From a political point of view, the idea of totalitarianism owes its origins and justification to Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). According to it, regardless of the specific national traditions or sources of ideology, totalitarian rule transforms the classes into masses, removes the multiparty system by replacing it with a one- , but with a mass movement, moves the center of power from the army to the police and establishes a foreign policy openly directed towards world domination. Totalitarian policy does not replace one legislation with another, but establishes its own consensus juris, while not subjecting to tyrannical lawlessness, arbitrariness and fear. And it can indeed without consensus juris, because it promises to free the application of the law from any connection with a certain movement or the will of man. And Professor Robert O. Paxton of Columbia University asks how Hannah Arendt can mix in the same notion of "totalitarianism," the Stalinist regime, where the party dominates civil society, radically simplified by the Bolshevik Revolution with the Hitler regime, which the party and the traditional elite share power.
The material of the discussion was published in Friedrich's editorial "Totalitarianism".
Friedrich distinguishes five features of the totalitarian system:
a / official ideology;
b / presence of a mass party controlled by the oligarchy;
c / government monopoly on arms;
d / government monopoly on the mass media, e / terrorist police system. Soon after, he added a sixth feature:
is / centrally planned economy.
In fact, communism, fascism and Nazism are very similar political phenomena.
The Sociological and Political Aspects of the Theory of Totalitarianism Developed by Raymond Aron distinguishes five fundamental elements of the totalitarian phenomenon:
a / monopoly of a political party / regime with a monopoly party /;
b) an ideology that becomes official in the state;
c / a dual monopoly on force means and methods of belief;
(d) Most economic and professional activities are subordinate to the State and become, to a certain extent, part of the State itself;
e) police and ideological terror.
This definition is substantiated and justified in the following extract from his book "Democracy and Totalitarianism"
- "The totalitarian phenomenon arises under a regime that gives the monopoly of a party's political activity.
- The Monopoly Party is inspired or armed with an ideology on which it gives absolute power and which subsequently becomes official in the state.
- To disseminate this official truth, the State in its turn retains a dual monopoly of power means and belief methods. All means of communication - radio, television, stamp, government, and government .
- Most economic and professional activities are subordinate to the state and become in some sense a part of the state itself. Since it is inseparable from its ideology, most of the economic and professional activities are colored by the official truth.
- Since everything is already a state activity and every activity is subordinate to ideology, the error committed in the economic and professional activity is both an ideological mistake.
Finally, there is a politicization, an ideological transformation of all possible mistakes of individuals, and as a result - a simultaneous police and ideological terror. "
The analysis of the scientific literature shows that there is a conceptual confusion when considering the notion of "totalitarianism." However, the following more important summaries and parallels could be made.
Authors under "totalitarianism" should be understood not as a type of political apparatus, but as a certain tendency or "conviction that an organized group or institution - a church, a government, a party, has a privileged access to the truth" (Edgar Halllet Kar.
There are authors who see the totalitarian features in the Spartan / Neumann state apparatus, the second additions to the "father" of totalitarianism JJ Rousso / Talmon,
Totalitarianism, as a conquered macchialelism (Fawl), fourth considers that totalitarianism is a form of government whose origins "arise before industrialism and regardless of industrialism" (Moore).
The two English political scientists Robert and Lewis in the book "Western European Politics Today", published at the University of Manchester in 1984, formed the totalitarian dictatorships / fascist political regimes, Hitler's Germany / and totalitarian democracies / former USSR and eastern European countries.
Summing up the discussions, the history, and the use of the idea of totalitarianism, Benjamin R. Barber in the most authoritative political encyclopedia in the West comes to the following conclusions that used to describe such different regimes as Nazi Germany, Stalin Russia, the Plato Republic, the Chin dynasty, fascist Italy, Sardinian Nicaragua, India during the Mongyu dynasty, the Roman Empire at Diocletian, Geneva at Calvin, Japan at Meiji , ancient Sparta and the United States, not only in the 1960s, but in the 1940s, this term does not seem to have any useful social scientific significance. But it remains an invaluable key to the character of ideology of the "cold war" and so of a sociologist s knowledge of the postwar era.