Download Arendt, from The Origins of Totalitarianism

PHIL 219
Arendt and The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
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Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 in Hanover,
spent her childhood in Königsberg (Kant’s
hometown), and died in New York in 1975.
She grew up in a Europe racked by
nationalism and the world wars.
She was a precocious child, and eventually
matriculated in the German university
system where she studied with the most
prominent German philosophers of the day.
With the rise of Nazism, she moved with her
family to Paris in 1933. In 1941 she was
forced to leave France and moved to New
York.
She taught at Princeton, Berkeley and
Chicago, but was most closely associated
with the New School for Social Research,
where she was a professor of political
philosophy until her death in 1975.
A World Aflame
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Though she studied with some of the most prominent philosophical
theorists of the 20th century, her own work had a distinctly practical
bent from the start.
We don’t have to look to far for an explanation. She grew up in a
Europe suffering from an extended political, economic, social, and
moral collapse.
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Though it’s strange to look back and realize this, right up to the First World
War, most if not all Europeans believed that they were the most advanced,
civilized, and progressive people in human history.
30 years later, with millions of dead, the great cities in ruin, and the smell of
the death camps permeating the continent, it would be hard to avoid a
much different conclusion.
A Political Crisis
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When Arendt begins to take stock of these events, she comes to the conclusion
that the root of the calamities was a political failure.
She identifies 4 elements of this failure.
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Cultural Crisis: the alienation of modernity encouraged a culture inconsistent with democracy
and prone to ideological manipulation;
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Theoretical Crisis: the political theory we’ve inherited has made us incapable of perceiving
and criticizing this culture—politics has come to be understood solely as means for
supporting economic activity;
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Institutional Crisis: the dominance of economic motives has transformed the public sphere
into a sphere of necessity, and freedom had become largely constrained to the private
sphere;
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Normative Crisis: citizens can no longer discern what they should be requiring of themselves
and their leaders, or what norms should be governing public discourse.
An Opening Salvo
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Arendt begins the project of
analyzing, assessing, and thinking
beyond the failure of western
culture in The Origins of
Totalitarianism.
Its aim is to explain why Europe was
such fertile ground for
totalitarianism in the twentieth
century and to analyze the forms
totalitarianism takes.
She answers the first question by
identifying three factors: racism,
anti-Semitism, and the rise of
imperialism.
The Analysis
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Addressing the second issue, she focuses her attention on the two most
prominent totalitarian regimes of the 20th century: Nazi Germany and
the Soviet Union.
Despite being apparently ideologically opposite, she concludes that they
shared features central to totalitarian regimes.
What characterizes both regimes is their replacement of all prior
traditions and political institutions with new ones that are explicitly
subordinated to the state, their aspirations for global rule, and their
successful organization of the masses.
Most distinctive is their use of terror, both as a means of political control
and as an ideological justification. Terror becomes an end in itself.
Mass vs. Class
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We can see the first element of this analysis (the replacement of
tradition and institution) in her discussion of “A Classless Society.”
One key to the rise of totalitarian regimes is the emergence of
‘masses.’
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A ‘mass’ is a group of people identified precisely by their lack of shared
interests and class identity. In the absence of these traditional avenues of
social cohesion and political expression, a mass is susceptible to
manipulation through what they do have in common: social alienation and
emotions.
“Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated
individuals” (846c1).
Exposing a political illusion
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Such movements stand in clear opposition to many firmly held
beliefs of traditional democratic political theorists.
The first is that democracy requires engagement and participation,
“…the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent
masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country,
and therefore a democracy could function according to rules which
are actively recognized by only a minority” (845c2).
The second is that the masses were no necessary part of the political
calculus. In fact, it was the ability of totalitarian movements to
mobilize the support of these supposedly indifferent masses that
accounts for their rise to power.
Mass Mobilization
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When we consider the rise of Hitler, or Stalin’s consolidation of
power after the Russian revolution, we see that this
mobilization of the masses is not fundamentally nationalistic,
but rather is completely at the service of the party.
It is not loyalty to the “fatherland” that is ultimately
demanded, but loyalty to the Führer.
According to Arendt, such loyalty could only be commanded in
the failure of traditional political and social institutions, and
would be particularly attractive to those who felt cut off,
isolated and desperate to belong.
From Mass to Movement
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The preeminent tool of totalitarian movements is propaganda.
The isolated character of the masses make them particularly
susceptible to the combination of gullibility and cynicism that seems
so evident in propaganda.
“Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times
to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly
object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie
anyhow” (848c1).
The key to the success of mass propaganda is the figure of the leader.
The ‘infallibility’ of the leader, who is the ‘truth-teller’ serves to
resolve the evident contradictoriness of the message.
Institutional Dissonance
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One of the most surprising developments to conventional
political theorists is the ability of totalitarian regimes to survive
contact with existing political forms and institutions.
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The conventional wisdom was that these movements would lack the
capacity to work the machinery of governance, that contact with
the real world would either force their collapse or moderate their
ideologies.
On the contrary, the isolated and unprecedented character of
regimes like the Reich limited their vulnerability to typical
institutional pressures, and even exacerbated their violent
impulses (849c2).
A New Theory of Power
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Arendt explains this by observing that, “…behind their politics
is hidden an entirely new and unprecedented concept of
power” (849c2).
She specifies this concept by reference to more traditional
accounts. It exhibits:
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Disregard for consequences (not ruthlessness);
Neglect of national interests (not nationalism);
Contempt for utilitarian interests (not self-interest);
Adherence to ideology (not lust for power).
The Face of Totalitarian Power
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This shift is in large part explained by the very factors that explain the
mobilization of the masses in the first place. The party, in the person of
the leader, is the only good.
As a result, the paradigmatic form of totalitarian power is domination.
This is, for Arendt, the lesson of the concentration camps. She calls them
the laboratory of totalitarianism (850c2). They express the subordination
of all other interests to the ideology of the regime and are essential to its
survival.
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“Without concentration camps, without the undefined fear they inspire an the
very well-defined training they offer in totalitarian domination…a totalitarian
state can neither inspire it nuclear troops with fanaticism nor maintain a whole
people in complete apathy” (851c1).
Accident or Essence
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Given the analysis Arendt has offered, the question remains,
was the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century merely a
historical accident, or was it a response to something essential
in the political self-understanding of the West?
From the perspective of traditional political theory,
totalitarianism seems clearly contradictory. As we’ve seen, the
prevailing question of political philosophy has been the
question of authority. Totalitarianism, with its rejection of
traditional models of authority, seems an aberration.
A Profound Transformation
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But what appears as a rejection of traditional political forms is
really, according to Arendt, a transformation (or better, a
radicalization) of these forms.
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“It is the monstrous, yet seemingly unanswerable claim of
totalitarian rule that, far from being ‘lawless,’ it goes to the sources
of authority…that far from being arbitrary it is more obedient…that
far from wielding its power in the interest of one man…[it is
obedient to] the law of History or the law of Nature” (853c1).
Thus, even terror is ‘lawful’ (854-5).
Essence?
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Thus, Arendt concludes that totalitarianism is expressive of a
certain truth of traditional political theories.
That’s not to say that the various political philosophies that we
will examine are empty or useless. Ultimately, Arendt is going
to argue for a revitalization of a number of the classical themes
and concerns that we’ll focus on as a remedy for
totalitarianism.
However, particularly the modern theories (e.g., social contract
theory) exhibit a blindness, a careless confidence, and a onesidedness that makes us vulnerable to the new theory of power
and authority that totalitarianism embodies.