Difference between revisions of "The Two Totalitarianisms"
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+ | A small note – not the stuff of headlines, obviously – appeared in the newspapers on 3 February. In response to a call for the [[prohibition]] of the [[public]] display of the [[swastika]] and other [[Nazi]] [[symbol]]s, a group of [[conservative]] members of the [[Europe]]an Parliament, mostly from ex-[[Communist]] countries, demanded that the same apply to [[Communist]] [[symbol]]s: not only the hammer and sickle, but even the red star. This proposal should not be dismissed lightly: it suggests a deep change in [[Europe]]’s [[ideological]] [[identity]]. | ||
− | http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n06/zize01_.html | + | Till now, to put it straightforwardly, [[Stalinism]] hasn’t been rejected in the same way as [[Nazism]]. We are fully aware of its monstrous aspects, but still find <em>Ostalgie</em> acceptable: you can make <em>Goodbye [[Lenin]]!</em>, but <em>Goodbye [[Hitler]]!</em> is unthinkable. Why? To take another example: in [[Germany]], many CDs featuring old East German Revolutionary and Party songs, from ‘Stalin, Freund, Genosse’ to ‘Die Partei hat immer Recht’, are easy to find. You would have to look rather harder for a collection of [[Nazi]] songs. Even at this anecdotal level, the difference between the [[Nazi]] and [[Stalinist]] universes is clear, just as it is when we recall that in the [[Stalinist]] [[show trials]], the accused had [[public]]ly to [[confess]] his crimes and give an account of how he came to commit them, whereas the [[Nazi]]s would never have required a [[Jew]] to [[confess]] that he was involved in a [[Jew]]ish plot against the [[German]] [[nation]]. The reason is clear. [[Stalinism]] conceived itself as part of the [[Enlightenment]] [[tradition]], according to which, [[truth]] being accessible to any [[rational]] man, no matter how depraved, everyone must be regarded as responsible for his crimes. But for the [[Nazi]]s the [[guilt]] of the [[Jew]]s was a fact of their [[biological]] constitution: there was no need to prove they were [[guilty]], since they were [[guilty]] by virtue of being [[Jews]]. |
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+ | In the [[Stalinist]] [[ideological]] [[imaginary]], [[universal]] [[reason]] is objectivised in the guise of the inexorable [[law]]s of [[historical progress]], and we are all its servants, the [[leader]] included. A [[Nazi]] [[leader]], having delivered a [[speech]], stood and silently accepted the applause, but under [[Stalinism]], when the obligatory applause exploded at the end of the leader’s speech, he stood up and joined in. In Ernst Lubitsch’s <em>To Be or Not to Be</em>, [[Hitler]] responds to the [[Nazi]] salute by raising his hand and saying: ‘Heil myself!’ This is pure [[humour]] because it could never have happened in [[reality]], while [[Stalin]] effectively did ‘hail himself’ when he joined others in the applause. Consider the fact that, on [[Stalin]]’s birthday, prisoners would send him congratulatory telegrams from the darkest [[gulag]]s: it isn’t possible to imagine a [[Jew]] in [[Auschwitz]] sending [[Hitler]] such a telegram. It is a tasteless distinction, but it supports the contention that under [[Stalin]], the ruling [[ideology]] presupposed a space in which the [[leader]] and his [[subject]]s could meet as servants of [[Historical Reason]]. Under [[Stalin]], all people were, theoretically, [[equal]]. | ||
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+ | We do not find in [[Nazism]] any equivalent to the [[dissident]] [[Communists]] who risked their lives fighting what they perceived as the ‘[[bureaucratic]] deformation’ of [[socialism]] in the [[USSR]] and its [[empire]]: there was no one in [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] who advocated ‘[[Nazism]] with a [[human face]]’. Herein lies the flaw (and the bias) of all attempts, such as that of the [[conservative]] [[historian]] Ernst Nolte, to adopt a [[neutral position]] – i.e. to ask why we don’t apply the same standards to the [[Communists]] as we apply to the [[Nazis]]. If [[Heidegger]] cannot be pardoned for his flirtation with [[Nazism]], why can [[Lukács]] and [[Brecht]] and others be pardoned for their much longer engagement with [[Stalinism]]? This position reduces [[Nazism]] to a reaction to, and [[repetition]] of, practices already found in [[Bolshevism]] – [[terror]], [[concentration camp]]s, the [[struggle to the death]] against [[political enemies]] – so that the ‘[[original sin]]’ is that of [[Communism]]. | ||
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+ | In the late 1980s, Nolte was [[Habermas]]’s principal opponent in the so-called <em>Revisionismusstreit</em>, arguing that [[Nazism]] should not be regarded as the incomparable [[evil]] of the 20th century. Not only did [[Nazism]], reprehensible as it was, appear after [[Communism]]: it was an [[excess]]ive <em>reaction</em> to the [[Communist]] [[threat]], and all its [[horror]]s were merely copies of those already perpetrated under [[Soviet]] [[Communism]]. Nolte’s idea is that [[Communism]] and [[Nazism]] share the same [[totalitarian]] form, and the difference between them consists only in the difference between the [[empirical]] agents which fill their respective structural roles (‘[[Jews]]’ instead of ‘[[class]] [[enemy]]’). The usual [[liberal]] reaction to Nolte is that he relativises [[Nazism]], reducing it to a secondary echo of the [[Communist]] [[evil]]. However, even if we leave aside the unhelpful comparison between [[Communism]] – a thwarted attempt at [[liberation]] – and the radical [[evil]] of [[Nazism]], we should still concede Nolte’s central point. [[Nazism]] was effectively a reaction to the [[Communist]] [[threat]]; it did effectively replace [[class struggle]] with the struggle between [[Aryan]]s and [[Jews]]. What we are dealing with here is [[displacement]] in the [[Freud]]ian sense of the term (<em>[[Verschiebung]]</em>): [[Nazism]] displaces [[class struggle]] onto racial struggle and in doing so obfuscates its true nature. What changes in the passage from Communism to Nazism is a matter of form, and it is in this that the Nazi [[ideological]] [[mystification]] resides: the [[political struggle]] is [[naturalised]] as [[racial]] conflict, the [[class antagonism]] inherent in the [[social structure]] reduced to the invasion of a [[foreign]] ([[Jew]]ish) [[body]] which disturbs the [[harmony]] of the [[Aryan]] [[community]]. It is not, as Nolte claims, that there is in both cases the same formal [[antagonistic]] [[structure]], but that the place of the [[enemy]] is filled by a different element ([[class]], [[race]]). [[Class antagonism]], unlike [[racial]] [[difference]] and conflict, is absolutely inherent to and constitutive of the social field; [[Fascism]] displaces this essential [[antagonism]]. | ||
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+ | It’s appropriate, then, to recognise the [[tragedy]] of the [[October Revolution]]: both its unique emancipatory potential and the [[historical necessity]] of its [[Stalinist]] outcome. We should have the honesty to acknowledge that the [[Stalinist]] purges were in a way more ‘[[irrational]]’ than the [[Fascist]] [[violence]]: its [[excess]] is an unmistakable sign that, in contrast to [[Fascism]], [[Stalinism]] was a case of an authentic [[revolution]] [[pervert]]ed. Under [[Fascism]], even in [[Nazi]] [[Germany]], it was possible to survive, to maintain the [[appearance]] of a ‘normal’ everyday life, if one did not involve oneself in any oppositional political activity (and, of course, if one were not [[Jew]]ish). Under [[Stalin]] in the late 1930s, on the other hand, nobody was safe: anyone could be unexpectedly denounced, arrested and shot as a traitor. The [[irrationality]] of [[Nazism]] was ‘[[condense]]d’ in [[anti-semitism]] – in its [[belief]] in the [[Jew]]ish plot – while the [[irrationality]] of [[Stalinism]] pervaded the entire [[social body]]. For that reason, [[Nazi]] [[police]] investigators looked for proofs and traces of active opposition to the regime, whereas Stalin’s investigators were happy to fabricate evidence, invent plots etc. | ||
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+ | We should also admit that we still lack a satisfactory theory of [[Stalinism]]. It is, in this respect, a scandal that the [[Frankfurt School]] failed to produce a systematic and thorough analysis of the phenomenon. The exceptions are telling: Franz Neumann’s <em>Behemoth</em> (1942), which suggested that the three great world-systems – [[New Deal]] [[capitalism]], [[Fascism]] and [[Stalinism]] – tended towards the same [[bureaucratic]], globally organised, ‘[[administered society]]'; [[Herbert Marcuse]]’s <em>Soviet Marxism</em> (1958), his least passionate book, a strangely neutral analysis of [[Soviet]] [[ideology]] with no clear commitments; and, finally, in the 1980s, the attempts by some [[Habermas]]ians who, reflecting on the emerging [[dissident]] phenomena, endeavoured to elaborate the notion of [[civil society]] as a site of resistance to the [[Communist]] [[regime]] – interesting, but not a global theory of the specificity of [[Stalinist]] [[totalitarianism]]. How could a school of [[Marxist thought]] that claimed to focus on the conditions of the failure of the [[emancipatory project]] abstain from analysing the nightmare of ‘[[actually existing socialism]]’? And was its focus on [[Fascism]] not a silent admission of the failure to confront the real [[trauma]]? | ||
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+ | It is here that one has to make a [[choice]]. The ‘pure’ [[liberal]] attitude towards [[Left]]ist and [[Right]]ist ‘[[totalitarianism]]’ – that they are both bad, based on the [[intolerance]] of political and other differences, the rejection of [[democratic]] and [[humanist]] values etc – is a priori [[false]]. It is necessary to take sides and proclaim [[Fascism]] fundamentally ‘worse’ than [[Communism]]. The alternative, the notion that it is even possible to compare [[rationally]] the two [[totalitarianism]]s, tends to produce the conclusion – explicit or implicit – that [[Fascism]] was the lesser [[evil]], an understandable reaction to the [[Communist]] [[threat]]. When, in September 2003, [[Silvio Berlusconi]] provoked a [[violent]] outcry with his observation that [[Mussolini]], unlike [[Hitler]], [[[Stalin]] or [[Saddam Hussein]], never killed anyone, the true scandal was that, far from being an expression of Berlusconi’s idiosyncrasy, his statement was part of an ongoing project to change the terms of a postwar [[Europe]]an [[identity]] hitherto based on [[anti-Fascist]] [[unity]]. That is the proper context in which to understand the [[Europe]]an [[conservatives]]’ call for the [[prohibition]] of [[Communist]] [[symbol]]s. | ||
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+ | ==See Also== | ||
+ | * [[Fascism]] | ||
+ | * [[Socialism]] | ||
+ | * [[Communism]] | ||
+ | * [[identity]] | ||
+ | * [[Hitler]] | ||
+ | * [[Stalin]] | ||
+ | * [[Stalinism]] | ||
+ | * [[Nazi]] | ||
+ | * [[symbol]] | ||
+ | * [[totalitarianism]] | ||
+ | * [[jew]] | ||
+ | * [[belief]] | ||
+ | * [[class]] | ||
+ | * [[enemy]] | ||
+ | * [[antagonism]] | ||
+ | * [[public]] | ||
+ | * [[ideology]] | ||
+ | * [[the political]] | ||
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+ | ==Source== | ||
+ | * [[The Two Totalitarianisms]]. ''London Review of Books''. Volume 27, Number 7. March 17, 2005. <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n06/zize01_.html>. Also listed on ''Lacan.com''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizektwoto.htm>. | ||
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+ | [[Category:Ethics]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Political theory]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Politics]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Articles by Slavoj Žižek]] | ||
[[Category:Works]] | [[Category:Works]] | ||
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Latest revision as of 14:42, 12 November 2006
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