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The “Isms” in Totalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Alexander J. Groth
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis

Extract

A major theme in political literature since the nineteen fifties has been a “unitotalitarian” approach to the study of modern dictatorships. The principal totalitarian “isms”—Fascism, Nazism and Communism—have been viewed as examples of one common species, containing no doubt some variations and differences; but practically, or operationally, the divergencies have been thought considerably less important than the similarities. The emphasis has been heavily on the structure and methods underlying the exercise of political control by the “Leader” and the “Party.” In what is undoubtedly the outstanding modern study of the subject, Friedrich and Brzezinski have attempted to extrapolate predictive hypotheses from the common pattern of totalitarian dictatorship expressed in a familiar syndrome of six interrelated characteristics.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1964

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References

1 Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1959), p. 7Google Scholar: “… it is very important to explain [that] the totalitarian dictatorships, Communist and Fascist, are basically alike.” Cf. Ebenstein, William, “The Study of Totalitarianism,” World Politics, Vol. 10, No. 2 (January 1958), pp. 274288CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Daniel Bell, “Ten Theories in Search of Reality: The Prediction of Soviet Behavior in the Social Sciences,” ibid., No. 3 (April 1958), pp. 327–356.

2 Friedrich and Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 6 and ibid., p. 300.

3 Though that is not to say that the discounting of ideologies as “mere words” or “ritualistic formulas” is helpful or useful. Cf. Brzezinski, Z., The Soviet Bloc (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1960), pp. 386395Google Scholar for an excellent account.

4 Friedrich and Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 211. Cf. Drucker, Peter F., The End of Economic Man (New York, 1938), p. 149Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Apter, David, “A Comparative Method for the Study of Politics,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64, No. 3 (November 1958), pp. 221237CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a general model concerned with “mobility opportunities.”

6 See Schweitzer, Arthur, Big Business in the Third Reich (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1964)Google Scholar, for an excellent postwar reappraisal.

7 See, e.g., Black, C. E. (ed.), The Transformation of Russian Society (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1960), pp. 235350CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Although these changes have almost never been accompanied by an increased standard of living for the “stationary” members of the working class, and in many cases have involved a decline. Cf. Inkeles, Alex and Bauer, R. A., The Soviet Citizen (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1961), pp. 33–34, 81–82, 8384Google Scholar, e.g., see also Inkeles, Alex, “Social Stratification and Mobility in the Soviet Union: 1940–1950,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 15 (August 1950), pp. 465479CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Djilas, Milovan, The New Class (New York, 1957), p. 61Google Scholar.

9 Cf. Schapiro, Leonard, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1960), pp. 435–7, 522–6Google Scholar.

10 See, e.g., Spulber, Nicolas, The Economics of Communist Europe (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, particularly pp. 340, 343. East European increases in industrial output and in the ratio of producers' to consumers' goods, by 1955, even in the case of the already substantially industrialized Czechoslovakia, far exceeded comparable Italian or German efforts prior to 1939.

11 Cf. U. S. Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Hearings on the Elimination of German Resources for War (hereafter cited as the Kilgore Hearings), Washington, June-July 1945Google Scholar.

12 A large body of literature testifying to this point appeared during the 1930s and the Second World War. Outstanding examples were Salvemini, Gaetano, Under the Axe of Fascism (Victor Gollancz, London, 1936)Google Scholar; Neumann, Franz, Behemoth (Oxford University Press, New York, 1942)Google Scholar; Brady, R. A., The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; Sweezy, Maxine Y., The Structure of the Nazi Economy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmidt, Carl T., The Plough and the Sword (Columbia University Press, New York, 1938)Google Scholar. Whatever their Marxist biases and predilections, these works presented a considerable body of factual evidence showing that the social and economic consequences of Fascism were advantageous to the affluent and either relatively or absolutely disadvantageous to workers, small business, and other lower income groups. Before and after the War much, if not all, of this evidence was ignored and discounted despite the fact that corroborating postwar data on the Fascist economic systems had become available. Thus, in rebutting Neumann's 1942 assertion that the Nazi economy was essentially “capitalist,” Friedrich and Brzezinski relied on the rather inconclusive evidence of Gunther Reimann's Vampire Economy of 1939 but not on the Kilgore Committee Hearings of July 1945, which in some 1600 pages presented evidence gathered directly by U. S. Government research teams after the Nazi defeat. Cf. Friedrich and Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 210.

13 In view of amply documented Fascist policies with respect to land reform, reprivatization of nationalized properties, restrictions on small business, subsidies, taxation, education and many other matters, it is difficult to accept the Friedrich-Brzezinski position (op. cit., p. 8): “It is indeed true that more of the institutions of the preceding liberal and constitutional society survived in the Italian Fascist than in the Russian Communist society. But this is due in part [?] to the fact that no liberal constitutional society preceded Soviet Communism …. In Czechoslovakia and in the Soviet Zone in Germany … we find precisely such institutions as universities, churches and schools surviving ….” Naturally, however, the authors could not extend the parallel to expropriation of landed property or confiscation of industry. Cf. Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, Fascism in Action (Washington, G.P.O., 1947)Google Scholar. On the subject of Fascist subsidies to business, Gaetano Salvemini wrote: “In actual fact, it is the State, i.e., the taxpayer who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise …. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.” Salvemini, op. cit., p. 416. Undoubtedly, the Fascist economic system was not a free market economy and hence not “capitalist” if one wishes to restrict the use of this term to a laissezfaire system. But did it not operate in such a fashion as to preserve in being, and maintain the material rewards of, the existing socio-economic elites?

14 See Ascoli, Max and Feiler, Arthur, Fascism for Whom? (New York, 1938), p. 255Google Scholar. Cf. Kilgore Hearings, op. cit., p. 439. See Matthews, Donald R., The Social Background of Political Decision Makers (New York, 1954), pp. 48–52, 53–4Google Scholar.

15 Cf., e.g., Salvemini, op. cit., pp. 182–9; Neumann, op. cit., pp. 434–436; Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 159–175.

16 See, e.g., Deutsch, Karl W. and Edinger, L. J., Germany Rejoins the Powers (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1959), particularly pp. 8086Google Scholar. Cf. Finer, Herman, Mussolini's Italy (New York, 1935), pp. 270271Google Scholar; Ascoli, Max (ed.), The Fall of Mussolini (New York, 1948), pp. 2223Google Scholar.

17 The orthodox Marxist view is a caricature. Cf. Palme-Dutt, R., Fascism and the Social Revolution (International Publishers, New York, 1935), p. 100Google Scholar: “Fascism … is from the onset fostered, nourished, maintained and subsidized by the big bourgeoisie, by the big land-lords, financiers and industrialists.” See also Strachey, John, The Menace of Fascism (Covici Friede, New York, 1933), p. 128Google Scholar.

18 Thus, e.g., under Fascist rule in Italy university tuition exemptions were abolished in 1933. The number of university students declined from 43,865 in 1920–21 to 27,013 in 1928–29, then increased to an average of about 38,000 for the years 1933–35—thus falling short of totals which had already been reached in 1918–19 and failing to keep up with the expansion of the population. Marraro, H. R., The New Education in Italy (S. F. Vanni, New York, 1936), pp. 249, 255, 432Google Scholar. In Germany, the decline under the Nazis was even more precipitous. Mussolini at least strengthened primary and secondary education, though his pace of progress did not match in many respects the 19th Century growth of elementary education in Italy. Cf. Minio-Paluello, L., Education in Fascist Italy (Oxford University Press, London, 1946), pp. 15, 29Google Scholar, e.g. Under Hitler's rule the number of elementary schools declined from 52,959 in 1931 to 49,720 in 1940; the number of full-time teachers from 190,371 to 171,340; enrolment declined from 7,590,466 to 7,327,556. Highly significant from a mobility point of view, the number of university students fell from 95,807 in 1931 to but 39,236 in 1939. The number in higher technical institutes declined from 23,749 to a mere 10,307. By a decree of 1933 only ten per cent of students admitted to universities could be women. Samuel, R. H. and Thomas, R. H., Education and Society in Modern Germany (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1949), pp. 38, 50, 112, 132–33Google Scholar. On the other hand, the Soviets expanded regular secondary and primary school enrolment from 7.9 million before 1917 to 34.6 million in 1939, and from 1940 to 1959 total university enrolment increased from 75,682 to 213,000. deWitt, Nicholas, Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R. (G.P.O., Washington, 1961), pp. 133, 210Google Scholar.

19 Considerable evidence on this is supplied by Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress (3d ed., Macmillan, London, 1957)Google Scholar, and Lutz, Vera, Italy: A Study in Economic Development (Oxford University Press, London, 1962)Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Kilgore Hearings, op. cit., pp. 218–421. Only at the end of 1935 did the ratio of capital goods investment to national income in Germany exceed the boom year of 1928.

21 On this question a vast amount of evidence remains to be gathered but the actual, tangible consequences of Fascist rule certainly can be empirically analyzed. Whether Fascism destroyed or preserved the existing socio-economic order inherited in 1922 and 1933, respectively, can be deduced from comparisons of data on land distribution, occupational structure, the fate of private fortunes and a hoBt of other factors. If some changes could always be expected, anywhere and under any circumstances, and if these changes must, in part, be attributed to causes other than the policies of the Fascist regimes, the results must nevertheless be considered highly significant. See Janowitz, Morris, “Social Stratification and Mobility in West Germany,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64 (July 1958), pp. 624CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Deutsch and Edinger, op. cit., pp. 35–37, 260–265; Edding, F., The Refugees as a Burden and Stimulus to the West German Economy (Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1951), p. 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Diagram 3). Though data presented in these sources were gathered some years after the War and were complicated by the influx of refugees from East to West Germany, remarkable structural stability between 1939 and 1955 emerges. This stability and the survival of pre-Fascist socio-economic elites are corroborated in a variety of other sources. Cf., e.g., Abosch, Heinz, The Menace of the Miracle (Collet's, London, 1962), pp. 82Google Scholar; Grosser, Alfred, Western Germany (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1955), pp. 9597Google Scholar. An interesting example of research having potential sample significance is Muhlen, Norbert, The Incredible Krupps (New York, 1959). Pp. 164–65Google Scholar are particularly revealing. The author affirms that a “high extent” of both profit and competition was maintained in the Nazi economy but the regime drastically minimized the entrepreneurial share in economic management. See also Samuel and Thomas, op. cit., p. 177, on the remarkably stable upper class predominance in German universities from Weimar to the postwar period. On Italy, among other sources, comparisons of land-holding patterns from 1930 to 1947 are highly interesting and consonant with the interpretation offered here. Cf. Fascism In Action, op. cit., p. 132 and Lutz, op. cit., pp. 155–156. Also Lipset, S. M. and Bendix, R., Social Mobility in Industrial Society (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1960), pp. 22–3Google Scholar. In its impact on socio-economic elites Fascism was apparently a system of totalitarian controls without totalitarian consequences.

22 Delzell, Charles F., Mussolini's Enemies (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1961), p. 182Google Scholar. Cf. Villari, L., The Liberation of Italy (C. C. Nelson, Appleton, Wisconsin, 1959), p. 14Google Scholar.

23 Delzell, op. cit., p. 223.

24 The Nemesis of Power (Macmillan, London, 1953), p. 694CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 In Russia 71.9 per cent of the divisional commanders and 100 per cent of the corps commanders were Communists in 1928. Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1958), p. 401Google Scholar. Cf. deSola Pool, I. et al. , Satellite Generals (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1955), p. 4Google Scholar.

26 Kilgore Hearings, op. cit., pp. 1047, 1064, 1560.

27 Schweitzer, op. cit., p. 505. Cf. also pp. 5–6 and 506–7 for the author's conclusions on these points. Summarizing the experience of the thirties, the author says: “Whether in terms of power or functions, the top Nazi leaders were only occasionally able to influence, and could not lay down, the economic and military policies of the regime”, p. 507.

28 Cf. Ritter, Gerhart, The German Resistance (New York, 1958), pp. 152155Google Scholar; Fitzgibbon, Constantine, 20 July (New York, 1956), pp. 186194Google Scholar; see also Romoser, George K., “The Politics of Uncertainty: The German Resistance Movement.” Social Research, Vol. 31, no. 1 (Spring, 1964) pp. 7393Google Scholar.

29 It is assumed here that the “Doctors' Plot” of 1948 was a figment of Stalin's—and MVD's—imagination.

30 The Discourses of Niccolo Machiavelli, trans. Walker, L. J. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1950), vol. I, p. 233Google Scholar. Hitler apparently perceived the problem of “unassimilated” and politically significant groups as being a “brake” on his dictatorship. What, if anything, he might have done about this “after the war” is another matter. Cf. The Goebbels Diaries, ed. and trans. Lochner, Louis P., (Garden City, New York, 1948), p. 287Google Scholar. Goebbels recalls, e.g.: “With a certain bitterness [Hitler] observes he must conduct [the war] with the present corps of generals. But once the war is over he wants to withdraw more than ever from military affairs and again devote himself to things which suit him much more personally. He is deeply shocked at the infidelity of the generals. They are ungrateful ….” (March 1943.) And Goebbels himself wrote on November 17, 1943: “I regard it as a cardinal error in the relationship between Party and Wehrmacht that the Party has not had the opportunity and possibility [!] of injecting its ideas into the Army. As a result the Army today is not so dependable as it really ought to be in times of severe strain.” p. 515.

31 Cf., e.g., Krieger, Leonard, “The Interregnum in Germany: March-August 1945,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 1 (March 1949), pp. 507532CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Arthur Schweitzer, “On Depression and War,” ibid., Vol. 62, No. 3, (September 1947), pp. 321–353.

32 Cf. Lerner, Daniel et al. , The Nazi Elite (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1951), pp. 69–72, 84Google Scholar; Finer, op. cit., pp. 364–376.

33 Ascoli and Feiler, op. cit., p. 269: “National Socialism must be understood as truly being the present day German version of present-day Russian Bolshevism.” Cf. Tucker, R. C., “To-wards a Comparative Politics of Movement Regimes,” this Review, Vol. 55 (June 1961), pp. 281282Google Scholar: “Though the political symbolisms differed in all essentials, the two types of systems were identical.” (Before Stalin's death, i.e.)

34 Cf. Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (Garden City, New York, 1960), pp. 131176Google Scholar.

35 Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York, 1962), ch. 7, pp. 188210Google Scholar: “… the occupant of a leadership position is the object of expectations on the part of other members of the group—expectations that become stronger as the leadership position becomes more inclusive.” (p. 191) and … “a leader who changes his norm sharply after the group norm has been established may not be followed by others.” (p. 192).

36 Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power (New York, 1960), p. 7Google Scholar. The Soviet policy of support of Cuba, carried on despite considerable risks of Soviet-United States involvement, appears to have been much influenced by a Sino-Soviet competition for the following of the external Communist constituency. The Stalin-Trotsky power struggle was undoubtedly affected by the “revolutionary fizzle” of the external constituency. The adoption of the Soviet 1936 “democratic” constitution and Italian Fascist adaptations of racism even before World War II also have their “external constituency” aspects, in the sense of efforts made to conform with expectations or claims of kindred groups abroad.

37 This relative and contingent (crisis-born) preference does not seem to be subject to any serious dispute although the question of precisely how effective and important was the support of business interests, in bringing the Fascist regimes to power, continues controversial and unresolved. Works often cited on both sides of the issue are far from conclusive: Lochner, L. P., Tycoons and Tyrant (Chicago, 1954), p. 115117Google Scholar; Thyssen, Fritz, I Paid Hitler (New York, 1941), p. xvGoogle Scholar. Cf. Lipset, op. cit., pp. 148–149.

38 Cf. Deutsch and Edinger, op. cit., p. 100–103 for some comparisons of the anti-Nazi resistance records of business, trade union, and S.P.D. and C.D.U. elites. Cf. Almond, Gabriel A. and Kraus, W. H., “The Social Composition of the German Resistance,” The Struggle for Democracy in Germany, ed. Almond, G. A. (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1949), pp. 64107Google Scholar.

39 Brzezinski, Z., “Totalitarianism and Rationality,” this Review, Vol. 50 (Sept. 1956), p. 757Google Scholar. Cf. Inkeles and Bauer, op. cit., p. 235.

40 Cf. Z. Brzezinski, “Totalitarianism and Rationality,” loc. cit., p. 757: “Nonetheless it is sufficient to read Starace's plans to change the Italian national character or Mussolini's remarks on the need to eradicate the Italian ‘softness,’ as well as some of the party regulations on daily behavior of the citizen issued in 1938 to realize that such a revolution was being seriously contemplated in Italy. In the case of the Nazis, there is even more ample evidence that the New Order in Europe would have resulted in revolutionary changes in Germany proper, changes highly inimical to the established order. Hitler's war-time conversations and Himmler's plans for the S.S. are full of projects that would have involved radical changes in German society and economy.”

41 F. W. Deakin explores, very instructively, the problem of what did happen to Mussolini when he attempted some “social radicalism” in 1944. The Brutal Friendship (New York, 1963). See esp. pp. 670671Google Scholar.

42 Cf. Arthur Schweitzer's conclusion, p. 555.

43 Cf. Fainsod, op. cit., p. 484: “The members of the elite in the final analysis have a vested interest in the perpetuation of the Soviet System.”

44 In 1953 Isaac Deutscher saw three alternatives for future Soviet developments: relapse into Stalinism; military dictatorship, and the most likely: “socialist democracy.” Russia: What Next? (Oxford University Press, New York), p. 208Google Scholar.

45 Brzezinski, op. cit., p. 374. Cf. Staar, Richard F., The Communist Party Leadership in Poland (Georgetown University, Washington, 1961)Google Scholar.