Re: [xmca] Totalitarianism as a Totalizing Construct

Seems about right to me.
mike

On 4/13/07, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> My point never was that "totalitarianism" didn't exist, And totalitariands
> is one form by which the state invades and attempts to control every part of
> the society and individual life world, But for me, the term
> totalitarianism has always been associated with the threat and use of
> physical force to coerce compliance and submission to how the state defines
> the society and individual action within it. The gulags, re-education
> camps, etc.
>
> I think that Orwell actually saw beyond that -- Newspeak was the
> instrument to eliminate the possibility of dissident thought and I think he
> understood that this can't be achieved with the jackboot and trucheon alone,
> and to his amazing prescience, the "telescreen" was the precursor of the
> levels of surveillance that actually exist today, this in a time when the TV
> was hardly born. In his other essays, notably "Politics and the English
> Language", he discussed the ways in which political language in the
> so-called democratic societies really functions to prevent critical thought
> about social realities. After all, where is "newspeak" most alive and
> well? Would you disagree with me if I say that is in the mouths of people
> like Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their counterparts across the political
> spectrum in the U.S. and elsewhere in the "FREE WORLD" . Bush constantly
> says that "war is peace" and he himself personifies that "ignorance is
> bliss" through his perfectly calculated performances that validate redneck
> ignorance and denial.
>
> My point is simply that totalitarianism is an anachronistic term, it
> refers to an early historical period, not that long ago but the amount of
> change in social relations in the last 100 years seems much greater than the
> amount of change in the 1000 or 2000 before that And the "masters of
> consciousness" (title of a book I once read) don't rely on the jackboot and
> truncheon to control people; it isn't effective, quite simply: the demise
> of the socialist experiments in the Soviet Union and other parts of Eastern
> Europe might just as well be a massive demonstration of the failure of
> "totalitarianism", exacerbated of course by the ongoing assault of the
> capitalist states in the rest of Europe and America.
> The term "hegemony", on the other hand, is all about how consent gets
> generated, about the process of getting people to buy into something on the
> basis of fears and desires that don't necessarily relate to prisons,
> torture, or executions.
>
> "totalitarianism" as a form of political control has basically
> disappeared simply because it didn't work, it wasn't sustainable over the
> long term. And the most prominent recent proponents of that system, such as
> Pinochet, became pariahs in their own time. But that certainly doesn't
> mean that the ruling elites don't have just as much or more control over the
> members of contemporary societies. They've just become very good at getting
> people to buy into ideological systems that serve their interests, hegemonic
> images of what is good and right, beautiful and desirable replace the threat
> of torture, imprisonment, death, as a form by which a small group of people
> control the masses. Also Shitty education, in which science and
> technology is valued more than the humanities, is a big player. But that's
> another story.
>
> For what it's worth.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> *Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> Odd, Paul. I was thinking about the term, hegemony along with musing about
> totalitarianism. Thinking that the former fit the case of US in 1962-63,
> the
> academic year I was a post doc in moscow, but that totalitarianism was a
> pretty good chacterization of the situation in Moscow;. The problem is
> that
> it does not, in that context, derive from capitalism if one wishes to
> grant
> the USSR the status of a socialist country, which seems at least
> plausible.
> And I thought, of course, of Orwell, who was so influenced by the
> betrayals
> and mixtures of fascism and Stalinism in Spain.
>
> For me, totalitarianism (this my personal musings set off by the Davids)
> is
> associated with deep, direct, life-threatening invasion of the state in
> the
> everyday lives of people. It is illustrated with chilling accuracy in the
> recent film, "the lives of others." One of my first experiences in Moscow
> was someone knocking on the door of our room, walking in,
> not introducing himself, walking into the shower, turning it on, bringing
> us
> into the shower
> and there whispering that he was a friend of a colleague of mine who had
> been there the
> previous year.... by way of introduction.
>
> Or, a few years later, visiting the Institute of Psychology where I had
> many
> former colleagues, and having a woman I had worked with shake with fear
> because I had walked down the hall and knocked on her lab door without it
> being cleared.
>
> Or knowing that the large cupboard at the end of the large seminar room
> was
> a fake piece
> of furniture which the KGB agent assigned to the institute sat in to
> overhear conversations,
> his office being next door.
>
> Or getting very sick and having a friend who was also a speech writer for
> Brezhnev shake with fear because I had stayed overnight at her and her
> husband's apartment with a high fever while they fed me aspirin and
> chicken
> soup and this same KGB guy had called and threatened her for allowing me
> to
> stay overnight.
>
> Or.........
>
> When I wrote earlier that what scares me about the US today is that it CAN
> and IS
> happening here, those are the kinds of experiences I had in mind. And the
> genuine if misguide thouht that totalitarian is a very polysemic word.
> mike
>
>
> On 4/12/07, Paul Dillon wrote:
> >
> > Davids and Mike, timid lurkers:
> >
> > There is a serious problem with the word "totalitarianism".. I found
> > the following quick quote in Wikipedia:
> >
> > The original meaning of the word [totaltianism] as described by
> > Mussolini and Gentile (G. Gentile & B. Mussolini in "La dottrina del
> > fascismo" 1932) was a society in which the main ideology of the state
> had
> > influence, if not power, over most of its citizens.
> >
> > Admittedly, "most" is a very inaccurate word. Many would assume it is
> > 50%+1 or more(legacy of Rousseau?) but in fact, most highway patrol
> > officers will attest that when 30% of the "citizens" don't follow a law,
> it
> > can't be enforced. Grounds: speed limits.
> >
> > And, if we delve further, or even think about it a little, we will find
> > that the term has been employed as David K. has so correctly directed us
> to
> > see, is a product of capitalist ideology. After all, Mussolini and
> Hitler
> > had no problems with capitalist economy, in fact their main supporters
> were
> > capitalist and their main opponents (including FDR) came from the other
> > camp, with all its varied flags.
> >
> > I think it is much more useful to talk of "hegemony" in its original
> > formulation: Antonio Gramsci. A great thinker who Mussolini imprisoned
> > quickly.
> >
> > Last night I spent a "smashing" time with a friend who told me he hates
> > all Americans. He himself has no nationality, his father was a Serbian
> > landlord who stuggled against the Nazis during WWII and then had to flee
> the
> > Red Army because he was a "People's Enemy" being basically a neo-feudal
> > latifundista. He went from Italy (where my friend was born) to Peru,
> where
> > the great landlord ended up as a miner in the cold barren and poisoned
> > Andean highlands.
> >
> > When Yugoslavia disappeared beneath Clinton's bombs, my friend became a
> > stranded Tom Hanks, change airport for Peru, but the same deal: he can't
> > leave, his passport means nothing.
> >
> > We spent many beers last night during which I tried to convince him it
> > isn't "Americans" he should be hating (also that hate damages him more
> than
> > its object) but, it is the fact that capitalism grew freely,
> unrestrained by
> > previous feudal or Asiatic elites, in the current USA political entity,
> and
> > that one does need to distinguish the people from the government
> (another
> > term that should be examined critically), As I argued (for example
> > pointing out that his sister, a native Peruvian, can't stand Peru now
> and is
> > much happier in Long Beach CA, a destiny she defends by simply ignoring
> what
> > the U.S. government has done since Hamilton and the Monroe Doctrine. His
> > sister simply turns a deaf ear when her brother points out that the US
> > freely bombed Yugoslavia, land of their papa, defending their actions
> > beneath the pretext that they were fighting whom>?? Oh yeah, those guys
> the
> > US govt paid to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and who (by some
> > accounts) later turned around
> > and bit the master's hand. This is a much more complex situation than
> > what Orwell and Arendt were critiquing when they developed the notion of
> > "totalitarianism".
> >
> > (No jaybirds sing in these forests, and any crow like sound should
> > simply be controlled)
> >
> > But the bottom line is this: "totalitarian" is an anachronistic
> > term. The recent thread on using security/credit searches for anyone who
> > receives federal money should reveal that Orwell's jacboot and truncheon
> are
> > no longer the force that blinds and subjects people to interests that
> > control the society. A much more serious term is "hegemony". Read
> Gramsci,
> > but read Dante and Croce first.
> >
> > Paul Dillon
> >
> >
> > David Preiss wrote:
> > David Kellogg,
> >
> > It seems to me that by your note you are implying I am making a contrast
> > between good and evil. I don't doubt the russians' abilities to perform
> > gigantic instrumental advances in science as their counterpart
> westerners
> > did
> > (however the collapse of their whole political endeavours). What I am
> just
> > saying is that I certainly doubt Vygotsy built his career against those
> > standards.
> >
> > I haven't made any claim also about the nature of the USSR science. I
> also
> > share your questioning of western ethnocentricism, which by chance I
> have
> > been
> > able to revisit here in many talks in AERA, supposedly global, but
> > performed
> > by only american or americanized academics.
> >
> > What I don't have any doubt, though, is that life under Stalin was
> > anything
> > but good (as it is living under the war on terror). If you think the
> USSR
> > was
> > a nice place to think about human nature, well, that's your take on this
> > issue. We think different and so be it.
> >
> > Best,
> > David Preiss
> >
> >
> > Mike Cole escribi�:
> > > For an interesting book on Science in the USSR that covers the
> Stalinist
> > > period, I highly recommend Loren Graham's work. It ranges very widely
> > > across the sciences including physics, biology, and even psychology.
> > >
> > > Fascinating discussion of the polysemy of totalitarianism.
> > >
> > > mike
> > >
> > > On 4/11/07, David Kellogg wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Dear David (Preiss):
> > >>
> > >> Thanks for your note from busy AERA. Hope you are staying out of the
> > >> Chicago wind!
> > >>
> > >> I went to school in "anti-totalitarian" Chicago when it was a
> training
> > >> ground for "los chicago boys", the men who served as quartermasters
> for
> > >> General Pinochet. So I guess I don't find the word "totalitarian"
> > >> particularly helpful, except possibly as a description of how the
> > private
> > >> sector has laid its clammy hand on every aspect of public life under
> > >> capitalism or the way in which North Americans assume that their
> > America is
> > >> America and the way that Westerners assume that their world is the
> > whole
> > >> world.
> > >>
> > >> As a young adult I lived through the "anti-spiritual pollution
> > campaign"
> > >> and the "campaign against bourgeois liberalization" and of course the
> > >> movement which is incorrectly described by the totalitarian media in
> > the
> > >> West as the "Tiananmen Square Democracy movement" (because that is
> what
> > >> Western TV screens showed). My wife grew up during the Cultural
> > Revolution
> > >> (and was a militant participant at age seven). It was not a different
> > world;
> > >> it was the same one, and people made decisions (including life and
> > death
> > >> decisions) in much the same way as you do.
> > >>
> > >> I also think that the USSR, even under Stalin, can hardly be
> considered
> > >> a second or third rate science power (they led the world in space,
> for
> > >> example, and were a very close second in atomic energy). When my
> father
> > >> visited the USSR in the early sixties, he was astonished to discover
> > that
> > >> the Russian physicists had read all of his work, and highly
> embarrassed
> > to
> > >> admit that he had read none of theirs, even though theirs was
> available
> > in
> > >> English and his was not available in Russian. This shouldn't have
> been
> > so
> > >> astonishing, given the totalitarian nature of Western intellectual
> > life.
> > >>
> > >> David (Kellogg)
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> ---------------------------------
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> >
> >
> > --
> > David D. Preiss Ph.D.
> > Profesor Auxiliar / Assistant Professor
> > Pontificia Universidad Cat�lica de Chile
> > Escuela de Psicolog�a.
> > Av. Vicu�a Mackenna 4860.
> > Macul, Santiago de Chile.
> > Chile
> >
> > Tel�fono: (56-2) 354-4605
> > Fax: (56-2) 354-4844.
> > Web: http://web.mac.com/ddpreiss/
> >
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Received on Sat Apr 14 07:49 PDT 2007