing of a ‘Leninist’ party and its road to power, the second for pre­ serving the party’s monopoly of power. The older one of those prescriptions is rooted in Lenin’s conviction of the indispensable role of a ‘correct’ strategy for the victory of the revolutionary party. This strategy was founded on a ‘correct’ inter­ pretation of Marxism, and its ‘correct’ application for the analysis of historical and social conditions. Hence a leader who is convinced that he has that correct strategy (as Lenin was), and that the fate of the party and the revolution may depend on its adoption, must in no case submit to an erring majority, even within the leadership, on vital questions. Rather he must force the majority of the Central Com­ mittee to submit to him by threatening his resignation, or appeal to the cadres or even the rank and file, or even split or refound the party. The history of the Bolsheviks up to their seizure of power is full of such splits and ‘refoundings’ practised by Lenin ;12 and even on the eve of the October revolution, and in the early period after it, when his authority was supreme, he repeatedly used the threat of resignation to bring an opposing majority of the Central Committee to heel.13 The opposite prescription is based on the need for the absolute unity 12

13

Cf. B. D. Wolfe’s classic formulation ‘Where Lenin and two or three were gathered together, there was Bolshevism’, in his Three Who Made a Revolution, London 1956, p. 501. Notably in forcing acceptance of the Brest Litovsk treaty on 23 February 1918, and apparently also in forcing through the turn to the New Eco­ nomic Policy on the eve of the tenth party congress, as reported by L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU], London I960, p. 211, n. 1, quoting the memoirs of N. Valentinov. [2 8 8 ]

Richard Lowenthal of a party in power seeking to establish and preserve its monopoly, because the preservation of party unity is seen as a condition for that monopoly. It has been most clearly argued by Lenin at the tenth party congress of March 1921. This was the congress that prevented a Russian ‘Thermidor’ by adopting the New Economic Policy and Lenin’s model for relations between the state and the trade unions, and laid the foundations for a fully developed ‘totalitarian’, single­ party regime. Lenin viewed the continued agitation against the con­ gress decisions by the ‘workers’ opposition’ —■on the morrow of the Kronstadt sailors’ rising — as so dangerous for the preservation of the party’s power that he proposed and carried his famous ‘ban on factions’, which ever since has been regarded as one of the ‘Leninist norms of party life’.14 In its original form, it referred specifically to a ban on groups engaging in continued opposition against congress decisions ; and when Ryazanov suggested that it should also exclude any future election of congress delegates on alternative platforms (as had taken place before this congress on competing resolutions con­ cerning the status of the trade unions), Lenin rejected the idea as unduly tying the hands of all future leaderships.1516 But Lenin’s own argument for the ban had gone beyond the specific occasion. He pointed out that for a revolutionary party, ruling in conditions which required temporary economic concessions to hostile classes, it was not enough to prevent those classes from access to the decision-making process by depriving them of parties of their own ;lfl so long as factions could freely be formed within the ruling party, they would inevitably become channels for pressures emanating from the class enemy. Hence submission to majority decisions, in this case, of course, ‘correct’ deci­ sions sponsored by Lenin, was vital for the survival of the proletarian dictatorship. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the course of the liquidation of the remnants of other Soviet parties, in 1921 and 1922, the argument already was used to generalize the ‘ban on factions’ in Lenin’s lifetime. This ban later decisively served Stalin to silence his 14 15

16

See the ‘Resolution on Party Unity’, quoted by Schapiro, ibid., pp. 214-215, from the documents of the tenth congress. See R. Medvedyev, Let History Judge! — The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, New York 1971, pp. 385-386, quoting the minutes of the congress. A ban on the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary parties was never formally enacted, but the reasons for suppressing them were spelt out by Radek at the tenth party conference in May 1921, and their remnants were in fact crushed in the course of 1921 and 1922. For details, see Schapiro, Origin, op. cit. (n. 4 ). [2 8 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After inner-party opponents, who vainly invoked, through the mouth of Lenin’s widow at the fourteenth party congress in December 1925, the counter-argument of the ‘correct minority’ used by Lenin before the seizure of power.17 The above may suffice to show that the Leninist tradition is ambi­ guous on the crucial question whether a minority in the leadership is obliged to submit to the majority or is entitled, and indeed bound by its sense of duty, to continue the struggle by appeal to the rank and file, if it regards the issue as vital for the fate of the revolution. But we have seen that the inherent dilemma of a totalitarian insti­ tutionalized revolution concerning whether to give priority to speedy progress towards the utopian goal or to the goal of modernization was bound to create repeatedly such vital policy conflicts in the leadership — at least until a stage of economic development had been reached at which the utopian revolutionary impulse had spent itself. For the handling of such recurrent leadership conflicts, the Leninist tradition offered not one indisputable prescription, but two contradictory ones ; it was in its nature insufficient to found a type of legitimacy based on procedural consensus. During the course of the institutionalized revolution, the communist party regimes thus only could avoid an institutional crisis on one condition : if there was a leader with uncontested, or at any rate overwhelmingly accepted, personal authority. Only in the presence of such a leader were his opponents likely to submit rather than en­ danger the unity and power of the party, remembering that the leader, who had been proven right before on crucial decisions, just might be right again after all. Such overwhelming authority inside the party was clearly enjoyed by Lenin from his return to Russia in April 1917 to his incapacitation by illness, and by Mao Ze-dong from the final eclipse of his last Moscow-oriented rival in the Chinese communist party, Wang Ming, in 1940, at least to the first session of its eighth congress in 1956, and possibly to the end of 1958. It was enjoyed by nobody in either country during the period of their most difficult decisions on their respective roads of revolutionary development, with the result that both suffered, at different times and in different con­ texts, severe institutional crises leading to the prolonged suspension of party rule in favour of personal despotism, or at least of an attempt at personal despotism.

17

See Schapiro, CPSU, op. cit. (n. 13), p. 298. [2 9 0 ]

Richard Lowenthal The Rise and Impact of Stalinist Despotism None of the men around Lenin would have been accepted by his colleagues as able to succeed him in his position of unique authority, and Lenin himself did not feel that any one of them possessed the needed all-round superiority over the others. In our context, the fundamental interest of the document known as ‘Lenin’s Testament’18 is that it shows both that Lenin was fully aware of the problem of succession — that he clearly understood the need for a recognized single leader, although he had never publicly stressed his own role — and that he had no solution to offer. In the circumstances, the estab­ lishment of a ‘collective leadership’ by the survivors was as inevitable as was its failure to avoid a struggle for the succession to the leading role ; for differences on major issues were bound to arise within the collective, and in view of their ideological importance the leaders of the minority were bound to try and appeal to the rank and file, in other words, to engage in ‘factional’ activities. But in contrast to the early ideological conflicts in which Lenin had built up his authority, the new conflicts among his heirs developed within a party in control of a single-party state, a party which could no longer tolerate a split. The first series of those new inner-party conflicts, between 1923 and 1929, was decided in Stalin’s favour. This was due, above all, to two facts. He held from the beginning the key position of general secretary with its power of appointments, and he understood certain facts better than his rivals : the longer the party continued to hold monopolistic power, and the greater the share of its members recruited after the seizure of power for a ruling party, the more the late-Leninist prin­ ciple of the primacy of party unity was bound to appear more con­ vincing to those members than the early-Leninist principle of the obligation to split for the sake of the correct revolutionary policy. He thus consciously applied the tactics of discrediting his opponents as ‘factionists’ plotting against ‘the party’s’ policy, while in effect using the party machine as his own faction. This was comparatively easy when first Trotsky and then Zinoviev and Kamenev advocated a change from the New Economic Policy in order to revive the class 18

The name ‘Lenin’s Testament’ has been generally given to his deathbed letter to the Central Committee about the problem of his succession, in which he warned against leaving the power of the general secretary in Stalin’s hands but was unable to suggest an alternative. The text, kept from publication by Stalin at the time, was released by Khrushchev in the context of his ‘secret speech’ at the twentieth congress. It is available in English, e.g., in B. D. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin’s Ghost, New York 1957, pp. 262-263. [2 9 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After struggle in the countryside and increase the pace of industrial ac­ cumulation at the expense of the peasantry. It became more difficult when, from the turn of 1927/8, Stalin himself began to move in a similar direction, finally advocating a radical programme of forced industrialization, forced collectivization and forcible ‘dekulakization’ : now he was the innovator, and at first he had no majority in tire Politburo. Yet he had, in the course of the preceding struggles, acquired what amounted to sole control of personnel appointments and dismissals, in both the party and the government apparatus, in­ cluding the secret police, and thus created a large network of men linked to him by gratitude for their appointments, hope of promotion and fear of removal. With their help he succeeded by a series of skilful tactical manoeuvres in pushing, within two years, the critics of his new ‘left’ turn, notably Bukharin, into the role of a ‘right op­ position’, and then again the ‘unity reflex’ worked in his favour.19 All these decisions, which together by 1929 gave Stalin victory in the succession struggle after Lenin’s death, were still achieved by innerparty methods, i.e. by the use and abuse of the party apparatus. The political system inherited from Lenin had not changed basically, even though the leader with overwhelming authority had been replaced by the apparatchik with overwhelming skill. The years of the first five-year plan and the forced collectivization not only brought further important decisions, as we have seen, notably the decision against ‘egalitarianism’ and for highly differentiated wages on an extremely low basis, and the beginning of a programme for expert training in industry ; they also brought the revival of a climate of massive violence in which the borders between plain failure to achieve the expected results, non-compliance and active sabotage were increasingly blurred, while any attempts at inner-party opposition had been driven under­ ground and came to be treated as conspiracies punishable by the courts. Even earlier, Stalin’s defeated opponents had been required not only to submit to party discipline, but to ‘disarm ideologically’, i.e. to admit explicitly that they had been wrong, if they wished to remain party members ; this was the meaning of the new concept of the ‘monolithic party’. Altogether, those years of the ‘revolution from above’ with its mass deportation of alleged kulaks, which des­ troyed the independent peasantry, created a whole new class of state slaves in the labour camps, and culminated in a severe famine, also 19

See Schapiro, CPSU, op. cit. (n. 13), chap. XX. A full account of those manoeuvres can now be found in S.F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, New York 1974. [2 9 2 ]

Richard Lowenthal strengthened Stalin’s position by the spreading conviction of the party members that his strong arm alone could prevent a total collapse of the regime : they showed a tendency for a transition from ap­ paratchik rule within the party to the later personal despotism above it. But as late as 1932, the refusal of the Politburo to approve the death sentence on the anti-Stalinist ‘conspirator’ Ryutin showed that the institutions of the party were not yet subordinate to Stalin’s every whim : the despotism was not complete as yet. It became complete in the years when life was supposed to have become happier after the conclusion of the collectivization drive, between the seventeenth party congress of early 1934 and the start of the blood purge in full force in the summer of 1936. There is some disagreement among scholars about the nature and extent of opposition to Stalin’s continuing in sole control at the ‘congress of the victors’, now that his brutal rule no longer seemed indispensable for saving the regime from collapse. But even those who would dis­ believe Roy Medvedyev’s well-sourced account of the large number of votes cast against Stalin’s re-election to the Central Committee20 and accept Adam Ulam’s suggestion that there was at most a ‘plot by adulation’,21 can hardly deny the likelihood that there was a move­ ment at that congress to reduce his power, and that he learned of it ; and this seems the most plausible explanation of his determined turn to achieve full independence from the institutions of the party by relying on personal control of the secret police. As Robert Conquest has shown, Stalin’s moves to put his future chief executionists into the required key positions started at that time.22 Even if it is barely conceivable, as Ulam suggests, that the assassination of Kirov — with all the suspect incidents of the previous release of the assassin and the quick killing of the most immediate witnesses — was not a Stalinist plot but just one of those absurd accidents that sometimes do make history,23 it was certainly exploited by Stalin with a will. The danger of war, and indeed of a war on two fronts, and the need for extreme political flexibility at the top to avert it, may indeed have offered to Stalin a justification, if any was needed, for seizing despotic power. However, the fact that his power within the party institutions had begun to appear insecure for the first time in years, and that attempts 20

21 22 23

Medvedyev, op. cit. (n. 15), pp. 155-156. I have not seen A. AntonovOvseenko’s Portret Tirana, New York 1980, which offers additional mate­ rial in the same direction. A. Ulam, Stalin, the Man and his Era, New York 1973, pp. 370—375. R. Conquest, The Great Terror, New York 1973, revised ed., pp. 66-68. Ulam, op. cit. (n. 21), pp. 384-388. [2 9 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After to control it were made precisely by hitherto loyal, highly placed supporters like Kirov, was certainly motive enough. The Great Terror was that seizure of despotic power. The institutions of the party were not destroyed, but effectively deprived of a political life of their own. They were turned into mere propagandist organs at the disposal of the despot, parallel but not superior to other organs of administration like the economic bureaucracy and the military. If any one branch of Stalin’s government after 1936 was superior to the others, it was clearly the secret police, which for a time was enabled on Stalin’s orders to arrest, torture and execute Central Committee members, generals and top economic administrators by the hundreds ; but even the secret police remained strictly subordinate to the despot who, issuing orders through his personal secretariat, could replace its chief at will. As we have seen, Stalin at the same time used the blood purge as a new revolution from above, decimating the old élite of revolutionary veterans and subsequently opening the party wide to a thoroughly frightened new élite of post-revolutionary bureaucrats and managers. For he had no intention of renouncing the services of the nominally still ‘ruling’ party. He still derived his public legitimacy from being its General Secretary ! Unwilling to be tied in the least by political institutions with a will, or at least a potential will, of their own, he was yet fully aware of the need for institutional tools in running his empire. The same eighteenth party congress, held in March 1939, which changed the party’s statutes so as to endorse the change in its composition brought about by Stalin’s sanguinary version of the ‘cir­ culation of élites’, also gave the signal for a limited revival of the party’s activity by assuring the delegates that a similar mass purge would not be repeated.24 Such an assurance may have been both needed and doubted by its addressees in view of the fate of the majority of delegates to the previous congress, the seventeenth congress of 1934, known at the time as the ‘congress of victors’, but later found to have been largely a congress of (prospective) victims. It was, then, as an organized body without a soul, as a machine with­ out a will, and as a trophy decorating the man who had castrated it that the CPSU survived the long final period of Stalin’s rule. Thirteen years were to pass before a party congress was held again. We know from Khrushchev that the Central Committee rarely met during those 24

Cf. Schapiro, CPSU, op. cit. (n. 13), p. 437, quoting speeches by both Stalin and Zhdanov and the resolution of the eighteenth congress on the subject. [2 9 4 ]

Richard Lowenthal years, and the Politburo mostly in subgroups called together by Stalin as he pleased ;25 we know also that during the war, the State Defence Committee (GKO) was a far more important centre of decisions than the Politburo, and that Stalin thought it useful for his authority during the war years to take over personally the direction of the government as well as of the party. Of the institutionalized revolution which we described as the essence of totalitarianism, the revolutionary process was suspended during the war years and the key institution of party rule was reduced to an auxiliary role ; but neither was dead, as both were recognized by the despot as still important for his rule, espe­ cially for the postwar period. We have seen above how efforts to revive the revolutionary process were made, with partial though de­ clining success, in the very last years of Stalin’s rule, and they could not have been made without a reactivated party. But the primacy of the party over the other power machines of the regime was not restored in Stalin’s lifetime, nor was the personal security of its senior officials : true, there was no more mass bloodletting on the scale of 1936-1938, but the ‘Leningrad affair’, the ‘Mingrelian plot’ and the ‘Zionist plot in the Crimea’, all took their victims26 — and of course there was the persecution of leading communists in Eastern Europe as ‘Titoists’ as well. Finally, the very last months of Stalin’s rule were, according to Khrushchev, devoted to the preparation of another major purge, of which the Slansky trial in Prague and the ‘plot of the Krem­ lin doctors’ seem to have been the harbingers. During all those years, Stalin’s power was greater than Lenin’s had ever been ; by contrast, his authority, the spontaneous respect and trust offered to him, had originally been incomparably less broadly based. Ultimately, it was his fundamental insecurity in that situation that had caused him to seize despotic power after he had defeated all inner-party rivals and successfully survived the horrors of his forced collectivization drive. For all the mad elements in the Great Purge, Stalin was not a clinical madman : the fact that he was capable, despite his initial miscalculations, of leading the Soviet Union to vic­ tory over Hitler proves it, and strengthens the argument for seeing the blood purge as a piece of utterly brutal and ruthless, but cal­ culated, politics by a man who had reason to feel insecure in posses­ sion of his power. 25 26

See Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, e.g., in : Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin’s Ghost, op. cit. (n. 18), e.g., pp. 240, 242. For details, see R. Conquest, Power and Policy in the USSR, London 1961, chaps. 5, 7, and App. V. [2 9 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After But the objective situation changed after the war. Because of Soviet sacrifices and Soviet victory under his leadership, Stalin then enjoyed greater genuine authority than ever before. In all probability, he could then have afforded to renounce his despotic status and restore the institutional practice, not indeed of democracy but of a party dictator­ ship of the ‘Leninist’ type. But that he was unable to conceive. Des­ potic rule had become, in his mind, identical with his personal security. For all we know, there was no danger to his rule in his final years. The only danger was in his own personality, twisted and distorted as it had become by a life spent largely in persecuting others. As a result, he became an obstacle to the restoration of institutional communist rule. It only could begin after his death. The Institutional Crisis of Late Maoism Decision-making on China’s road of development after the end of the civil war was objectively far more difficult than in Russia, simply because the task was so much more formidable. The productive forces needed for modernization were far more backward, and the qualified cadres far more scarce in China in 1949 than in Russia in 1921. Nevertheless, the early years of the Chinese People’s Republic saw far less serious leadership conflicts about that road than the corresponding period in Russia. In part this was because a leader with unchallenged authority survived in the person of Mao Ze-dong, but in part also because many crucial decisions were at first copied unquestioningly from the Soviet model. As we have seen, the first five-year plan, starting in 1952, was shaped as a matter of course along the Soviet lines of priority for heavy industry, strict centralization of planning, authority for expert cadres, and differentiated wages. The fact that the original chief planner Gao Gang, who had apparently been more directly be­ holden to Soviet influence than seemed politically desirable in Mao’s eyes, was deposed and arrested soon after Stalin’s death and died in prison, made no immediate difference to the pursuit of the economic policy he had initiated. Subsequently, differences within the leadership on the speed of agricultural collectivization did not concern the prin­ ciple and did not aifect the united implementation of Mao’s decisions. The immediate impact of Khrushchev’s destalinization in 1956 was to weaken the spell of the Soviet model but not the authority of Mao. On the contrary, the two Chinese Politburo decisions of April and December 1956 on the subject clearly expressed Mao’s ideas.27 Further, 27

‘On the Historic Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, Peking, 5 April 1956 ; ‘More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of [2 9 6 ]

Richard Lowenthal by underlining Khrushchev’s strictures against Stalin’s lapses into ‘Great Power Chauvinism’ in inter-communist relations, but expressing regret at the insufficiently Marxist quality of Khrushchev’s philippic and attempting a more ‘scientific’ appreciation of the merits of the dead despot, they appeared to stake a claim for Mao’s independence from Stalin’s successor in matters of Marxist-Leninist theory, and indeed for his superior standing in this field. In the circumstances, the fact that the first session of the eighth congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the same year removed the reference to ‘The Thought of Mao Ze-dong’ from the party statute, while clearly a tribute to the new condemnation of the ‘cult of personality’, should not be interpreted as evidence of a weakening of Mao’s authority at that time.28 In its main work, the congress imitated an earlier Soviet example, that of the seventeenth congress of the CPSU of 1934. It followed the hard­ ships of collectivization with an effort at reconciliation with the people, granting the use of private plots to the peasants as well as a substantial rise in minimum wages to the workers, and a wide opening of the party to ‘intellectuals’ — meaning all the literate strata — which led on to the famous ‘hundred flowers campaign’. At the same time, it deviated from the Soviet model by making the first moves to streng­ then regional or local party control over the managers. A weakening of Mao’s authority must have begun, however, when the experiment in freedom of discussion, known as the ‘hundred flowers campaign’, got out of control in the following year. The flood of criticism of the communist party regime that came to light showed that the leader had far over-estimated the basic loyalty that the in­ tellectuals would show if freed from censorship.29 For Mao it was a traumatic lesson of the slowness with which ‘social consciousness’ was adapting to the imposed changes in the social structure. For the in­ tellectual critics it brought a withdrawal of the experimentally granted freedoms and persecution in a new ‘anti-rightist campaign’. At the same time, the raising of minimum wages produced a mass influx into the towns of peasants who could not be absorbed by industry

28 29

the Proletariat’, ibid., 29 December 1956. Both articles were stated to be based on discussions of enlarged meetings of the Chinese Politburo. For substantial English extracts and comments, see D. Zagoria, The SinoSoviet Conflict 1956-61, Princeton 1962, pp. 43-48, 59-60. For a detailed, documented analysis of this decision, see R. MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, I, London 1974, pp. 43—48. For a full account, see MacFarquhar, op. cit. (n. 28), chap. 16 ; the resultant weakening of Mao’s authority is detailed in the subsequent chapters. [2 9 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After due to lack of capital. It was dramatic proof that the Soviet model of development could not be imitated successfully in a country where the shortage of capital in relation to the pressure of a rapidly grow­ ing population was so much more severe than in Russia. The search for an indigenous Chinese road of modernization had thus to be started in earnest at the very moment when Mao’s authority among the leader­ ship was no longer immune against all criticism. True, that authority was still great enough to launch China from early 1958 on the gigantic experiment of the ‘Great Leap Forward’. We have earlier described its two main aspects : a new ‘revolution from above’ imposed on agriculture by creating the ‘People’s Com­ munes’, initially with strong utopian features, and a campaign for a competitive raising of industrial targets by local and regional party committees over the heads of the managers. When the first major corrections of the commune programme were undertaken by the Cen­ tral Committee in December 1958, apparently with Mao’s consent, he took the occasion to resign his position as head of state in favour of Liu Shao-qi, and indicated his intention gradually to retire from the daily conduct of affairs into a more detached, if still ultimately direct­ ing, role.30 But this did not prevent the minister of war, Marshal P’êng De-huai, from making a general attack on the concept of the Great Leap at the Lushan plenum of the Central Committee in the summer of 1959 ;31 and while P’êng’s demand for a reversal of the general line initiated by Mao was rejected in principle, and P’êng subsequently removed from office, a number of further corrections were imposed in practice. From that moment onward, the Chinese communist leadership has remained deeply divided on the essentials of the road of development. What it all amounted to was that the ageing Mao, under the impres­ sion both of the objective difficulties of Chinese modernization and of what he saw as the ideological degeneration of the Soviet Union, with which he was involved in increasingly open and bitter conflict, had developed a preference for the utopian over the modernizing 30

31

It is suggested that Mao had already conceived his plan to retire eventually to the ‘second line’ at the time of the first session of the eighth party congress in September 1956, but took steps to carry it out only in 1959 following the Central Committee plenum of December 1958 ; see MacFarquhar, op. cit. (n. 28), pp. 105-107. The first Western report of this clash was by D. A. Charles, ‘The Dismissal of Marshal P’eng Teh-huai’, China Quarterly, V III (Oct.-Dec. 1961). It has been fully confirmed by Chinese publications in the course of the Cultural Revolution. [2 9 8 ]

Richard Lowenthal solutions of the basic dilemma of communist policy. He showed this tendency not only in his initial concept of the people’s communes, but also in his general insistence on a high degree of egalitarianism as opposed to differentiated material incentives and on giving ageing revolutionary veterans authority over post-revolutionary managers and technicians. Perhaps Mao revealed this most basically in his belief in the need to change people’s consciousness before effectively changing their material conditions of life. But with his authority weakened by repeated failures, Mao was no longer able to impose leadership unity behind that policy by his control of the party machine. From 1958/9 to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the struggle between the ‘two lines’ swayed to and fro in the Chinese Central Com­ mittee. The new president, Liu Shao-qi, regarded by many as Mao’s presumptive successor at the head of the party as well, and the party’s general secretary, Deng Xiao-ping, increasingly opposed Mao, while Zhou En-lai, the head of government, remained loyal to the principle of Mao’s leadership but tried persistently to moderate Mao’s policies by his advice. In fact those policies were gradually pushed back be­ tween 1960 and 1962. But Mao felt less and less able to submit to what he had come to regard as a ‘revisionist’ majority that was pushing China along the road which had, in his view, led Russia to bureau­ cratic degeneration and indeed to a form of restoration of capitalism. As the struggle dragged on, Mao came increasingly to pin his hopes on the army, where the civil war spirit of solidarity and sacrifice had been kept alive most effectively and where his supporter Lin Biao had taken over command from P’êng De-huai. Mao also relied on the education of a new generation of ‘revolutionary successors’, while viewing the established hierarchies of party and state as obstacles to the pursuit of his concept of ‘uninterrupted revolution’. By 1964, the same year in which he elaborated the long-term concept in his basic document on ‘Khrushchev’s Phoney Communism’,32 Mao started two propaganda campaigns designed to isolate the ‘revisionist’ party estab­ lishment : the campaign ‘Learn from the Army’ and the campaign for ‘Socialist Education’. Having thus prepared the ground, and find­ ing himself still unable to force a clear-cut decision in his favour in the established organs of the party, he finally decided in 1965/6 to launch the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ without clear au32

See Editorial Department of Renmin Ribao and Honggi, ‘On Khrushchev’s Phoney Communism and its Historical Lessons for the World — Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (9 )’, Peking Review, VII (17 July 1964) (in English). [2 9 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After thority from the split Central Committee and probably against the will of its majority.33 He did so by mobilizing a mass movement of university and high school students with the logistic support and ultimate backing of the army, which had apparently also helped to get together the Maoist part of the Central Committee to approve the decision. This was a procedure recalling the role of the military leaders in the first stage of Mao’s rise to the top of the party at the — equally irregular — Tsunyi conference of the enlarged Politburo in 1935. The character of this start of the Cultural Revolution as a military coup d'état, making Mao’s rule formally independent of the party institu­ tions, became obvious when Mao, in his appeal to the ‘Red Guards’, declared that rebellion against the constituted organs of party and state — always excepting the army — was justified. Once established as a ruler freed from institutional limitations, Mao proceeded in fact to destroy a large part of the institutions of com­ munist party rule. He dissolved the official communist youth organiza­ tion and the trade unions, and effectively stopped the functioning of the party organs by allowing the Red Guards to occupy their offices. He gave them the same freedom with regard to most government ministries, including for a time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the exception of a remnant around premier Zhou En-lai who miracu­ lously kept a rudiment of administration going. Altogether, the parallels to and contrasts with Stalin’s establishment of his despotic rule are equally striking. The parallel lies in the crucial fact that the leader’s power was made independent from the institu­ tions of party rule. The central difference lies in Mao’s relying for this operation primarily not on the secret police, but on a mass move­ ment backed by the army — a natural consequence of his desire to continue rather than control the revolution. But the method of mass mobilization against the political and ad­ ministrative institutions had its own anarchic logic and Mao, who had first called on various army units to support the Red Guards against ‘bureaucratic resistance’ by some non-Maoist party and trade union units, soon had to call on the military again to restore order 33

The ‘communiqué’ of the decisive Central Committee meeting (1-8 August 1966) published on 12 August 1966, fails to mention the number of members and candidates who participated, as was normally done, but mentioned the presence of ‘revolutionary teachers and students’. According to a report by Bogunovié, the Peking correspondent of the Belgrade Politika, a meeting had originally been called by Liu Shao-qi and Deng Xiao-ping for 17 July but been prevented by an occupation of the party’s headquarters by the Peking garrison. [3 0 0 ]

Richard Lowenthal as various Red Guards began to fight each other or ransacked the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a result, Mao became in­ creasingly dependent on the army as the only apparatus of power that had remained intact and was no longer faced by any serious com­ petition. It was the army that, from the turn of 1967/8, proceeded to liquidate the mass movement and to form the backbone of the new political and administrative institutions that emerged — first the Revolutionary Committees in the regions and leading cities, to which some supposedly Maoist party officials and some supposedly reliable Red Guard leaders were coopted, and finally the party as reconstituted from above around this tripartite core.34 If Mao had in fact attempted to make himself a despot — and the fantastic cult of his person with the quasi-religious ritual of recitals from his Little Red Book, repeated several times a day in offices and factories, in trains and planes all over the country, leaves little doubt about that — the attempt had failed. Instead he had become depen­ dent, for a time at least, on the army as the new key institution. An outward expression of that failure was that, when the ninth congress of the CCP met in the spring of 1969 in order to revive the party from its coma, it incorporated in its new statute not only the leader­ ship of Mao for life, but the decision that his new deputy should also be his eventual successor : Lin Biao, the head of the armed forces.35 It soon became apparent that the upheaval of the Cultural Revo­ lution had no more resolved the underlying policy conflicts on China’s road of development than it had created stable new institutions or resolved the question of ultimate power. The reconstituted organs of party and administration could not manage their task without rehabil­ itating a considerable number of former leading cadres who had survived persecution for having opposed Mao’s ideas but had been converted to them only outwardly. Next to them sat a smaller but important number of true Maoist supporters of the Cultural Revo­ lution, while military leaders, who had backed it at first but been sobered in its course, held the balance. In view of the renewed dead­ lock and the waning authority, and indeed activity, of Mao, it was hardly surprising that his designated successor should now try to seize the reins. Lin Biao apparently developed the idea of pursuing the 34

35

For details, see J. Domes, ‘The Role of the Military in the Formation of Revolutionary Committees 1967-68’, China Quarterly, XLIV (Oct.-Dec. 1970). J. Domes, China after the Cultural Revolution, Berkeley 1977. [3 0 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Maoist road of development, but of winning the struggle for it not by mass mobilization, which had issued into anarchy repulsive to his generals, but by military authority and discipline — as a true revo­ lution from above. He had evidently come to believe that Mao’s con­ cept could only be imposed on China by an open military despotism, with himself as the despot.30 Whether that idea had already taken the form of a concrete plot, as was later alleged, we do not know. We do know that it was implicit in Lin Biao’s political course, and that it ended by arousing the united opposition of the civilian leaders of both camps and of many regional commanders, who proceeded to crush him in Mao’s name. The outcome was that Lin Biao lost his life and was branded a traitor. Following this failure of the second attempt at a despotic solution, the CCP had to be reorganized again at its tenth congress of 1973. The man who now emerged as the central figure owing both to his supreme political ability and to his earlier self-effacement was Zhou En-lai. Zhou was equally accepted as loyal by Mao, as moderate by the anti-Maoist pragmatists and as an indispensable symbol of order and continuity by the bulk of the military leaders ; but he was a dying man. While he was continuing the rehabilitation of moderates, in­ cluding Deng Xiao-ping, and had succeeded in slowly reducing the excessive share of military men in the central and regional party leadership (probably to the relief of most of them), the struggle between followers and opponents of the Maoist road had assumed increasingly the character of a dual succession struggle — for Zhou and for Mao. The campaign by the Maoist hard-core group (later named the ‘Gang of Four’ after its ultimate failure) against ‘Lin Biao and Confucius’ was in fact intended to discredit Zhou, with his back­ ground of a mandarin family, as a ‘Confucian’. This, and the renewed banishment of Deng, whom Zhou had made his deputy and presumptive successor, after Zhou’s death in April 1976 and a mass demonstration in his memory in Peking’s central square, showed the intensity of the struggle. In fact, by the time of Mao’s death in September of the same year neither the questions of policy nor the institutional question had been resolved. Mao left his life-work in a state of open political and institutional crisis, under a regime, that, if it could be described as a political system at all, was certainly no longer totalitarian.36

36

This interpretation of Lin-Biao’s political ideas follows the argument of J. Domes, ibid. [3 0 2 ]

Richard Lowenthal IV .

Towards Post-totalitarian One-party Rule

From what has been said so far, it should be clear that both the death of Stalin and that of Mao ushered in much more than is commonly understood by a crisis of succession. Both leaders left their countries with an unsolved crisis of their political institutions, and with un­ decided problems about their future roads of development. But the actual nature of the institutional crises and of the development dilem­ mas was quite different in the two countries. In Russia, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had continued to exist throughout seventeen years of Stalin’s autocratic rule, and the fiction that Stalin was ruling in its name had never been aban­ doned. On the other hand, in Stalin’s lifetime the party had never recovered an effective institutional primacy in relation to the other machines of power, leaving the Vozhd as the sole arbiter between them. With his disappearance from the scene, there was a wide open contradiction between the legitimate primacy of the party and the effective uncertain balance between the various power machines — and there was no more recognized arbiter. In China, the fiction that Mao was ruling in the party’s name had been more or less abandoned in the first two years of the Cultural Revolution, when the party organs were completely paralysed. But its restoration had begun with the reconstruction of the party in 1968/9, and was pushed more decisively after the death of Lin Biao and the tenth party congress of 1973 had ended the period of obvious military predominance. It may be said that by the time of Mao’s death, the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party among the existing power machines had even become somewhat more real again than that of the CPSU at Stalin’s death. This result was due largely to the subtle work of Zhou En-lai’s gardener’s hand on whatever political flowers had survived the preceding thunderstorm. But if the Chinese Party started the post-Mao period in a somewhat better position relative to the other power machines than the CPSU, it had the crucial dis­ advantage of being far more deeply divided in itself than the latter at Stalin’s death. The root of those divisions was in the far more urgent importance of China’s unsolved problems of modernization in 1976 than of Russia’s in 1953. The Soviet leaders who took over from Stalin may have differed in the firmness of their conviction that eventually still another turn of the revolutionary screw would be needed in Soviet agricul­ ture — a conviction that Khrushchev tried to put into practice only years later, after he had won the succession struggle ; but, governing [3 0 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After as they did a fairly developed industrial country with a number of acute economic weaknesses causing mass discontent, they were all agreed that it was more urgent to try and remedy those weaknesses than to transform further the structure of society. If the end of the process of revolutionary transformation from above had not yet finally arrived in Russia — that happened only after the failure of Khrushchev’s last attempt described earlier and was sanctioned in his party programme of 1961 — it was already close enough to affect the climate of discussion. By contrast, the Chinese communists were, after as before the death of Mao, profoundly divided over the unresolved conflict of priorities between uninterrupted revolution versus rational economic moderniza­ tion. As a result, the ‘succession crisis’ in Russia took the form of conflicts between the exponents of different power machines, in which the first secretary of the party had the decisive advantage of tradi­ tional legitimacy. In China, it took the form of a continuing struggle between utopian revolutionaries and practical-minded modernizers, in which the Utopians were now deprived of their former chief asset, the protection of the late Mao. Khrushchev’s Restoration of Party Primacy The replacement of the large and unwieldy party presidium elected at Stalin’s nineteenth congress by a small group of top leaders on 7 March 1953, within two days of Stalin’s death, may be seen as a first step towards restoring the initiative of the party.37 The decision taken one week later to release Malenkov, who had initially been appointed both chief of government and first secretary of the party, from the latter position, eventually worked out in the same direction,3839 even if it was taken only to prevent the cumulation of key offices by one member of the new leadership, and even if Malenkov may have preferred the government post by choice ; for that decision left Khrushchev as senior party secretary, though he got the formal title of First Secretary only later in the year. But the first major and ulti­ mately decisive event on the road towards reestablishing the party’s primacy was, of course, the fall and arrest in June of Beria, who had resumed control of the combined ministries of the Interior and State Security, from which Stalin had removed him, immediately after his death and was probably viewed by all concerned, and certainly by Khrushchev, as the most dangerous rival of the party machine.3® 37 38 39

Schapiro, CPSU, op. cit. (n. 13), p. 558. Ibid., p. 559. Cf. Khrushchev Remembers, trans. and ed. by S. Talbott, Boston 1970, Part I, chap. 9. [3 0 4 ]

Richard Lowenthal Beria had not shown any direct signs of intending to use his powerful office for new purges. On the contrary, he had taken the initiative for quashing the prosecution of the alleged ‘doctors’ plot’. But he was suspected by the other leaders of trying to build up the political popu­ larity he lacked by using his position as Malenkov’s first deputy in the party presidium for promoting concessions to the non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union and preparing other, more far-reach­ ing ones to the kolkhoz peasants, and generally of using his influence on Malenkov for getting new policies started without collective au­ thority. The immediate occasion for his downfall was apparently the extension of secret diplomatic feelers to the Western powers, started with Malenkov’s consent but without a decision of the government or party presidium. These advances were aimed at preventing West German rearmament within the Western alliance by new proposals for the re-unification of Germany under international safeguards on terms more attractive to the West than those of Stalin’s 1952 notes, and parallel instructions were given to the East German communists to be prepared for a possible loss of power in that context.40 When the West failed to show interest (Winston Churchill being the only exception),41 and the disorientation caused among the East German leadership contributed to the popular uprising of 17 June, Malenkov dropped Beria. The party presidium condemned, deposed and arrested him, accusing him of having acted as a foreign agent for many years who since his return to control of the ministries of the Interior and State Security had plotted with a group of conspirators to seize power by putting the secret police above the party and government. The affair ended with the execution of Beria and a group of his associates after a trial announced in December 1953.42 It was followed by that of three other groups of close associates of Beria from the secret police apparatus in the succeeding three years, and of one secret police in­ vestigator who had played a key role in forcing confessions from the accused in the ‘doctors’ plot’. Together, those were to remain the only political executions of senior officials in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. In our context, the important fact was not the defeat of Beria and his associates as such, but the capitis diminutio of the Soviet secret

40 41 42

Cf. my introduction to A. Baring, Der 17. Juni 1953, Stuttgart 1983. See Churchill’s statement on a possible ‘Locarno-solution’ for a reunited Germany, in the House of Commons, 11 May 1953. The announcement, dated 24 December, gave 26 June as the date of Beria’s arrest and 23 December as the date of his execution; see Conquest Power and Policy in the USSR, op. cit. (n. 26), App. VI, pp. 440-447. [3 0 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After police, which was the signal for a lasting reduction of its power as an institution. The consequences included the dismantling of the labour camp empire as a major sector of the Soviet economy controlled by the state security organs, though labour camps on a more limited scale were preserved as one of the weapons for dealing with real critics of the regime : the end of Stalinist mass terrorism against whole categories of citizens still permitted the continuation of official terror against individual opponents. But the crucial change in the balance among the leadership was that the state security apparatus lost the power to intervene in party affairs that had been the key instrument of Stalin’s despotism. Conversely, a number of senior posts in this apparatus were now filled by men ‘from outside’, i.e. from a strict party career. The next major struggles concerned the relative primacy of the party and government machines. After abandoning the post of first secretary of the party, Malenkov had still remained chairman of the Party Presidium. Khrushchev, as senior party secretary, still ranked only as Number Three of the party presidium, even after Beria’s removal, apparently on the ground that the secretariat was merely an executive organ of the policy-making presidium. The chief policy concern of both Malenkov and Khrushchev in the early post-Stalin years was clearly to overcome popular discontent in both the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc by concessions to the peasants and improvements in the standard of living. Their differences on the best means to this end, hardly recognizable in the speeches by Malenkov and Khrushchev on urgent improvements in agriculture in August and September 1953 respectively,43 seem to have been quite subordinate to the question of primacy, raised when agreed decisions were announced in the name of ‘The Council of Ministers and the Central Committee’ in that order. Measures for widening the scope of autonomy for the East European ‘satellites’ seem also to have been started in broad agree­ ment,44 and so were the first, non-public preparations for an attempt at a reconciliation with Tito, based on blaming Beria for the break of 1948/9 and the subsequent persecutions in Eastern Europe.45 There may have been more serious differences on the amount of diplomatic concessions to the West needed to reduce external tensions 43 44 45

Cf. ibid., p. 229. So on Imre Nagy’s ‘New Course’ in Hungary ; cf. ibid., p. 221. Apparently the first correspondence preparing the Soviets’ reconciliation with Yugoslavia was undertaken in December 1954 on behalf of the Soviet government, then still headed by Malenkov. (Personal information to the author from Yugoslav sources.) [3 0 6 ]

Richard Lowenthal at a time when inner-Soviet and inner-bloc consolidation after the death of the Vozhd was not yet assured. This is indicated by Ma­ lenkov’s apparent half-involvement in Beria’s feelers on the German problem, and also by the contrast between his statement that a nu­ clear war would destroy human civilization and Khrushchev’s insistence that it would only mean the end of capitalism. But the issue over which Khrushchev finally chose to rally a majority against Malenkov in the winter of 1954/5, and to force his resignation in early February 1955, was the charge that he had gone too far in favouring the ex­ pansion of the output of consumer goods at the expense of heavy industry and arms production. It was little more than a well-picked pretext, calculated to appeal to both the Stalin-reared economic bureau­ cracy and the armed forces : little had been done in that direction, and there had been no attempt at a Malenkov-sponsored campaign in favour of such changes when the anti-Malenkov campaign against them got started.46 Both in the fall of Beria and in the developments leading to the forced resignation of Malenkov in February 1955, the institutional question of the party’s immunity from interference by the secret police and of the party machine’s primacy in relation to the government bureau­ cracy were thus more important than any controversial policy issues. But, by the time of the latter event, a substantial policy conflict was brewing behind the scenes between Khrushchev and Molotov over policy towards Tito’s Yugoslavia and the ‘loyal’ communist allies in Eastern Europe ; and here Khrushchev was the convinced innovator and Molotov the defender of the Stalinist tradition. Broadly, Khrush­ chev wished to give the East European ‘satellites’ greater autonomy. He proposed tying them to Moscow by a more rational economic division of labour rather than weakening their leaders by the inter­ ference of countless Soviet ‘advisers’ and agents, in all fields and on all levels. To prevent hostile exploitation of that new autonomy on the part of Yugoslavia he advocated a timely reconciliation with Tito, admitting the wrongness of Stalin’s anti-Titoist campaign but blaming it on Beria. Molotov saw the danger that ‘rehabilitation’ of Tito would weaken the position of Stalinist leaders in Eastern Europe who had imprisoned or executed their rivals as Titoists, and weaken Soviet authority in those countries as well. Khrushchev had his way and, visiting Tito together with Malenkov’s successor Bulganin, achieved 46

The anti-Malenkov campaign started with an article by Prof. Strumilin on 1 November 1954. For details of the origin of the issue, see Conquest, op. cit. (n. 26), pp. 249-256.

[307]

Totalitarian Democracy and After a limited reconciliation by disavowing the anti-Titoist campaigns of the late 1940s but blaming them on Beria, even though Tito insisted that Stalin himself was to blame. Molotov, who, despite his position as foreign minister, had been left out on this occasion just as he had been left out of the visit to Peking by Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan in late 1954, vainly opposed Khrushchev’s action in the party presidium and remained isolated when he brought it before a Central Committee plenum in July 1955.47 By November, he had to apologize publicly for a wrong theoretical formulation ; in summer 1956, he had to resign as foreign minister. In isolating first Beria and then Malenkov, Khrushchev had been able to rely on the natural tendency in the collective of post-Stalinist leaders to form coalitions against whichever of them appeared to become too strong for the comfort of his rivals. After the fall of Malenkov and parallel to the eclipse of Molotov, Khrushchev himself assumed an extremely prominent role on the world stage, not only in Peking and Belgrade, but at the Geneva summit of 1955 and with his journey in South Asia. He had thus moved into the exposed role of the emerging Number One, watched with distrust and anxiety by other members of the collective. One major motive for his decision to use the twentieth congress in February 1956 not only for disavowing the ‘cult of Stalin’s personality’, but for exposing his crimes against loyal communists and generally the harm done by his despotism to the party as an institution,48 must have been the wish to reassure the entire élite of party and government that nothing of the kind would occur under his leadership — that he was going to keep to the ‘Lenin­ ist norms of party life’. In fact, this reckoning with Stalin, long pre­ pared by the collection of facts but improvised in its rhetoric form and originally half-concealed as it was, was a necessary part of the restoration of party institutions. There were, of course, other motives as well. The talks with Tito must have convinced Khrushchev that it would not do to blame the blood purges on Beria alone. He must also have been aware that even the partial disavowal he had made in Belgrade was having important repercussions in the rehabilitation of puige victims in Poland and Hungary. Finally, and here destalinization is directly 47

48

See Conquest, op. cit. (n. 26), p. 266, referring to the account of the minutes of that plenum brought to the West at the time by Mr Seweryn Bialer. Its substance was confirmed by Radio Moscow in July 1957, as quoted ibid., p. 265. See the text of the ‘secret speech’, e.g., in : Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin’s Ghost, op. cit. (n. 18). [3 0 8 ]

Richard Lowenthal linked with the evolution of general Soviet policy, Khrushchev had during the preceding year emerged as an innovator in many fields, both inside the Soviet Union and in its relations with the Eastern European states. That impulse for innovation had naturally encoun­ tered a great deal of resistance, among bureaucrats as well as among senior leaders reared in the Stalinist tradition, who often used the ‘proven value’ of that tradition as a supposedly conclusive argument, as Molotov seems to have done. Thus Khrushchev may have come to the conclusion that this inertial resistance against innovation could only be broken if the myth of Stalin’s infallibility was destroyed. Yet while Khrushchev’s destalinization on one side did deprive bureau­ cratic resistance of its argument, on the other it potentially streng­ thened it by giving the bureaucrats increased personal security. Though Khrushchev had given at this first party congress since Sta­ lin’s death a major public report on policy in the name of the Central Committee, quite apart from the later ‘secret speech’ on Stalin’s crimes, and though provincial party leaders beholden to him had for some time been speaking of ‘the Central Committee under the leadership of Khrushchev’, his personal primacy was not yet formally sanctioned. In fact, since the plenum of July 1955, which saw his political victory over Molotov soon after that over Malenkov, the official list of mem­ bers of the party presidium had become alphabetical, no longer show­ ing a visible Number One. That list, in which government members, still including both Malenkov and Molotov, held a substantial ma­ jority over the members of the party secretariat, was confirmed with­ out change at the twentieth congress. The only changes in Khrush­ chev’s favour had taken place at a somewhat lower level, in additional elections of presidium candidates and of members of the secretariat, and in the election of more provincial party secretaries to the Central Committee. All the elections, moreover, had been unanimous, on the basis of lists negotiated before the congress in the outgoing, and now again incoming, party presidium. In short, the heads of the govern­ ment bureaucracy, by being entrenched in the party presidium in strength, were still in an apparent position to more than balance the representatives of the party machine and Khrushchev as its exponent.49 In this situation, the post-destalinization upheavals in Poland and Hungary of the autumn of 1956 were bound to cause at least a temporary weakening of Khrushchev’s position. Not only did they seem to confirm the warnings of Molotov (whom Khrushchev had 49

See Conquest, op. cit. (n. 26), p. 287; App. I, p. 398. [3 0 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After actually to take along to his talks in Warsaw). But also the sudden need to aid the economies of both countries to recover from the crises upset Soviet economic plans, which had anyhow been over-ambitious. By November Molotov was given the Ministry of State Control with considerable powers to intervene in various sectors of the govern­ ment. By December a Central Committee plenum severely criticized planning errors, and entrusted revision of the plans to a ‘State Eco­ nomic Commission’ of senior economic administrators. But by the time of the next plenum in February 1957, Khrushchev had apparently succeeded in recovering a majority by mobilizing his loyal provincial secretaries against the economic bureaucracy. This plenum then re­ sumed his ambitious slogan for overtaking, ‘in a historically brief period’, the most developed capitalist countries in output per capita. It severely criticized the ministerial administration of the economy as inefficient and paralysing the initiative of managers and technicians on the spot by its remote control. The plenum proposed to replace the branch ministries through an ‘operative direction by economic regions’ subordinate only to ‘countrywide centralized planning*. It also cen­ sured the methods of Molotov’s state control apparatus and demanded its ‘radical reconstruction’. The Party Presidium and the Council of Ministers were to submit proposals for the wholesale economic reor­ ganization to the supreme Soviet.50 It was this proposal for breaking up the structure of the economic bureaucracy, replacing all or most of the branch ministries by re­ gional bodies that came to be called ‘Councils for National Economy’ under strong influence of the regional party organs, that was to cause the closest approach to a pre-Stalin ‘factional struggle’ in the course of the post-Stalin ‘succession crisis’. When Khrushchev put forward his full plan for the reorganization at the end of March, it was published by the Party Presidium and the Council of Ministers not as their joint proposal to the Supreme Soviet, but as ‘Comrade Khrushchev’s Theses for Discussion’ ; and during the subsequent press debate only one close associate among all the presidium members publicly supported them — all the others kept silent.51 In the Supreme Soviet session in May, when Khrushchev’s ‘draft law’ was passed, not a single member of the presidium spoke. In fact, a majority of presid­ ium members — all from the government side except for the can­ didate Shepilov, an ideologist and former protégé of Khrushchev — had by now got together. The grouping had taken shape on the 50 51

Ibid., pp. 295-298. Ibid., pp. 298, 301. [3 1 0 ]

Richard Lowenthal apparent initiative of die-hard Stalinists like Molotov and Kaganov­ ich and resentful victims of Khrushchev’s rise like Malenkov on one side, with top economic administrators like Pervukhin and Saburov on the other. They united under the slogan that Khrushchev must be overthrown before his impulsive foreign and economic policies ruined the country, or before he established a personal dictatorship. Both the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Bulganin, and the head of state, Voroshilov, eventually joined their ranks. On 18 June, when a meeting of the presidium opened, the hour to strike had evidently arrived. But Khrushchev and his minority of supporters insisted on a decision by a full meeting of the Central Committee ; and by the time its members, or most of them, assembled in an improvised plenum on 22 June, the ‘factionists’ found themselves isolated.52 The question arises how Khrushchev and his followers managed to prevent a public presidium decision against them before the full Central Committee met. It is true that such a major upheaval would hardly appear ‘legitimate’ in the Leninist sense without approval by a plenum ; but in the four years of struggles for primacy following Stalin’s death, procedural rules had not yet gained a decisive com­ pelling force by themselves. However, it seems to be established that the speedy calling of a plenum was made possible by the armed forces, then led by Marshal Zhukov (who after the war had been deprived of his commanding position by Stalin and had been reinstated in the course of destalinization), making planes available for gathering in the Central Committee members. If that is true, it seems equally plausible that the attitude of the anti-Stalinist army leaders also prevented the anti-Khrushchev majority in the presidium from forc­ ing a publication of their decision before a plenary meeting.53 At any rate, that meeting became a turning-point : the ‘plotters’ were on the defensive from the start, and most of them tried to make excuses for their conduct. When the plenum ended on 29 June, it had voted a condemnation of the ‘anti-party group’ of Molotov, Ma­ lenkov, Kaganovich and Shepilov, depriving them for factional activ­ ities of their membership in the Central Committee and in its pre­ sidium or secretariat. The roles of Bulganin, Voroshilov, Pervukhin and Saburov were not disclosed at the time, and only Saburov among them was not reelected to the presidium. At the same time, the presidium was broadened to fifteen full members and nine candi52 53

Ibid., pp. 311-319, App. VII, pp. 458-463. Ibid., p. 312. [3 1 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After dates, and the new members turned out to be clear supporters of Khrushchev from the secretariat and the recently created party bureau for the Russian Federal Republic -— plus Marshal Zhukov. The net result of the crisis was that from July 1957 not only was Khrushchev the uncontested head of the collective leadership, but the repre­ sentatives of the party machine had a dominant majority in the party presidium, with government representatives reduced to a bare remnant of three : both the primacy of the party and of its first secretary were at last clearly established.54 Yet Khrushchev and his closest associates did not yet feel that it was finally safe. Twice in the process of restoring the primacy of the party, it had been dependent on the backing of the armed forces — in the overthrow of Beria, and in defeating the inner-party coup of the ‘anti-party group’ around the old Stalinists. Such a situation was tolerable, from the viewpoint of true single-party rule, if the armed forces were firmly under the party’s control. But in the course of the ‘succession struggles’, that control had been clearly weakened, and the military had been able to make its weight felt in its own perceived interest rather than at a united party’s command. While the results so far had been satisfactory for Khrushchev and his machine, the conditions in which they had arisen were not. More, Marshal Zhukov appeared to have deliberately used the situation not only to reha­ bilitate the military victims of Stalin’s purges, which seemed unob­ jectionable, and to enhance his own wartime reputation, which was natural but gave rise to some controversy, but also to reduce the influence of the Political Administration of the Armed Forces, which was in fact a department of the Central Committee, and thus in­ crease the independence of the professional officer corps. It was this last development which Khrushchev saw as intolerable. In late October 1957, while Zhukov was on a journey abroad, some articles appeared in the military press stressing the vital need for subordination of the armed forces to party control. On the day of his return, 26 October, his replacement as Minister of War was an­ nounced. Sometime in the remaining days of October a Central Com­ mittee plenum discussed in his presence the charges that he had tried to curtail the work of party organizations in the army and developed a cult of his own personality. A number of other army leaders spoke as witnesses against him, and Zhukov admitted that some of the charges were justified. The Central Committee decided to remove him from its own ranks and a fortiori from the party presidium, and to provide 54

Ibid., App. I, p. 399. [3 1 2 ]

Richard Lowenthal him another job. There was no visible opposition and no major re­ percussions.5556 The last of the power machines to be treated as in­ dependent from the party in Stalin’s time — the last independent pillar of the regime — had lost that role : the control of all levers of power by the ruling party, the basic institutional characteristic of totalitarianism, had been fully restored. Yet Khrushchev, who had achieved that restoration, also believed in using it to continue the other, dynamic characteristic of totalitarian­ ism — the revolutionary transformation of society in the direction of the utopian goal, even if by less violent methods than had been used in Stalin’s time. By now some of the most grievous social and economic injustices had been remedied, as was done by his wage reforms and social security policies over the years, and above all by his 1958 agri­ cultural reforms, winding up the machine tractor stations, selling their equipment to the kolkhoz peasants largely on credit, and unifying the buying prices for their produce. Party rule had been consolidated again — and now Khrushchev started his final attempt at such a revo­ lutionary transformation. We have described earlier how he gave, at the twenty-first congress in 1959, the signal for new structural trans­ formations of agriculture by the creation of ‘agrotowns’ and the drastic reduction of the peasants’ private plots and herds ; how the attempts failed ; and how, in the new party programme he got ap­ proved by the twenty-second congress in 1961, he accepted the lesson that, at the level of economic development achieved in Russia, the revolutionary process had exhausted itself. He then announced that the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ had come to an end in the first country ruled by it. In other words, the restored institutions had sur­ vived the revolutionary process. But this was bound to create new problems of ideological legitimation for the party and of leadership style for Khrushchev himself. It was not enough for the new programme to announce that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States in per capita output by 1970 and enter the age of communist abundance by 1980 ; Khrushchev had also to find a credible new role for the party in this post-revolutionary age of promise. Thus in 1962 he tried to divide the party organization from top to bottom into separate industrial and agricultural sectors, charged with the direct guidance of the economic administration.58 But the attempt proved unpopular not only with the economic ad­ ministrators thus exposed to increased party interference in their work, 55 56

Ibid., pp. 339-341. Schapiro, CPSU, op. cit. (n. 13), pp. 572, 576. [3 1 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After but also with the regional and local party secretaries who hitherto had been Khrushchev’s chief supporters. They now found themselves burdened with new responsibilities for which few of them felt com­ petent. At the same time, discontent was increasing in the political and bureaucratic élites at his general tendency to impose improvised decisions in military and foreign policy also. The Cuban missile ad­ venture and the tactical conduct, though not the substance, of the conflict with communist China were the most spectacular examples. The point was that the man who had done most to restore the party’s primacy after a long period of despotism found it extremely difficult to comply with binding procedural rules. It was not that he nursed secret hopes of becoming a despot himself : he had seen too much of Stalin’s methods, and his horror of them, if expressed belatedly, was sincere. But he remained the type of a dynamic leader of the bygone revolutionary age, always believing in impending great changes, always ready to improvise new initiatives to exploit apparent new chances — and often too impatient to wait to obtain institutional authority. Again and again he would take major decisions without adequate consultation with his colleagues, or seek to overcome their hesitation by appealing to ‘public opinion’ over the heads of the leading cadres. In the end, his personality became the last obstacle to completing the post-revolutionary institutionalization of the Soviet system he had done so much to make possible — and the system he had created rejected him : first the party presidium, which he had packed with his trusted supporters after its rebellion of 1957, and then the Central Committee plenum, which had backed him against that rebellion, voted in October 1964 to depose him in order to assure procedural regularity and protect the party and the country against his ‘harebrained schemes’.57 Brezhnev’s Stabilization of Post-revolutionary Institutions There was no ‘succession crisis’, indeed no institutional crisis at all, after the overthrow of Khrushchev. On the contrary, the unprece­ dented change of leadership by a vote of the Central Committee was the prelude to a new period of unprecedented institutional stability. The new Politburo, with Brezhnev as General Secretary and Kosygin as chairman of the Council of Ministers, both of whom Khrushchev himself had selected as his right-hand men, was to rule continuously for eighteen years. There were to be occasional individual changes in its composition, many of them forced by biological necessity but a few 57

Ibid., pp. 577-578. [3 1 4 ]

Richard Lowenthal also by substantial disagreements, but without a single political crisis caused by anything approaching factional groupings. The accepted end of the revolutionary process had left the members of the party élite without ideological motives for defying the majority. The cohe­ rent institutions left by Khrushchev made it easy for them to add the one thing to which he had been an obstacle : clearly established procedures of decision-making, which in advanced industrial countries are one essential condition -— though not by themselves a sufficient condition — for the legitimacy of a regime. The resulting post-totalitarian system may be described as an authori­ tarian bureaucratic oligarchy — not in the sense that there is no clearly recognizable leader, but that his powers over the other mem­ bers of the Politburo are not markedly greater than those of a Western Prime Minister over the members of his cabinet. The essential dif­ ference from a Western democratic system lies in the relationship between the ruling group as a whole and the people who have no means to remove it, not in the relationship between the leader and the ruling group. Against the background of the factional struggles after Lenin, of Stalin’s despotism and of the institutional rivalries after Stalin, the advantages of such a system of oligarchic stability appear considerable. But there is a price for them which the people of the Soviet Union, and indeed of the Soviet empire, have had to pay and are still paying : the price of excessive bureaucratic conservatism, of a stupendous lack of innovation and initiative (except in the military field), of an increasingly absurd over-ageing of leading and middle cadres. Those features appear today as the ironic nemesis of the final overcoming of decades of institutionalized revolution. But they do not detract from the basic lesson of the Brezhnev regime — the proof that post-totalitarian one-party rule can work. A Premature End of the Chinese Revolution? In China after Mao’s death in September 1976, the central immediate problem was not the primacy of the party as such, as in Russia after Stalin. The secret police had not been the decisive factor during the Cultural Revolution, the army had lost, the taste for playing an in­ dependent political role after the fall of Lin Biao, and the reorganized party, however deeply divided in itself, had recovered a measure of legitimacy thanks to the patient work of Zhou En-lai. The critical problem was precisely the deep ‘factional’ conflict still dividing the party itself between the self-declared heirs of the utopian revolutionary policies of the late Mao, headed by his widow Jian Qing and the Shanghai party leaders, and the modernizing followers of the late [3 1 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Zhou now headed by Deng Xiao-ping — a conflict closer in its bitter­ ness to latent, and not always latent, civil war than to ordinary factionalism. The first crucial move was made by a man who seemed to be in a balancing position. Hua Guofeng, a former security chief, had always been loyal to Mao and had become head of government after Zhou’s death, when he took part in the second banishment of Deng Xiao­ ping, but had never played a major role as an ideologue of the Cul­ tural Revolution. He now announced that Mao had designated him as his successor, and that he had, with the approval of the Politburo (and with the visible support of Mao’s personal bodyguard and of the garrison of the capital), arrested Jian Qing and her Shanghai friends, now named the ‘Gang of Four’ for ‘plotting to seize power’.58 Despite a later show trial, we have little evidence whether such a ‘plot’ existed ; but there is ample political evidence that this group was aggressively and ruthlessly out for power, and that their victory would have meant a full-scale resumption of the Cultural Revolution with all its horrors. At the same time, Hua, with little authority of his own beyond his alleged designation by Mao, was eager to present himself as the most faithful Maoist of them all, while wary of endangering his new posi­ tion by actually restarting a revolutionary upheaval. Thus he pro­ pagated the doctrine that all Mao’s policies and instructions must be accepted as valid forever, and prevented any fundamental criticism of Mao’s policy during the Cultural Revolution, as distinct from par­ ticular excesses and individual crimes attributed to the ‘Gang of Four’, for the first two years after Mao’s death. Hua also tried to oppose the second rehabilitation of Deng Xiao-ping, which nevertheless was decided on by a Central Committee plenum in July 1977 ;59 and when addressing the party congress in August — with Deng already pre­ sent — he still repeated the Maoist slogans of ‘continuing the revo­ lution under the dictatorship of the proletariat’ and ‘grasping class struggle as the key link’.60 But the ruling party of a great country could not stagnate in this 58

59 60

Hua’s seizure of power and the arrest of the ‘Gang of Four’ took place on 6 October. They were first published by the China News Agency on 22 October in the form of reporting a Peking mass demonstration celebrating Hua’s appointment as chairman of the Central Committee of the party and its military commission, and the victory in foiling the plot of the Four. Communiqué in New China News Agency, 23 July 1977. Text of Hua’s report of 12 August in New China News Agency, 23 August 1977. [3 1 6 ]

Richard. Lowenthal kind of political and ideological limbo for long. As a result of the official campaign against the real militant Maoists, the ‘Gang of Four’, and of Deng’s return, Hua’s balancing position became increasingly dif­ ficult : Deng had started opposing the slogans about the unchanging infallibility of Mao’s instructions with a campaign for ‘seeking truth from facts’, as Mao himself had taught at an earlier time. By the time of a Central Committee plenum in December 1978, which is now officially regarded as an even more important turning-point for the party than the downfall of the ‘Gang of Four’, the slogan of ‘grasping class struggle as the key link’ was rejected as absurd in the absence of hostile classes ; it was replaced by recognizing the country’s modernization as the primary task. At the same time, the slogan of ‘seeking truth from facts’ was officially endorsed, giving the signal for an increasingly open criticism of the policies of the late Mao as pursued during the Cultural Revolution and in part also during the Great Leap Forward.61 From now on, Deng, recognized as the spiritual heir of the generally revered Zhou En-lai, came increasingly to the fore as the effective political leader of the party, without aspiring to become its nominal leader. Thinly hidden in second-rank positions in party, army and government, he inspired a number of somewhat younger cadres who gradually moved into the leading positions, culminating in the re­ placement of Hua Guofeng first as government leader and then, in June 1981, as party chairman by nominees of Deng. The Central Committee plenum of June 1981 replaced Hua Guofeng by Deng’s nominee Hu Yaobang, while allowing Hua to remain one of the party’s ‘deputy chairmen’ (the last on the list). This session was, however, still more remarkable for the adoption of a long, and long prepared, critical resolution on the history of the Chinese Com­ munist Party since the founding of the Chinese People’s Republic, a carefully balanced document of partial ‘de-Maoization’.62 The docu­ ment fully recognized Mao’s earlier merits in theory and practice as decisive both for the communists’ road to power and for the subse­ quent building of the foundations of a socialist order. But it criticized some of his policies during the Great Leap Forward as mistaken, and his concept of the Cultural Revolution as having been altogether wrong and having caused grave damage to the country and to the 61 62

Communiqué in New China News Agency, 24 December, and Beijing Review, 29 December 1978. See the ‘Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party’ adopted by the sixth plenum of the eleventh Central Committee (27-29 June 1981), Beijing Review, 6 July 1981. [3 1 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After communist cause. Mao was held fully responsible for this overall policy, as distinct from the individual crimes of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, for which only they were accountable. The future will decide whether those decisions can be accepted as the final results of a long and bitter struggle. This is suggested both by the striking degree of ideological exhaustion noticeable in the coun­ try and in the party, and by the balance and maturity of the decisive document of 1981, the intellectual level of which considerably sur­ passes anything produced by Soviet official ‘destalinization’. It would appear that the Chinese communist regime has by now abandoned the attempt at continuing the revolutionary transformation of society in favour of a clear priority for modernization. After a more profound chaos than the Soviet Union experienced in Stalin’s times, China would seem to have combined the restoration of the party’s primacy with the abandonment of the utopian goal more quickly, and at a much lower stage of economic development, than Russia did — to have created another major post-totalitarian communist party regime on a more modest economic level. But it is just the fact that this radical change has occurred at a stage when the problems of Chinese modernization are far from finally solved that forces the observer to qualify his conclusions with a question mark of uncertainty. Indeed, the continuing tremendous difficulties of modernizing a vast country with China’s enormous population are both obvious on general grounds and visible in the early setbacks of an over-optimistic mod­ ernization policy. They are cumulated by such other problems as that of a massive generation change in a partly demoralized party with an over-aged leadership, that of widespread scepticism in the population due to the experience of the last sixteen years, and that of China’s serious shortage both of capital and of qualified technical, scientific and managerial cadres. Given all these obstacles, the present attempt at solving China’s problems appears to this observer as both courageous and remarkably rational ; whether post-revolutionary, posttotalitarian China will succeed where Mao’s revolutionary China went to shipwreck, he cannot venture to forecast. Epilogue: Beyond Totalitarianism? The stabilization of post-totalitarian and post-revolutionary institu­ tions of communist one-party rule in the Soviet Union, and the serious effort at stabilizing comparable institutions in China, raises the ques­ tions of the future of totalitarianism as defined in this paper, at any rate in its communist form. Most of the communist party regimes [3 1 8 ]

Richard Lowenthal of East Central Europe have also long ended the process of institu­ tionalized revolution, and its possible continuation for some time in Vietnam or Albania, or conceivably in Cuba, would hardly be a major political phenomenon by itself. Totalitarian regimes of the fascist or nationalist type have not existed since the collapse of national socia­ list Germany and fascist Italy as a result of World War II. The future of totalitarianism as a major feature of contemporary political his­ tory would thus seem to depend on the chances of new totalitarian movements to arise and come to power. I believe those chances to be small, at any rate concerning totalitarian movements with a com­ munist ideology. This sceptical view is not based on a new version of the harmonistic fallacy that was current in the late 1950s as the expectation of an ‘end of ideology’ — an expectation that the present author did not share at the time. Now, as then, I am acutely aware that radical dis­ sent from the values and institutions of the Western democracies is by no means approaching an end either in their own countries or in the non-Western world. It is indeed inseparable from the growing difficulty of passing on the basic values of Western civilization either to the young generations of the West or to non-Westem countries whose native civilizations have been disrupted by the Western impact, a difficulty that I am inclined to view as a long-range historical phenomenon. But it seems to me that this radical dissent from Western values is tending to take, in this final quarter of the twentieth cen­ tury, quite different directions from those it took in the second and third quarters of the century, which saw the high tide of the totali­ tarian phenomenon. As Jacob Talmon has shown, that high tide — at any rate in its com­ munist form — was based on the ideas of political messianism derived from the radical wing of the Enlightenment and developed into a full-blown secular religion, complete with its sacred history, by Karl Marx. When that secular religion was transformed into the ideology of a totalitarian party and finally of a totalitarian regime by Lenin, and spread to his followers in other countries, it retained the limitless utopian optimism of a belief that salvation on earth was possible by political means in our time. By contrast, the present post-Marxian, and indeed post-enlightened, dissent in the West develops in an ideo­ logical climate of profound pessimism, with apocalyptic visions of the impending destruction of mankind by nuclear war, by the irreme­ diable poisoning of the environment, or by hunger brought about by an unmanageable explosion of the world’s population. More generally, [3 1 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After under the impression of two world wars, of the horrors of totalitarian and despotic dictatorships, of the nuclear arms race and of the limits of economic growth, the enlightened belief in the unlimited possibilities of human reason has given way in large numbers of Western minds to a mood despairing of the rational faculties of modem man. At this point, it might be objected that the nationalist and fascist forms of pre-totalitarian and totalitarian movements were also based on a rejection of the heritage of the Enlightenment. But the mood we observe in an important part of the present young generation of the West appears to be equally far from a belief in power as from a belief in reason. Rather, it tends to find expression either in a re­ turn to religious, or frequently pseudo-religious, beliefs in transcendent sources of salvation, or in desperate attempts at a flight from society and its uncontrollable dangers, or in anarchic forms of more or less violent protest. For where there is no vision of a better social order, there is also no basis for any type of messianic movement aiming at total power, only for religious or secular ways of withdrawal from a hopeless world, or peaceful or violent forms of an apolitical Great Refusal. It seems to me impossible at the present time to predict whether that mood will last in our Western societies : much will evidently depend on the success of rational efforts to bring under control the very real world-wide dangers which have created that climate. But assuming its continuation for argument’s sake, such a climate seems unlikely to give rise to new fanatical movements aiming at totalitarian power. Rather, it would be liable to produce anarchic forms of political decay, leading eventually to the naked rule of military force without any legitimating ideology beyond the maintenance of ‘order’, as in the ‘praetorian’ forms of Caesarism in late antiquity. As such a development would appear like a fulfilment of the Spenglerian vision of the ‘Decline of the West’, and as the com­ munist world appears to have arrived at a somewhat different but hardly less marked state of ideological exhaustion, the future of totali­ tarianism would seem to depend on the Third World. There, a number of the new states have in their first or second generation produced nationalist single-party regimes with more or less socialist elements in their official ideology, though in most cases neither the regimes nor the ideology appear coherent and dynamic enough to deserve the label of ‘totalitarianism’. In particular, most of those regimes, even those who for a time took a pro-Soviet stand, have been unable, if not unwilling, really to follow the model of Soviet-style communism, while [3 2 0 ]

Richard Lowenthal some of the more recently created pro-Soviet regimes owe their orientation to military rather than ideological ties. What real kinship there is arose from the desire of the new élites of those countries to achieve quick modernization without a serious effort to accept Western values, with the Soviets appearing as a ready-made model for this kind of watered-down Enlightenment. But in course of time, the faith in utopian visions of Western origin in a Soviet version appears to have declined in the Third World as well, due partly to the diminishing attraction of both the Soviet and Chinese models and partly to their own often intractable difficulties of modernization. The type of movements that really may acquire increasing import­ ance in underdeveloped countries with such difficulties are those that are anti-Western without being pro-communist, because they embody a cultural resistance to the Westernizing aspects of modernization, reinforced by the initial failures of attempts to impose such moderni­ zation from above. It may be argued that the Chinese Cultural Revo­ lution, regardless of Mao’s ideological intention, drew most of the destructive energy of its early, spontaneous phase from this kind of cultural anti-Westernism. Pol Pot’s Red Khmers in Kampuchea, sup­ ported by China in their seizure of power in the 1970s, showed a similar profoundly anti-modemistic spirit in their deliberate expulsion and in part annihilation of the town population. Evidently, such movements, even though they may use the Marxist-Leninist label, have less in common with the heritage of the Enlightenment and of Marx, even in its totalitarian Leninist version, than with the extreme mani­ festations of the Islamic fundamentalist revival, such as Khomeini’s anti-modernist revolution and his terrorist regime in Iran, or Ghaddafi’s Libyan regime with its deliberate promotion of international terrorism as a means of weakening the West. The future of such movements and regimes may well depend on whether, once in power, they remain as consistent in their antimodernism as in their anti-Westernism. Clearly, they are far from refusing to acquire modern weapons and instruct their followers in their use ; and as the modernization of military organization has generally proved the easiest first step in underdeveloped countries, they may eventually be ready to extend it to other fields, dragging their traditionalist followers along by the ties of their common enmity against the West. There are parallels here even to the evolution of Hitler’s ‘National Socialism’, which in its early propaganda included such features as the glorification of traditional customs, as well as of small-scale enterprise and ‘blood and soil’, but on its road to power and afterwards was in no way inhibited in its cooperation with [3 2 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After modern large-scale industry. In that sense, it is conceivable that a variant of fascism linked with religious traditionalism may still have more of a future in parts of the underdeveloped world than other forms of totalitarianism seem to have anywhere. On the whole, then, it would appear that the basic ideological prob­ lems of the final part of our century are no longer linked with the remote heritage of the Western Enlightenment. They are rather asso­ ciated with a growing failure of Western civilization in transmitting its basic values and attitudes, which have created the modem world, either to its own young generation or to non-Western countries. Just because of the Western origin of ‘totalitarian democracy’ traced by Jacob Talmon, those problems of the declining impact of Western civilization tend to lead us beyond totalitarianism. They are part of a new chapter of history.

Totalitarianism and After in Communist Party Regimes Comments on Richard Lowenthal’s Paper by H A R O L D Z. S C H I F F R I N The Truman Institute, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

I n h i s v e r y s t i m u l a t i n g and thought-provoking paper Professor

Lowenthal has injected a strong dose of the optimistic, nineteenthcentury faith in the forces of progress. At the same time his prognosis for the fate of totalitarian societies conforms, to a certain extent, to the Marxist interpretation of history, inasmuch as he believes that the economic basis of society will inevitably impinge upon and trans­ form the political superstructure. Let me say at the outset, that, of course, like everyone else, I share Professor LowenthaPs hope that totalitarianism is (or was) a fleeting, transient episode in the history of mankind. But if I share his hope, I am afraid that I cannot completely share his optimism. First of all, let me briefly summarize his thesis, as I understand it. He points out that indigenous communist movements have attained power only in underdeveloped countries. This of course is a major negation of a basic Marxist assumption. He then asserts that this deviation from the Marxist projection and timetable has afflicted communist regimes with two mutually contradictory goals. On the one hand, these regimes aspire to the Marxist, utopian goal of a completely unified, classless society. And on the other, they are committed to achieving developmental, modernizing goals. It is the contradiction between these goals that provides the instability that has characterized totalitarian communist systems. And to a great extent the history of the Soviet Union and of the People’s Republic of China would seem to substantiate this thesis. Furthermore, Professor LowenthaPs analysis has the advantage of correcting previously held conceptions of totalitarian societies. Instead of viewing these societies as frozen and immobilized in their totalitarian strait-jackets, he has offered an explanation for their obviously un­ stable and changing character. In addition, he has focused, very con[3 2 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After vincingly, on an inherent source of instability — the incompatibility of goals which history has imposed upon these societies. But, granted that the dynamic contradiction exists, I am not convinced that its resolution will take the form that Professor Lowenthal implies. Using the cases of communist Russia and communist China, he implies that there is a long-term trend towards the victory of modernization over utopianism. In the case of Russia, he argues that the attainment or near attainment of a modern level of industrial development will extinguish revolution­ ary, utopian impulses. And in the case of China, the failure to achieve modernization will have the same result. And a third possibility is that a personal despotism or the attempt to create such a despotism will paralyse or destroy one-party rule. In other words, no matter what happens — whether modernization succeeds or fails — the attenuation of rigid totalitarianism is inevitable. In its place will be a milder form of authoritarianism, in which the totalitarian institutional framework will be gradually softened through the spontaneous, evolutionary influence of the economic and social basis of society. As a general comment, I would say that the proposition that economic forces ineluctably influence the political superstructure in a continuous and secular fashion has yet to be confirmed. On the contrary, one could argue that despite the changes which have taken place in the Soviet Union since the death of Stalin, and in China since the death of Mao, the totalitarian institutional framework exhibits remarkable durability. In the case of the Soviet Union, if Professor LowenthaPs hypothesis is correct, then the Brezhnev era should have been clearly less total­ itarian than the preceding Khrushchev period. As I understand it, this is a highly debatable point, and there are a number of Soviet experts and émigrés who would argue that, despite having given Soviet society more material benefits and a less volatile political style, the Brezhnev regime nevertheless retreated from the relative political liber­ alization of the Khrushchev period. Certainly, the entire post-Stalin period cannot be characterized by an irreversible trend towards pluralism and the institutionalization of limits to one-party dictatorship. In the case of China, Professor Lowenthal is less optimistic. True, since the death of Mao and the defeat of the Gang of Four, the new leadership — which incidentally is not a new generation of technocrats but an old generation of Mao’s former close comrades — has chosen a more rational course for economic development. Discarding Mao’s faith in voluntarism, present leaders explicitly state the need for con[3 2 4 ]

Harold Z. Schiffrin forming to the ‘objective laws of economics’. And discarding Mao’s insistence upon egalitarianism, they realize that material incentives and inevitable disparities in income are prerequisites for economic growth. Mao wanted growth and equality. They are prepared to sacrifice equality for the sake of growth. But what if there is insufficient growth? The Chinese economy is not yet out of the woods, and if the general level of subsistence does not rise, there could be a large constituency — poor peasants and unskilled workers, and millions of former Red Guards-—demanding a return to the mass mobilization tactics and the communitarian, egalitarian vision of the Maoist era. True, the present regime has cancelled and reversed the persecution of intellectuals and scientists and is attempting to co-opt them in a united front. On the other hand, it is quite obvious that the single­ party regime has no intention of removing all barriers to freedom of expression and the right to criticize. There have been previous periods in which the barriers have been let down, only to be set up again. This happened in 1957, when the ‘hundred flowers’ bloomed and suddenly wilted. And more recently, in 1978-1979, under the leadership of Deng Xiao-ping, democratic slogans plastered the walls of Peking, and then were abruptly erased. Thus, the Chinese experience has not proved that economic rationality automatically launches a continuous and irreversible trend towards greater political freedom. The Chinese regime has imposed four criteria for defining the limits of acceptable revolutionary behaviour : one must not question : 1. 2. 3. 4.

The leading role of the Communist Party. Socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat. Marxist-Leninist Mao Tse-tung thought.

Now, however ambiguous these criteria may be, they cannot be construed as a sure recipe for limiting the awesome power of single­ party rule. Nor do I think that the Russian formula for socialist legality poses a danger to monolithic party rule and all its ominous potentialities and implications. In both countries we have witnessed thaws, but the totalitarian iceberg is not continuing to melt. But if we are not convinced by Professor Lowenthal’s prognosis of unilinear political change — and I must admit that in my role as discussant I am deliberately overstating the opposite case — then what other options are there for totalitarian regimes? [3 2 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After First of all, even if we accept the primacy of economic factors, and consider them the independent variable in the totalitarian equation, why could we not assume that the ruling élites in these regimes will settle for a modest, even stagnating, economic level in order to restrain the corrosive, anti-totalitarian effects of sustained economic growth ? And, if national security interests dictate continued economic and technological advance, these regimes can purchase sophisticated techno­ logical techniques from their capitalist adversaries without opening the doors to freedom at home. They can bribe their own technocrats with dachas and other emoluments while suppressing political freedom and discarding egalitarianism. There is also the possibility that these regimes will undergo recurrent cycles of relaxation and rigidity without substantially impairing the single-party dictatorship. In discussing the pathology of totalitarian regimes, we should also not forget that single-party dictatorships, more than any other political system, are affected by the personalities of their leaders. I am not sure that, despite the harrowing experiences of the Stalinist and Maoist periods, these regimes have been sufficiently immunized from the virus of personal despotism. Even if Marxist, utopian ideology has been eroded, ultra-nationalism, fanned perhaps by actual or perceived external threats, could continue to legitimize totalitarian regimes. My final thought is that Professor Lowenthal is essentially betting on rationality in human behaviour. I hope he is right, and I wish that I could agree with him completely. But as w’e all know, in politics rationality is not always trumps.

[3 2 6 ]

PART FOUR

THE IMPACT OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY ON THE JEWISH SITUATION

Democracy and Its Negations — On Polarity in Jewish Socialism by JONATHAN FRANKEL The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

T h e l a t e J a c o b T a l m o n wrote extensively on socialists of Jewish

origin such as Rosa Luxemburg, but rarely on ‘Jewish socialism’: the Jewish socialist parties such as the Bund, Poale Zion and the myriad other movements which worked within the Jewish world and sought to make it over on socialist foundations. Nonetheless, those themes which Talmon saw as so central in the modern historical process were of dominant importance in the microcosmic political subculture of Jewish socialism. It, too, was permeated by the Promethean urge to rebel against the entire existing order, and to transfer from the gods to man the control of human destiny. And thus it, too, was doomed to display every variety of tragedy associated with total, all-embracing, human ambition : the often noble tragedy of individuals who refused to compromise their principles and were cast aside (sometimes to their death) by socio-political forces beyond their control; and the, perhaps, more terrible tragedy of those who chose to compromise on fundamental issues only to find that they had participated in building a satanic force which turned to destroy its creators. The grandiose ideological confrontations and the awesome dialectical transformations which were of such consuming interest to Talmon have inevitably pursued the Jewish socialist parties throughout their history. On the one hand, these parties had originated as an integral part of the Russian revolutionary movement, and this meant that political messianism acted as a major factor in their formation and development. But, as against this, they can also be seen as belonging predominantly to the ‘Westernizing’ stream of Russian politics. After all, the freedoms characteristic of the English-speaking world, with which Talmon so deeply identified, exerted an immense attraction on East European Jewry in general — and the Jewish socialist parties were by no means immune to this attraction. [3 2 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After The form taken by this conflict between political maximalism and political minimalism, between belief in total revolution and belief in limited revolution, varied radically according to time and place. In this paper, an attempt will be made to analyse the interaction between political contexts and political ideologies. *

‘Jewish socialism’ as defined here refers to those parties and move­ ments which, working within the Jewish world, demanded not only universal but also particularist, national, solutions to the Jewish question. This definition, therefore, excludes ‘Yiddish-speaking socialism’ : those groups which saw their political activity among Jews as required by nothing more than linguistic necessities — the need to conduct agita­ tion on behalf of the general movement (be it the Russian, Polish or American) in Yiddish. In this sense, ‘Jewish socialism’ can be said to have originated as an organized political force in the Pale of Settlement during the period 1897-1906. Four separate parties were established ; the Bund ; Poale Zion (ESDR — PZ) ; the Seimists (SERP) ; and the SS (SSRP)1— which combined in their platforms socialist demands with a Jewish national programme. These parties, in various permutations and com­ binations, took part in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 but were eliminated gradually thereafter by the Soviet regime. Many of their members and much of their programmes were absorbed into the Evsektsiia, the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party. These Jewish socialist parties survived intact, however, in inter-war Poland and Lithuania where they played an important role on the Jewish political stage. Various of their offshoots likewise remained active among the ‘emigrations’ in Palestine and the United States. Moreover, in the inter-war period, the Zionist pioneer youth produced a whole series of new organizations advocating Jewish socialism, such as the ZS,2 Ha-Shomer Ha-Za‘ir, and the Gedud Ha-‘Avoda, all of which made a major contribution to the development of the labour move­ ment in Palestine. All four parties mentioned above of the pre-1914 period eagerly sought 1

2

ESDRP— (PZ) : Evreiskaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia rabochaia partiia — po'ale zion (Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party — Poale Zion) ; SERP : Evreiskaia sotsialisticheskaia rabochaia partiia (Jewish Socialist Labour Party) ; SSRP : Sionistsko-sotsialisticheskaia rabochaia partiia (Zionist Socialist Labour Party). £.S. : Zionist Socialist Party. [3 3 0 ]

Jonathan Frankel entry into the Second International but they differed from the leading socialist parties of Russia, Germany and other major countries in the emphasis which they placed on intermediate solutions to the national question. Their political programmes can thus be conceived as three­ tiered, in distinction from the two-part structure characteristic of the classic Social Democratic platforms. First came the so-called ‘minimal programme’ which followed standard lines. Here was spelt out in detail the demand for a parliamentary republic with equal rights before the law and social welfare legislation. Second, as the distinctive addition to this minimal programme, each party presented its own national demands. Thus, the Bund sought cul­ tural-national autonomy for the Jews within the Russian Empire. The other parties likewise advocated national rights in the Diaspora but in addition were committed to the idea of establishing a Jewish ter­ ritory, in Palestine (in the case of the Poale Zion) or elsewhere (in the case of the SSRP and the Seimists). Finally, on these foundations was raised the so-called maximal programme, meaning the commitment to the full-scale socialist transformation of the world, bringing with it the abolition of economic classes, private property and national antagonisms. These aims at first sight appear to be hopelessly contradictory — so­ cialist dictatorship and democracy, nationalism and internationalism — but they were easily reconciled in theory by the concept of stage-bystage development. Capitalist democracy was a necessary and separate period of undefined duration preceding the socialist era. So long as the political situation in the Russian Empire encouraged all the forces of opposition, liberal, nationalist, and socialist alike, to form one united front against the tsarist regime, the three-tiered pro­ gramme was of great advantage. In what, to use Marxist terminology, was a straightforward anti-feudal revolution, liberalism, socialism and nationalism could, however momentarily, be seen as complementar)' rather than contradictory ideologies. After all, this perception had prevailed in Western and Central Europe during the analogous period of the 1840s and the early stages of the 1848 revolution. Thus, until October 1905, the Bund, the first party to adopt Jewish socialism, enjoyed enormous prestige and took pride in the fact that its idea of Diaspora autonomism was being universally accepted by nearly all the other movements in the Jewish political world. However, with the publication of the October Manifesto and the ter­ rible wave of pogroms which immediately followed, fissures began to appear in the anti-tsarist coalition, in the microcosmic Jewish world as well as in the macrocosm of Russian politics generally. The funda­ mental dilemma inherent in socialist support for the idea of Jewish [3 3 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After autonomism was thus first revealed in the early months of 1906. A coalition of the liberal and Zionist forces in the Union for the Attain­ ment of Full Rights for the Jews in Russia now united to demand the immediate organization of a Jewish National Assembly. Only such an assembly, it was argued, could defend the fundamental national in­ terests of Russian Jewry in the new era of constitutional politics. Logically, the Bund could have been expected to support this move, for it had pioneered the entire concept of autonomism and the demo­ cratization of Jewish self-government. However, in reality, it saw in this demand — of which V. (Z.) Jabotinsky was the most eloquent cham­ pion — nothing less than a political booby trap. Autonomism as a general theory could be used to provide Jewish socialism with its own separate ideological identity, to mark it off from Iskra and the PSD (Polish Socialist Democratic Party), and to mobilize mass support. But to hold elections could well mean to expose the revolutionary left as a minority group in the Jewish world and thereby undermine its claim to hegemony during the revolution. In an article of January 1906, a Bundist spokesman explained this line of thinking with an almost brutal frankness : Each class has its own political programme__ The Jewish pro­ letariat does not have to go to your Seim in order to gain a polit­ ical Torah ; it has already received one from Karl Marx and his followers. [Moreover, the Jewish proletariat] forms, after all, a minority in the Jewish people — true, an important and active minority but still a minority. The Bund, a revolutionary Marxist party, would not permit itself to accept a diktat from the Jewish bourgeoisie in such an assembly and so why ‘go there in the first place ?’3 What all this meant in practical terms was that at least throughout the period of the revolution the Bund — and the other Jewish socialist parties, for that matter — saw themselves essentially as part of the general socialist camp. Their primary loyalty was to the victory of the revolution, and the reordering of Jewish life from within had to take second place. This passing episode of 1906 (the Jewish National Assembly in fact never met) can be seen as the first example of what was to emerge as a regular pattern. The Bundist immigrants to the United States, organized in the Jewish Socialist Federation, bitterly opposed the or­ ganization of an American Jewish Congress during World War I even 3

'Der yidisher seym’. Der veker, No. 1 2 (8 January 1906), pp. 1-2. [3 3 2 ]

Jonathan Frankel though they did eventually send a nominal delegation to the Congress when it finally met in December 1918. (In this case, however, in con­ trast to 1906, the Poale Zion championed the idea of the Congress.) When Jewish autonomy was partially established in the independent Ukraine in late 1917 and 1918 similar pressures exerted themselves. Members of the Jewish socialist parties (M. Zilberfarb, A. Revutsky) accepted the post of Minister for Jewish Affairs as nominees of the Ukrainian socialist governments. In turn, the Zionist and orthodox religious movements denounced these appointments as essentially anti­ democratic, because, according to autonomist theory, the representatives of the Jewish people should be elected by that people. Eventually, in November 1918, a provisional Jewish parliament, elected on an indirect basis, did assemble in Kiev and was, indeed, dominated by the Zionist delegation. The relationship between this provisional parliament and the newly appointed Minister of Jewish Affairs, Re­ vutsky— a socialist and a member of the Poale Zion — was highly strained throughout. And all the socialist delegates took the first con­ venient opportunity to leave the provisional parliament never to return. This entire experience was summed in the Bundist newspaper in these terms : [All that] national autonomy [has brought with it] . . . are con­ stant conflicts with the Zionists. .. a deepening of the abyss be­ tween the two cultures — the Hebrew and the democratic. Our friends have been Russian and Ukrainian socialists. From the point of view of both pedagogy and psychology they have been much closer to us than the Jewish majority in the kehillot.4 The ambiguous relationship to autonomism within the Jewish world was matched by the similar relationship to democracy at the level of general politics. As was suggested above, there were deep wells of sympathy and identification with Western liberalism in the Russian Jewish mind. Inevitably, the contrast was made between the pogroms, the numeras clausus and the Pale of Settlement, characteristic of the autocracy, and the equality of rights and the economic opportunities made available to the Jews in the parliamentary democracies. It was often noted, for example, what a huge percentage of the Menshevik faction was made up of Jews. Despite this, during the 1905 revolution the Bund, the Poale Zion and the SSRP all adopted political positions much closer to those of the 4

K-r [Yekhezkl Kantor], 'Di yidishe avtonomye>, Folkstsaytung, No. 24/285 (15 March 1919), p. 2. [3 3 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Bolsheviks than to those of the Mensheviks. They solidly proclaimed a boycott of the election to the First Duma ; pressed for the pursuit of violent revolution even after the October Manifesto and the December uprising in Moscow ; and scorned all cooperation with liberal, ‘bour­ geois’, forces. The profound hatred for the autocracy and mounting faith in the limitless possibilities of revolution combined to brush aside all patience with half measures. Proletarian hegemony — or even dictatorship — became the rallying cry. In a famous series of articles published late in 1905, Dubnov, a supporter of the liberal Kadet Party, denounced the camp of Jewish socialism which declares its pretensions to be the representative of our national interests... but the alienation of these Marxist fanatics was re­ vealed in tragic form during the recent events. .. they are pro­ foundly convinced that the Russian people are called upon to carry through a revolution of the highest order which will enable it in one fell swoop to leap all historical barriers, even a democratic constitution, directly to a ‘people’s government’ . . . or even a little further — to social revolution---- How has this impractical Rus­ sian nationalism seized hold of you, gentlemen, the Jewish Social Democrats. . . ?5 During the 1917 revolution (as we shall discuss below) the pendulum swung very far in the other direction, towards political moderation. But a process in many ways analogous to that of 1905-1906 gained momentum from late in 1918. The victories of the Red Army in Russia itself combined with the news of the revolution in Germany to inspire the belief that the triumph of international socialism had become inevitable. The Jewish socialist parties — the Bund, the Poale Zion, the Fareynikte (a union of the SSRP and the Seimists) — now en­ tered a three-year period of inner crisis and fragmentation as one fraction after another declared itself communist and was speedily absorbed into the Bolshevik party. Of course, there were many other factors at work here, apart from the quasi-messianism of triumphal communism. The tribulations im­ posed by the civil war, the famines and pogroms hardly left room for the middle ground represented by Mensheviks and liberals. Nonethe­ less, there were groups and individuals who refused to accept the logic of Bolshevik inevitability, with some like Mark Liber disappearing into the prison camps and others, A. Litvak and A. Revutsky, for example, escaping to Poland or Lithuania. 5

S. Dubnov, 'Uroki strashnykh dnei’, Voskhod, Nos. 47-48 ( 1 December 1905), p. 9. [3 3 4 ]

Jonathan Frankel Across the frontier to the West, however, the pressures from almost all levels of the Bund and Poale Zion to join the onward march of world communism reached boiling point in the years 1920 and 1921. In the last resort, and despite huge defections to the Polish Communist Party (which had established its own, ‘Yiddish-speaking’, Jewish Sec­ tion), both parties retained their independence. They entered into prolonged negotiations in an effort to enter the Comintern on at least minimally acceptable terms, but by 1922 it was clear that the Moscow leadership was adamant in its refusal to grant concessions. The majority in the two parties alike was ready enough to accept the idea that the era of parliamentary democracy was now giving way to that of socialism and of ‘power to the Soviets’. The Poale Zion went even further than the Bund in this direction and actually accepted all of the famous Twenty-One Points laid down for membership of the Comin­ tern. If, nonetheless, they finally retained their independence, it was because they were faced with the humiliating demand for what amounted to unconditional ideological and organizational surrender. In order to join the Comintern, the Bund would have had to expel a large part of its veteran leadership ; the Poale Zion would have had to renounce the Palestine idea ; and in short time both parties would have had to disperse, bringing their membership into the Polish Communist Party. The extraordinary, magnetic pull exerted by Soviet Communism in the period 1919-1921 found its most dramatic expression, perhaps, in the American Jewish labour movement. In the United States, after all, there were no civil war, no famine, no invasion and no pogroms to reinforce the Leninist idea that the world was starkly polarized between socialism and counter-revolution, the Red Army and the White Guards, proletarian internationalists and anti-Semitic chauvinists. Nonetheless, a majority in the Jewish Socialist Federation (essentially Bundist in orientation) voted in 1920 to join the American Communist Party. And even in later years many prominent personalities, among them Morris Vinchevsky and Chaim Zhitlovsky who had both pioneered the concept of ‘Jewish socialism’ in the 1870s and 1880s, identified them­ selves with the cause of world communism. This development clearly reflected the inherent power immanent within the Jewish socialist movement of the millennial and messianic vision. The hope of the entire world being made over anew ; of international brotherhood in place of war between nations ; the belief that existence determines consciousness, that ‘nurture’ is all and ‘nature’ nothing ; that the new man was being forged — all served to make the beacon of communism shine the brighter and to throw the mundane advantages of the liberal system into the shade. These same factors would later [3 3 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After come into play on the left wing of the labour movement in Palestine and Israel, in the Ha-Shomer Ha-Za‘ir movement and the Mapam party. Despite, or perhaps because of, the triumph of Stalinism, the faith in the logic of the Marxist theory of history ; in the superiority of the socialist over the capitalist—imperialist order ; in the power of the economic base to determine the nature of the political super­ structure — all served to still inner doubt and deny the evidence of mere empiricism. Once again, as with the Bund and the Poale Zion in Poland in the early 1920s, only deep rooted organizational loyalties, and the refusal to abandon at least a minimal core of Jewish na­ tionalism, stood in the way of total integration with the communist movement (a path chosen by Moshe Sneh and his followers alone). The pull to the extreme left only became overwhelming in its power under very unusual circumstances. In a different political context, the pendulum could swing just as far and fast towards the other pole, that of ‘Westernizing’ parliamentarianism. In this respect, there could be no greater contrast between the stance adopted by the Jewish socialist parties in 1905 and that adopted in 1917. During the period from the February revolution until October, and indeed well beyond that date, until mid- or late 1918, the Bund, the Poale Zion and the Fareynikte (or at least the majority within those parties) threw their absolute support first to the Provisional Government and, after its overthrow, to the Constituent Assembly. Their spokesmen — Mark Liber most prominently but many others, such as Moyshe Rafes, David Zaslavsky, Kondratovich — renounced the Bolsheviks as anti-democratic, adven­ turist, Blanquist, and therefore also anti-Marxist. ‘The Bolshevik adventure,’ wrote a leading Bundist, A. Zolotarev, on 30 October 1917, ‘is drawing to its close. If not today then tomorrow the entire uprising will be liquidated__ [They are] a few adventurers who rely on the power of bayonets.’6 A few days later Rafes was talking about the probability of ‘a new, a bloody, struggle . . . this time between the socialist parties and against the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks’.7 While in 1905-1907, the overwhelming impulse was to bring down, to destroy, the tsarist autocracy, in 1917 this long-awaited dream was made reality at the very outset, in February, and the deep longing within the Russian-Je wish world for political liberty, for the freedom of expression and party organization, now became predominant. How­ ever, this mood did not survive beyond the first months of the civil 6 7

A. Zolotarev, ‘Der tof fun der bolshevistisher avantyureFolks-shtime, No. 16 (30 October 1917), p. 1. M. Rafes, ‘A sof tsum birger-krig’, ibid.. No. 20 (16 November 1917), p. 1. [3 3 6 ]

Jonathan Frankel war and the Mensheviks proved much more dogged in their resistance on principle to the Bolshevik dictatorship than did the Jewish parties. Eventually, both the objective situation of the Jewish people during the years of the civil war and the three-tiered nature of the Jewish socialist ideologies combined to break down the initial resistance to communism. After all, many members of the Jewish socialist parties long believed that much of their national programme — be it the development of a secular Yiddish culture, the establishment of Jewish farming regions or perhaps a territory — could yet be fulfilled at least partly within the Soviet Union. Throughout, critics from within (the so-called ‘internationalists’ such as Rafael Abramovich) had accused the party leaderships of going too far in their willingness to cooperate with the liberal and ‘bourgeois’ forces in Russia. They saw here a classic form of right-wing deviation, ‘opportunism’, ‘Millerandism’, defencism. Given the tension inherent in the Jewish socialist programmes, radical lurches to right or to left were hardly to be avoided. Thus, on arriving in the United States, the immigrant Bundists almost always attacked the well-established socialist newspaper of Abe Ca­ lían, Forverts, as a crass example of yellow journalism, ready to aban­ don party propaganda in order to expand readership. But many Bund­ ists were taken on to its staff in the years 1907-1914. In the 1920s it became the main bastion within the Jewish labour movement of parliamentarianism and anti-communism, a fact which provided the so­ cialist right with huge financial and organizational resources but also acted to repel many towards the extreme left. For his part, Cahan chose to describe the conflict as a new version of the classic struggle between true Marxist socialism and sheer utopianism. He also tended more and more to abandon his anti-Zionism, seeing in the General Federation of Jewish Labour in Palestine, the Histadrut, a potential ally against communism. And, of course, it is true that the Mapai labour party in Palestine from its foundation in 1930 had little time for rigid theories of Marxism and the class struggle of the proletariat. David Ben-Gurion’s call to move ‘from class to nation’ (mimciamad le‘am) was in that sense by no means anomalous. While Jewish socialism thus tended to swing violently between the poles of proletarian dictatorship and parliamentary democracy, it was not subject in the Russian Empire or Poland to similar oscillation between nationalism and internationalism. The fact that the Jews in Eastern Europe lived as an ex-territorial minority, highly vulnerable to pogroms and massacres, constantly reinforced the attraction of the internationalist idea. There were grave doubts about the possibility of [3 3 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After brotherhood between nations — hence the readiness to advocate terri­ torialist policies — but there was no doubt about its desirability, neces­ sity even. All the Jewish socialist parties, therefore, were eager to work within the general framework of the Russian revolutionary movement. The SERP affiliated itself with the SRs, and the Bund with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (which it had done so much to found in 1898). These two Jewish parties therefore enjoyed ties with the Second International — ties which Poale Zion and the SSRP eagerly (but in vain) sought to match. The situation was very different in the United States and in Palestine. In America, with its own monolinguistic culture, the immigrant social­ ists saw it as impossible to transfer their autonomist programme, and, to that extent, they became even more internationalist than in Europe. Nonetheless, internationalism was not necessarily equated with ‘assimilationism’, and there were increasing demands for Yiddish-language schools, for the encouragement of Yiddish culture, and for socialist participation in Jewish communal organization, particularly in ad hoc organizations dedicated to the defence of Russian Jewish interests (un­ restricted immigration ; pressure against the tsarist regime). In Palestine, the reverse trend took on pronounced form from a very early stage. The Poale Zion party was founded there in 1905 and the stance it adopted until 1907 was close to the ideology developed in the same period by Ber Borochov; that is to say the fulfilment of Zionism was envisaged as the direct result of objective socio-economic processes and of the class struggle. ‘Our minimal goal’, stated Der onfang in 1907, ‘is the seizure of economic and political power here in the coun­ try . . . . Our maximal goal is the total overthrow of oppression. .. the abolition of classes---- The two goals are logically and historically linked like two steps on a ladder’.8 However, even then there were clear signs that the unique political circumstances in which the youth of the second large immigration wave into Palestine, the Second Aliya, found itself would encourage a far more nationalist orientation than was characteristic of Jewish socialism anywhere else. In fact, leaders of the Poale Zion in the years 1908-1914 increasingly tended to see socialism as a means to the attainment of national goals rather than vice versa, as demanded by ideological orthodoxy. There were, at least, three major factors involved here. First, the small group of young men and women who constituted Poale Zion in Palestine in the main preferred to put a voluntarist rather than 8

*Undzere o y f g a b nDer onfang. No. 1 (27 June 1907), p. 2. [3 3 8 ]

Jonathan Frankel determinist gloss on the Marxist theory of Zionism. True, there were those in the movement who argued that as long-term socio-economic forces — capitalist development and mass immigration — would even­ tually produce a clear Jewish majority in Palestine, it would be logical to organize the labour movement on internationalist lines from the start. That is to say, the party should unite Jewish and Arab workers in homogeneous trade unions and political organizations. But the prevailing interpretation was radically different. If the class­ conscious socialist Jewish workers were to have their own organization ready in time they would be ideally poised to play a decisive role (as a national vanguard) in the anti-feudal revolution in the Ottoman Empire and Palestine, a revolution which was confidently expected even before the coup of the Young Turks in 1908. Following the clash with the Turkish soldiers in the Hotel Spektor in Jaffa in March 1908 Yizhaq Ben-Zvi could thus write that we have always anticipated as inevitable a conflict between the incoming Jews, on the one hand, and the Turkish regime, on the other. We have never fooled ourselves into thinking that the Jewish forces in Palestine could grow through a process that is always calm and slow__ The process is bound to involve those long-term revolutionary factors that solve the problems of the people b y ... blood and iron.9 A second factor which encouraged demonstrative nationalism among the young immigrants was their determination to cure what they regarded as the mortal disease afflicting the old-time colonists and colonies, established in the 1880s and 1890s. The Second Aliya diag­ nosed this disease as excessive dependence on philanthropic aid from abroad, on cheap Arab labour and Arab guards, and on the corrupt Ottoman authorities. In rejecting this entire way of life, they de­ manded that the Jewish settlements act as the vanguard of the Zion­ ist enterprise, as the embryo of the future Jewish state. The young Jewish workers, thus, insisted on raising the national flag on public occasions regardless of possible violent retribution by the Turkish administration, and they reacted with fury when the veteran settlers responded by tearing the flag down. A.D. Gordon termed such in­ cidents an attempt ‘to extinguish the last spark of the Rebirth’,10 9 10

Avner [Yi?haq Ben-Zvi], ’Der yafeer lektsyon’. Der yidisher arbeter [Galicia], Nos. 12-13 (14 April 1908), p. 3. A.D. Gordon, “Al dvar mosro ha-tov shel ha-adon Dizenhof’, Ha-£vi, No. 14 (27 October 1908). [3 3 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After and the Poale Zion paper condemned them as ‘acts committed here. . . by our own people, the Jewish people, which makes the blood freeze in one’s veins’.11 The efforts to produce a Jewish working class to replace Arab labour in the colonies inevitably reinforced the same strong drift towards an outspoken nationalist position. Finally, the tradition of the armed self-defence unit which the youth of the Second Aliya brought with them from Russia in the period of the pogroms, 1903-1906, undoubtedly acted as a major formative influence on the Jewish labour movement in Palestine. As early as 1907, members of the Poale Zion, including Ben-Zvi, established the clandestine paramilitary Bar Giora group which took as its slogan the phrase, Tn blood and fire Judaea fell, in blood and fire Judaea shall rise’. (Taken from a poem by Ya‘aqov Cohen, this slogan had been employed in a Poale Zion pamphlet in Russia in early 1905.) The successor organization of Bar Giora, Ha-Shomer, was similarly associated with the Poale Zion movement although not under party control. It, too, saw itself potentially as an armed vanguard of antiTurkish and Jewish national revolt. It is paradoxical, of course, that the Poale Zion, with its socialist and Marxist orientation, tended from the start to be more militantly nationalist in many ways than its rival, Ha-Po‘el Ha-Za‘ir (which defined itself as an integral part of the Zionist movement without any ties to socialism, still less with the Second International). But the paradox can, in fact, be readily explained by the greater political activism, revolutionary spirit, and readiness to use armed force charac­ teristic of Russian socialism. And, naturally enough, those members of Poale Zion who demanded a more internationalist line rarely stayed long in Palestine to argue their point. Thus, the new man of socialist dreams, as forged in the school of such veteran pioneers of the Palestine Poale Zion as Yisrael Shohat and Yizhaq Tabenkin, would seek to ‘conquer’ land and labour not only with the hoe but also with the gun. In conclusion, the following points can be made. Jewish socialism made a decisive contribution to modem Jewish history in that it proved able to involve (as general Zionism, for example, did not) important sections of the youth and the working class in active po­ litical life. The form of action — revolutionary and underground organization, trade unionism, disciplined party politics, armed selfdefence, agricultural pioneering — differed radically from the modes of action established previously in the Jewish world. The Jewish 11

r ‘Al ha-pereq’y Ha-ahdut, No. 1 (July-August 1910), p. 28. [3 4 0 ]

Jonathan Frankel socialist parties developed elaborate ideologies to map out the transi­ tion from the present world of darkness to the future world of light. However, rapidly-changing realities made a mockery of these blue­ prints, and every group, and indeed every individual, had to decide whether to move together with the prevailing oscillation of the given time or place or to resist the pressures and perhaps be cast on the ‘rubbish heap of history’. Thus it was that the enormous energies tapped and mobilized by Jewish socialism — as by Russian socialism generally — could so easily end in the dialectical negation of the original multi-tiered programmes and be diverted to the single-minded attainment of monistic but practical goals. Depending on the particular socio-po­ litical context, liberty was sacrificed for dictatorship ; internationalism for nationalism ; radical innovation for bureaucratization.

[3 4 1 ]

Zionism and Political Messianism by

ISRAEL K O L A T T The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

I.

Political Messianism in Erez Israel of the 1930s

of ‘totalitarian democracy’ and ‘political messianism’ originated in Jacob Talmon’s mind in the late 1930s against the back­ ground of the Moscow trials and the study of the French Revolution. They were formulated to explain the morphology of revolutions, and became a key concept in the elucidation of modem history and the destiny of man. Overtly, these ideas had nothing to do with Zionism and the Palestinian reality. It often puzzled me how a young man who lived here during the stormy years of the late 1930s had been absorb­ ed by the European upheavals and their historical roots. But he who follows historical thought in Jewish literature and studies closely will find an interaction between the great European revolutions and Jew­ ish historical thought. Chaim Hazaz, who personally experienced the Russian Revolution, interpreted the messianic movement in seven­ teenth-century Judaism in the light of the antinomies and anomies of the revolution in Russia of his time ; Gershom Scholem, who chose the path of Judaism and Judaic studies, devoted himself to the study of explosive phenomena in the Jewish spirit and Jewish life. Was Talmon influenced by the experience of Jewish messianism and Zionism when he turned to the explanation of the modem movements ? There can hardly be found any evidence for such a suggestion : the ‘tyranny of philosophy’ was far from Zionism, which drew its inspira­ tion from beliefs, emotions, and historical experience. But Zionist life in the 1930s provided an emotional background for the encounter of redemptive ideas and their dialectics. This can be demonstrated by the following example : at the time of Talmon’s student years a young and promising leader of the kibbutz movement, Eliezer Liebenstein (known later as Livneh), delivered a stirring speech at one of the conferences of Ha-Kibbutz Ha-me’uhad, which considered itself the most pioneering of the kibbutz movements. T he ideas

[3 4 2 ]

Israel Kolatt Livneh was a gifted man, brought up in Russia during World War I and the revolution ; he went to Palestine in the early 1920s to become one of the young leaders of the kibbutz movement. In the late 1920s he became the ideologist who pointed out the affinity between Lenin and Leninism and the kibbutz ; in the early 1930s he spent some years in Germany as an emissary and saw the Nazis seizing power. In this speech Livneh reproached the kibbutz movement for being influenced by totalitarian regimes. The argument went as follows : the kibbutz movement considered itself not only a form of communal life but the highest stage of dedication to Jewish national and so­ cialist goals ; it had chosen the way of life most suitable for the construction of a national economy, primary accumulation of capital, and maximal absorption of immigration ; as such it claimed the mono­ poly of the education of youth and cultural influence. The aim of this education was considered as being the salvation of the Jewish indi­ vidual as well as of the Jewish nation. It developed a strict organiza­ tional and dogmatic structure which was to dictate to the individual his form of life and his set of ideas. The spontaneous growth of the young, the influence of various ideological mentors, the independent choice of autonomous cells of society, gave way to a strict central discipline. This discipline was intensified by the state of national emer­ gency. In the hall where the meeting was held a banner declared, ‘The courage of despair has not been extinguished in Israel’. And Livneh stated : ‘Courage of despair has always been with Israel and twice it brought the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem*.1 Livneh realized, of course, that all these trends cannot be consum­ mated in the absence of a state which can impose its will and material­ ize a totalitarian regime. (The further directions taken by Livneh are relevant to our subject ; he was once described as the man who went successively through all the ideologies of the twentieth century. He became an ardent socialistliberal and for a time a central figure in the labour movement, Mapai. In the 1960s he turned towards a Zionist maximalism based on a semi-messianic conception of the rise of Israel as opposed to the decline of the West.)

1

E. Liebenstein, in : Ha-histadrut ha-kelalit shel ha-ovedim be’erez yisra’el ( ‘General Federation of Labour in Israel’), Ha-Kibbutz Ha-meuhad, 11th Council, Yagur, 2-7 October 1936, Ein Harod 1937, pp. 97-114.

[343]

Totalitarian Democracy and After II.

Asset or Neurosis ?

Here on this occasion some general questions concerning the nature of the messianic idea, its relation to ‘political messianism’ and the rela­ tion of both to Zionism may be raised. Is the quest for the good society, or for the perfect state of peace, justice and learning to be attained in the future, a neurosis of the European soul or is it an asset for which the Jewish tradition may take credit ? Is this idea necessarily doomed to corruption and degeneration into totalitarian democracy ? Should it be studied only as a factor leading to the European predicament of the twentieth century ? Could Zionism have arisen in an age which did not attribute significance to the historical process ? Should Zionism be fitted into the context of the political and social movements which strove towards a revolutionary solution, or could it be conceived in the context of the demographic move­ ments of immigration and the establishment of new societies and states overseas ? Should it be studied in the context of human frus­ tration, or in that of human adventure, enterprise and achievement ? Following the contribution of Jacob Talmon to the perception of messianism, nobody can deny the ambivalence of the messianic idea, but his very preoccupation with this idea has its roots in the Jewish and Zionist world of images and symbols, and ambivalence does not mean total rejection. III.

Origins of Zionism — Reservations Towards Messianism

Despite the messianic idea latent in the Jewish intellectual and emotional tradition, despite the image of the Zionist movement as bringing about the redemption of the wretched masses and the image of Theodor Herzl as a saviour, Zionism up to World War I had very little to do either with messianism in the Jewish traditional sense or with political messianism. The reservations towards the traditional messianic idea stemmed from various sources : orthodox circles were aware of the danger of at­ tributing a divine sanction to human actions and aspirations. Sub­ sequent to the messianic movements of the seventeenth century, any human claim to mix the course of manifest history with the course of divine redemption was considered ‘blasphemy’ and was suspected of pernicious ‘false messianism’. Non-orthodox Zionism was reserved towards the messianic idea since it implied an historical passivism. These groups considered Zionism as the activization of the Jewish people in history, whereas a messianic [3 4 4 ]

Israel Kolaít content carried the stigma of unrealism and failure connected with ‘false messianism’. A more pertinent question may be the relation of Zionism towards the secular movements labelled ‘political messianism’, i.e. the move­ ments of national and social liberation which aspired to find perfect solutions to the human condition. Here it should be stated : Zionism in its early stages dissociated itself from the course of the European social movements, in both con­ text and content. It was Reform Judaism which adopted the liberal view of progress — conceiving a humanity advancing towards peace and justice, a humanity in which the Jewish messianic mission acquired a universal significance and not a national significance. Despite the well-known simile drawn by one of the precursors of Zionism, Moses Hess, between the redemption of Rome, the holy city on the Tiber, and Jerusalem, the holy city on Mount Moriah, Zionists considered the social rift in Europe and the imminent social upheavals to be a malady of European society and a danger to the Jewish people. Leo Pinsker, in his well-known pronouncement at Katowitz in 1884, at the founding conference of the Hoveve Zion movement, the Lovers of Zion, says as follows : Without entering upon the struggle among the nations, or trying to decide the outcome of the struggle which has begun to rage between capital and labour — without seeking to penetrate the cloud of mystery surrounding the future — we can be certain that the storm will begin with godless agitation against the Jews, who in the eyes of the mob are the sole carriers of capital and property. And the false prophets, feigning ardour for the libera­ tion of their people from misfortune, will only too readily find an excuse for throwing the guilt upon the hated Jews. We can already see the beginning of this anti-Semitic movement, but who can foresee its end ?2 Herzl expected to stabilize the European liberal regimes by putting an end to anti-Semitism, which had proved to be a subversive element in European society. Not only was the external policy for the realization of Zionism ex­ cluded from the course of ‘political messianism’, its inner social con­ tent was likewise erected on a ‘balanced’ social structure which con­ sidered private and cooperative property as the backbone of the 2

L. Pinsker, Road to Freedom (writings and addresses with an introduction by B. Nethaniahu), New York 1944, p. 110. [3 4 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After desirable society. The very existence of concentrated large private capital on the one hand and a proletariat on the other was considered a potential of social unrest. While Zionism postulated the creation of a solid agricultural base for the revived nation, the reality of European societies seemed to the early Zionists to undermine this tenet by private ownership of the soil, eviction of the agricultural population and the creation of a rootless proletariat. If there was a myth in early Zionism it was that of the return to Zion as the fount of life and inspiration and the return of the Jews to the Orient. The Orient implied simplicity of life and spiritual values ; the relief of the Jewish body from European anti-Semitism would be a freeing of the Jewish soul from the materialistic and disintegrating elements of Europe. IV. Preludes to Political Messianism There was only one Zionist thinker who conceived Zionist realization as interpreted in the redemptive historical process : this was Nachman Syrkin, who was in relative eclipse before World War I but rose to great influence later. He defined Jewish history in Hegelian terms as the only history which has a philosophy, i.e. its content is the realiza­ tion of the idea of reason. This idea is the revolutionary one. It brings the content of Jewish poetry, philosophy and ethics to culmination and fulfilment. It breaks down the orthodox as well as the bourgeois ele­ ments in Jewish society and establishes the socialist Jewish society in concomitance with the world revolutionary process. However, there existed in Zionism a certain intellectual as well as social potential for political messianism. The Zionist vision had nuances which drew their inspiration from the rich world of Jewish messianic symbols and images. The exile and plight of the Jews were not en­ visaged in strict terms of political subjugation and geographical dis­ persion but acquired a cosmic and personal significance. The world was considered to be in exile from its ideal state — to be in a state of falsification. The individual Jew was considered to be alienated from his real self while in exile, and deprived of his homeland. This rich world of symbols invested Zionism with a total vision. It could have served as a poetic inspiration or also as a postulate of total redemption — and the ‘totalistic’ content could spill over into the political domain. In addition, there has never been a decisive distinction between the religious and the secular in Jewish life. The unity of nation and religion has made this separation almost impossible. In the Hebrew lan gu age [3 4 6 ]

Israel Kolatt itself religious and secular terms and associations are hardly dis­ tinguishable. Not only is belief in the fullness of vision to come true in the fullness of time a feature which gives Zionism its comprehensive meaning, but also latent in Zionist ideology is the conception that time is not merely a sequence of human deeds and successive events. History has a mean­ ing and an end : it is not by accident that an ancient people returns to the land of its forefathers. Even those Zionists who did not rely on divine providence did not exclude the providence of History. As well as an intellectual potential for political messianism Zionism possessed a social one. Zionism implied a normative view of history. It condemned the existing conditions in which the Jewish people were circumstanced ; it reproached the Jews for their passivity ; it set a goal and authorized itself to lead them towards its achievement. From its inception Zionism had to wrestle with the so-called national apathy and to rely on élite groups for action. There have been different forms of élite in the history of Zionism — élites which have tried to give direction to emigration and settlement, élites which have tried to educate the people by word or by deed of self-sacrifice, and élites which have tried to dominate them. Even in the political sphere, Herzl posed the problem : what right has the Zionist minority to represent all of the Jewish people ? And answered by the use of a legal formula according to which the client may be represented by proxy. Apart from taking a normative view of history, Zionism also presented a collective aim, common to all sectors of the Jewish people, and thus looked askance at the differentiation of classes, strata and in­ terests in its ranks, as well as at a pluralist form of government based on numerous parties. It was such a conservative ‘bourgeois’ Zionist as Menachem Ussishkin who opposed the beginnings of party organization in Zionism and claimed that unity of purpose should exclude any fractional organiza­ tion in a national movement. Furthermore, if liberal democracy presupposes a certain notion of politics, Zionism, like all national movements, had a different ap­ proach from that of Western liberalism. It did not strive for a balance of competing interests. It did not advocate trial and error. Zionist politics was formulated to struggle for the national idea under tre­ mendous hardships. The balance of powers and of liberties — assum­ ing that power should be limited — was only secondary to the need to fulfil a national mission. Opposition, according to this view, is not a necessary complement of government but becomes factional interest, [347]

Totalitarian Democracy and After false ideas and sometimes a nuisance. Ben Gurion’s idea about a gov­ ernment composed of all the ‘constructive forces’ illustrates this line of thinking. The ambivalence in the relationship of Zionism to the rest of the nation could have its consequences in relation to the social basis of Jewish democracy. The theorists of Zionism were always in doubt whether it was a movement for the people, or also of the people and by the people ; the problem was even graver in regard to its reali­ zation. We have mentioned the wish of the early Zionists to attain a balanced social structure established on a solid middle class. Later generations in Zionism doubted the ability of the Jewish middle classes to leave the lands of the dispersion and to take a leading role in the political field as in economic construction. A deep suspicion, which had its origin in the Russian social milieu, made the Zionist labour movement distrust the Jewish petit bourgeois. The poor performance of the Jewish middle class in Palestine, the employment of non-Jewish hired labour, the lack of political initiative and enterprise, only enhanced this negative attitude. The working class, on the other hand, was conceived as the only class whose cause was identical with the national one, the only class whose destiny was identical with a harmonious national society, namely a classless society. This idea gained momentum after World War I. V.

The Turning Point

World War I, which is considered a major milestone in the develop­ ment of totalitarian regimes in Europe, has a different significance in Jewish and Zionist history. It destroyed the Jewish traditional life in Eastern Europe but gave the Jewish people a role in political history. The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate gave the Jews a legal status in the international order. The war legitimized the use of force in the service of the Jewish nation, not only in self-defence against pogroms but in the national mission. In reviewing the position, the Zionists asked themselves whether the Jewish people and the Zionist movement would gain by the break­ down of the traditional European order and society. Should they re­ joice at the fall of the tsar and the emancipation of Russian Jewry? Or should they condemn the Bolshevik regime ? Political messianism penetrated into the Zionist camp not as a direct inheritance of the Jewish traditional concept of messianism but as a tenet adopted from European political theory. European political theory [3 4 8 ]

Israel Kolatt may be indebted to a certain extent to the Jewish tradition. In the Zionist climate of opinion a new encounter took place between the European version and the connotations of the traditional Jewish concept. VI.

Messianic Tendencies Left and Right

The sequence of World War I and the Russian Revolution, the new dynamics of history, and the feeling of national emergency drove the left in the Zionist movement towards the search for consummation. But on the left, tendencies towards centralism and totalitarianism always had to compete with grass-roots self-rule. It was in the right wing of Zionism that a full fledged ‘political messianism’ could develop. In 1932, on the eve of the Fifth Revisionist Conference, Abba Ahimeir called upon his party to leave the ‘liberal swamp’ and to pass to the era of ‘dictatorship’.3 The challenge of political messianism from the East affected the Zion­ ist left. Communism bore mortal dangers to Zionist convictions. The gospel of universal revolution promised to put an end to the unique Jewish position of alienation and distress. Any adaptation of the revo­ lutionary means of class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat would have been detrimental to Zionism. It would have split Jewish and Zionist unity and destroyed the common effort in the building of Palestine. On the other hand, the establishment of Palestine as a class capitalist society would have justified communist accusations against Zionism. The only way to compete with the socialist com­ monwealth in the Soviet Union was to build the socialist common­ wealth in the Land of Israel. Assuming that the socialist idea was a national idea, and that ‘na­ tional capital’ would provide the means of economic reconstruction, which would be carried out by cooperative labour, the rebirth of the Jewish people ‘in the land of its forefathers’ was considered to be at hand. Ben Gurion, who led the Histadrut labour union in the 1920s, made a heroic attempt to build it on a centralistic base. The ‘dictatorship of the idea’ over each individual and every economic unit was directed with total devotion to the task. The idea of the complete solution to national and social problems advocated by labour Zionism took as its model not parliamentary socialism but the community of producers. 3

A. Ahimeir, Flazit ha-am, 9 August 1932 ; 13 September 1932 (maximalist Revisionist Zionist declaration at the fifth Revisionist conference). [3 4 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Seemingly, this idea gave way to that of the state as a machine for enforcing law — but it also virtually implied giving way to the law as a restriction on the rulers. The total devotion to the nation could be transferred to the total subjugation of individual and group to national and social authority and needs. However, devoted concentration did not make up for lack of funds, and the promising building succumbed to the difficulties, leaving behing it shattered hopes, and emigration of those who had come to participate in the national effort. In the late 1920s the labour move­ ment changed its course in order to lead the nation’s parliamentary institutions and a mixed economy. It was in the 1920s that the Zionist movement witnessed the pheno­ menon which drew the attention of Jacob Talmon — the transition of persons and loyalties from left to right. The phenomenon itself is well known. Dostoevsky and Mussolini are two of its most prominent representatives. What is it that drives people from one extreme to the other ? Is there a hidden affinity between both poles ? And should it be found in man’s mental structure or in a common ideological denominator ? Both are anti-liberal and anti-parliamentarian. Both esteem heroic suffering and martyrdom for the cause. Is it the dialectic of the human soul which moves the pendulum from one pole to the other ? Or does the dialectic rest in the situation of the revolutionary act ? In the late 1920s a group of the labour movement turned towards Revisionism and changed its character. Revisionism started off as a political movement aimed at the revision of Zionist policy towards Great Britain. Its social platform was vague and tried to find a com­ bination of private property and étatist elements to put forward. The joining of Uri Zvi Greenberg, one of the geniuses of Hebrew poetry, and of Abba Ahimeir, a learned and original thinker, propelled a wing of the movement towards anti-liberalism. This group not only recommended violent tactics for confronting the British, and not only preached the use of force rather than political pressure : they also proclaimed the primacy of force, the élite, and revolution over liberal values. A combination of various trends led the right towards a kind of political messianism. The ideological starting point was the Nation as the supreme value : Ahimeir was a student of history, and wrote his dissertation in Vienna on Russia in Spengler’s theory of history. He conceived of the nation as an organism and history as a struggle among nations. He considered himself the prophet of twentieth-cen­ tury Zionism as against the nineteenth-century Zionist traditions ; [3 5 0 ]

Israel Kolatt whereas nineteenth-century Zionism was rural, utopian, pacifist, he preached the idea of deed, élite and struggle. Already in 1928 he spoke of the messiah who would not come according to the traditional image on an ass but on a tank.4 Bloodshed is the criterion of realiza­ tion. Communism served as the arch-enemy so far as its ideology was concerned, but was an example to be followed as a revolutionary means. Whereas Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky endeavoured to educate a new race of glory, Ahimeir looked for the revolutionary sansculottes. He suggested moving the centres of the Zionist movement to the centres of mass Jewish population in Eastern Europe, and combining the mass movement with the revolutionary élite. Zionist education should carry youth away from liberalist to Jesuit-like ideas ; we should learn from the fascists and communists. One should be like one’s enemies ; one must learn to hate as a pre-condition for love — so ran his new gospel. Contrary to the struggle of the élite for the national future and destiny the labour movement was accused of giving priority to the building of an economy, the sanctification of material goods, and the betrayal of the idea of the Kingdom. According to Greenberg the ‘great mind’ ought to dictate the course of history, which the ‘small mind’ does not grasp. The idea of the messiah was the great idea of the Kingdom of Israel, which had been abandoned by the left, the pioneers who had turned out to be petite bourgeoisie. Henceforth the standard-bearers would no longer be the Jewish proletariat but the revolutionary élite. Thus the combina­ tion of the poetic vision of Greenberg and the political philosophy of Ahimeir constituted a potential Jewish nationalist version of totalitarian democracy on the Zionist right. The political and economic messianism of the Zionist left considered that the Jewish socialist commonwealth should be the outcome of an inner effort, and envisaged the integration of the Jewish people into the socialist commonwealth of nations. The political messianism of the right put the same emphasis as the messianism of the left upon ‘realiza­ tion’, i.e. upon the dynamics of history, but relied on a completely different view of history and set of values, and other methods of achieving this realization. Whereas the left underwent a metamorphosis which established it as the broad base of the Jewish society, the right failed to lead Jewish 4

Idem, Do’ar ha-yom, 14 October 1928, on questions of the moment (from a Fascist’s notebook).

[351]

Totalitarian Democracy and After society politically and socially and left only traces in the intellectual tradition, to bear fruit in the 1940s during the struggle against the British. VII.

Checks to Tendencies of Political Messianism

Ideological as well as social factors barred the way to the realization of the ideas of political messianism in the Zionist camp. First of all there were the strong liberal tendencies in the Zionist middle class and in the labour movement : anti-liberalism in Europe was deemed to be synonymous with anti-Semitism and was thus abhorred by most Jews ; Zionist socialism relied on the pioneering response of the in­ dividual and rejected the constraint of an enforced mould ; the sub­ jectivist trend in Russian thought, the revolt against evil — all these served as a check to totalitarian tendencies. The social factors which prevented any attempt to realize any form of totalitarian messianism were even more valid than the ideological ones. It has been stated by the originators of the use of the term ‘polit­ ical messianism’ that it is not only the inherent development of a set of ideas but also social conditions which may favour or disfavour its materialization. Jacob Talmon himself has drawn attention to the fact that the ideas of the extreme right remained marginal in France while taking hold in Italy. Whereas the feeling of frustration in face of the tardiness of the mainstream Zionist movement led towards extreme means, decisive factors have prevented such an outcome. The basic social fact which served as a check to such a development was the lack of a central Jewish authority with state powers. The Zionist movement could mobilize the Jewish people only by conviction and good will. There were always alternatives to Zionism — and when during the late 1930s and early 1940s there was no alternative for the Jews escaping Europe, Palestine was also barred to them. Likewise the Jews had no governmental power in Palestine, and the political society of the pre-state Jewish community was mainly a democracy by consent and free will. Moreover, in the economic sphere, the flow of capital from the Jewish diaspora — private as well as public — made up for the lack of local capital. It proved a much more suitable means for accumulation and investment than any inner concentration. Later, the political circumstances in which Zionism materialized in the state of Israel integrated it in the democratic world. The influence of British democracy served to enhance the inherent liberal and democratic tenets in Zionism. The redemptive idea in Zionism after World War II differed from [3 5 2 ]

Israel Kolatt that of the previous decades in that it lost its universal content. The labour movement of the 1930s had considered the redemption of the Jewish people as an integrated part of a universal process. The sug­ gested platform of Mapai in the late 1920s declared socialism to be the central content of human history as Zionism is the central content of Jewish history. The struggle against British policies and Arab hos­ tility was considered part of the general path to liberation. The late 1930s introduced doubts about the linearity of progress and the early 1940s demonstrated the possible exclusion of the Jewish people from the universal pattern. Thus we come to the preconditions of our present predicament. Zion­ ist ideology had to face a vacuum when the hope of integration among the nations as a result of a universal trend of liberation and eman­ cipation was shattered. The experience of World War II and the Holocaust, the disappointment with British policy in Palestine, the encounter with the Arabs, all contributed to mental exclusion from a universal context. The partial support of the community of nations for the rebirth and existence of Israel was not a counterweight. On the other hand, there was the confrontation of a new generation of orthodox Zionists with secular history in the Holy Land. All these have combined in the dangerous mixture of messianic sanctions and politics and accentuated the force of J. L. Talmon’s warning.

[353J

Zionism and Political Messianism Comments on Israel Kolatt’s Paper by

ANITA SHAPIRA Tel Aviv University

I f i n d m y s e l f at a disadvantage in commenting on Professor Kolatt’s presentation as it concurs more or less with my views on this subject. So, for the sake of the argument, I’ll try to emphasize and elaborate certain aspects of Zionism, some of them already mentioned by Professor Kolatt, in order to point out what I consider the inherent though ambivalent connection between Zionism and political mes­ sianism. His presentation is a pioneering study on this most intriguing question, thus my remarks should be taken as questions, pointing to various possible lines of future research rather than attempting a con­ clusive summary of this problem. When I first considered the subject of Professor Kolatt’s lecture, ‘Zionism and Political Messianism’, it occurred to me that, in fact, what we have here are two issues, not one. Professor Kolatt devoted most of his lecture to the question : does Zionism belong to those currents of modern, secular messianism as defined by Jacob Talmon, which have been discussed here the past few days ? This is, obviously, one issue. The other issue is : is Zionism a consequence of these cur­ rents which incidentally served the progenitors of the Zionist move­ ment ? Can one possibly describe the awakening of Zionism without taking into consideration the national movements of the nineteenth century — their heart-moving examples, the exclusive inference which they had for the Jews, the virulent anti-Semitism which they aroused ? Can one possibly describe the awakening of Zionism without the mes­ sianic hopes aroused in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen­ turies in Eastern and Central Europe, centred in the revolutionary movements, characterized as they were by an atmosphere of passionate longing for the redemption of the world ? In short, the Zionist move­ ment was a child of its time. As such, its mentality, and its psycholog­ ical attitudes, were certainly reflecting the fervour and r e v o lu tio n a r y [3 5 4 ]

Anita Shapira passions so abundant in the liberation movements in Eastern and Central Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. I claim that the ideas and concepts advanced by Zionist leaders, from the very beginning of the Zionist idea, have much in common with political messianism, and that these concepts were not isolated and typical of the extremes, but were part of the mainstream of Zionism. Zionist Concepts and Political Zionism 1. Zionism is marked by the belief in one all-inclusive, comprehensive and immediate solution to the Jewish problem. The theme is rich with contradictions and paradoxes. True, Theodor Herzl was a leader deeply committed to the world of liberal thinking. The Utopia that he sketched in Altneuland was a model of the liberal tolerant state that the Jews of the Hapsburg Empire dreamed of, and that Herzl knew to be elusive after his encounter with anti-Semitism. Moreover, it is difficult to think of a figure with a less revolutionary style than Herzl with his petit bourgeois way of life. And yet, his entire grasp of Zionism is laced with elements of messianism. He came to believe in Zionism in consequence of his disenchantment with the belief in progress. I think Professor Bracher mentioned here the other day the feeling of revo­ lutionaries that something went wrong with history. Herzl continued to believe in the progress of society at large, but thought that con­ cerning the Jews something had gone wrong. This concept was central in his thinking. Moreover, we may look at the way he formulates the challenge before him : ‘To solve the Jewish problem once and for all’. The ‘here and now’ is what gave Herzlian ideology much of its power. The solution appears to be complete and immediate, a unique revolutionary act, which solves the enigma of Jewish history and, at the same time, answers the existential problems facing the Jews. ‘Catastrophic Zion­ ism’ is surely a term indicating an affinity of Zionism with political messianism. The overhanging threat of catastrophe endows the Zionist solution with an urgency, provides it with historical justification and likens it to the redemption which follows upon the heels of premessianic tribulations. Herzl experienced the burning impatience of the revolutionary. He was against gradualist schemes of ‘infiltration’ which were empirical in conception and devoid of the element of a dramatic historical breakthrough. More important still was the messianic mood which his activities evoked among the Jewish masses in the Pale of Settle­ ment. Herzl may have continued to think in rational-liberal-aristo­ cratic terms, but the Jewish masses endowed him and his activities [3 5 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After with messianic significance. Their dreams, frustrations and expecta­ tions were to shape Zionism, regardless of the bourgeois affiliations of the man who aroused them. 2. The proponents of Zionism and its enthusiasts at the end of the nineteenth century' and later presented Zionism as an idea which pre­ cluded any others. It was the one and only solution to the Jewish problem. Neither assimilation, nor world revolution, nor territorialism, nor cultural autonomy was a viable solution. Not only were these alternatives presented as illusory and illogical : they smacked of na­ tional betrayal, a misreading of the historical process. Jewish history was reinterpreted ‘Zionistically’, showing that the Jewish people had aspired to return to its homeland throughout all the generations. Emphasis was placed on those instances in Jewish history marked by rebellion against the reality of Jewish life in exile. In this way, one could establish the illusion of a succession of attempts at immigration and settlement of Palestine. What in fact was sporadic and marginal in Jewish life was given a pre-eminence, testifying — as it were — to a historical process of which Zionism was to be the crowning achieve­ ment. In numerous circles, Zionist realization was grasped as an in­ evitable goal of Jewish history. This may perhaps explain the zealous­ ness inherent in Zionist attitudes towards other, contending messianic movements, as well as the zealousness of contending factions within the movement towards one another. This intolerance was not for­ tuitous. It was the result of a singular, all-embracing world-view which denied the legitimacy of any alternatives, which were considered menacing to it and thus menacing to salvation itself. 3. The Zionist solution to the Jewish problem was presented as a total solution : ‘There, in the Land of our Fathers, all our hopes would be realized’. Social and national redemption merged together. 4. Two further features, very much interrelated, need to be men­ tioned. These are Zionist activism, namely, the idea that the Jewish nation not only may but must take its fate into its own hands and shape it independently of any transcendent forces, and activism in the sense of revolutionary minorities reshaping the fates of masses. This latter conception was very powerful in the motivation of the immigrants of the second and third aliya and their followers. It was given a broad interpretation in relation to the entire Zionist movement : because its members remained a minority among the Jewish people as a whole, the Zionist leadership developed the mentality of a besieged minority. The minority, misunderstood by the majority of the Jewish people and in possession of the key to the enigma of Jewish history, had the right to lead the masses — even against their will — to salvation. [3 5 6 ]

Anita Shapira Messianic Fervour and Facing Reality I could continue to point to further similarities between the Zionist movement and other contemporary political messianic movements. But, as Professor Kolatt has remarked, we should remember that the Zionist movement was structured on a parliamentary basis and func­ tioned — almost always — in accordance with the tenets of Western democracy. I should like now to distinguish between a frame of mind and the pragmatic necessity. The frame of mind, the emotional and psycho­ logical structure of the Zionist movement, was commensurate with secular messianism. Yet history placed many objective obstacles in the way, forcing it to adapt to the real world in which it functioned. The central obstacle was the fact that Zionism was the national movement of a people which was not sure whether it really wanted to be a people and which did not inhabit its own territory. I find it hard to recall any other revolutionary movement whose guiding idea was so totally remote from reality. This remoteness nurtured messianic ele­ ments in the movement. Faith, devotion, willingness for self-sacrifice and self-denial created an apparent reality, a visionary reality, which was essential for the belief of its followers in the certainty of re­ demption. Zionism existed for years not by virtue of reality, but by virtue of the imaginative power of its faithful. The Zionist leadership was very well aware of the vast chasm stretching between what was desired and what was possible, and the history of the Zionist move­ ment is the history of the great efforts made to translate vision into the hard currency of real achievement. Thus, the history of the Zionist movement has been characterized by a constant tension between recognition of the real world and its constraints, on the one hand, and a primordial perception of Zionist truth as total truth, on the other, forcing realities to conform to its vision. This tension was not peculiar to any specific trend or leader of the movement, but was common to almost all of them. Scratch the empirical surface of almost any Zionist leader and you will dis­ cover a tremulous, messianic belief which will burst forth in times of crisis or in moments of what Talmon called ‘historical break­ through’. The developmental contours of Zionist history appear to confirm the fact that as it moved from utopian to real world it adopted more and more the instruments of the practical world, and during this process abandoned its messianic passion becoming a political movement with an empirical foundation. In all events, the tension between the revolutionary mentality and the [3 5 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After need to confront a real world typified all sectors of the Zionist move­ ment. We find this ambivalence demonstrated in the attitudes towards two major issues, the institutions of formal democracy and the use of violence. Attitudes Towards Democracy The Zionist movement was not democratic at its inception although it kept to the parliamentary rules. It was representative of Jewish notables, while the more plebeian and messianic elements likely to be attracted to the movement remained beyond the pale. Their eventual integration within the Zionist Organization was rather protracted and overlaid with impure thoughts of the possibility of dismantling formal democracy. Among the left, the leaders of Ahdut Ha-‘Avoda, unlike those of Ha-Po‘el Ha-Za*ir, were not particularly enamoured of the principles of what they called ‘formal democracy’. During the 1920s, the labour leaders Berl Katznelson and David Ben-Gurion often voiced feelings of frustration and contempt for the Zionist Organization. They considered it an inert body rather than the representative of the vital forces of the Jewish people. The notion that an avant-garde — that is, a minority which was convinced that it had an historic mission — had the right to assume authority beyond its numerical strength was a view more or less acceptable and accepted among fairly wide circles in the movement, both in the right and left wings. It was not a fringe view. The unwillingness of the Revisionists to accept majority rule, their insistence that they were entitled — as representatives of higher justice — to a larger representation in the bodies of the movement than that which they had received in the elections was a reasoning also not foreign to the Zionist left, even when labour spokesmen publicly ‘defended’ democratic procedure against the Revisionists’ claims. Among the parties of the left, it seems that Mapai’s complete reconciliation with the principles of democracy, and its acceptance of them as the cornerstone of its policies, came naturally enough with its ascendency to the Zionist leadership. Even then, Mapai criticism of the Revisionist split in the Zionist Organization had less to do with the democratic principles involved than with its consequent weakening of the national strength and unity. The last labour—Revisionist meet­ ing, between Berl Katznelson and Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky in London in September 1939, is most revealing. Jabotinsky had agreed to return to the Zionist Organization on the condition that elections be held to the Congress without a poll tax — that is, the shekel. Berl asked: ‘And what if you lose?’ Jabotinsky answered: T will resign and my movement will accept majority rule.’ Berl recounts: T laughed [3 5 8 ]

Anita Shapira in his face. I told him that I didn’t believe him. Would I give up my life-long beliefs for any kind of majority?’ The shared ambivalence of left and right in Zionism to the principles of parliamentary demo­ cracy is apparent. The Use of Force This ambivalence is striking in relation to the use of force as well. The Zionist vision was replete with pacifist sentiment and an aversion to the use of force. Force was contrary to the ideals of the model society, whether liberal or socialist in conception. On the other hand, Zionist believers always dreamt of national sovereignty and its attri­ butes ; they longed to be like other nations, and like them to have a military force. The early Zionist, R. Judah Alkalai, mentions this in his writings. Even the Biluim pioneers cherished thoughts about the redemption of the land through the power of arms as a kind of apotheosis in the creation of the Jewish state. The Kingdom of the Hasmonaeans, the revolt of the Maccabees were typical images of Zionist romanticism. The Return to Zion during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah was never given prominence in Zionist mythology, and for good reason : it was a return effected under foreign rule. The revival of the Maccabees provided more suitable material. The Feast of Hanukka was accorded a new significance, and the emphasis was transferred from the martyrdom of Hannah and her seven sons and the miracle of the oil to the battle-cry of Mattathias ‘Come, you who are for God’, and the heroism of Judah Maccabee. During the time of the second aliya, together with the pacifist currents in Ha-Po‘el HaZa‘ir, we find the activism of Poale Zion, expressed in the motto of Ha-Shomer: ‘In blood and fire Judaea fell, in blood and fire Judaea shall rise’. The 1930s and 1940s are marked by mounting tensions within the Jewish community in Palestine between the left and right — whatever these terms meant in the context of Mandatory Palestine. The fear of terror against political enemies was constantly on the minds of the leaders : whether after the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff, or later on, during the bitter rivalry between the various underground armies. Terrorism was certainly considered possible, almost understandable, though abhorrent. It seems to me that these manifestations illuminate the inner world of the Zionist leaders who felt an affinity to the world of revolution, in which ethical judgements were relative and the end justified the means. A classical example of the tension which existed between the desirable and the possible, between the messianic dream and political reality, [3 5 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After is the famous letter of Chaim Arlosoroff to Chaim Weizmann on 30 June 1932. Arlosoroff exemplified the pragmatic leadership of the labour movement. The labour leaders had pitted their sober judge­ ment of what was possible under existing circumstances against the uncompromising perfectionism presented by the Revisionists’ demands at the Zionist Congress in 1931, for a declaration of Zionist final aims : the establishment of a Jewish state. Arlosoroff, writing to Weizmann, made a political reckoning. After arriving at the conclusion that all legal, democratic action was leading the Zionist movement to a dead end, he states : One thing I feel very strongly and that is that I will never re­ concile myself to the defeat of Zionism without making an at­ tempt that would be commensurate in its gravity with the entire force of our struggle for the revival of our national life and the sanctity of the trust invested in us by the Jewish people. The ‘attempt’ to which he refers is to seizing power by force and the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship by a minority Jewish government. This government would then initiate a rapid demograph­ ic change in the country through intensified Jewish immigration. Arlosoroff’s approach seems to be representative of broad circles within Zionism. The Zionist idea, was considered prior to any other kind of loyalty — to class, to international solidarity, parliamentarism or de­ mocracy. As the 1930s progressed, and the fascist regimes came to power in Germany and Italy, and the character of the Soviet regime became apparent, the Zionist leadership inclined towards non-revolutionary, gradualist and democratic methods, as exemplified by Great Britain in general and British labour in particular. This was part of the Westernization which gradually penetrated Israeli society, first on the political level and then on the psychological and cultural. The process was completed only during the 1950s. With the establishment of the state, the extreme right also began to give up the use of force and accept the limits of parliamentary procedure. It is still too early to ascertain whether this process resulted from the establishment of the state, the decline of revolutionary fervour in Israel as elsewhere, or the arrival of a new generation on the political stage. The 1967 war created a new confrontation between the myth of the nation and political pragmatism. As a result a new mass party rose to power and destroyed the old political loyalties which had held sway over Israelis for the past few decades. I do not intend to dwell [3 6 0 ]

Anita Shapira on the present. I want merely to make one comment concerning the historical tension in Zionism between political messianism and the acceptance of reality. It seems to me that part of the difficulty today of those who object to political messianism arises from the fact that in their heart of hearts they accept the goals of maximalist Zionism. Once again, scratch the surface of an empirical Zionist and you will find messianic passion. Thus, the debate between Weizmann and Jabotinsky of the 1920s and 1930s has returned to engage us in the question of not what is desirable but what is attainable.

The Israeli Kibbutz — The Dynamics of Pragmatic Utopianism * by ERIK COHEN The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

The Thesis T h e I s r a e l i k i b b u t z is a controversial phenomenon : is it Utopia

realized, a model for a future communitarian society,1 or is it a col­ lective ‘total institution’?2 Did the substantial changes which the kib­ butz has experienced in the three-quarters of a century since its foundation completely disfigure the utopian intent, or did it succeed in preserving its distinctive physiognomy despite far-going transforma­ tion ? The controversy is not merely a matter of different cognitive or evaluative perspectives ; it reflects a deep-seated opposition or am­ biguity in the very nature of the kibbutz as a social form, which, in turn, profoundly influenced its social dynamics. I argue that an under­ standing of this basic opposition is essential for an adequate sociolog­ ical analysis of the kibbutz ; indeed, that the failure to grasp that ambiguity is at the bottom of many unsuccessful attempts to classify the kibbutz neatly into one of the general sociological categories, such as ‘Utopia’3 or ‘ideological sect’,4 or to comprehend its dynamics in terms of one of the current models of social or ideological change. I wish to emphasize that the reason for that failure is not the one which devoted kibbutz idealists like to adduce — namely that the kibbutz *

Thanks are due to Professor M. Rosner for his helpful comments on the lecture on which this paper is based. 1 D. G. Gil, ‘Der Kibuz — ein mögliches Modell für humanes Überleben und für Befreiung’, in : H. von Gizycki & H. Habicht (eds) ; Oasen der Freiheit, Frankfurt a/M 1978, pp. 84—102. 2 Sh. Goldenberg & G. R. Wekerle, ‘From Utopia to Total Institution in a Single Generation — The Kibbutz and the Bruderhof, International Re­ view of Modern Sociology, II (2) (1972), pp. 224—232. 3 E.g., M. E. Spiro, Kibbutz — Venture in Utopia, New York 1963. 4 O. Ichilov & S. Bar, ‘Extended Family Ties and the Allocation of Social Rewards in Veteran Kibbutzim’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, XLII (2) (1980), p. 422. [3 6 2 ]

Erik Cohen is such a unique creation that it evades sociological conceptualization and analysis ; rather, the reason is that it represents a unique con­ figuration of essentially opposed traits, each of which, in isolation may be quite ubiquitous. A comprehension of the complex nature of the kibbutz, in turn, per­ mits an understanding of the particular character of its social dyna­ mics — one which I conceived of elsewhere as ‘persistence in change’.5 It also brings to light the forces which make for its continuous vitality as well as the perils which that very vitality poses for the survival of the kibbutz as a distinctive social form. I shall avail myself of the opportunity of this symposium to honour the memory of Professor J. L. Talmon to show how the general ap­ proach just outlined can be used to explain why the kibbutz did not become a ‘totalitarian democracy’, nor did it develop the kind of strong charismatic, authoritarian leadership typical of some utopian communal sects.6 My thesis is that, like ‘totalitarian democracy’, the kibbutz was indeed utopian ; but like ‘liberal democracy’, it was also pragmatic ; its ‘pragmatic utopianism’ is closely related to the fact that the kibbutz lacked a rigid blueprint prescribing its ultimate form, a point M. Buber noted a long time ago.7 Its programme hence re­ mained essentially open and pliable.8 While such openness posed serious risks to the preservation of its communal character, it also prevented the emergence of tyrannical institutions and authoritarian leaders, who, as an embodiment of the movement’s values, would claim absolute ascendancy and total power over its rank-and-file membership. Totalitarian Democracy and the Kibbutz — A Comparison Stated simply, Talmon’s basic thesis was that ‘totalitarian democracy’ is the essentially unintended and unexpected consequence of a revo­ lutionary utopian ideology which promises salvation through a radical restructuring of society by way of political action and by virtue of which men will become both fully equal and completely free. Equality 5 6

7 8

E. Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, in : E. Kamenka (ed.), Community as a Social Ideal, London 1982, pp. 123-146. J. W. Bennett, ‘Communes and Communitarianism’, Theory and Society, II (1975), pp. 75-76 ; B. Wilson, Religious Sects, London 1970, p. 186 ; M. Rosner, Direct Democracy in the Kibbutz’, in : R. M. Kanter (ed.), Communes, New York 1973, p. 178. M. Buber, ‘Epilogue — An Experiment That Did Not Fail’, in : M. Buber, Paths in Utopia, Boston 1950. N. Golomb & D. Katz, ‘The Kibbutzim as Open Social System’, Ruppin Institute (mimeo) 1970. [3 6 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After and liberty, however, as ordinarily conceived, are conflicting values ; a change in the meaning of liberty had thus to be instituted, so that *... the dichotomy of liberty and equality would be resolved by men having learned to will unanimously the common good, in other words, the general will’.9 Since the road to salvation lies in the political sphere, which comes to . embrace the whole of human existence’,10 the State, and its functionaries, become the supreme expression of the collective will, the embodiment of Rousseau’s volonté générale and the bearers of the *... single, all-embracing and exclusive truth’.11 In the name of that truth, all inequalities between the members of the society are to be destroyed, so that nothing remains between man and State.12 Even as all men of good will do wish the new revolutionary order, it would still ‘. .. have to be enthroned by a vanguard of the enlight­ ened and the brave, with the help of coercion.. ,’.13 These ‘enlightened and brave’ at the head of the State, embodying the ‘general will’, thus come to wield absolute power over the mass of plain citizenry', leading ultimately to the emergence of totalitarian democracy. The dynamics of such a democracy is radically different from that of ‘liberal demo­ cracy’,14 which is a pragmatic mechanism for the articulation of public preferences but does not claim to possess an ultimate political truth or hold forth a promise of political salvation to all men. The kibbutz has shared, in common with other utopian communal movements, some of the premises of totalitarian democracies. Indeed, its potential for totalitarianism may seem to have been greater than that of the religious communitarian movements. The latter strove to shape reality in the image of some transcendent divine blueprint ; their religious commitment posed an intrinsic constraint on their leaders — who tended to be authoritarian, rather than totalitarian. In the kibbutz, owing to its proclaimed secular character,15 there were not such intrinsic constraints : the collapse of the transcendent level onto that of inner-worldly human action created the very same pre­ conditions which led to totalitarianism elsewhere. While the kibbutz community may not have envisaged expressly a future state of ideal 9 J. L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, London 1981, p. 536. 10 J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London 1952, p. 2 ; Myth, p. 549. 11 Myth, p. 459. 12 Origins, p. 250. 13 Myth, p. 535. 14 Origins, pp. 1-3. 15 Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 124-125. [3 6 4 ]

Erik Cohen harmony16 as an ultimate end of its endeavours, it certainly strove to harmonize man and society ; for that reason the kibbutz pro­ pounded, at least in its early stages, an extreme egalitarianism, and advocated, and initially largely achieved, a voluntary submission of the individual to the collective. This included not only the public but also the most private spheres of life, such as the family, sex and procreation.17 There were in the early kibbutz vague but acutely felt salvational or ‘messianic’ steerings — the early settlers felt that they lived in a ‘signi­ ficant time’, a time of exemplary, prototypical decisions and acts by which the foundations of a future, communal society are created.18 Hence the heated controversy on apparently minor matters of daily collective living.19 The founders conceived of themselves as an élite, a select group of pioneers, which, the constraints of prevailing cir­ cumstances notwithstanding, constituted the spearhead not only of the future Jewish society in Palestine, but also — more dimly and grandiosely — of a world-wide communal future. All the kibbutz movements had their visionaries, ideologues and charismatic leaders — A. D. Gordon, Y. Tabenkin, M. Yaari and Y. Hazan come im­ mediately to mind — some of whom remained at the head of their movements from the early days until the present time. And yet, what­ ever the prestige and power of these leaders, they did not attain a position of absolute preponderance in all matters, big or small ; indeed, over time, their influence seems to have found expression, primarily, in matters of general ideology and national and international politics rather than matters concerning the internal arrangements of life in the kibbutz community. Why didn’t the kibbutz develop an overwhelming, charismatic and totalitarian leadership ? Though it is risky to attempt to explain his­ torical events which did not take place, I shall venture the claim that those very oppositions or ambiguities mentioned above account for the absence of a totalitarian trend in the kibbutz movement. For that purpose we have to examine more closely the utopian characOrigins, p. 2. M. E. Spiro, ‘Is the Family Universal?’, American Anthropologist, LVI (1954), pp. 839—846 ; Y. Talmon, Family and Community in the Kibbutz, Cambridge (Mass.) 1972, pp. 3-12. 18 E. Cohen, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Kibbutz’, in : G. K. Zollschan & W. Hirsch (eds), Social Change — Explorations, Diagnoses and Conjectures, New York 1976, p. 710. 19 D. Krook, ‘Rationalism Triumphant — An Essay on the Kibbutzim in Israel’, in : P. King & B. C. Parekh (eds), Politics and Experience, Cam­ bridge 1968, pp. 312-313. 16 17

[3 6 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ter of the kibbutz. Like other utopian movements, the kibbutz aspired to achieve societal perfection. But this was not a goal merely set in a millenarian future ; rather, it was pursued in the immediate here and now. In sharp contrast to the tactics pursued by totalitarian demo­ cracies, the fact that complete perfection cannot be immediately achieved did not mean that the attempt to realize it should be in­ definitely postponed. Social perfection, however, was not a single overriding, absolute goal. The essential ‘secularly’ of the kibbutz found one of its expressions in the fact that it had a plurality of goals, differentially emphasized by the several kibbutz movements, among which social perfection was only one ideal. Complementary to, but not identical with it, the kib­ butz also strove, on the one hand, to serve as an instrument and pioneer of wider Jewish national aspirations,20 and, on the other, to provide the context for the self-realization of the individual member. True enough, the member was expected, as he served the collective, to realize himself. But the institutions of the collective were to be so constituted as to make self-realization possible. Though self-sacrifice was lauded, and even demanded, no complete self-effacement was expected. Individual liberty was not assimilated to equality as in the totalitarian democracy. Indeed, the values and goals of the kibbutz remained throughout a loose amalgam.21 The kibbutz never succeeded completely in harmonizing and streamlining them around a single ul­ timate purpose — perhaps it never even tried. The gradual emergence and subsequent aggravation of divergencies in its goals and values provided perpetual ideological tensions and occasional conflict within the movement, endowing it with a vitality and dynamism so conspi­ cuously absent in other communal movements. This also helped to deflect attention from ultimate ‘soteriological’ goals and turn it to­ wards more immediate practical problems. The secular nature of the kibbutz is closely related to the essentially prosaic circumstances of its origins : it emerged out of the practical exigencies of survival of the pioneering settlers in the hard circum­ stances of life in Palestine at the beginning of the century, and not from an ideal vision based on some eternal and absolute ‘truth’. The kibbutz could retain its essential value pluralism owing to the fact that, from the outset, it was not merely an end in itself but also an instrument for individual and national realization. Its secularism and 20 21

Buber, op. cit. (n. 7). Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5 ), p. 124. [3 6 6 ]

Erik Cohen attendant pluralism of goals and values is of paramount importance for an understanding of two crucial features of the kibbutz, which justify its characterization as a ‘pragmatic utopia’ : its essentially ‘open programme’ and its reflective, practical and frequently experi­ mental approach to emergent problems, the solutions to which, and the consequent institutional arrangements, are as much responses to situational exigencies as implementations of ideological precepts ; in­ deed, in order to survive, the kibbutz has often had to compromise its values.22 That very openness was in itself risky, since it encouraged a certain opportunism, which, particularly at a later stage of the development of the kibbutz, posed a threat to its survival as a distinct social form, even as it thrived as a practical enterprise.23 But such an approach precluded the emergence of a strict dogmatism — a definite hierarchy of values and goals, unambiguously defined and expressing a single, ultimate truth which could then be taken to express a un­ animous general will, and be embodied and enforced by an unassail­ able, absolute leadership. Rather, the hierarchy of values, their mutual trade-offs, and their precise interpretation under changing conditions remained, in principle, undecided, and thus a matter of open, com­ munal deliberation. The social order of the kibbutz is thus essentially a negotiated one, permanently in flux, with no clearly envisaged ul­ timate form. Since no member, however respected, could claim a monopoly of wisdom or inspiration concerning the realization, inter­ pretation and application of the collective’s values, and since the in­ dividual was respected as a person, controversy was tolerated and the expression of individual opinion permitted and even encouraged. Once a decision was taken, the members were expected to be com­ mitted to it — at least one sector of the movement practised ‘ideolog­ ical collectivism’ ; but such uniformity was achieved only after a process of deliberation and negotiation, and was not imposed from above ; it was also ad hoc and had to be achieved anew on every upcoming issue ; finally, it was stressed more in ideological matters concerning national and international politics than in concerns of the daily life of the collective. Indeed, if there was dogmatism in the kibbutz, it existed in respect of wider political issues (e.g., in the attitude of the left-wing, Marxist movements to the global power blocs or to national, political, social and economic problems) rather than on matters of internal communal arrangements. 22 23

Bennett, op. cit. (n. 6 ), pp. 64—65. Cohen, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Kibbutz’, op. cit. (n. 18) ; idem, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5 ).

[367]

Totalitarian Democracy and After These characteristics of the kibbutz were further reinforced by its essential voluntarism, which was not merely an ideological principle but a concrete fact of important consequences for the working of its institutions : since the kibbutz remained embedded in its social en­ vironment, and neither isolated nor insulated24 itself from it, the dis­ satisfied member could always leave and, unlike in other communal movements, at a relatively low opportunity cost ;2526 many members, including perhaps half of the second generation, indeed did so, giving the lie to the ludicrous view of the kibbutz as a ‘total institution’.28 Those who remained did so generally of their own free will. This circumstance put serious constraints upon the power of the kibbutz leaders : unlike in totalitarian democracies, where the boundaries of the collective and the state coincide, the kibbutz leadership does not wield real — not to speak of absolute — means of coercion over the membership. Rules and laws there may have developed,27 but these did not radically change the fact that compliance cannot be enforced and eventually depends on the members’ consent : the kibbutz is an extreme example of a society in which all rule-governed behaviour —■even if the rules are formalized — depends on inducement and consent, rather than constraint. Coupled with the conception of the individual as a concrete, unique person and not an abstraction, this voluntarism puts in the hands of the rank and file membership a power vis-à-vis the leadership which is completely absent in totalitarian demo­ cracies or charismatic utopian movements. To sum up : the pluralistic, open, pragmatic and voluntaristic charac­ ter of the kibbutz imposes important checks on whatever totalitarian tendencies might have developed in the formative stages of the move­ ment. The direct democracy instituted in the kibbutz, even if it is an expression of the communal spirit and solidarity, is also a forum for the legitimate expression of the personal opinions, desires and complaints of individual members. While consensus may be aspired to, differences of opinion are tolerated and their expression is respected. Whatever shortcomings direct democracy may suffer from in the big 24 25

26 27

B. R. Wilson, ‘An Analysis of Sect Development’, in : B. R. Wilson (ed.) : Patterns of Sectarianism, London 1967, pp. 36-37. D. Barkin & J. W. Bennet, ‘Kibbutz and Colony — Collective Economies and the Outside World’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XIV (1972), pp. 456-483. Goldenberg & Wekerle, op. cit. (n. 2). Cohen, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Kibbutz’, op. cit. (n. 18) ; H. Tarlo, ‘Some Socio-Legal Aspects of the Kibbutz’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, X XII (2) (1980), pp. 103-123. [3 6 8 ]

Erik Cohen and complex kibbutz of our days, and whatever attempts may have been made to manipulate public opinion, the freedom of the individual to air his views and preferences has not only been theoretically as­ serted, but has been preserved in practice ; with growing individualism, it has in fact expanded rather than declined. The Dynamics of the Political Sphere in the Kibbutz Owing to its open programme, the institutional arrangements of the kibbutz have not been fixed according to a pre-existing blueprint, but underwent far-reaching modifications and changes over the years, reflecting the changing directions in which the tensions between the basic values have been resolved as well as the pragmatically inspired accommodations between utopian ideals and changing environmental conditions. The decision-making institutions of the kibbutz and its leadership pat­ terns likewise emerged from a prolonged process of trial and error, in an interplay of conflicting values and practical considerations, which shaped their changing manifestations. The kibbutz strove to establish political institutions which would assure equal and free participation to its members, preserve its essential communalism and yet operate efficiently. The principal stages of their evolution are well known : starting from an extreme egalitarianism — according to which all issues, big and small, were to be decided by the general assembly of members and the collective was to manage itself without any formal organization and leadership roles — the kibbutz developed over time a complex organizational structure, replete with committees, func­ tionaries and institutional procedures.28 While this process of political institutionalization removed the general assembly from the day to day running of communal affairs, and significantly narrowed the scope of issues dealt with by the assembly, it led neither to a formal abolish­ ment of direct democracy nor, more importantly, did it turn the as­ sembly into a mere rubber stamp for decisions already taken elsewhere. The assembly ceased to run directly the daily affairs of the kibbutz. Some passivization of the membership has taken place : the assembly meets less frequently and though it is still generally well attended, many members do not take an active part in its deliberations.29 How28

29

N. Golomb, The Theory of Kibbutz Administration, Israel, Ministry of Agriculture, Extension Service (mimeo), 1963 ; Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5 ), pp. 135-136. E. Cohen, A Comparative Study of the Political Institutions of Collective Settlements in Israel, Jerusalem, Department of Sociology, Hebrew Uni­ versity (mimeo), 1968, pp. 27-35. [3 6 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ever, the essentially collective character of decision-making has been preserved : the general assembly still retains direct control over the fundamental decisions in all principal areas of collective life, and serves as well as the forum which elects the various functionaries and committees and in which their decisions and actions can be openly discussed and criticized. While the complexity and specialized nature of many decisions — particularly in the economic sphere — preclude a full comprehension by all rank and file members of the issues con­ cerned,30 there exist in the kibbutz several mechanisms which help the retention of public attention and concern, and prevent the emer­ gence of the kind of apathy and alienation from public affairs found, e.g., in many producers’ or consumers’ cooperatives. The kibbutz is a multiplex society, i.e. one in which the same per­ sons participate in different spheres of life ; the political life of the community is embedded in the wider social sphere, and does not con­ stitute a segregated sphere of activity as in modern democracies or cooperatives. The kibbutz is also a highly reflective and self-critical society,31 quick to perceive instances of malfunctioning. Both these factors make for an amount of informal discussion and deliberation of internal problems and pending issues quite unusual with other mod­ em communities of similar complexity. Though the intensity of public life has somewhat slackened off in the big and mature kibbutz, a circle of the more active and knowledgeable members continues in most collectives to maintain a keen interest in public affairs. As the kibbutz matures, this circle is depleted by the process of functional differentiation and specialization ; but, owing to the principle of rota­ tion in leading roles (to be discussed below), the pool of members with past experience in such roles later tends to widen again, especially once the second generation takes over central offices. Members with past experience, but out of office, possess the competence to evaluate and criticize the proposals of the current leadership and to influence public opinion. In some cases this may lead to a confrontation between the founders and their sons ; but it certainly helps to maintain interest and involvement in public affairs. In order to improve communications and engage the attention of the rank and file members, the kibbutz has also evolved advanced methods of popularization, demonstration and communication through which 30

31

E. Cohen, ‘Progress and Communality — Value Dilemmas in the Col­ lective Movement’, International Review of Community Development, X V -X V I (1966), pp. 3-18. Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5). [3 7 0 ]

Erik Cohen even unknowledgeable persons can be informed about pending issues in terms comprehensible to them. Although this raises a potential problem of manipulation of public opinion, the other mechanisms, and especially the existence of a pool of competent but momentarily inactive members, constitute a powerful check to such manipulation. Even though the general assembly, then, tends in most cases to confirm the proposals brought before it by the current leadership, this is usually a reasoned, and not an automatic, conérmation: the proposals, which have been formulated in a lengthy process of both formal and informal enlightened deliberation, represent a compromise expressing the climate of communal opinion rather than a dictate imposed upon the collective and merely symbolically confirmed by its assembly. The principles informing the selection of functionaries and the man­ ner of their operation furnish further safeguards against any totali­ tarian tendencies. All public functionaries are elected for limited periods ; and though some members tend to rotate between several central offices, while many never attain offices of any importance, no exclusive power élite, monopolizing all important positions, has, in general, emerged. With the maturing of the second generation, indeed, the number of persons eligible for central offices has expanded;32 while many of the kibbutz-born generation left to look for new op­ portunities outside, those who remained gradually took over leading offices in most settlements. Public office in the kibbutz is, on the whole, an onerous role — a fact which helps to keep offices in rotation and diminishes the chances that functionaries will develop vested interests in their jobs. Indeed, the principle of rotation not only hinders the emergence of a power élite but also ensures the equitable distribution of the burden of public offices between as wide a group of members as the efficient manage­ ment of public affairs, and the members’ readiness to serve, permit. Many members do not deem the sense of power and accomplishment, accompanied by some appurtenances of office and a mainly informal status, to be equal to the troubles and efforts involved, and time needed, for the performance of public roles. This, as well as the in­ terpersonal tensions which often accompany such performance, re­ duces the number of aspirants for offices, and also serves as a safe­ guard against members developing a vested interest in office. Central functionaries of the movement frequently encountered difficulties in bridging the gap between their status on the national scene and that of a member of the kibbutz, equal to all the other members, which 32

Ibid., p. 138. [3 7 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After is a precondition for acceptance on the communal level. As a con­ sequence, they were often socially isolated at home — a fact which may not disturb a totalitarian leader, who may even savour ‘splendid isolation’ at the pinnacle, but may be highly distressing to a leading member of a communal settlement. Direct democracy in the contemporary kibbutz tends to become re­ stricted to basic decisions, while the daily running of affairs is in the hands of elected functionaries. But there are as yet sufficient safeguards which preserve collective control over public matters, and prevent the emergence of a power élite dominating the rank and file member­ ship. This situation in itself is no guarantee that it will survive in­ definitely in the future, but its success in overcoming formidable ob­ stacles in the past, engendered by the far-reaching changes which took place in the kibbutz, permits some optimism. Communal Structure and Communal Politics Totalitarian democracy is predicated upon the radical elimination of all inequalities and differences among the membership of the col­ lectivity.33 Such a Gleichschaltung eventually destroys all autonomous social entities located between the individual and the ultimate political community or the state. The individual is thus exposed, alone and atomized, to the overwhelming and pernicious power of the state. The kibbutz did not undergo such a Gleichschaltung. The early kib­ butz, the ‘Bund’,34 was indeed a highly cohesive community, and denied the legitimacy of any intermediary group, including the nuclear family, which could impair the exclusive commitment of the individual to the collective.35 As most kibbutzim made the transition to the big­ ger, more heterogeneous and institutionalized ‘Commune’,36 inter­ mediate groups, such as the nuclear, and later extended, family,37 friendship and work groups,38 and groups of origin, age-groups and, eventually, generations, either emerged or retained their particular identities. Such groups, rather than destroying the communal cohe­ sion, in fact reinforced it by adding personal social ties to the over-all 33 34 35 36 37 38

Origins, p. 250. Cohen, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Kibbutz’, op. cit. (n. 18), pp. 708-713. Y. Talmon, op. cit. (n. 17), pp. 3-6. Ibid., pp. 34-36 ; Cohen, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Kibbutz’, op. cit. (n. 18), pp. 718-725. Y. Talmon, op. cit. (n. 17). A. Etzioni, ‘Solidario Work Groups in Collective Settlements {Kibbutzim)', Human Organization, XVI (1957), pp. 2-6. [3 7 2 ]

Erik Cohen commitment of the individual to collective living. In the political sphere, they contributed to the process of articulation of divergent opinions and interests ; while this process led in some instances to raucous conflicts and internal struggles threatening the over-all in­ tegration of the kibbutz,39 it also provided a powerful antidote to the emergence of an unquestioned and unquestionable leadership which thrives on rank and file apathy under conditions of complete homo­ geneity of opinions and interests. With the transition to the even bigger, more complex and differen­ tiated ‘Association’,40 further far-reaching social transformations have taken place. The kibbutz has developed formal institutions, capable of functioning effectively — and in the spirit of its communal pre­ cepts — despite a weakening of solidarity, the strengthening of indi­ vidual interests and the decline of the members’ value commitments. While such developments threaten the effectiveness of the informal, diffuse social controls over the functionaries, and necessitate more formal mechanisms to insure their accountability, they also give addi­ tional licence to the free expression of the demands of individual members and of specific interest groups. As the expression of indi­ vidual and group interests gradually achieved legitimacy, the kibbutz took on some characteristics of liberal democracy. One of the prin­ cipal threats to the mature kibbutz, indeed, is that of ‘ungovernabil­ ity’,41 stemming from the institutionalized separation between the member’s contribution to the collective and his demands on it. But, as a growing number of rank and file members become apathetic in matters of public concern, there is also always an inherent potential for ‘authoritarianism by default’ — the domination of the kibbutz by an increasingly powerful group of active leaders, who achieve control over the kibbutz not because they charismatically embody its values but because they are prepared to shoulder public responsibility. The problem of the mature kibbutz in the public sphere is hence to steer a narrow path between excessive liberalism, which would impair its communality, and excessive delegation of authority, which would curtail individual freedom and participation in the communal demo­ cratic process.

39 40 41

See, e.g., G. M. Kressel, 'From Each According to His A bility . . Strati­ fication Versus Equality in a Kibbutz, Tel Aviv 1974 (in Hebrew). Cohen, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Kibbutz’, op. cit. (n. 18), pp. 725-737. Y. Atzmon, ‘Ungovernability in Israel’ (forthcoming). [3 7 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Pragmatic Utopianism — Challenges and Responses The peculiar combination of opposing tendencies endowed the kibbutz with a social dynamic quite unlike that of totalitarian democracies. Indeed, as time progressed, and the kibbutz grew in complexity and heterogeneity, and became progressively intertwined with the sur­ rounding society, the continuous process of resolution of tensions between opposites, which shaped its changing character, enrouted it along lines ever further removed from totalitarianism as conceived by Professor Talmon. However, as pragmatism gained an upper hand over utopianism, the kibbutz faced challenges of quite a different or­ der : while remaining non-dogmatic, dynamic and vital, it was also threatened with a gradual loss of its distinctive communal ‘physiog­ nomy’ as it accommodated ever more to the desires and preferences of its members, and as the ability of the collective to regulate itself informally declined. This problem is most severe in the mature and big kibbutz, tending to the type of association. Under the authoritarian leaders in totalitarian democracies and other utopian movements, the factual ability of the members to shape their own destiny is virtually nil, as the course of society seems to be steered towards a predestined goal, which purportedly embodies the general will. As the individual loses all influence on public affairs, the social and institutional structure tends to ossify. The kibbutz, which has preserved a functioning direct democracy, faces the opposite challenge : as ideological commitments weaken, there is no telling in which direction the effective will of the majority will enroute the kibbutz — and if it will not eventually lose its com­ munal character. This threat gains additional force by the fact that, owing to its secularity and openness there are no intrinsic limits, derived from some explicit conception of a sacred ultimate order, which put effective constraints on the will of the membership. In the last analysis, it is the voluntary assent of the members to retain the com­ munal character of their society on which the preservation of the dis­ tinctive ‘physiognomy’ of the kibbutz hinges. Indeed, various authors have pointed out that the scope of communality in the kibbutz has, with the years, been gradually reduced.42 How did the kibbutz respond to the threat of eventually losing its 42

E.g., Cohen, ‘Progress and Communality — Value Dilemmas in the Collective Movement’, op. cit. (n. 30); Y. Talmon, op. cit. (n. 17); H. Mariampolski, ‘Changes in Kibbutz Society — Their Implications for the Situation of the Sexes’, International Review of Modern Sociology, VI (1) (1976), pp. 201-216. [3 7 4 ]

Erik Cohen communal character ? In the main by facing squarely the problems of change, and reflectively instituting such communal arrangements as would satisfy the demands and desires even of those members whose communal value commitment has been weakened. In other words, the strategy of the leadership has been to demonstrate to the members that the kibbutz is able to compete effectively with the outside, noncommunal society, and thus preserve their commitment to its com­ munal arrangements.434 Never has the essential pragmatism of this utopian movement been more clearly expressed than in this attempt to prove that it is a viable alternative to the way of life of the sur­ rounding society. For the time being, at least, this strategy seems to be paying off ; all the kibbutzim, even the biggest and most complex ones, retain communal arrangements in the most crucial areas of life — work, consumption and public affairs ;M and though the kibbutz seems presently to face a serious crisis of continuity — as many as half of its second generation leave, while other second generation members manifest conspicuously innovative tendencies — its immediate future is not seriously threatened. Already steps are being taken to stem the outflow of second generation members ; the inflow of new members from Israel and abroad maintains a demographic equilibrium ; and the nation-wide organizations of the kibbutz movements function as important cushions against too intensive a penetration of outside forces upon the individual kibbutz. With the change in the national polit­ ical climate, the political position of the kibbutz in the wider society has weakened, but this in turn has led to an increased self-awareness. While isolation could lead the kibbutz to estrangement and growing ossification, its past record lends support to the expectation that in its pragmatic and reflective manner it will evolve novel solutions to its current problems, while retaining its peculiar dynamics of permanence-in-change. Conclusions We thus wind up with a paradox : prima facie the utopian democracy would seem to have a better chance than the kibbutz of eventually realizing its soteriological aspirations. The utopian democracy has a clear vision and is directed towards it by the strong hand of a leader­ ship which purports to be the embodiment of its values. But, as Talmon has so powerfully shown, its practical consequences are an aber­ ration of the ideal ; as he put it at the end of his first book : ‘This 43 44

Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5) Ibid. [3 7 5 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After is the course of salvational creeds : to be bom out of the noblest im­ pulses of men, and to degenerate into weapons of tyranny’.45 The ap­ parently strict and rigid adherence to the fundamental dogma pro­ duced its very opposite. The kibbutz does not prima facie have a very good chance to stand the test of time, and appears to be more vulnerable to radical change, owing to its open, undogmatic, pluralistic and secular character and the essentially centrifugal tendencies in its political make-up. As we have seen, however, and as was shown at greater length elsewhere,46 up till now it has succeeded, by its pragmatic and reflective approach, to preserve its distinctive communal ‘physiognomy’, despite all the shifts in value emphasis among its membership and the far-reaching structural transformations which it has experienced in the course of its history. The present-day kibbutz is not Utopia realized — and of all people, its members are fully aware of its shortcomings and prob­ lems. But it is a viable alternative way of life, which has avoided the two pitfalls of the cul-de-sac of ossification, so frequent in other uto­ pian movements, and the nightmare of totalitarianism, engendered by the dynamics of political messianism.

45 Origins, p. 253. 4f> Cohen, ‘Persistence and Change in the Kibbutz Community’, op. cit. (n. 5 ). [3 7 6 ]

The Israeli Kibbutz — The Dynamics of Pragmatic Utopianism Comments on Erik Cohen’s Paper by M ENACHEM ROSNER Haifa University

W h i l e I b a s i c a l l y a g r e e with Professor Cohen’s argumenta­

tion and conclusions on the dynamics of pragmatic utopianism in the Israeli kibbutz, I question the concepts used in his central thesis. My comments are, therefore, mainly a modest contribution toward conceptional clarification. The main question discussed in Erik Cohen’s paper is the relevance of the model of totalitarian democracy to the history of the kibbutz movement. Cohen’s answer seems to be that the totalitarian development of the kibbutz was a possibility but it did not work out since ‘like totalitarian democracy the kibbutz was indeed utopian ; but like liberal democracy it was also pragmatic’. While I agree with the analysis that the kibbutz is a ‘unique configuration of essentially opposed traits’ I question both the utopian and pragmatic definitions of the kibbutz. We recognize at least three different concepts of utopianism : 1. Jacob Talmon — to whom Cohen refers — preferred to use the term ‘political messianism’ instead of utopianism. (In the first and third books of his trilogy the term Utopia is not used at all, while in the second book it is used when dealing with utopian socialism as opposed to scientific socialism.) The main characteristic of political messianism is, in Talmon’s conceptualization, an all-embracing belief system solving all human problems, the attempt to achieve a future state of ideal harmony, etc.1 2. K. Manheim’s well-known conceptualization of utopianism2 is quite different. He conceives as utopian only those ‘orientations that, trans­ cending reality when they pass over into conduct, tend to shatter either 1 J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London 1952. 2 K. Manheim, Ideology and Utopia, New York 1936. [3 7 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After partially or wholly, the order of things prevailing at the time’.3 The central element is therefore not ‘perfection’ or 'ultimate salvation’ but an alternative to existing society. 3. The Marxist conception of utopianism centres on the necessary historical, economic and political conditions for the realization of socialist or communist society and criticizes utopian socialism for its neglect of those conditions that leads to attempts at realization when the conditions are not ripe for it .4 I doubt whether Talmon’s concept of ‘political messianism’ is relevant to the kibbutz. I do not think that it is possible to make Cohen’s generalization that the kibbutz community envisaged a future state of ideal harmony to be achieved by inner worldly human action. Vast differences existed between the ideological foundations of the different kibbutz movements. The founders of the first kibbutz — Degania — maintained a limited and pragmatic definition of the goals of the kibbutz, as stated, for example, by J. Busel in an attempt to review the first ten years of its existence. Of the five goals of the kibbutz that were mentioned by Busel,5 the first three were concerned with the creation of conditions to assist new immigrants in becoming agricul­ tural workers in Israel and the fourth was with the settlement of new areas. Only the fifth one expressed utopian connotations : ‘to create a way of life of economic equality and equality between men and women’.6 Contrary to the above, the Gedud Ha’Avoda, one of the main kibbutz movements of the third allya, the immigration of 1919-1923, stated a goal that was perhaps utopian in the Marxist sense : ‘to build the country by means of creating a general commune of Jewish workers’, with collective production patterns and one general treasury aimed at supplying all members’ needs. The only generalization that can be made in this context is perhaps M. Buber’s statement contrasting the ‘topical’ orientation of the kib­ butz movement with the utopian orientation of other social movements that postpone the realization of the alternative society to some points in the distant future.7 The kibbutz movements were utopian only in 3 4 5 6 7

Ibid., p. 192. F. Engels, Socialism — Utopian and Scientific, trans. E. Aveling, London (first ed., 1892) 1944. J. Busel (1919), in : Sh. Gadon (ed.), Netive ha-kibbuç weha-kvuza, I, Tel Aviv 1958. Ibid. Buber states : ‘It is a fundamental error to view this trend as romantic or utopian’. ‘At bottom it is thoroughly topical and constructive, that is [3 7 8 ]

Menachem Rosner Manheim’s sense, striving to change the status quo with a vision of a better society, but not in projecting a harmonious future. Perhaps the most ideologically oriented kibbutz movement, Ha-shomer Ha-za‘ir, stated explicitly in its platform of 1927 that ‘the kibbutz is the prototype of the future communistic society’. But it is not a per­ fect society. It must constantly strive to overcome inherent conflicts concerning the integration of the individual and the society, creating conditions conducive to the free development of personalities. The main means for the kibbutz movement to achieve this goal is education and re-socialization, but not ‘dénaturation’ as Talmon cites from Rousseau or ‘depersonalization’ as in ‘total institutions’ to which the kibbutz is sometimes compared. The platform states that ‘the essence of the kibbutz derives from its social life’. Social life is therefore not subordinated to the political sphere as in Talmon’s conceptualization of totalitarian democracy. The basic orientation of the kibbutz seems therefore to be ‘topical’ but not utopian, stressing the importance of striving toward a better society in the present and not perfectionism. The central realm is social life, not politics. The pragmatism of the kibbutz movement is very different from the predominantly utilitarian and individualistic prag­ matism that serves as the philosophical basis for the dominant trends of liberal democracy. The pragmatism of the kibbutz is an outcome both of its ‘topical’-constructive orientation and of its instrumental pioneering role in the process of nation-building. But the choice be­ tween alternative means to achieve even pragmatic goals was not guided mainly by utilitarian criteria. Reference to basic kibbutz values had a central place in this process although their weight might differ for different periods. I assume that E. Cohen had this in mind when mentioning the reflective manner in which the kibbutz reacts to en­ vironmental changes, which is quite different from the conventional pragmatic approach. In conclusion, I doubt that it would have been possible for the kibbutz movement to develop in a totalitarian direction. The main obstacle is not the pragmatism of the kibbutz but its ‘topical’ orientation and, even more important, its communitarian social structure. It is not by chance that one of the first steps of the Gleichschaltung in the Soviet Union was the abolition of communes. Some communes were created in the period after the revolution and others later by former members to say, it aims at changes which, in the given circumstances and with the means at its disposal, are feasible’ ; see M. Buber, Paths in Utopia, Boston 1958, p. 140 (English ed. ; published in Hebrew : Tel Aviv 1946/7). [3 7 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After of the Gedud Ha-‘Avoda who tried to create kibbutz-like communities in the Soviet Union. The communal structure and social life con­ tradicted the totalitarian trend toward ‘atomization’. The possibility of an authoritarian leadership, as in other communi­ tarian movements, has been a much more relevant danger to the democratic values of the kibbutz than totalitarianism. Authoritarian charismatic leaders have become dominant in many religious and spiritual communitarian movements, both in the past and in the pre­ sent. But similar attempts have usually failed in the secular com­ munities abroad, as well as in the kibbutz, and we shall later discuss the reasons for it. In conclusion, I doubt that the real alternatives in the kibbutz situation have been totalitarian democracy based on uto­ pianism or liberal democracy based on pragmatism. The Kibbutz Type of Participatory Democracy The kibbutz did not have to turn away from the totalitarian pole of democracy, as stated by E. Cohen. Does it turn towards the liberal pole ? Are there only two types of democratic theory and practice ? Was Talmon’s conception of liberal democracy a normative prescrip­ tion or a description of an empirical reality ? Talmon was well aware of the tension between the ‘liberal defence of private property’ and the egalitarian elements of democracy, and analysed the historical ‘compromise’ between these elements.8 Is kibbutz democracy rooted in this ‘compromise’ or does it represent a third basic type of democracy : participatory democracy ? J. Talmon considered Rousseau — who made the first attempt to develop a theory of participatory democracy — to be one of the fathers of totalitarian democracy. Contemporary political theorists, such as C. B. MacPherson, consider participatory democracy as a model, ‘in the best tradition of liberal democracy’.9 I prefer to conceptualize participatory democracy, at least of the kibbutz type, as a third distinct type. I agree with E. Cohen’s statement concerning the basic differences between kibbutz democracy and totalitarian democracy. But I think that it is also necessary to state the basic differences between kibbutz democracy and the prevailing forms of liberal democracy that have been conceptualized as democratic realism,10 polyarchy,11 or demo8 9 10 II

J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism — The Romantic Phase, London-New York 1960, pp. 505-518. G. B. McPherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, New York 1977, p. 115. J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York 1950. R. Dahl, Poliarchy, Participation and Opposition, New Haven 1972. [3 8 0 ]

Menachem Rosner cratical élitism.12 These basic differences relate both to the theoretical assumptions and to the normative patterns and mechanisms,13 as fol­ lows : 1. Kibbutz democracy is neither ‘a pragmatic mechanism for the articulation of preferences’ nor a political method establishing rules of fairness in the competition between élites. It is perceived as an end in itself, promoting equality in the members’ influence and streng­ thening their commitment to the common good of the kibbutz. 2. Kibbutz democracy is not confined to the political sphere but is comprehensive as a basic principle in all areas of life, such as in economic activity and organization and in education. The implemen­ tation of this principle might be more difficult in certain areas, e.g., industrial plants in comparison with agricultural branches, but there is a permanent effort at democratization. 3. Political activity in the kibbutz is not confined to voting in elections. In contrast to the separation between society and polity in liberal democracy, and the dominance of the polity — the state — in to­ talitarian democracy, political activity is only one aspect of social life in the kibbutz and political participation is a part of everyday life. 4. Democratic decision-making is perceived in the kibbutz mainly as a process of problem-solving serving the common good and not as a mechanism for the distribution of scarce goods among competing permanent interest groups. Most of the interest groups that exist in the kibbutz, such as work branches, age groups, etc., are involved only occasionally with the issues that are discussed at the general assembly. Due to overlapping membership in various types of groups there are no basic splits between permanent groups. 5. Political activity is exercised not only through direct participation in the collective decision-making of the general assembly and com­ mittees but also through participation in the management of different areas of social life. Many administrative functions are not full-time jobs and are filled by committees. Managers in the economic sphere are elected for limited periods. 6 . The main motivation for political activity is not an instrumental motivation aimed at the protection and promotion of individual and group rights and interests but as a mode of self-expression and com­ mitment to the community and its values. 12 13

P. Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism : A Critique, Boston 1967. M. Rosner & N. Cohen, ‘Is Direct Democracy Feasible in Modem So­ ciety ? The Lesson of the Kibbutz Experience*, in : Th. Bergman & L. Liegle (eds), Integrated Cooperatives in the Industrial Society, Assen 1980. [3 8 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After The patterns and mechanisms for the implementation of these theoret­ ical assumptions are realized in the general assembly and in the net­ work of committees, as well as in the rotation of office holders and the lack of privileges afforded them. The plebiscite, a central mech­ anism of pseudo-direct totalitarian democracy, is contrary to the ethos of kibbutz participatory democracy, which is based on personal relations and mutual persuasion. On the other hand, decision-making is based not only on consensus but also on majority rule. I do not know how different this ideal-type of participatory democracy is from J. Talmon’s conception of liberal democracy, but it is surely very different from the realities in most democratic nations and organiza­ tions and from most contemporary democratic theories that reflect these realities. I agree with Cohen on the reasons why this particular type of democracy did not degenerate into totalitarian democracy. But kibbutz democracy has developed neither from totalitarian towards liberal democracy nor in the opposite direction. It can be conceived of as a permanent struggle to implement a third type — participatory democracy — which has evolved gradually, through experimentation and trial, under the more difficult conditions of the complex and mature contemporary kibbutz. The Dilemmas of Kibbutz Democracy While we doubt whether the dichotomy of totalitarian versus liberal democracy is an appropriate conceptual framework for the analysis of kibbutz democracy, some of the dilemmas related to this dichotomy are relevant to the Problemstellung of Talmon’s monumental trilogy. In the conclusion of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Talmon states two basic antinomies : 1. The conflict between a comprehensive belief-system and freedom.14 2. The contrast between freedom and economic concentration. Eco­ nomic concentration is seen as a condition for economical progress and social security.15 The first antinomy can be related to the tension that exists in the kibbutz, as well as in other ideological movements, between the com­ mitment to ideological goals and the process of democratic decision­ making that is perceived as an expression of freedom — of self gov­ ernment. We have already stated that kibbutz ideology is not a mes­ sianic belief and kibbutz democracy is not based on self-interested 14 15

J. L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of the Revolution, London 1981. Myth, p. 234. [3 8 2 ]

Menachem Rosner individualism. But there do exist real tensions between the more futur­ ist and generalist ideological orientations and the more present-oriented, local and pragmatic considerations that influence the process of deci­ sion-making. Three examples assist in illustrating these tensions and the means employed to alleviate them : 1. The problem of charismatic leadership. It has already been men­ tioned that while charismatic authoritarian leaders have become dom­ inant in many communitarian religious and spiritual movements, such attempts have failed in the secular communities. An early example of such a failure is the case of Etienne Cabet — the visionaire and founder of Icaria — who found himself in a minority on many ideolog­ ical issues and finally decided to split the community and to found a new one that would conform to his initial vision. While in a religious or spiritual community the leader is accepted as the legitimate ‘trans­ lator’ of its vision into everyday life, such ‘translation’ is not automat­ ically accepted in democratic communities in which the members decide — if necessary, by majority — what is the legitimate translation of abstract, general values into specific norms. Commitment to demo­ cracy in the kibbutz is, therefore, a safeguard against the domination of authoritarian leaders. The egalitarian norms and intensive social control in small, comprehensive communities has prevented the develop­ ment of privileges and of a permanent leadership status while creating ambiguities in the status of potential ideological leaders. This is per­ haps one of the reasons for the lack of ideological leader-figures in the younger generation of the kibbutz. 2. The tension between ideology and democracy is also reflected in the relationship between kibbutz federations and movements and the individual kibbutz communities. Three different types of such relation­ ships may be discerned : (a) the most ‘utopian’ historical kibbutz movement mentioned above, Gedud Ha'Avoda, also had the most centralist organizational structure according the least degree of au­ tonomy to the individual kibbutz. (b) The relatively less ideological movement, Hever Ha-Kevuzot, on the other hand, limited the func­ tions of the federation, leaving a large degree of autonomy to the kibbutzim, (c) A special solution was found by the most ideologicaloriented movement, the Kibbuz Arzi. Here, while the economic autono­ my of the individual kibbutz is relatively large, ideological guidance and ideological education and political representation are central roles of the federation. The goal of the democratic decision-making process in this federation is to achieve maximal consensus not only on issues related to everyday kibbutz life or to the implementation of its in[3 8 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After temal values but also on those concerning its more general and com­ prehensive ideology. These structural arrangements in the different kibbutz movements exemplify the various approaches in handling the possible tensions between ideology and democracy. While J. Talmon considered the conflict between a comprehensive belief-system and freedom to be insolvable, the kibbutz movements have tried different patterns in an attempt to overcome the related tensions. Talmon was less explicit in his discussion of the conflict between freedom and economic functional requirements, such as economic centralization. But we may assume that he accepted the general belief that a certain organizational structure — centralist, hierarchical and bureaucratic — both in the individual firm and in the general economy is a necessary precondition for economic efficiency. These organizational features are, by definition, in opposition to values of equality and freedom and in our conceptualization also to demo­ cracy. Many historical examples — from the Soviet N.E.P. to the Chinese cultural revolution — can be cited as support for the thesis of con­ tradiction between economic and ideological considerations. The con­ cerns expressed by Talmon about economic concentration as a danger to freedom are especially relevant to Western liberal democracies. The kibbutz experience, especially in the area of industrialization, is quite a different illustration of this general problem. Since the beginning of the process of industrialization, questions have been raised, both inside and outside of the kibbutz movement, whether the kibbutz ideology, and especially its democratic organization struc­ ture, creates obstacles for efficient industrial activity.16 One such ob­ stacle is the ideological commitment to self-labour while industrial development requires an open labour market. The lack of monetary incentives, the rotation of managers and the democratic decision-mak­ ing were also perceived as opposing the universal optimal model of efficient organizational structure-hierarchy and bureaucracy. Paradoxically, the results of many studies have shown that those kib­ butz industrial plants which conform to the ideological requirements, e.g., do not employ hired labour and are organized more democrat-

16

E.g., J. Valier, ‘Structural Differentiation, Production Imperatives and Communal Norms : The Kibbutz in Crisis’, Social Forces (1962), pp. 233-242. [3 8 4 ]

Menachem Rosner ically, seem to be economically more successful.17 The main explana­ tion for this ‘paradoxical’ finding is based on the degree of congruence of compliance patterns, expectations and aspirations. The more ef­ fective plants are those in which the organizational patterns and the expectations of kibbutz members are more congruent. The legitimization of the power structure and normative compliance are related to democratic decision-making, which corresponds to mem­ bers’ expectations and aspirations. But since democratic decision-mak­ ing and participative management are explicitly prescribed by the ideological decisions of the kibbutz federation, there is — at least in this area — also a clear positive relationship between ideological con­ formity, participatory democracy and economic effectiveness. To sum up, while, according to J. Talmon’s conception, the opposition between freedom and the organizational preconditions of economic efficiency are stressed, the kibbutz experience points to a different possibility — participatory democracy as conducive both to freedom and self-expression and to economic achievements. The very special conditions in which the kibbutz has historically devel­ oped do not permit us to attribute to this third type of democracy the same level of universal applicability as to the two types studied by J. Talmon. But, in light of the developments since the first Hebrew publication of M. Buber’s Paths in Utopia thirty-five years ago, I should like to recall his concluding sentences — We must designate one of the two poles of socialism between which our choice lies by the for­ midable name : Moscow. The other pole I would dare to see also today, as many years ago, in spite of all the failures and retreats, in our small cooperative endeavour.18 In the English edition this sentence is replaced by : ‘The other I would make bold to call Jerusalem’.19 The choice, therefore, is not only between ‘totalitarian democratic’ state socialism and ‘liberal democratic’ capitalism. The kibbutz type of participatory democracy presents a third possibility, not only as a theoretical model but as an efficiently working social and economic system.

17 18 19

U. Leviatan & M. Rosner, Work and Organization in Kibbutz Industry, Darby (Pa.) 1980. Buber, op. cit. (n. 7 ), p. 126 (Hebrew ed.). Ibid. (English ed.), p. 140.

[385]

The Context of Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Totalitarianism by

BEN H A L P E R N Institute of Advanced Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

T h e c o n c e p t o f ‘ t o t a l i t a r i a n i s m ’ was developed simultane­

ously by a group of conservative liberals, not necessarily connected in other ways, who since the late 1930s began to see common traits in the communism of the left and the fascism (or Nazism) of the right. What made it possible for them to join together such antipodes was not the political liberalism of these contemporary observers but the conservative intellectual tradition which they also shared. Burke’s and Tocqueville’s critiques of democratic absolutism were in the back­ ground of Talmon’s and Hannah Arendt’s paradoxes ; and in Arendt’s case there was the specific tradition of German Lebens- and Existenzphilosophy, with its highly ambivalent critique of Romantic liberalism. The consequence was that, while both Arendt and Talmon rejected the image in which the twentieth century was being shaped, Talmon came out in positive terms as a protagonist of nineteenth-century British, empiricist and pragmatic politics, while Arendt tried to pro­ ject into the twenty-first century her Germanic image of the ancient Athenian polis. The concept of ‘totalitarianism’, given such strikingly original formula­ tion by thinkers like Talmon or Arendt, has a clear, natural relation to certain fairly stereotyped, critical appraisals of modern times. It represents an extension, varying according to individual circumstances, of a widespread rejection of deterministic generalization as a mode of thought (leading to absolutism as a mode of action) and of mass society as a condition of life. In her later work, Hannah Arendt developed out of the crude material of these widely shared attitudes a refined philosophic analysis of The Human Condition and The Life of the Mind. Critics and students of her work have noted recently how little these later studies connect with the historical-political anal[3 8 6 ]

Ben Holpern ysis of ‘totalitarianism’ that first won her fame.1 But that early work derives from the same basic predispositions — for freedom and against conformity in culture ; for the individual and against the mass in the community — upon which her philosophic system built its structure. The challenging form her conception of totalitarianism took arose not out of abstract issues but out of the concrete context of the times. Her notion of ‘totalitarianism’, like Talmon’s, reflects not only the rather elementary intellectual predispositions common to their respective back­ grounds, but the shared trauma of all liberals in the 1930s — a trauma, however, which each expressed in an individual construction, reflecting profound personal commitments. Talmon tells us explicitly that the shock of the events of the 1930s — the Moscow trials, the Spanish Civil War — catalysed his recogni­ tion of an identical malady in Soviet communism and German fascism, the ‘Revolt of the Masses’.2 The trauma of those days was a deep source of the moral concern expressed in his work. The same relation­ ship is evident in Hannah Arendt’s case. But the critical point for her was clearly not the moral collapse of communism but the Nazi assault on her identity, an issue that did not arise for one like Talmon. It happens that I am in a position to testify as a witness — a hostile, but friendly witness — concerning the specific context of Hannah Arendt’s formulation of her concept of totalitarianism. I also recall her resent­ ment, and appreciate the delicacy, of such contextual analyses of her ideas. But the eminence she attained demands historical appraisal — it is the necessary concomitant of the kind of immortality she aspired to — and I shall try to perform the task with all the empathy that she deserves. Society and the State The early expressions of Arendt’s concept of totalitarianism, in her first publications in English soon after arriving in America, attracted attention by their characteristic brilliance, but were not explosive in their impact. She wrote a long, highly suggestive study of the Dreyfus affair and its historic significance, published in Jewish Social Studies in 1942, which contained the germ of her later conception but also

1

2

See E. Fackenheim, To Mend the World — Foundations of Future Jewish Thought, New York 1982, p. 32, and n. 13 ; also S. Whitfield, Into the Dark — Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism, Philadelphia 1980, pp. 132165. See Y. Arieli’s remarks, pp. 5-6 above. [3 8 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After many passages reflecting fairly conventional views sharply opposed to some of her later startling judgements.3 She noted, for example, the decline of the nation-state, its ‘division into. . . small factions’ and ‘cliques’, the rise of the ‘mob’, and the ‘fundamental error of regarding (it] as identical with rather than a caricature of the people’. She referred to the ease with which the ‘mob’ fell in with notions of global conspiracies (by Jesuits, Freema­ sons, or Jews) as the true, secret dynamic of history. In all this she anticipated her doctrine of a Nazi conspiracy closely patterned on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ; but she still stated it in terms reasonably familiar and congenial to her audience. She remarked in passing that it was ‘the common error of our time to imagine that propaganda can achieve all things and that a man can be talked into anything provided the talking is sufficiently loud and cunning’ — but she did not, in this connection, put forward her theory of terror, rather than consent, as the force that bound together a totalitarian society. What she had to say about Jews and anti-Semitism in this article on the Dreyfus affair also anticipated her later formulas in some respects ; but in other respects her judgements stand in sharp contrast to those which later created such a stir. In the 1942 article, her acute and bold formulations nevertheless remained within the common ground of intellectual discourse among progressive, Zionist Jews of that time. A close reader might note that her factual account of the decline of Jewish status under the Third Republic reflected excessively the re­ searches of the Nazi historian, Walter Frank ;4 but the moral base of her judgements could raise no eyebrows. Thus, she viewed the pre-modem Jews in the narrow frame — within limits appropriate to Germany, or France, but certainly not to the bulk of Jewry — of ‘a closed group [of money-lenders] who worked directly for the state and were directly protected by it’. Her conser­ vatism showed in her view, similar to Frank’s, that the corruption of politics ensued when ‘society’ — that is, the economic class interests of the bourgeoisie, in particular — invaded the machinery of state. On the other hand, she reacted in a way thoroughly in tune with traditional Jewish sentiments when she lamented that ‘when the state machine was dissolved, so too were the closed ranks of Jewry’, reflecting 3 4

‘From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today’, Jewish Social Studies (July 1942), pp. 195-240. W. Frank, Nationalismus und Demokratie in Frankreich, Hamburg 1933. It is not only relied on for factual items, there is also a shared perception of parliamentary democracy, cf. Whitfield, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 160-162. [3 8 8 ]

Ben Halpern an attitude sharply at odds with her well-known later contention that the more organized the Jewish community, the more nearly total was the destruction of the Jews under the Nazi occupation. Equally un­ exceptionable to her circle of readers were her attacks on the attitudes during the Dreyfus affair of the Jewish bourgeoisie and the Dreyfus family itself. She sounded like a Jewish progressive nationalist when she charged that those assimilationists were mainly concerned with protecting their entrée into French social circles, and therefore sup­ pressed any defence based on the good old Jacobin principle that an injustice to one is injustice to all. The case for the solidarity of all the oppressed, voiced by her here, was not yet formulated in the chal­ lenging context of her later post-nationalist doctrine concerning the ap­ propriate response to totalitarianism. *Organized Guilt’ The full development of her views on totalitarianism was first made explicit, I believe, in her discussion of the question of ‘German guilt’ towards the end of the war. This was presented in 1945 in articles published in the Jewish Frontier (‘Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility’) and Partisan Review (‘Approaches to the “German Pro­ blem” ’) . 5 The thrust of her argument was summarily indicated in her remarks about the currency of ‘the thesis. . . that there is no difference between Nazis and Germans’. This, she said, was a ‘victory of Nazi political warfare’, which, she noted, ‘was incorrectly described as mere propaganda’. A complex argument was implied in each of these preg­ nant phrases. First, of course, she contended that Nazism was not, as many held, an authentic development of a German national tradition, and ac­ cordingly, German history could not render the German people col­ lectively responsible for the Nazis. In support of this contention, she further argued that ‘by identifying fascism with German national character and history, people are deluded into believing that the crush­ ing of Germany is synonymous with the eradication of fascism’. But she went further than this still fairly standard argument : ‘Nazism [i.e. totalitarianism]’, she declared, ‘owes nothing to any part of the Western tradition. . . ’ [italics added]. Nazism — or totalitarianism — was something radically new, unique and unprecedented. It was, as she put it, a new system and technique of *lying the truth’. In this oxymoronic phrase, she indicated what in Nazi ‘propaganda’ 5

Jewish Frontier (January 1945), pp. 19-23 (trans. from Arendt’s German MS) ; Partisan Review (Winter 1945), pp. 93-106. [3 8 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After made it something other than ‘mere propaganda’ — made it, in fact, a new method of ‘political warfare’. Unlike the naïve propaganda of World War I, based on fictional ‘atrocity’ stories, the Nazis did not simply lie. They lied the truth. They relied on the truth about state and society in modern Europe : ‘The truth was the class structure of European society could no longer function . . . . The truth was that the national State, once the very' symbol of the sovereignty of the people, no longer represented the people, becoming incapable of safeguarding either its external or internal security.’ The Nazi lie consisted in offering as solutions of these genuine maladies only the semblance of their remedies, disguising a reality even more atrocious. If the Arendt thesis had gone no further than this, she would be no more than another brilliant journalist whose paradoxes merely adorned her prose. Hannah Arendt, however, was serious about the implications of her terms, and continued to explicate them in con­ clusions that grew progressively more extreme. The new method of persuasion that Arendt called ‘lying the truth’ rested — in its false solutions for true problems — on the ability and willingness to convert fictions into realities by force and violence. If the totalitarian vision were not yet true at any moment, the Nazis could manage by coercion to make it so. Thus, ‘the truth of the [social] breakdown.. . was answered by the Nazis with the lie of the Volksgemeinschaft, based on complicity in crime and ruled by a bureau­ cracy of gangsters____And the truth of the decline of the national State was answered by the famous lie of the New Order in Europe’, constituted in fact by armed conquest and occupation. At this point, while immediately concerned with the question of Ger­ man guilt (and the related problem of the reconstruction of the post­ war world), Arendt still thought of the Nazi procedure of ‘lying the truth’ — or of forcibly validating their lies — as a measure of ‘polit­ ical warfare’. Hence, she traced its development to the urgent need for tactical decisions arising out of the Nazis’ changing military pro­ spects. When they hoped for victory, she said, the Nazis hid their terrorism by recruiting only confirmed or probationary criminals for the work of murder and torment, and by masking the machinery for persecution with innocuous-seeming legal phrases and bureaucratic formalisms. After the ‘lost battle of Britain’, she concludes, the Nazis no longer ‘expected victory’. At that point — as she said in 1945, viewing events from the perspective of a war considered to be nearly won by the so-called United Nations — the Nazis began to plan for the future activities of their conspiracy in the post-war world, when defeat would have driven them underground. The very foundation of [3 9 0 ]

Ben Holpern their project would have to be the destruction of the German nation — not the Jews, who seemed to be less relevant for Arendt in this con­ nection. The prospect of defeat, according to Arendt, made the Nazis drop the mask of concealment from their criminal project : c. .. today these crimes are openly proclaimed under the title of “measures of liquidation” in order to force “Volksgenossen” whom difficulties of organization made it impossible to induct into the “Volksgemeinschaft” of crime at least to bear the onus of complicity and awareness of what was going on__ The totalitarian policy which has completely destroyed the neutral zone in which the daily life of human beings is ordinarily lived,6 has achieved the result of making the existence of each in­ dividual in Germany depend either upon committing crimes or on complicity in crimes’. Two consequences followed from the new policy. The first bore upon the question of fixing guilt and responsibility upon individual Germans following an Allied victory, the particular context of Arendt’s concern in this article. She said, ‘Just as there is no political solution within human capacity for the crime of administrative mass murder so the human need for justice can find no satisfactory reply to the total mobilization of a people for that purpose. Where all are guilty, nobody is guilty.’ The other consequence was one that, at the time, concerned her still more. The ‘total identification of the whole German people with the Nazis’ (and, even more, an Allied post-war policy holding Germans collectively guilty and responsible) would serve the Nazi plot, of which Arendt warned in a subsequent article in the Jewish Frontier,7 the plot to build a future Fascist International : ‘National Socialism’s chances of organizing an underground movement in the future depend on no-one’s being able to know any longer who is a Nazi and who is not . . . ’. Terror and Totalitarianism Up to this point, Hannah Arendt’s published discussion of totali­ tarianism had been conducted within the context of the ‘German problem’ and of the changing strategic situation of the Nazis alone. In July 1947, the Jewish Frontier published her review-article ‘The 6

7

Here Arendt uses ‘totalitarian’ in the sense in which ‘total’ and ‘totalist’ were originally used by the fascists themselves — if not with the same feeling : namely as an extension of political controls into every function of society — the inverse of the democratic corruption of politics by society. ‘The Seeds of a Fascist International’, Jewish Frontier (June 1945), pp. 12-16. [3 9 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After Hole of Oblivion’, based on a book by a Polish woman, The Dark Side of the Moon, in which life in the Russian concentration camps was described, as experienced during the Soviet occupation of Poland.89 In this article, and in a later expansion of her ideas in Partisan Review in 1948,9 she significantly extended and generalized her con­ ception of totalitarianism, and of the role of terror in the cohesion of the totally regimented society — now seen explicitly as a type represented by the USSR and the Nazi Reich alike. She noted, in the light of the description in the book under review, that : ‘The most. . . important motive of the system of concentration camps is not even to inflict suffering. The main purpose is to make people disappear from the face of the earth, and to make those they left behind forget that they ever existed.’ What was thereby achieved, in fact, by the concentration camp system in the USSR was the terrorization of the entire society and citizenry by the nameless threat of the gulag — and this, she concludes, was the basic force that operated to hold the Soviet system together in mechanical compliance, presumably dispensing with the need for uncoerced consent. The same force, yielding the same effects, thereafter applies consistently in her remarks on the Nazi Reich as well. In that connection it bolstered her critique of current notions of the collective responsibility of the German people, who were now not only organized but terrorized into a common guilt. But the new formula was not simply a convenient rationalization. It is obvious that Arendt was entranced by the simple elegance of this revision of her earlier notions10 about the ways in which the Nazis produced a social system that made a reality of their lies. Unlike her thesis that the Nazis manufactured ‘organized guilt’ as a war measure, in the expectation of defeat and with a view to continuing their criminal conspiracy underground after the war, this version of how a lying reality was made — the construction of a society held together simply by terror — served as a permanent, universal, adequate 8 9 10

Jewish Frontier (July 1947), pp. 23-26. ‘The Concentration Camps’, Partisan Review (July 1948), pp. 743-763. I refer here to earlier and later notions strictly in relation to her published formulations. The published statements, tailored to specific occasions, were clearly more absolute and precise at any time than the full range of implications in her current views. Thus, when challenged in 1948 (Jewish Frontier, August and October), Hannah Arendt conceded that ‘consent’ — or ‘collaborationism’ — was a factor sustaining the structure of totali­ tarian society, in addition to the element of sheer ‘terror’. Similarly, while her published statements in 1942 were impeccably ‘Zionist’ in tone, the Zionist position she voiced downplayed ‘nationalist’ in favour of ‘inter­ nationalist’ values. [3 9 2 ]

Ben Holpern cause of totalitarian societies as such. It also displaced the German character of Nazism from the main focus, reducing it to a sub­ ordinate issue, rendered more or less gratuitous by the more general theory of totalitarianism. All the other elements of her analysis — the anti-national character of the mass ideologies, their reliance on the mob, and their character of international conspiracies— could also be easily generalized to include the Soviet case, especially after the rise of Stalin ; and if Hannah Arendt did not herself explicitly carry out an application to Soviet Russia of her derivations of fascism from imperialism and the chauvinist ‘pan-’ movements (pan-Ger­ manism, pan-Slavism), there were enough ex-Trotskyite post-com­ munists among her readers who could readily do so. Her analysis fell in with the needs and predispositions of an extensive and influential contemporary avant-garde audience. Jews and the Post-war World What then about the Jewish aspects of her doctrine ? The same period — the early post-war years — saw developments that provoked her to go beyond her early article on the Dreyfus affair in regard to Jewish issues as well. In that article, she had ended with a contrast between Theodor Herzl and Bernard Lazare which left no doubt that her Zionism (and in her early articles in Commentary she was specifically identified as a Zionist) 11 was aligned with the universalist radicalism of Lazare’s Jewish national concept and strongly opposed to HerzPs narrow particularist ‘national chauvinism’. In 1946, her article on Herzl in Commentary sharpened the animus of this opposi­ tion ; and in 1948 she came out in support of Judah L. Magnes’ lastminute attempt to forestall the creation of the State of Israel and enable the US State Department to replace it with its own jerry-built trusteeship plan as a temporary expedient.12 After the proclamation of Israel’s independence nullified this effort, Magnes came to Chaim Weizmann to congratulate the new president on the realization of Jewish millennial hopes.13 Hannah Arendt, who said she expected to be treated as a traitor, made no such gesture, but adopted the stance of a pariah among her own community. In spite of the sharp criticism she received at the time, it was a status the Jewish community did

11 12 13

Commentary (February 1946), p. 27 ; (May 1946), p. 1 ; cf. May 1948, p. 398. Commentary (May 1946), pp. 1-8 ; (May 1948), pp. 398-406. A. A. Goren (ed.), Dissenter in Zion — From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes, Cambridge (Mass.) 1982, p. 55. [3 9 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After not really impose upon her until the book on Adolph Eichmann pro­ duced a larger sensation. What primarily concerned Hannah Arendt in the aftermath of the war, and in the attitudes she expressed in 1948, was clearly stated in her June 1945 article, ‘The Seeds of a Fascist International’, in the Jewish Frontier. In this article, incidentally, she gave an excep­ tionally drastic form to her theory of anti-Semitism. Not only was modern anti-Semitism from the beginning ‘an International’. ‘As a global conspiracy,’ she said, ‘facism was essentially based on antiSemitism’ [italics added]. This went far beyond her argument in the 1942 article on the Dreyfus affair. There she had argued, in a Jewish historical context, that the cause of modem anti-Semitism was the bourgeois invasion of the ‘State machine’, making the function of the Jewish money-lending corporation obsolete and robbing the Jews of the sovereign’s protection, once granted in reciprocity. Now she made anti-Semitism the essential base of international fascism. Modem anti-Semitism, moreover, was not to be confused with ‘mere discrimination against minorities’. As a German émigré to America, she noted that it had ‘burst forth most frightfully in a country where there was relatively little discrimination against Jews, while in other countries with much more active social discrimination (as for example the United States), it has failed to develop into a significant political movement’. Thus, ‘It was a highly dubious achievement of Jewish counter-propaganda to have exposed anti-Semites as mere crackpots and to have reduced anti-Semitism to the banal level of a prejudice not worth discussing’.14 In fact, as Jews failed to note, ‘they were being drawn into the very storm center of the political perils of our culture’. For it was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that became the model the fascists followed ; and, taking the exterritorial survival of the Jewish people as their example, the fascists developed an es­ sentially anti-national, global conspiracy of their own, with antiSemitism as its essential base. But, as already noted, Hannah Arendt was not at this point, in June 1945, primarily concerned with the special difficulties of the Jews. The post-war fascist International would indeed continue to exploit anti-Semitism and take advantage of the situation of stateless Jews, but it had by now a far wider base. Not only was the national state ‘no longer a working concept of politics’, a mere ‘walking 14

Note that, in sharp contrast to her later provocative doctrine of the ‘banality of evil’ in her report on Eichmann, here she decries the depiction of anti-Semitism as ‘banal’. [3 9 4 ]

Ben Holpern corpse’ ; but since the Versailles treaty, ‘with its aftermath of minority questions and statelessness, the Jewish demonstration that nationality can be maintained without a state or territory has been repeated by almost all European people’. Only the Nazis’ deliberate adoption of the Jewish method — the exterritorial conspiracy — can explain ‘why with unparalleled coolness, [they] allowed their [own] land [and not the occupied territories] to be transformed into a shambles’. In this way, they planned to turn their war into a merely temporary defeat. After the war, she pointed out, ‘the German nation itself no longer existed’. The dividing line of the contemporary world ran right through the middle of what had been Germany. Hence, ‘freed of every national tie ... the Nazis can try’, said Arendt, ‘once more in the post-war era to organize as that true and undiluted secret society dispersed all over the world which has always been the pattern of organization towards which they have striven’. She contended that the ‘factual existence of a communist International, growing in power’, would aid their project, since many would see this as cogent proof of the lie of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Post-war colonial problems would help the Nazi racists emerge as the true champions of white supremacy, ‘outbidding’ any other group that favoured restricting human rights. The post-war refugee problem — including, but far from limited to, that of the Jews — would offer the Nazis further opportunities ; especially so, if the democracies ‘continue to operate with purely national conceptions, renouncing any ideological strategy of war and peace and thereby giving rise to the impression that, in contrast to the ideological Internationals, [both communist and fascist], they stand only for the immediate interests of particular peoples’. These were the assumptions that haunted Hannah Arendt’s mind in the post-war years ; and on such assumptions she took her stand on current issues of policy, including Jewish issues. The evils she feared with such intense conviction could only be averted, she believed, if the democratic Allies — that is, primarily the United States and Great Britain, upon whose joint efforts she implicitly relied — avoided a policy of ‘restoration of the European national system’. Such a resto­ ration, already being implemented, according to her perception, by the Russians — ‘in all areas under immediate Russian influence, the forces of yesterday have placed themselves in the saddle’— would have a disastrous impact among the displaced masses, non-Jews as well as Jews, upon whom she pinned her hopes. It would mean for them ‘a rightlessness compared to which the proletarians of the nine­ teenth century had a privileged status’. As stateless non-citizens they [395]

Totalitarian Democracy and After would lack the very ‘right to have rights’, a phrase she coined in another connection.15 Yet it was they who ‘might have been the true vanguard of a European movement. . . many of them indeed were prominent in the Resistance. . If they were not to be driven into the arms of the fascist International, there was only one way : the Anglo-Americans must work for a Federal Europe, in which the former Resistance fighters would be the core and leading element, and in which the displaced Europeans would find their proper place. Zionism as ‘Racist Chauvinism’ This was Hannah Arendt’s ruling conception and dominant preoccu­ pation in the crucial years of 1947—1948, when the future State of Israel was being given its painful birth. In common with other anxious observers, like Robert Weltsch and Ernst Simon — or Solomon Schwarz, who also commented in the same vein — she viewed with alarm the militant activism which possessed contemporary Jews, and particularly the community in Palestine, in the post-war years and during the struggle to create and defend the new Jewish state. She, like others, con­ sidered Jewish paramilitary resistance to the British, and later to the Arab states, as suicidal ; and she, like others, dreaded the moral effects that a militant nationalism would have on the Jewish homeland. But beyond these concerns shared with others, she had additional reasons, rooted in the conception she had formed of the nature of the fascist plague, during the war and in the coming post-war future. She had warmly favoured, and continued to view positively, in terms of her still-unwritten political philosophy, the creation of the ‘Jewish homeland’. This would give the unhistoric, uprooted Jews a ‘world’ of their own in which they could strive for ‘glory’ by noble words and deeds like ancient Athenians. Under current conditions, however, the Jewish national revival ought to conform to certain contemporary historical necessities — if I may use a Marxist term that she might object to. The Jewish homeland could not survive, nor would it deserve survival, as an outdated copy of the old-style nation-state, in its recent ‘racist-chauvinist’ version. The Jewish homeland must align itself with the Anglo-American brotherhood, with a Feder ill Europe, and with the successors of the wartime Resistance including the liberation movements of the Arab world. It was these considerations that were especially present in her mind when she supported Dr Magnes’s attempt to help the American State Department sidetrack

15

See Whitfield, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 107-112. [3 9 6 ]

Ben Holpern the UN partition plan in order to compel the Jews to accept a solution of the Palestine problem acceptable to the British and the Arabs. In an article on these themes in Commentary (evidently written before the tide of battle in Palestine turned in the Jews’ favour and the Jewish state was successfully launched, but published at the climax of those events) ,16 Hannah Arendt further developed her concept of totalitarianism, applying it, this time, to the case of the contemporary Zionist and Jewish consensus. An essential feature of totalitarianism, she now said, was the setting of all-or-nothing choices ; or (a related feature), setting off a group as opposed to — or by — all other groups on major political issues. Since this was, indeed, the nature of the policy followed by the Zionists and supported by the Jewish consensus, she tagged both with the label of ‘racist chauvinism’ — an early, possibly the original, precursor of a well-known more recent UN reso­ lution on Zionism. The application of her concept of totalitarianism to Jews provoked a critical response in the Jewish Frontier, in which her categories were directly questioned.17 It was pointed out that Hannah Arendt’s new criteria for totalitarianism — the posing of all-or-nothing choices and the total isolation of a group — were nowhere more perfectly realized than in the position of the Jewish ‘resistance’ in the Warsaw ghetto battle. And it was assumed that, rather than stamping this behaviour — or ‘action’, as Arendt would certainly have said — as totalitarian, she would consider it the only appropriate response to totalitarianism. (It was also noted that if these categories were philosophical — as indeed they turned out later to be — then they applied in principle to action as such, and hence were of dubious value in distinguishing concrete types of action.) The criticism also called into question the Arendt thesis — first suggested in the 1947 Jewish Frontier reviewarticle regarding Soviet concentration camps and fully developed in 1948 in Partisan Review — that the totalitarian terror of the concen­ tration camps extended through the whole society and replaced consent as the principle of its cohesion. Against this, it was argued that ‘vague terror’ — unsupported by the systematic torture of the concentration camp — could not produce a ‘society of the living dead’ without a widespread adoption of ‘collaborationism’. Only all-or-nothing resis­ tance could maintain life and morale against the terror of totalitar­ ianism. In response to the criticism, Hannah Arendt took up the issue of 16 17

Commentary (May 1948), pp. 399-401. B. Halpern, ‘The Partisan in Israel’, Jewish Frontier (Aug. 1948), pp. 6-9. [3 9 7 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After collaborationism-18 In this connection, she anticipated in a way the attack on the role of the Jewish Councils during the Holocaust that provoked much of the embitterment generated by her Eichmann book. ‘The central question. . . is really. . . whether one wants or does not want to collaborate. And this question, again, is tied up with an older troublesome question of Zionist politics, that is, the problem of the distinction between friend and foe. W hen.. . the Jewish Agency con­ cluded a Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the problem of this distinction was involved . . . . A similar error in judgement, though in an opposite sense, is one of the basic conflict between official Zionism and its current ‘collaborationist’ opposition__ Indeed, if Great Britain were an enemy of the Jews, like Nazi Germany, the all-or-nothing attitude would be justified. The point is precisely that today a certain general hysteria imposes all-or-nothing policies upon a moderately friendly world---- Neither the Arabs nor the British are enemies against whom an all-or-nothing attitude could be justified . . . ’. In closing her response, Hannah Arendt wrote of ‘the reasons why the “partisan” attitude cannot be generalized. . . ’. It was a wise comment — applicable to other concepts as well — but not, of course, one that she always kept in mind in her own intensely ‘engaged* writing.

18

Jewish Frontier (October 1948), p. 56. [3 9 8 ]

Between Rulers and Ruled — Some Aspects of the Jewish Tradition by

EPHRAIM

E. U R B A C H

President, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities

P a r t I V of Jacob Talmon’s last book The Myth of the Nation and

the Vision of Revolution bears the title ‘The Jewish Dimension*. In it, with great vigour and a fine perception of drama, Talmon describes the extreme precariousness of Jewish existence among the nations. He struggles with tormenting questions and explains the roots of the millenarian neurosis, which was a continual source of tension in the relationship between Jews and Christians. Talmon describes also the radical change undergone by the suddenly emancipated and secularized Jews of modern times, whose wish to forget their ancestry from a people with a history of four millennia did not make them more acceptable to the society in which they were living. In fact, as Talmon stresses, the more meagre the bonds between Jews in modern times, and the more rapid their assimilation, the more widespread became their image as strangers and bearers of alien values. Talmon frequently mentions the astonishingly disproportionate numbers of men and women of Jewish origin to be found among the theoreticians of socialism, revolutionary leaders and activists in radical movements. Following what he designates Freud’s epoch-making uncovering, if not discovery, of the subterranean springs of human conduct behind all its pretence, external decorum and delusion, Talmon finds a deeper common level for the thinking of these revolutionaries in the prophetic legacy and its vision of history as moving towards a Salvationist denouement. By presenting the theme of my lecture in the frame of this Colloquium in memory of my late friend and colleague Jacob Talmon, I do not intend to add another explanation for the addiction to totality, un­ conditional zeal and neglect of organizational exigencies said to be so characteristic of revolutionaries of Jewish extraction. My inquiries are rather oriented towards a different Jewish dimension. Is there anything in Jewish tradition concerning the relationship between rulers [3 9 9 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After and ruled which makes it meaningful in a political context ? The change which occurred in Jewish history during the past few decades and its new dilemmas are described aptly by Talmon in the following passage : When tired of the position of eternal stranger, who is always held guilty and so often becomes, indeed, entrapped in guilt, Jews determined to create a home in the land from which they had set out on their millennial peregrination, and to which the curses of all the anti-Semites of the world had been dispatching them throughout the ages, but they again landed in a situation of disheartening ambivalence and ambiguity. Talmon felt helpless in this situation. He could not find an explanation for the fact that Israel had become the ‘Jew’ among the nations, with the only difference that, while individual Jews were accused of being subversive, revolutionaries aiming at the destruction of the existing structures of societies, the State of Israel is accused instead of having become the bearer of the banner of imperialism and even racism. Talmon’s quest for recognition of Israel by the outside world as the fulfilment of a great humanistic and liberal inheritance bestowed upon these factual developments a tragic appearance. Yet one must admit that the great ideas of the Jewish legacy — and not only the prophetic and messianic aspects — were not the outcome of a craving for recognition or esteem by the surrounding peoples, but the result of inner struggles and of confrontations between rulers and ruled. Political structures are as much consequences of political rule as their causes.1 The record of the phenomenon of rule fills the pages of Jewish history from its earliest days. I am limiting myself to some aspects as reflected in the talmudic and midrashic writings. *

The teachers of Mishna and Talmud did not develop any systematic political theory. But since the interpretation of the Scriptures was their primary and greatest concern, we can expect that many of the biblical passages concerning issues with political implications aroused a desire to comment upon this theme. The Sages of the period en­ countered many difficulties of interpretation, and were aware of the contradictions that appeared when undertaking comparisons between 1

W. Ullman, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, Ithaca, New York 1975, pp. 42 ff. [4 0 0 ]

Ephraim E. Urbach parallel sources. The gap between the times in which the biblical events took place and the times of the creators of the halakha and haggada certainly limited the capacity and possibility of reaching a full understanding of the biblical record. One may indeed doubt whether these scholars were interested at all in the kind of Rankean history which endeavours to find out ‘how it really was’. But one may assume that it was just this distance, and the experiences of their own and of the intervening generations, that called for a comparison of biblical events with later ones in different ages and places. Such a comparison sharpened the ability to discern the unrevealed origins of events, their inner nexus and relationships. Sometimes the Sages reached their conclusions by adding links and joints to the exegetical development. These are admittedly no more than conjectures, yet they contribute to a better understanding of the historical process and the deduction of practical conclusions. Both the explanation of past events, and the consequences to be drawn from them, are as a matter of fact the main purpose and preoccupation of all the Sages in their homilies and stories, and it did not matter to them if the conclusion reached was actually derived from a later experience and transposed to biblical times. For the purpose of our investigation such an approach is certainly not less valid than historical exactitude. Even those homiletic extensions of the biblical stories that come close to historical romance are not devoid of factual implications and reflect different views and conflicts. (By this method these teachers avoided the perils of Biblicism, which stems from an indiscriminately literal application of the descrip­ tion of events in the Scriptures.) It took a lengthy historical process and a profound sense of history to create this literature of stories, interpretations and homilies, one of the main features of which perhaps may be appropriately described by the title of Henry Steel Commager’s work as ‘the search for a usable past’. The assertions made so far require a more explicit exposition. Let me start with the ‘King Law’ in Deuteronomy (xvii : 14—15) which deals with the appointment of a king, his rights and duties and the limits of his power. The Sages, of course, read this passage in full knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the anointing of Saul in I Samuel viii, but we find a divergence of opinions in the middle of the second century about the meaning of the ‘king law’. R. Nehorai stresses the words ‘and you shall say, I will set a king over me’ and comments ‘this is a culpable act of Israel, as it is said (I Sam. viii : 7) : ‘“for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” ’. R. Judah countered this interpretation with [4 0 1 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After ‘but it is a positive commandment of the Torah to appoint a king, as it is said: *7 ^ 0 EPtm DTP (“appoint to yourself a king”).2 Why then were they punished in the days of Samuel ? Because they did it before the time was ripe’ (Tosefta Sanhedrin 1, 5, p. 421 ; BT ibid., 20b). R. Judah thus argues that the sin of Israel in appointing a temporal king was only a circumstantial one. According to another version of this controversy, R. Nahorai opposed the view of R. Judah more pointedly, and states explicitly that the phrase in Deuteronomy ‘appoint to yourself is not meant as a positive commandment : ‘it was only a concession to their [Israel’s] grievances, as it was well known to Him [the Almighty] that they will complain and say “let us be like all other nations and have a king” ’ (Sifre Deut. ed. L. Finkelstein, p. 208).3 It seems to me appropriate to raise the following question on this subject : is this controversy only over an exegetical point, or is it connected with conflicting views on monarchies in general, as these were known to the Sages in Palestine ? The knowledge they derived from the history of the First Commonwealth, from the times of the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties and from their experiences of the rulers of Rome and of Persia, with whose ways and policies our Sages were quite well acquainted, is testified by the numerous parables concerning kings and the many halakhic rulings on this subject found in the Mishna. However, an answer to this question requires the re­ consideration of some additional sources. One must admit that if we did not have the baraitot we have quoted, and had to rely upon the Mishna only, we could not have suspected that the appointment of a king was not conceived as mandatory, and we can certainly see no trace of a negative attitude towards monarchs in the whole of the Mishna. Furthermore, the way in which the Mishna defines the ‘manner of the king’ and his prerogatives should be examined more closely. For the Mishna combines the prescriptions of Deuteronomy with those of the Book of Samuel, but on the one hand it omits all those rights listed in Samuel which, according to R. Judah, were meant to serve

2

3

The King James Version has here a definitely pro-monarchic translation : ‘Thou shalt in any wise set him King over thee’, while the Vulgate has only ‘eum constitues’. As has been pointed out by L. Ginsberg, the same view is to be found in pseudo-Philo’s Antiquities, which makes Samuel utter the words : ‘petentibus regem ante tempus’ ‘they desire a king before the time’ ; see L. Ginsberg, Legends of the Jews, VI, Philadelphia 1926, p. 230. [4 0 2 ]

Ephraim E. Urbach only as a warning against arbitrary rule,4 and on the other it moderates the limitations and prohibitions imposed upon a king in Deuteronomy. Consequently the Mishna allows a monarch to mobilize people even for an optional war (niEHil nan^tt) ; he may break through private property in order to build a road ; he is entitled to the first portion of booty taken by the people. Qualifications are also made regarding the prohibitions in Deuteronomy against the king on multiplying wives, horses, silver and gold. These mishnaic passages, and others dealing with the observances of the respect due to a monarch, testify that the authors of these halakhic rulings, from the first tannaim until R. Judah the Patriarch, consider the establishment of a monarchy as a positive religious commandment and a national duty, to be discharged as soon as an opportunity is offered. (The positive attitude of R. Judah to kingship as such does not contradict his well-known negative view of the Hasmonean dynasty. The reason for this we have to look for, not in the Sadducean inclinations of the Hasmonean rulers, but in the illegitimacy of their family, which was not of Davidic origin.) The predominant feature in the estimation of kingship in the Mishna is connected with the realities of the time of its compo­ sition, and particularly with the character and activities of its redactor, the Patriarch R. Judah, and the claims of his predecessors, whose status as patriarchs came close to what Max Weber has designated ‘Traditionelle Herrschaft’, or traditional rulership. But the combination of outstanding scholarship and political power did not find general acceptance.5 There was a pronounced tendency among the great author­ ities of the age to negate it, and to support the separation of nationalpolitical rule from religious-judicial leadership. R. Aqiva, the supporter of Bar-Kokhba, was an adherent of this trend, and it is not surprising therefore that he enjoined his son, R. Joshua : ‘Do not dwell in a city whose heads are scholars’ (BT Pesahim 112a). R. Aqiva seems not to have had much confidence in philosopher-kings — without having any knowledge about Plato’s failure to realize his ideal state. The Patriarch Judah took advantage of the changes that had taken place under the Severan emperors to alter the character of the pa­ triarchate in accordance with current notions of public office. His 4

5

A similar trend is apparent in the king-chapter in the Scroll of the Temple : the warnings in I Sam. viii :13 : ‘And he will take your fields and your vineyards’ is changed into a commandment ‘and he shall not covet your house and your vineyard’ (p. 56). ‘Class-Status and Leadership in the World of the Palestinian Sages’, Pro­ ceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, II, Jerusalem 1968, p. 50. [4 0 3 ]

Totalitarian Democracy and After close friendship with the ‘emperor’ referred to in the sources — whoever this may have been — and R. Judah’s wealth, of which there is considerable mention, lent the patriarchate a royal quality. As always, such a tendency did not remain without opposition. R. Phinehas b. Yair, a saintly man of good deeds, son-in-law of R. Simeon b. Yohai, protested against the mode of living at the court of ‘Rabbi’ and against the element of rulership and the royal style that he affected (PT Demai i, 22a; BT Hullin 7b). When R. Judah and R. Hezekiah, the sons of R. Hiyya— himself a close pupil and friend of the patriarch — once became merry with drink during a meal with ‘Rabbi’, they said : ‘The Son of David will not come until two dynasties of Israel have come to an end, namely that of the Head of the Exile in Babylonia (nVlin tpxi) and that of the Patriarch in the Land of Israel’ (BT Sanhedrin 38a). These words undoubtedly not only conveyed to the patriarch their own views but also echoed the opinions of those Sages who did not regard with favour the authoritarian tendencies characterizing the patriarchate, tendencies which had already been voiced in the days of the father of R. Judah, R. Simeon b. Gamliel. The interest shown by these scholars in the biblical sections dealing with the ‘manner of kings’ is connected with their relationship to the patriarchate, and certainly also with develop­ ing expectations of messianic fulfilment and their attitude to any earthly government necessitated by the requirements of human society. The colleague and friend of R. Yohanan, R. Simeon b. Laqish, explains the relation of the Sages to rulers in the following interpretation of Genesis i : 31 : ‘ “and behold it was very good” — “it” is the earthly kingdom. Is the earthly kingdom really very good ? Is this [passage] not rather surprising? But the earthly kingdom cares for the ôlxrj (nrpn) justice for the people.’ The meaning of this comment is that earthly monarchy is surely not very good, but it is still better than anarchy in that it ensures the prevalence of law.6 The statement of R. Simeon b. Laqish has a long tradition behind it. One needs only to recall the saying of R. Hanina, segan ha-kohanim, who lived during the last decades of the Temple : ‘Pray for the peace of the kingdom, because without it a man would swallow up his fellow alive’ (Avot iii : 3). The same mode of thinking led to the formulation of special blessings to be said when one encounters kings of Israel or kings of the ‘nations of the world’ : ‘Blessed be He who apportioned from his glory to those who fear him (y»XT^) or to his 6

Extended in BT Avoda Zara 3b, and by Paul in his letter to the Romans xiii : 1-7. [4 0 4 ]

Ephraim E. Urbach creatures’ (BT Berakhot 58a). By paying honour due to rulers one is paying honour to the Lord. It is not the person that one is honour­ ing, but the institution that he represents. Hence a king cannot folgo the honour due to him (see Mekhilta, Pisha, 13, p. 45; BT Zevahim 102a ; Ketubot 17a : *?inö TTD3 pX HOD to *lVö). But we find no unqualified endorsement of government in the sources. A comparison of the earthly kingdom to the heavenly one is fully expressed only once : ‘The earthly kingdom is similar to the kingdom of Heaven (WPpTT XIVD1?» pJD MTD^»)'7. Its meaning in the context could be understood as an expression of flattery to the gentile king to whom it was directed, but by the use of p i n and in the light of other sources, it could also imply an admonition to the human ruler that he should walk in the ways of the heavenly king. The third-century amora R. Eleazar b. Pedat is thus drawing a parallel between the behaviour of the Lord of the World and that of an earthly king when he says : naqà ßaoiMcog ó vôfioç *dyga