Juan J Linz: Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes
The Shortened Century of Totalitarianism
The history of the origins of the political disasters of the "short century" should start with 1914, World War I and its aftermath. As Hobsbawm (1994), Franqois Furet (1999), Ernst Nolte (1987), and Karl Bracher (1984) emphasize, the old bourgeois order was shattered by the guns of August. Without the war there would not have been the split of socialism between Bolsheviks and Social Democrats, nor the rise of Italian interventionist nationalism, Mussolini and fascism, the German radical left, and the Nazi success in destroying Weimar democracy. Certainly, the intellectual roots of the ideological response to the war and its aftermath were there, as Bracher, Mosse, Gentile (1975), Sternhell (1978), and Furet among others stress. The war generated among respectable intellectuals, as Mommsen (1997‑1998) has shown, a nationalist‑chauvinist, militarist reaction that may be difficult to understand today. With the mass slaughter, its revolutionary aftermath, the new nationalisms, and the displacement of millions from their homes, the war desensitized people to the violence and horrors to come, a point eloquently made by Hobsbawm.
That legacy became articulated and institutionalized in the great antidemocratic movements and the regimes studied in this book. In the common matrix of the war and its aftermath, the intellectual seeds of revolutionary Marxism, irrationalist philosophy, social Darwinism, and racism would bear new and poisoned fruit. (A more complete discussion would include an analysis of those origins, but the works cited should allow the reader to fill that gap.) The generational composition of the founders and top elites of fascist and communist parties all over the world, and certainly of the German Nazi and communist parties, reflects the centrality of the experience of World War I, in contrast to the older elites of the Christian Democrats and even more the socialist parties (Linz, 1978, pp. 43‑47, especially Table 1).
Reading Furet and a number of other works of intellectual and cultural history gives us considerable insight into why totalitarianism seduced so many outstanding minds‑though not always for long. There is no fully equivalent work on the attraction of fascism, although there is a useful review by Hamilton (1971) and the writings on Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and Gottfried Benn and on the fascist graduates of the Ecole Normale Superieure (Rubinstein, 1990). Would those regimes have had the same success without that appeal to intellectuals? Possibly yes, considering their appeal to common men, the desire for security, and above all the fear that their terrorism created. We should not forget their ability to mobilize participation through the single party and the administered mass organizations, nor the gratification derived from, or dependent on, on that participation. Within the scope of my early work it was not possible to convey sufficiently the importance of that "democratic" participatory dimension.
Nolte (1987) has rightly stressed the importance of the fear of revolution in Europe in generating reactionary sentiments. That fear was stimulated by the unsuccessful but bloody revolutionary attempts and the widespread revolutionary rhetoric in the socialist movement, by the efforts of communist emissaries to kindle revolution, by the conflicts in the new nations bordering on the Soviet Union, and by the militias and army officers involved in repressing revolution, many of whom turned against even the democratic governments that were successfully stopping revolution.
Anticommunist, anti-revolutionary sentiments were an essential component of the antidemocratic wave in Europe (not always led by the fascists). Fascism and Nazism were the beneficiaries of that response to communism, but anti-communism, in my view, was not the only, and in many cases not the most important, ideological basis and appeal of fascism. Nazism was not just anti-communism. Hitler's racism may have been reinforced and legitimized by an emphasis on the Jewish leadership of some of the revolutionary movements of the time, but it had prewar and deeper intellectual and cultural roots. Fascism was a more complex phenomenon and movement than anti-communism. As any reader of the work of Gentile (1975) knows, Italian fascism's antiliberal, antibourgeois, even anticlerical elements, as well as its overall style, are not the reaction to communism or the result of "learning" from the Soviet experience, as Nolte argues in his scholarly but one-sided analysis.
While anti‑Semitism and the Holocaust occupy a central and unique place in the analysis of Nazi ideology, it should be considered as part of a broader racist ideology: "a full blown system of thought, an ideology like Conservatism, Liberalism" (Mosse, 1985, p. ix). That racism was reflected in the mass murder of gypsies and in the sterilization of the German children of black soldiers (World War I). Such social‑ Darwinist eugenic thinking was part of a larger body of scientific thought, which had a broad appeal beyond Germany and counted many followers in the democratic left. (We tend to forget the scientific and pseudoscientific pedigree of racist thinking, of Gobineau, Vacher de Laponge, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and the eugenic movement.) Even when Nazism, as other fascist movements, was fundamentally nationalist (and therefore "particularistic" rather than "universalistic," to use Furet's terminology), its racism was in a sense "universalistic," ready to sacrifice the nation and those citizens not identifying with the racist-biological myths, and attempting to mobilize racists beyond its borders. The racist‑eugenic utopia was something quite different from nationalism (Mosse, 1983).
Liberal democrats, however, should not ignore the contribution of the "civil war" atmosphere in the crisis of democracy that made possible the fascist and particularly the Nazi appeal: there was an atmosphere generated by the rhetoric of the class struggle, the futile violence of German communist party (KPD) activists, the growth of the communist parties, and the ambiguity toward liberal democracy of some sectors of the socialist movement. Anticommunism could lead, and did lead in a number of countries, to authoritarian regimes and to repression, but not to a totalitarian system with its revolutionary efforts at social transformation. Also, a number of democracies, some incorporating the socialist parties into the government, were able to oppose both fascism and communism. The totalitarian ambitions of fascists, the totalitarian dimension of Italian fascism, cannot be understood as a reflection of anticommunism. The radical and fully totalitarian rule of Hitler adds Nazism's distinctive anti‑Semitism and even more broadly conceived racism to fascist ideological elements and the Italian model. Indeed, Nazi racism went beyond the characteristic nationalism of fascist movements. (In this context, it is significant that "neofascist" groups and skinheads today do not connect that much with the fascist legacy, but instead use Nazi symbolism in their violence against foreigners).
That legacy became articulated and institutionalized in the great antidemocratic movements and the regimes studied in this book. In the common matrix of the war and its aftermath, the intellectual seeds of revolutionary Marxism, irrationalist philosophy, social Darwinism, and racism would bear new and poisoned fruit. (A more complete discussion would include an analysis of those origins, but the works cited should allow the reader to fill that gap.) The generational composition of the founders and top elites of fascist and communist parties all over the world, and certainly of the German Nazi and communist parties, reflects the centrality of the experience of World War I, in contrast to the older elites of the Christian Democrats and even more the socialist parties (Linz, 1978, pp. 43‑47, especially Table 1).
Reading Furet and a number of other works of intellectual and cultural history gives us considerable insight into why totalitarianism seduced so many outstanding minds‑though not always for long. There is no fully equivalent work on the attraction of fascism, although there is a useful review by Hamilton (1971) and the writings on Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and Gottfried Benn and on the fascist graduates of the Ecole Normale Superieure (Rubinstein, 1990). Would those regimes have had the same success without that appeal to intellectuals? Possibly yes, considering their appeal to common men, the desire for security, and above all the fear that their terrorism created. We should not forget their ability to mobilize participation through the single party and the administered mass organizations, nor the gratification derived from, or dependent on, on that participation. Within the scope of my early work it was not possible to convey sufficiently the importance of that "democratic" participatory dimension.
Nolte (1987) has rightly stressed the importance of the fear of revolution in Europe in generating reactionary sentiments. That fear was stimulated by the unsuccessful but bloody revolutionary attempts and the widespread revolutionary rhetoric in the socialist movement, by the efforts of communist emissaries to kindle revolution, by the conflicts in the new nations bordering on the Soviet Union, and by the militias and army officers involved in repressing revolution, many of whom turned against even the democratic governments that were successfully stopping revolution.
Anticommunist, anti-revolutionary sentiments were an essential component of the antidemocratic wave in Europe (not always led by the fascists). Fascism and Nazism were the beneficiaries of that response to communism, but anti-communism, in my view, was not the only, and in many cases not the most important, ideological basis and appeal of fascism. Nazism was not just anti-communism. Hitler's racism may have been reinforced and legitimized by an emphasis on the Jewish leadership of some of the revolutionary movements of the time, but it had prewar and deeper intellectual and cultural roots. Fascism was a more complex phenomenon and movement than anti-communism. As any reader of the work of Gentile (1975) knows, Italian fascism's antiliberal, antibourgeois, even anticlerical elements, as well as its overall style, are not the reaction to communism or the result of "learning" from the Soviet experience, as Nolte argues in his scholarly but one-sided analysis.
While anti‑Semitism and the Holocaust occupy a central and unique place in the analysis of Nazi ideology, it should be considered as part of a broader racist ideology: "a full blown system of thought, an ideology like Conservatism, Liberalism" (Mosse, 1985, p. ix). That racism was reflected in the mass murder of gypsies and in the sterilization of the German children of black soldiers (World War I). Such social‑ Darwinist eugenic thinking was part of a larger body of scientific thought, which had a broad appeal beyond Germany and counted many followers in the democratic left. (We tend to forget the scientific and pseudoscientific pedigree of racist thinking, of Gobineau, Vacher de Laponge, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and the eugenic movement.) Even when Nazism, as other fascist movements, was fundamentally nationalist (and therefore "particularistic" rather than "universalistic," to use Furet's terminology), its racism was in a sense "universalistic," ready to sacrifice the nation and those citizens not identifying with the racist-biological myths, and attempting to mobilize racists beyond its borders. The racist‑eugenic utopia was something quite different from nationalism (Mosse, 1983).
Liberal democrats, however, should not ignore the contribution of the "civil war" atmosphere in the crisis of democracy that made possible the fascist and particularly the Nazi appeal: there was an atmosphere generated by the rhetoric of the class struggle, the futile violence of German communist party (KPD) activists, the growth of the communist parties, and the ambiguity toward liberal democracy of some sectors of the socialist movement. Anticommunism could lead, and did lead in a number of countries, to authoritarian regimes and to repression, but not to a totalitarian system with its revolutionary efforts at social transformation. Also, a number of democracies, some incorporating the socialist parties into the government, were able to oppose both fascism and communism. The totalitarian ambitions of fascists, the totalitarian dimension of Italian fascism, cannot be understood as a reflection of anticommunism. The radical and fully totalitarian rule of Hitler adds Nazism's distinctive anti‑Semitism and even more broadly conceived racism to fascist ideological elements and the Italian model. Indeed, Nazi racism went beyond the characteristic nationalism of fascist movements. (In this context, it is significant that "neofascist" groups and skinheads today do not connect that much with the fascist legacy, but instead use Nazi symbolism in their violence against foreigners).
