Προς μια κριτική της έννοιας του Ολοκληρωτισμού

by Domenico Losurdo, Αντώνης Μπαλασόπουλος (translator)

Ιστορία του Κομμουνιστικού Κινήματος: Αποτυχία, προδοσία, ή διαδικασία μάθησης;

Η σύγχρονη κυρίαρχη ιστοριογραφία και ιδεολογία επιχειρούν να συνοψίσουν έναν δραματικό αιώνα με το περιτύλιγμα ενός διδακτικού παραμυθιού: στις αρχές του 20ού αιώνα, μια όμορφη και ενάρετη κορασίδα (η δεσποινίς Δημοκρατία) δέχεται την επίθεση πρώτα ενός κτήνους (του κυρίου Κομμουνισμού) και μετά ενός δεύτερου (του κυρίου Ναζισμού-Φασισμού). Χρησιμοποιώντας τις διαφορές ανάμεσα στους δύο, και μέσα από σύνθετα γεγονότα, η κορασίδα απελευθερώνεται από τη φριχτή κατάσταση. Έχοντας φθάσει στην ωριμότητα χωρίς να χάσει ίχνος από τη χάρη της, η δεσποινίς Δημοκρατία μπορεί επιτέλους να ζήσει τον νεανικό της έρωτα ερχόμενη εις γάμου κοινωνίαν με τον κύριο Καπιταλισμό.

Ο Ντομένικο Λοζούρντο (1941-2018) παραμένει μια αινιγματική μορφή: ένας «αρχαιολόγος» της δυτικής ιστορίας της φιλοσοφίας και της πολιτικής θεωρίας, που μοιράζεται με τον Φουκώ και τον Νίτσε την έντονη καχυποψία για τις «παραδεδεγμένες αλήθειες». Το στοίχημα που βάζει η παρούσα έκδοση είναι ότι, με το πέρας της ανάγνωσης, οι άκρως τετριμμένες έννοιες του «ολοκληρωτισμού» και της «αποτυχίας» ή «προδοσίας» ως χαρακτηριστικών του κομμουνιστικού κινήματος και του υπαρκτού σοσιαλισμού δεν θα είναι αυταπόδεικτες.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Theory

124 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Domenico Losurdo (14 November 1941 – 28 June 2018) was an Italian Marxist philosopher and historian better known for his critique of anti-communism, colonialism, imperialism, the European tradition of liberalism and the concept of totalitarianism.

He was director of the Institute of Philosophical and Pedagogical Sciences at the University of Urbino, where he taught history of philosophy as Dean at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Since 1988, Losurdo was president of the Hegelian International Association Hegel-Marx for Dialectical Thought. He was also a member of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin (an association in the tradition of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Prussian Academy of Sciences) as well as director of the Marx XXI political-cultural association.

From communist militancy to the condemnation of American imperialism and the study of the African-American and Native American question, Losurdo was also a participant in national and international politics.

Reviews

[Jithu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sharp criticism of Arendt's category of totalitarianism. Well researched historical materialist treatise on the inner functioning of liberal democracies, and by extension fascist states and how they stack up against common western anti communist myths about the Soviet Union.

[Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent critique that uncovers the inconsistency and western bias behind the concept of totalitarianism and how it has been (and still is) used as a mere tool for justifying imperialism, xenophobia, and war.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 3 out of 5]

get dunked on dumbass

[Zernab · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The struggle against totalitarianism serves to legitimate and transfigure the total war against the 'barbarians' who are alien to the Western world."

Maybe I should have stopped to read Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" before I read this article. However, I feel much of my education within liberal grade school history already had Arendt's imprint on it. If you have learned about totalitarianism through the American school system, then you have probably already seen Nazi Germany compared to the USSR under Stalin, both being posed as examples of it. In which case, you already grasp a major essence of what Arendt lays out in her work...or, let me correct myself- the major things Western policy wishes you get out of it.

Losurdo critiques the contemporary theory of "totalitarianism" by challenging its utility as a neutral, objective analytical category. On the contrary, he says it is a historically biased and politically motivated term that only became popularized due to liberal propogandists efforts to delegitimize the USSR during the Cold War, (really liked how he describes it as an international Civil War that "tore apart all countries transversally".)

He compares/contrasts governments labeled "totalitarian" to liberal democratic ones and shows how unfair this propagandized narrative that liberal democracies are the antithesis to totalitarianism is... How it completely overlooks the history of colonialism and slavery and concentration camps that liberal democracies have actively participated in the past and how imperialism still maintains rooted in these liberal democracies today. How the category is not equally applied to Western-aligned authoritarian regimes.

Losurdo points out how wrong it is to look at this newly created label of 20th century "totalitarian" regimes as some new breed of moral evil that mankind has never seen before, and how elements of totalitarian control can be found all over the place in historical forms of authoritarianism and colonial rule.

Now that doesn't mean that there were not very specific social and economic contexts that shaped these regimes, just what has now become a useless category: "totalitarianism" makes things overly simplified. It conflates vastly different political systems! By lumping together regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the label muddles the specific contexts of those regimes, and lets Western liberal democracies get away with social moral evils unscathed.

Also really enjoyed the critique on Friedrich Hayek.

Some favorite quotes:

"The main flaw of the category of totalitarianism is that it transforms an empirical description tied to specific characteristics into a general logical deduction. It is easy to recognise similarities between Stalin’s USSR and Nazi Germany. [...] However [...] surreptitiously, the analogies between the USSR and the Third Reich with regards to the question of the one-party dictatorship are considered to be the decisive ones, whereas the analogies on the level of eugenics and racial politics (which would lead to very different associations) are ignored or eliminated."

"A major aspect of the Nazi programme was that of building a racial state. And what were, at the time, the possible models for a racial state? Even more so than South Africa, the first example was the Southern United States. [...] Even for his plan to build a German continental empire, Hitler had in mind the United States model, which he praised for its ‘extraordinary inner strength’: Germany was called upon to follow this example, expanding to Eastern Europe as to a sort of Far West and treating the ‘indigenous people’ in the same way as the redskins were treated. We come to the same conclusion if we examine eugenics. As is well known, with regard to this ‘new science’, the Third Reich was indebted to the United States, where eugenics, which was invented during the second half of the nineteenth century by Francis Galton (a cousin of Darwin’s), became very popular. [...] Even after the Nazi rise to power, the ideologues and ‘scientists’ of race continued to claim that ‘Germany, too, has much to learn from the measures adopted by the North-Americans: they know what they are doing’. It should be added that this was not a unilateral relationship. After Hitler ’s rise to power, the most radical followers of the American eugenic movement looked up to the Third Reich as a model, and even travelled there on an ideological and research pilgrimage. It is now necessary to ask ourselves a question: Why, in order to define the Nazi régime, should the argument regarding the one-party dictatorship be more valid than that of racial and eugenic ideology and practice? It is precisely from this sphere that the central categories and key terminology of the Nazi discourse derived."

What is at the heart of Nazism is the idea of Herrenvolk, which is associated with the racial theory and practice carried out in the Southern United States and, more in general, with the Western colonial tradition. It is precisely this idea that the October Revolution attacked: not by chance, in fact, the revolution called upon the 'slaves in the colonies' to break their fetters. The common theory of totalitarianism concentrates exclusively upon the similar methods attributed to the two antagonists and, besides, claims that they derive univocally from a supposed ideological affinity, without making any reference to the actual situation or to the geopolitical context.

..." what role did the common theory of totalitarianism and the banner of the struggle against totalitarianism play in the massacre that in 1965 took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Communists in Indonesia? And with regard to Latin America's contemporary history, its darkest moments are not tied to 'totalitarianism', but to the struggle against it. Just to give an example, a few years ago, in Guatemala, the Truth Commission accused the CIA of having strongly helped the military dictatorship to commit 'acts of genocide' against the Mayas, who were guilty of sympathizing with the opponents of the regime supported by Washington."

"Nowadays we constantly hear denunciations, directed toward Islam, of 'religious totalitarianism' or of the 'new totalitarian enemy that is terrorism'.*" The language of the Cold War has reappeared with renewed vitality, as confirmed by the warning that American Senator Joseph Lieberman has issued to Saudi Arabia: beware the seduction of Islamic totalitarianism, and do not let a 'theological iron curtain' separate you from the Western world.**^ Even though the target has changed, the denunciation of totalitarianism continues to function with perfect efficiency as an ideology of war against the enemies of the Western world. And this ideology justifies the violation of the Geneva Convention, the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the embargo and collective punishment inflicted upon the Iraqis and other peoples, and the further torment perpetrated against the Palestinians. The struggle against totalitarianism serves to legitimate and transfigure the total war against the 'barbarians' who are alien to the Western world."

[Chet · Rating 4 out of 5]

People use the word "totalitarianism" to just mean "bad" or "country that makes me feel uncomfortable", and don't think through the deeper history or implications.

[Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good.

"[T]he theory of the non-innocence of theory is not a
taxicab one can get in and out of at will. So, what role did the common theory
of totalitarianism and the banner of the struggle against totalitarianism play
in the massacre that in 1965 took the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Communists in Indonesia? And with regard to Latin America’s contemporary
history, its darkest moments are not tied to ‘totalitarianism’, but to the struggle
against it.
...
In other words, with its silence and repressed thoughts, has not the common
theory of totalitarianism itself turned into an ideology of war, of total war,
one that has helped to increase the horror it supposedly condemned, thus
falling into a tragic performative contradiction?"

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Marxist dunking on liberals never gets old. Losurdo continues to be awesome.

[Kim ☭ · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's pretty good

[Benjamin Reinhard]

Much more of an essay than a book, but it’s really well done. Losurdo is such an amazing writer, need to read more of his work

[Eli N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much covers everything there is to be said about the “theory” of totalitarianism

[Conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Losurdo brings to the forefront the uncomfortable reality that many people enjoy using labels to explain away more complex realities which in turns allows these complex realities to be shaped by people who want a specific narrative to take place. Losurdo’s critique of modern liberalism should not be seen as a promotion OF totalitarianism, but more of a wake up call that the values we saw are embodied in the systems we there too might be as elusive as the meaning of totalitarianism.