In the 20th century, the discourse on centralization and decentralization was expressed in a common dispute between liberals and Marxists and between liberals and fascists about totalitarianism and its role.
Historical experience has shown that democracy has not always been able to defend itself against totalitarianism or authoritarianism and to halt its territorial expansion. The events of fresh decades have shown that neoliberal democracy has given clear signs of emerging in totalitarianism criticized by its ideologists. Neoliberals from the US and any of the leading European countries launched an event that led to the outbreak of a war between Russia and Ukraine. And erstwhile the tightening of social relations in their countries became apparent, defending themselves against the failure of power, they went after insolent falsification of elections and judicial elimination of political opponents from moving for office.
The essence of totalitarianism
Since Benito Mussolini totalitarianism was characterized as the state's desire to control all areas of social life, subjecting the individual's interests to the interests of the state. A strong position in the totalitarian state was attributed to leaders (a leader) and the ruling party, which was the only legal organization and its members filled most of the offices. Control of the extended repression apparatus over citizens was seen. There's been a visible inhibitory impact of a totalitarian state on the economy. You have been accused of continuous indoctrination of society through mass media and education, and of limiting communication through preventive censorship. Moreover, totalitarian states were believed to have manipulated and contradicted in practice the laws of the individual, free elections, freedom of expression and associations. In essence, they were to endure the duality of the state and society, the difference between the accused and the guilty. There were 2 types of totalitarian states that were to function on the basis of the concept of race (such as Nazi Germany) and the second prevailing class (such as countries of "real socialism"). The Nazi state was seen fulfilling its mission by exterminating the judaic people and expelling the degenerate race. In turn, the Stalinist state fought the enemies of the people in the name of eliminating exploitation and class rule.
The discourse on totalitarianism during the Cold War dominated the belief that it was the other and denial of democracy and civilian society. The first origin to defend society from totalitarianism was, according to the neoliberals, to respect the principles of democracy: cyclical and competitive elections, the equal treatment of individual political entities, the alternate of power, the principles of parliamentaryism, political pluralism, respect for number rights, the existence of legal standards that would set a barrier to the arbitrary pulls of power, the existence of an impartial and independent judiciary, the functioning of democratic institutions upholding the rights of individuals that may be threatened in society by egalitarianism, respect for human rights, the preservation of freedom of the press. The second origin to defend against totalitarianism was to decentralize political and economical life. The 3rd origin was to decision distant from state interventionism, to preserve private ownership of means of production and to privatise them where they were nationalised and economical planning.
The concept of totalitarianism was introduced to the dictionary of political sciences by Hannah Arendt, who in 1951 wrote an extended book Roots of totalitarianism. erstwhile she initially wrote about totalitarianism, she did not consider the totalitarian strategy of the russian state from the times of Lenin and NEP. At the time, she considered "stelinist communism" to be such, but she saw its differences with the Nazi system. It can be assumed that the subsequent persistent recognition of communism with fascism, Nazism, and even muslim fundamentalism served to suppress interior social and ideological conflicts tearing down Western civilizations and that it facilitated the subsequent triumph of neoliberalism. This was most likely besides an expression of the worsening of global contradictions during the Cold War.
In turn Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri They felt that erstwhile the phenomenon of totalitarianism began to be analysed, it was captured rather superficially, seeing in it only the demolition of the democratic public sphere, the mention to the Jacobin ideology and the negation of the free market. They did not question the sense of utilizing this term, but felt that it was essential to effort to explain it by reaching deeper social processes. Totalitarianism is not an invention of the 20th century. According to Hardt and Negri Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes He saw, now negated and paradoxical relation of totalitarianism and democracy; "Sieys saw the embryo of totalitarianism already in eighteenth-century concepts of the sovereignty of the nation and of the people, concepts that effectively held the absolute power of the monarch and carried it to the ground of national sovereignty. In the glow of intuition he saw the future of what could be called totalitarian democracy."
Democracy and totalitarianism
On the another hand, Kenneth Minogue, which showed fresh forms of totalitarianism, drew further conclusions, rejected the initially perceived other of totalitarianism and democracy, utilized in political sciences inactive in the 1970s and 1980s. Democratic states, in his opinion, at least at any stage, could in fact besides be totalitarian. This could be due to the fact that changes of a totalitarian nature were increasing in a way that was not noticed and gradually, as well as due to the fact that totalitarian regimes were doing everything to be considered democratic as long as possible. He wrote in this regard: “Democracy and totalitarianism, which are understood in various ways, can be regarded as completely exclusive concepts. Where democracy is, there is no area for totalitarianism. However, there is simply a problem. Although democracy is simply a strategy with full public support, not all regimes enjoying specified widespread acceptance are democratic, that is, they do not gotta respond to the public's judgement of social policy." Totalitarianism can besides enjoy the support of many social groups. due to this criterion, the other of democracy and totalitarianism turns out to be relative. For example: Napoleon III utilized the referendum erstwhile he wanted to overthrow the republic and introduce the empire. In referendums held in the 3rd Reich in 1933, 1934, 1936 and 1938 policies Adolf Hitler According to authoritative data, they supported – 95%, 88%, 98% and 99% of the population. In 1933 the Germans answered the question: do you support Adolf Hitler's policy, or are you in favour of a speech from the League of Nations? After the 1934 referendum, Hitler became Führer, after the 1935 referendum, the Saara Basin returned to Germany. In the 1938 referendum, Anschluss of Austria was accepted to the 3rd Reich.
Therefore, erstwhile considering the problem of relationships and relationships between totalitarianism and democracy, 2 alternately utilized concepts are used: "totaliztic democracy" and "democratic totalitarianism". It seems that in the first case totalitarianism is pointed to as the natural consequence of democracy and its immanent feature. In the second case, manipulative practices of totalitarian states can be sought to gain public support for their antisocial goals.
Liberal democracy and totalitarian democracy
Jacob L. Talmon, rejecting the schematic opposites of democracy and totalitarianism, he made a discrimination between democracy itself and liberal and totalitarian. Liberal democracy, in his opinion, treats political systems as "political inventions of human ingenuity and spontaneity", in which the "method of trial and error" applies. Freedom involves spontaneous action and absence of enslavement and force towards the individual. Totalitarian democracy assumes "the presumption of the existence of only and exclusive fact in politics". As a result, political action is characterised by “political messianism”. Supporters of this concept strive to choose a circumstantial task that people should operate. The only way to accomplish this concept is through a policy that covers all areas of social life. The aim pursued by the political strategy is "to treat the interior object of reason and the will of man, the fullest expression of his actual interests and the warrant of his freedom." This nonsubjective is influenced by “the utmost forms of people's sovereignty”. Freedom in totalitarian democracy can be achieved “as a consequence of the pursuit of absolute collective goals”. If people do not realize the existing conditions, they can even be forced to freedom until “the conflict between spontaneous action and work disappears, and with him the necessity to enslave them.” So not only the other of democracy and totalitarianism turns out to be relative, but besides the other of totalitarianism and freedom is more complicated.
According to Talmon, the main sources of totalitarian democracy were in the tradition of French Enlightenment and Revolution 1789. As a consequence of the improvement of rationalism, empirism and social determinism, religion has lost its emotional and intellectual basis and has ceased to be a guideline for people to act, a strategy of feudal dependence has broken down, the old concept of state society has begun to be replaced by the thought of abstract human unit. Human conscience was freed from spiritual ethics – it was replaced by secular social morality and utilitarian criteria. With the failure of the position of the Catholic Church and religion, the state remained the origin of moral sanctions. The philosophers of enlightenment were fervent promoters of freedom, equality and human rights. However, there has been a large political division in their womb: “The liberal democracy has receded from the spectrum of force and has found support in the doctrine of trial and error. Totalitarian messianism has strengthened the exclusive doctrine of the “enlightened” avant-garde, which easy absolves themselves of the usage of force against those who refused to be free and virtuous.”
In fact, modern totalitarian democracy is, according to the Talmud, “a dictatorship based on the enthusiasm of the masses, and so completely different from the absolute power exercised by the king by divine law or by the tyrant-usurper. To the degree that it is simply a dictatorship based on ideology and mass enthusiasm, it is [...] the consequence of the synthesis of the eighteenth-century thought of the natural order and the Russian perfect of mass reparation and self-expression.” Rousseau's "universal will" has become a fresh religion and a force for totalitarian democracy. "Totalitarian democracy emerges from a common trunk of eighteenth-century ideas and is not a phenomenon of a fresh date, a abroad tradition of the West. It appeared as a distinct and identifiable current in the time of the French Revolution and has since developed continuously. So its origins go much deeper into the past than the nineteenth-century reasoning systems, specified as Marxism."
Totalitarian democracy, according to Talmud, was not a denial of eighteenth-century individualism, which seems to be a paradox, but a consequence of the desire for its consistent implementation. “She has made man an absolute mention point. Man was not only to be liberated from his embarrassing limitations. All existing traditions, recognised social institutions and devices were to be destroyed and created again only to warrant man the fullness of his rights and freedoms to free him from dependence. Man was imagined as being per se [by himself, by himself—E.K.], devoid of all those attributes that did not fall into the category of universal humanity. It saw the only component of the natural order, excluding all groups and conventional interests. In order to scope a individual per se, all differences had to be ruled out and all inequalities had to be overcome. And so the ethical thought of human rights abruptly gained the character of an egalitarian social ideal. Since then, the main focus has been on eliminating inequalities, lowering people privileged to the standard of humanity and the request to free themselves of indirect centres of power and loyalty specified as classes, regional communities, professional groups and corporations. No barrier grew between man and state. State authority, no longer held back by any intermediate institution, has become unlimited."
In totalitarian democracy, Talmon believes that the thought of the sovereignty of the people has besides fallen over time into a “powerful coercion”, a permanent state of emergency and a cult of leaders; "In order to make the conditions for the universal will to be revealed, it was essential to destruct the elements distorting its actual image or at least diminish the meaning of their actual influence. It was essential to free the people from the harmful charm of aristocracy, from bourgeoisie, and from all those passed down in matters, and even from political parties, so that he might want what is his destiny. This request was so far more crucial than the formal act of democratic will."
Individualistic theories underlying totalitarian democracy have been replaced by collectivistic theory. According to Talmon, “the thought of an 18th century natural order, which the believers did not want to hear at first about planned and rational governance in the economy, took full importance and began to endanger freedom only erstwhile it was associated with the request for social security”. However, there is no simple link between economical centralisation and deficiency of freedom. Freedom is not jeopardised by the process of centralisation and politicalisation which takes place for nonsubjective reasons erstwhile it is not the consequence of imposing peculiar interests on society. Centralisation is being imposed on the full of society by the ideology and values of LGBT and "rewritten" history; erstwhile all European producers gotta produce plastic bottles with non-refractory caps; erstwhile states are obliged to accept certain quotas of refugees from conflict-affected countries which in their interest have caused the US but whose negative effects do not want to fight; erstwhile states are forced to conduct militaristic policies and purchases of arms in certain producers; erstwhile states are forced to apply sanctions contrary to the national interest.
In turn Arkady Rzegotski made a discrimination between totalitarian democracy and "hard" whose attempts to implement led to the regulation of terror, genocide, cleansing and enslavement, and "soft", described by Alexis de Tocqueville, Doing it in a milder and more sublime way.
Neoliberalism, allegedly combating the totalitarianism of labour law, has entered into the fight against "social security", threatening freedom in a time of globalisation. Kenneth Minogue wrote that since the issue of totalitarianism was addressed by philosophers – specified as Karl Popper – they began to be seen as “a certain form of “irrationalism”. This was an announcement to extend the explanation of the category of totalizticism. The improvement of globalisation and neoliberalism has created a request for fresh applications of this category in the fight for the awareness of masses increasingly dissatisfied with neoliberal governments.
In the spirit of neoliberal apology in the run-up to the outbreak of the large 2007 financial crisis, Rzegowski wrote that he is not the other of totalitarianism procedural democracy, “but a strategy in which freedom can be maintained; in which most spheres of social and private life are not subject to control by the authorities; in which free citizens are masters of their fate, state officials treat them as mature people who can take work for their lives and their loved ones.” This was an example of an archaic way of reasoning about the state, its social function and economical model.
Damage to the concept of totalitarianism
He decided to take a extremist theoretical step Jacques Rancierewho rejected the usefulness of the notion of totalitarianism. citing J. The President, wrote that due to complex socio-political processes, the concept of totalitarianism was deprived of its usefulness at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Initially, the totalitarian state was attributed to devouring society. By the end of the 20th century, this democracy began to be understood as being consumed by society. In his opinion, the neoliberals called democracy the same as the Liberals previously called totalitarianism. Created by neoliberals, “the image of democracy is composed of features that were late attributed to totalitarianism. The sketching of this image so involves a process of distortion: as if the concept of totalitarianism erstwhile tailored to the needs of the Cold War, having lost its usefulness, could now be taken apart and re-used to rework the image of democracy—i.e. what was expected to be the other of totalitarianism.” As a consequence of the substitution of terms, neo-liberals have actually begun to discredit and combat democracy.
The Neoliberals began to implement their ideology of "the inexpensive state". In their opinion, totalitarianism and democracy obliterated the borders between the state and society, burdened the state with besides many tasks, related to ensuring work and self-sufficiency for the lower layers, gave the state besides much power, which gained a monopoly on politics. The neoliberal groups, on the 1 hand, object to state interference in the economy, ownership relations, social spheres, and on the another hand, by suffocating public opinion advance a different than conventional household model or cultural patterns that should function in accordance with the "nature of the market", in order to increase the profits of layers having and the efficiency of mass exploitation.
At the end of the 20th century, under the slogan of combating totalitarianism, there was the denial of the "state of prosperity" by the neoliberal state. The fight against a "careful state" is presented by the neoliberals as a return to real freedom, the work of individuals for their actions and the return to civilian society initiatives. But in the process, they attack non-state social solidarity institutions that have different views than neoliberal state institutions. “There is simply a paradoxical situation,” wrote Urs Marti, although the citizens of democratic states can participate in the politics of their countries, they are expected to stand for the policy required by the “market”, otherwise they gotta face sanctions, specified as occupation losses. While they have a choice between the various parties, the programmes of these parties on the decisive issues of economical and social policy disagree little." So, although clear and brutal political totalitarianism disappears, in its place comes a new, soft totalitarian democracy, more sophisticated, having its economical basis and a fresh political form.
Margaret Kowalska pointed out that according to Michel Foucault, under the motto of combating totalitarianism, there has even been a proliferation of various kinds of mechanisms and disciplinary institutions towards society. At the same time, the individual institutions ceased to be limited in their location and methods of operation, and began to become flexible control mechanisms that could be moved and adapted to different conditions. In this situation, the charge of neoliberals about the concentration and centralization of power by totalitarian states turns out to be double-sided; "This dispersal of power does not diminish its effectiveness, on the contrary. The power is effective not erstwhile it emanates from a single centre, but erstwhile “it appears everywhere”. The diversity of discipline techniques, the variety of discourses service the deeper penetration of the social body, transforming its diverse elements into the wheel of the efficient machine, where everything should be in its place, a place circumstantial and precisely marked so that the full can function well. This means, no less, that the dispersal of power serves to totalize." We have clearly seen the accomplishment of these objectives in the activities of various types of “non-governmental” organisations and institutions which, contrary to their name, were financed by the US government or individual countries
Decentralization in the execution of neoliberals, intended to be a denial and the other of totalitarianism, proved to be its element, their "subtle" plan. The corporations gained power through this strategy not only over their employees but besides over many countries and nations. And centralization, which, according to the neoliberals in the past, was expected to be synonymous with totalitarianism, proved to be not so much an component of their hatred of democracy as a fresh way of functioning of transnational corporations. What was officially attempted to banish the main gate through intrusive propaganda has returned by the side door. Neoliberal democracy is more totalitarian and more spying on its citizens than democracy in "real socialism". This exposes the interior contradiction of neoliberal democracy utilizing the slogan of fighting totalitarianism to carry out the interests of the oligarchy of financial and global capital.
Edward Karolczuk
photo of wikipedia
Think Poland, No. 21-22 (25.05.1.06.2025)
