Totalitarian democracy is a

dictatorship A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no Limited government, limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, ...

based on the mass enthusiasm generated by a perfectionist ideology.Macpherson, C. B. (1952). eview of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon Past & Present, 2, 55–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/650125 The conflict between the state and the individual should not exist in a totalitarian democracy, and in the event of such a conflict, the state has the moral duty to coerce the individual to obey. This idea that there is one true way for a society to be organized and a government should get there at all costs stands in contrast to

liberal democracy Liberal democracy, also called Western-style democracy, or substantive democracy, is a form of government that combines the organization of a democracy with ideas of liberalism, liberal political philosophy. Common elements within a liberal dem ...

, which trusts the process of democracy to, through trial and error, help a society improve without there being only one correct way to self-govern.Talmon, J. L.
The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy
'' Britain: Secker & Warburg, 1968.

Etymology

The term was popularized by Israeli historian Jacob Leib Talmon. It had previously been used by

Bertrand de Jouvenel Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins (; 31 October 1903 – 1 March 1987) was a French philosopher, political economist, and futurist. He taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of Manchester, Yale University, ...

and E. H. Carr, and subsequently by F. William Engdahl and Sheldon S. Wolin.

Definition

In his 1952 book ''The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,'' Talmon argued that the totalitarian and liberal types of democracy emerged from the same premises during the eighteenth century. He regarded the conflict between these two types of democracy as of world-historical importance: :Indeed, from the vantage point of the mid-twentieth century the history of the last hundred and fifty years looks like a systematic preparation for the headlong collision between empirical and liberal democracy on the one hand, and totalitarian Messianic democracy on the other, in which the world crisis of to-day consists. The political neologism messianic democracy (also political messianism) also derives from Talmon's introduction to this work.

Differences with liberal democracy

Talmon identified the following differences between totalitarian and liberal democracy: * The totalitarian approach is based on the assumption of a total and exclusive truth in politics. It postulates a preordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which people are irresistibly driven and at which they are bound to arrive (see historical determinism). * The liberal approach assumes politics to be a matter of trial and error. It regards political systems as pragmatic contrivances of human ingenuity and spontaneity. The totalitarian approach views politics as an integral part of an all-embracing and coherent philosophy. It defines politics as the art of applying this philosophy to the organisation of society, and the final purpose of politics is only achieved when this philosophy reigns supreme over all fields of life. * The liberal approach recognises a variety of levels of personal and collective endeavour, which are altogether outside the sphere of politics. The totalitarian approach recognises only one plane of existence, the political. It widens the scope of politics to embrace the whole of human existence. It treats all human thought and action as having social significance, and therefore as falling within the orbit of political action. * The liberal approach finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion. The totalitarian approach believes freedom to be only realised in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose.

Historical development

Talmon argue that totalitarian democracy arose in three stages: # Intellectual developments in eighteenth-century France spurred by the collapse of feudal and ecclesiastical authority in the early modern era. # The development of single-party dictatorship during the

Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (French: ''La Terreur'', literally "The Terror") was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the French First Republic, First Republic, a series of massacres and Capital punishment in France, nu ...

and the use of terror as a political instrument, based on a doctrine of total popular sovereignty. # The extension of totalitarian logic to

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...

, leading to

Communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...

Further interpretations

Engdahl and Wolin have added some new dimensions to the analysis of totalitarian democracy. In his 2009 book ''Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy and the New World Order,'' Engdahl portrays America as driving to achieve global

hegemony Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one State (polity), state over other states, either regional or global. In Ancient Greece (ca. 8th BC – AD 6th c.), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of ...

through military and economic means. According to him, U.S. state objectives have led to internal conditions that resemble totalitarianism: " t isa power establishment that over the course of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

has spun out of control and now threatens not only the fundamental institutions of democracy, but even of life on the planet through the growing risk of

nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a War, military conflict or prepared Policy, political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are Weapon of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conven ...

by miscalculation" Wolin, too, analyzes the symbiosis of business and public interests that emerged in the Cold War to form the ''tendency'' of what he calls " inverted totalitarianism":

While exploiting the authority and resources of the state, nverted totalitarianismgains its dynamic by combining with other forms of power, such as evangelical religions, and most notably by encouraging a symbiotic relationship between traditional government and the system of "private" governance represented by the modern business corporation. The result is not a system of codetermination by equal partners who retain their respective identities but rather a system that represents the political coming-of-age of
corporate power In social science and economics, corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations. Overview In the developed world, corporations dominate the marketplace, compri ...
.

Elsewhere, in a 2003 article entitled "Inverted Totalitarianism"Wolin, Sheldon S
"Inverted Totalitarianism"
''The Nation'' magazine, May 19th, 2003. Wolin cites phenomena such as the lack of involvement of citizens in a narrow political framework (due to the influence of money), the privatization of social security, and massive increases in military spending and spending on surveillance as examples of the push away from public and towards private-controlled government. Corporate influence, he argues, is explicit through the media, and implicit through the privatization of the university. Furthermore, he contends that many political think-tanks have abetted this process by spreading conservative ideology. Wolin states: " iththe elements all in place...what is at stake, then, is nothing less than the attempted transformation of a tolerably free society into a variant of the extreme regimes of the past century."

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...

, in his 2002 book of essays '' Welcome to the Desert of the Real'', comes to similar conclusions. He argues that the war on terror served as a justification for the suspension of civil liberties in the US, while the promise of democracy and freedom was spread abroad as the justification for invading

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

and

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. Since Western democracies are always justifying states of exception, he argues, they are failing as sites of political agency.Žižek, Slavoj. ''Welcome to the Desert of the Real'', London and New York: Verso, 2002

Notes