I have now
reached the point where, with your continuing indulgence, I may summarize what
i believe to be the specific novelties of dictatorial totalitarianism.
First, it
is really totalitarian. It monopolizes all powers and directs all activities of
individuals and groups. It subordinates to itself all economics, religious, and
educational institutions and policies. It levels clases and restricts or
suppresses the liberty of family and person.
It leaves no room for the free play of individual wils and recognizes no
utility in free inquiry.
Second, it
commands and rests upon mass-support. It is no affair of an aristocratic class
or a military caste. Is is franky for and by the half-educated and
half-propertied lower middle class and upper proletariat.
99 Third,
totalitarian dictatorship is maintained, and its overthrow rendered unusually
difficult, by novel and marvellously effective agencies of popular education
and propaganda….Once in power, the dictator inmediately decrees a monopoly and
extensión of state schools…Everyone learns to read, of course; that is a
favorite boast of contemporary dictators…….
100
Futhermore, totalitarian dictatorship has evolved a new pattern of methods and
techniques. Behind a mask of plebiscites, popular elections, and occasional
assembling of a so-called parliament- which listens and applauds but doesn’t
really parley- the government actually functions through and with a single
political party which comprises a minority, usually a small minority, of the
nation, but which is more or less hand-picked, severely disciplined, and
equipped with a monopoly of the means of influencing public opinión and
enforcing the will of the dictator.
101 Still
another novelty of totalitarianism is its exalting of might and forcé, not only
as means to an end- there is precedent aplenty in Western history for that- but
and end in itselt.
The novelty
of totalitarianism in the History of Western civilitation.
Carton J.
H. Hayes
Proceedings
of the American Philosophical, vol 82, n 1, february, 1940.
P 91-102
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