Waldemar Gurian on Totalitarianism (1953)

The term "totalitarianism," which started its triumphal march through our time in Italy
and was taken over in Germany, has never been accepted by the regime which today
is regarded as the survival of totalitarianism in its most powerful form. The
representatives of the Soviet regime did not care to appear on the side of Fascism and
Nazism as belonging to the front of totalitarianism. The ruling Soviet party does not
officially pretend to be a ruling elite separated from the masses, destined to lead and
dominate them. . . . And even today, after the withering away of the state, announced
in Lenin's State and Revolution (1917), has been postponed to a future very far away,
beyond all human calculation, and after the strong almighty Soviet state has been
accepted as the decisive fact of the present, the belief is not abandoned that the state
will disappear. But this belief has become a utopian promise completely
overshadowed by the political regime as exist today. Therefore, it can be said that
despite the rejection of the name "totalitarianism," the USSR has become the purest
embodiment of totalitarianism, for in Germany it did not have time to last long
enough. . . .

What is totalitarianism? Totalitarianism is often not distinguished from absolutism.

Under absolutism all regimes without parties or elected representative bodies are
subsumed. . . . Totalitarianism appears then as a modern despotism. A power-hungry
group achieves power -- using demagogic means to maintain and expand its unlimited
and unchecked power. These means are particularly terrifying and efficient and our
time because of technical progress and inventions which permits swift concentration
and application of power and manipulation as well as production of public opinion.
There are no truly representative subleaders, there are no independent social groups,
no traditional rights, no historical contributions and merits which can check the
modern absolute totalitarian rulers; it must be emphasized that the totalitarian system
differs from old-fashioned despotism and autocracy in its use of economic and
technological pressures and manifestations of so-called public opinion. The
totalitarian tyrannies of our time do not appeal to the "divine right," but they claim to
represent the true will of the masses and of the people. They like to characterize
themselves as representing the "real country" against legalistic fictions of democracies
which destroy the unity of the people and paralyze it by parties, the instruments of
parasitic and egoistic particular interests. They present themselves as "true"
democracies because, for instance, only the communistic party (which allegedly is
identical with the working productive masses) exists; whereas all exploiters and their
representatives are suppressed. . . .

Therefore it may be said that the various forms of totalitarianism -- Nazism and Soviet
Communism -- are politico-social secularized religions, characteristic of our epoch.
The totalitarian movements and their power replace God and religious institutions
such as the Church; the leaders are deified; the public mass-meetings are regarded and
celebrated as sacred actions; the history of the movement becomes a holy history of
the advance of salvation, which the enemies and betrayers try to prevent in the same
way as the devil tries to undermine and destroy the work of those who are in the
service of the City of God. There are not only sacred formulas and rituals, there are
also dogmatic beliefs, claims to absolute obedience and damnation of heretics in the
name of absolute truth which is authoritatively determined by those leading the
movement. The doctrine may impose certain slogans and formulas -- racism for the
Nazis; class war, anti-capitalism for the Bolsheviks -- but just the unlimited and
uncontrollable right of interpretation and reinterpretation by the leadership gives to
totalitarian politics its flexibility. . . .

What is the formal structure of a totalitarian ideocracy or socio-political religion?

Essential is the belief; there are laws of necessary social development, economic or
biological ones. After many fights the good forces will win out; the right order will be
established. The victory of these good forces is dependent upon elites who represent
either groups of natural superiority or those by whom the true interest of the masses
becomes conscious. The domination of these groups is necessary for the world
salvation; indeed it is the world's salvation.

This domination cannot be a limited one; it must embrace the whole of life and
society. It must determine all realms of individual and social existence. There can be
no private life outside. Passive acceptance is insufficient. Enthusiastic, active
acclamation and support are necessary, or man must serve as malleable material in
order to show the superiority and the unlimited power of the rulers. . . .

The totalitarian ideology a deification of a power system -- the power system directed
by that group which came into being as its creator and claims to act as its realizer.
Therefore, it is on the one hand a system which pretends to answer all questions and
to solve all problems by its doctrine; on the other hand, it is very flexible, for it can be
adapted to all situations according to the decisions and the interests of the ruling elite.
Unauthorized criticism of details and rational arguments against the general line are
without effect; they appear simply as expressions of evil and ignorant forces unable to
see the whole truth. The individual must sacrifice himself to the collective dynamic.
The imperfect present is justified by the coming perfect future, that of the classless
society or of the Third Reich. Scientific and "ethical" justifications are used to express
the necessity of the totalitarian politics and demonstrate its superiority.

The totalitarian ideology becomes at the end a purely formal one. Under Stalin to
believe in the withering away of the state is transferred to a realm practically beyond
human history, but it continues to be most important. It justifies eternal dynamism, it
makes all actions of the totalitarian regime appear as necessary and corresponding to
the unity and logic of a system. . . .

The totalitarian society would dissolve into chaos if it could not be kept together by
the artificial totalitarian doctrine whose domination corresponds not only to the laws
of society and history, but fulfills the mission which it above all challenges. . . . The
ideocracy is the ideology for the continuation of the present rule by a group which has
established a system of absolute domination by terror, organization, manipulation, and
propaganda.

[Source: Waldemar Gurian, "Totalitarianism as Political Religion," in Carl J.

Friedrich, ed., Totalitarianism (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), pp. 120-123,
125-129.]