1) What is Totalitarianism?
Totalitarianism is a type of government that, in theory, allows no individual freedom and aims to give the state control over every facet of a person’s life. The term “totalitario” was first used by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to define the new fascist state of Italy in the early 1920s. He also added the phrase “all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state.” Totalitarian has evolved to mean absolute and tyrannical single-party rule by the start of World War II. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and North Korea under the Kim family are some further contemporary examples of totalitarian nations.
2) Plato on Dictators:
Interpreting Plato’s defence of the rule of philosophers requires an understanding of what democracy actually means. Nowadays, the majority of contemporary states are democratic in the sense that the populace has a voice in how the state is managed. There has been discussion about what democracy is ever since Plato’s time, including whether it is the concept of majority rule or what has come to be known as the “Madisonian view,” which holds that democracy entails the protection of minorities. According to Plato, everything comes down to what democracy actually means. Demos, which can be translated as “the people” or “the rabble” or “the unfit,” rule in a democracy.
Plato held that the yearning for freedom is the fundamental and motivating element of democracy; nonetheless, this very characteristic ultimately causes a state to fall into tyranny. He thought that because a democratic system involved such a diversity of interests, the only way anything could be accomplished under it was with strong leadership that could bring those interests together. According to Plato, strong leaders eventually turn into demagogic tyrants.
The “fourth and worst disorder of a state,” according to Plato, is tyranny. Tyrants are devoid of reason, “the very faculty that is the instrument of judgement.” The reason that the tyrannical man is enslaved—his best quality—is also the reason why the tyrannical state is enslaved—because it lacks both reason and order. In a tyranny, the tyrant’s egotistical actions are unchecked by any external authority. According to Plato, the law can prevent tyranny. He referred to the law as a “external power” and the “ally of the whole city” in the Republic.
3) Aristotle on Dictators:
Aristotle opposed Plato’s ideal state in The Politics. He claimed that it does not handle potential problems between its citizens. He asserted that Plato’s ideal state will combine two antagonistic states into one. The guards [the warriors] are reduced to a simple garrison in occupation by [Plato], while the husbandmen, artisans, and the rest are the true citizens. But if that were the case, then they would all share in the disputes, lawsuits, and other evils that Socrates claims exist in other states. He does state that with such a high level of education, people won’t need many regulations, but he only focuses on educating parents.
He claimed that “True” constitutions protected everyone’s interests. Constitutions that were “despotic” were only in the best interests of a specific person or group. Because it “has in view the interest of the monarch only,” tyranny perverts monarchy. Tyranny, in the opinion of Aristotle, is defined as “the arbitrary power of an individual… responsible to no one, [which] governs… with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will.”
No freeman, if he can get away from it, will put up with such a regime, according to Aristotle. According to Aristotle, tyranny is the “reverse of a constitution.” He clarified that a constitution cannot exist in an environment where laws lack authority. The rule of law ought to be absolute. As a result, genuine forms of government will of necessity have just laws, while warped forms of government will have unjust laws, Aristotle emphasised that these laws must uphold just ideals.
Aristotle shared Plato’s beliefs regarding the perils of democracy and oligarchy. Both, in his opinion, set the wealthy against the underprivileged. But he was aware that these governments may be in many different shapes. The worst were those who did not uphold the law. Democracies without the rule of law saw the rise of demagogues—leaders who play on the emotions.
4) Al-Farabi on Dictators:
Al-Farabi has placed a strong emphasis on the theoretical study of society and its demands, influenced by his political and social surroundings. He has authored a number of political treatises, the most well-known of which being “Model City.” He imagines his city as a collection of interconnected pieces, much like an organism; if one part becomes unwell, the others respond and tend to it. Each person is given a job and a task that are best suited to their unique skills and talents.
The tyrannical state benefits from its citizens’ goals; they work together to defeat others yet refuse to be defeated by them. Al-Farabi aims to differentiate between despotic nations and defines tyranny or despotism according to aim: dominion over people and over their things for power’s sake, internally or outside, through force and conquest or through persuasion and obtaining enslavement. Because of the dual nature of his tyrannical control, it frequently resembles timocracy or plutocracy. By adhering to Plato’s depiction of tyranny and the tyrannical man, as well as the movement from democracy to tyranny and from the democratic to the tyrannical man but done to their common source. Al-Farabi describes tyranny as having total authority.
5) Machiavelli on Dictators:
A tyrannical estate is one in which freedom and the rule of law are denied. Machiavelli clearly distinguishes between “absolute and tyrannical living” and “civil and free living.” The threat arises, more specifically, when someone “assumes enormous authority and adopts legislation disruptive of civic equality.” This always results in a situation where the tyrant’s whim becomes the law, which is the exact reverse of the “vivere libero” that is governed by laws.
Tyranny is founded on the use of force, which is in opposition to “civil modes and customs,” and on the requirement that various innovations be made in the State in order to overthrow established authorities and fracture long-standing allegiances. Such methods are extremely brutal and are repulsive to any community, not only to a Christian one, but to any composed of men, according to Machiavelli. Therefore, it is incumbent upon every man to avoid them and to prefer to live as a commoner than as a king with such human ruination on his record.
Tyranny is the ideal antithesis of “vivere politico,” which is defined as the ability to enjoy one’s possessions freely and without raising suspicion, such as the confidence that one’s wife and children will be respected, the absence of fear for oneself. Tyranny arises from corruption, from sedition and disorder and is nourished by them. The contrast could not be sharper or quicker. Living in safety and equality is the essence of liberty; tyranny, on the other hand, results from inequity that fuels factional conflict that is unchecked by the law. A state must be united, or kept together, and must have common rules; a tyrant maintains “the state disjoined” and solely considers his own personal interests.
6) Arendt on Dictators:
Critics argued that Arendt placed the blame for the victims’ complicity on those who were coerced, so relieving the Nazi officer of the tremendous moral weight of his duty. In an essay titled “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” which was published in 1964, she responded to these accusations. Here, she argues that if Eichmann were permitted to represent a monstrous and inhuman system rather than stunningly common people, his conviction would make him a scapegoat and let others off the hook. This is done in an attempt to answer the question in her title. Instead, she holds that everyone who worked for the government was morally responsible and complicit, regardless of their motivations.
However, despite the fact that the majority of individuals are guilty of serious moral offences, those who collaborated weren’t actually criminals. Instead, they made the decision to act lawfully in a clearly criminal system. It’s a subtlety that escalates into a severe moral dilemma. Arendt notes that even though they had alternatives that would have been fatal, everyone who aided the government consented to varying degrees of violence. “If somebody points a gun at you and says, ‘Kill your friend or I will kill you,’ he is tempting you, that is all.”
Arendt attempts to explain a “moral issue,” a Socratic principle we all “take for granted,” that it is preferable to suffer than to break the law, even though this situation may offer a “legal excuse” for murder. Arendt contended that individuals like Eichmann were not lawbreakers and sociopaths but rather rule-abiding individuals shielded by societal privilege. The people who had not been affected by the intellectual and moral turmoil in the early years of the Nazi period, she adds, were precisely the members of respectable society who were the first to capitulate. Without considering the morality of the entire new system, they merely switched one set of values for another.
On the other side, those who rejected, even those who “chose to die” instead of killing, lacked highly developed intelligence or complexity in moral matters.” But they were critical thinkers engaging in a quiet debate with themselves, as Socrates put it, and they refused to face a time when they would have to live with the crimes they had committed or enabled. Arendt reminds us that “whatever else happens, as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves,” regardless of what else occurs.
Even if such refusals to engage might be modest, private, and appear to have no impact, if there were enough of them, they would have an impact. All governments, asserts Arendt, echoing James Madison, “rest on consent,” as opposed to slavish submission. The “leader… would be helpless without the consent of government and corporate employees.” Arendt acknowledges the improbability of effective active resistance to a one-party authoritarian state. In spite of this, she believes that when individuals are most helpless and under pressure, an open admittance of one’s own weakness might offer us a final vestige of strength to resist.
7) Totalitarianism Today:
In a liberal democracy, anything that is not prohibited is allowed, but in a totalitarian regime, everything that is not prohibited is required. When Winston Smith’s mysterious interrogator O’Brien tells him: “If you want a view of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for eternity,” George Orwell’s infamous anti-totalitarian novel 1984 offers an even more horrific portrayal of life in a totalitarian government.
Many people equate fascist with totalitarianism, although the history of the idea is more nuanced. Totalitarian regimes can be broadly defined as non-democratic political systems that strive to regulate every element of life for the entire population using contemporary means like the media and a political police Nazi Germany, the USSR, and communist China are some examples that have been often used in this context. Less frequently used examples include Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It has been stated that Iran and North Korea are examples of contemporary totalitarian nations. To safeguard the principles of these revolutions in the political institutions that were constructed later, totalitarian nations were thus supposed to have emerged from a variety of revolutions in the twentieth century.
Not all contemporary authoritarianism, though, should be viewed as blatant instances of totalitarianism. The totalitarian model does not truly apply to Putin’s Russia. Many other authoritarian governments do not perfectly fit the totalitarian paradigm either since their authoritarianism is focused on manipulation through disinformation rather than attempting to instil confidence in a single ideology. It is debatable if China is presently dictatorial or has changed into something else. In this sense, far-right populists of today who participate in elections are also not totalitarian because their goal is to influence democratic systems rather than topple them.
The majority of recent conceptual work currently tends to conclude that studying totalitarianism is more difficult than determining whether a state is totalitarian or not. Although the exact nature of these features is still up for debate, many political movements and regimes can be regarded to possess totalitarian traits.
Totalitarianism might be viewed as a political aspiration instead. Totalitarian illusions can be seen driving many unsuccessful political organisations that seek to bring about fundamental change and to somehow unite a society under a single revolutionary philosophy, in addition to the mighty states of the interwar era. These dreams are still common among the more extreme far-right margins, as well as among left-wing revolutionaries and even Islamists, even if they are often far from power.