¹ Burrows, Robert, “Totalitarianism: The Revised Standard Version,” World Politics 21 (01 1969)Google Scholar. As we shall see, Burrows is not entirely hostile to the concept of totalitarianism.

² Spiro, Herbert J. and Barber, Benjamin R., “Counter-Ideological Uses of ‘Totalitarianism,’” Politics and Society 1 (11 1970): 3–5.Google Scholar

³ Spiro, Herbert J., “Totalitarianism,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Sills, David, vol. 16 (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar

⁴ See for example, Schapiro, Leonard, Totalitarianism (London: Pall Mall, 1972)Google Scholar; Curtis, C. Michael, Totalitarianism (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1977)Google Scholar; Latey, Maurice, Patterns of Tyranny (New York: Atheneum, 1969)Google Scholar; Friedrich, Carl and Brzezinski, Z. K., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (New York: Praeger, 1961).Google Scholar

⁵ See Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., Dictatorships and Double Standards (New York and Washington: American Enterprise Institute and Simon and Schuster, 1982)Google Scholar and the collection 1984 Revisited, ed. Howe, Irving (New York: Harper and Row, 1983)Google Scholar, especially the essays of Michael Walzer and Leszek Kolakowski. For a radical view see Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964).Google Scholar

⁶ Whitfield, Stephen J., Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. Chapter one contains a fine review of the uses of the term totalitarianism.

⁷ Spiro, and Barber, , “Counter-Ideological Uses of ‘Totalitarianism,’” p. 19 n. 32.Google Scholar

⁸ Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd ed. (New York: Meridian, 1958), p. 509.Google Scholar

⁹ The Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), p. xxxviGoogle Scholar. All further references will be to this edition except as noted.

¹⁰ Whitfield, , Into the Dark, chap. 1.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., p. 27.

¹² Burrows, Robert, “Totalitarianism: The Revised Standard Version,” p. 280.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., pp. 276, 279.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 280.

¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 276–77.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 275.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 277 citing The Origins, p. xxxi.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Aristotle, Politics 1292a17, b8Google Scholar. The translation of SirBarker, Ernest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar has been used and consulted. I have sometimes altered the phrasing or compared it with Newman, W. L.'s edition of the text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902).Google Scholar

²⁰ Whitfield, , Into the Dark, p. 29.Google Scholar

²¹ Arendt, , The Origins (London: Unwin, 1967), p. viiff.Google Scholar

²² Arendt, , The Origins, p. viii.Google Scholar

²³ Ibid., p. 148 n.45.

²⁴ Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: Yale, 1982), p. 405Google Scholar, notes that Arendt called herself “a kind of phenomenologist” but not like Husserl or Heidegger. For an excellent analysis of Arendt's debt to Heidegger, see Hinchman, Lewis P. and Hinchman, Sandra K., “In Heidegger's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Phenomenological Humanism,” The Review of Politics 46 (04 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. p. 188 where the authors stress Arendt's resistance to going “behind the data of consciousness to find their putative causes or psychological origins.”

²⁵ Arendt, , “A Reply” (to Eric Voegelin's review of The Origins) in The Review of Politics 15 (01 1953): 76–84.Google Scholar

²⁶ Kateb, George, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984), pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

²⁷ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 368, 385.Google Scholar

²⁸ Kateb, , Hannah Arendt, p. 81.Google Scholar

²⁹ Plato, Republic 579dGoogle Scholar says of the tyrannical soul, “he can never satisfy his desires.”

³⁰ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 387, 374.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid., p. 325.

³² Ibid., p. 373.

³³ Ibid., pp. 384, 375n.

³⁴ Ibid., pp. 345–46.

³⁵ Ibid. Thus in distinguishing leaders' personalities from those of followers, Tucker, Robert C. says, “Hitler would in all probability not have had a successful career in the Reichsbank under Hitler.”Google Scholar See “The Dictator and Totalitarianism,” World Politics 17 (07 1965): 577Google Scholar. For another discussion of this point see Aronson, Ronald, The Dialectics of Disaster (London: NLB, 1985), chap. 2, esp. pp. 37–41.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid., p. xxxvii.

³⁷ Ibid., pp. xxvi, xxix.

³⁸ For Arendt's view of the uncovering of hypocrisy, see her discussion of Brecht, in The Origins, p. 335Google Scholar, and of Robespierre and the Terror in On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1962), pp. 91–101Google Scholar. Cf. n. 24 above and n. 45.

³⁹ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 468.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 249, citing Delos, , La Nature (Montreal, 1944).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 471.

⁴² Ibid., p. 458.

⁴³ Ibid., p. 353.

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 457–58. Cf. pp. 453, 412. For a discussion of the relationship between “personal” and “social” logic, see Aronson, , The Dialectics of Disaster, pp. 121–27.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See the connection between the concept of ideology and suspicion in Mannheim, Karl's Ideology and Utopia, trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York: Harcourt, Brace, n.d.), pp. 63–64Google Scholar. I find it difficult to accept in its entirety Robert C. Tucker's separation of ideology from the paranoid personality. Rather, as he himself hints elsewhere, we should look upon the leader as the author of personal delusions expressed and functioning in ideological terms of which he is also partly the author (“The Dictator and Totalitarianism,” p. 571, cf. pp. 580–81).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Plato, Republic 576aGoogle Scholar. Cf. 567d; Hiero, , I, 38Google Scholar. Cf. Aristotle who puts into the mouth of the tyrant, “all men want my overthrow, but my friends have the power to effect it; distrust them above all others” (Politics 1313b25).

⁴⁷ Alliluyeva, Svetlana, Twenty Letters to a Friend (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 78.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 196–97.

⁴⁹ Alliluyeva, Svetlana, Only One Year (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 205Google Scholar. The author attributes too much responsibility for the terror to Beria. Roy Medvedev says Stalin was a more traditional tyrant motivated by power and jealousy. Distinguishing between real mental illness and various abnormal states, he denies that Stalin was a fully pathological paranoid schizophrenic and insists that he was fully responsible for his actions. Yet he admits Stalin's “morbid suspiciousness” and “serious psychic derangement,” and he compares Stalin's motives to those of Nero: a jealousy of anyone who could outperform him. Let History Judge: The Origin and Consequences of Stalinism (London: Spokesman, 1976), pp. 306, 313, 316, 351Google Scholar. Alec Nove, on the other hand, speaks of Stalin, 's “pathological suspiciousness” (Was Stalin Really Necessary [London: Unwin, 1964], p. 29).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Alliluyeva, , Twenty Letters to a Friend, p. 205.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 417–18.Google Scholar

⁵² Politics 1314b1 ffGoogle Scholar. This is the observation of Newman, W. L., The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 4, p. lxiGoogle Scholar. Cf. Politics 1285 a-b. See also Section 5 of the present essay for an elaboration of this point.

⁵³ For a discussion of Lord Shang, see Yu-Ning, Li, ed., Shang Yang's Reforms and State Control in China (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe, 1977)Google Scholar. Cf. Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York: Harper & Row, 1962)Google Scholar; Moore, Barrington Jr., “Totalitarian Elements in Pre-Industrial Societies,” in Political Power and Social Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 59–73Google Scholar. On Shaka, see particularly Eugene Walter, Victor, Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence (New York: Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar. This is an important work.

⁵⁴ Arendt, , Between Past and Future (New York: Viking, 1968), p. 41.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 218–21.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Moore, , Political Power and Social Theory, pp. 78–79; 35–36.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 191–92Google Scholar, citing James, Selwyn, South of the Congo (London: John Long, 1944)Google Scholar. However, James refers to Shaka as “a black Hitler” and briefly compares him to modern totalitarians. Cf. p. 19.

⁵⁸ An observer of Shaka, Nathaniel Isaacs, agreed calling Shaka's regime “Zoolucratical (For I do not know of anything resembling it in either ancient or modern history), a form that defies description or detail that can neither be comprehended nor digested” (Isaacs, , Travels and Adventures in East Africa [Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1936], p. 269; cf. pp. 272, 275).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 470.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Ritter, E. A., Shaka Zulu (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), p. 354Google Scholar. Citing Fynn, Henry Francis, The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1950).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Isaacs, , Travels, pp. 95–96, 206, 283Google Scholar; Fynn, , Diary, p. 19.Google Scholar

⁶² Ritter, E. A., Shaka Zulu, p. 180; cf. p. 290.Google Scholar

⁶³ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 473, 350, 427. Cf. p. 349Google Scholar where Hitler's “prediction” of the annihilation of European Jews is quoted.

⁶⁴ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, pp. 163–64.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ritter, , Shaka Zulu, p. 174.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, p. 256.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 192.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Isaacs, , Travels, p. 62Google Scholar; Fynn, , Diary, p. 139.Google ScholarWalter, , Terror and Resistance, pp. 253–54.Google Scholar Walter calls such views Grundnorms, touchstones of legitimacy (p. 256).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Sansom, Basil, “Traditional Rulers and Their Realms,” in Hammond-Tooke, W. D., The Bantu Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa (London: Routledge, 1974), p. 280.Google Scholar Cf. Gluckman, Max, “The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa” in African Political Systems, ed. Fortes, M. and Pritchard, E. Evans (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 31.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Fynn, , Diary, pp. 147–48; cf. p. 19.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., pp. 139, 144.

⁷² Ibid., p. 144.

⁷³ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 415.Google Scholar As with modern totalitarians, Shaka “looked forward … with a sort of prophetic spirit for the day to arrive when all his anticipations should be realized…. The success of his operations soon verified his predictions” (Isaacs, , Travels, p. 273).Google Scholar Shaka made wide use of prophecies which he had carefully stage-managed (see Isaacs, , Travels, pp. 276–80).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, p. 258.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Ibid., p. 6.

⁷⁶ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, pp. 134–35.Google Scholar Cf. Fynn, , Diary, pp. 28–29Google Scholar; Isaacs, , Travels, pp. 62, 92, 131–35.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 135.

⁷⁸ Moore, , Political Power and Social Theory, p. 35.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Fynn is strongly of this opinion. Cf. Diary, pp. 139–44.Google Scholar See also Walter, , Terror and Resistance, pp. 279–89.Google Scholar Similar tendencies are found in ancient China: The Confucian, Chu Hsi, complained bitterly of Shang Yang's “reforms” in which the “evils of disturbance and deception unavoidably arose in the giving and the taking of the land” (Yu-Ning, Li, Shang Yang's Reforms, p. xvi).Google Scholar Hsun Tzu complained of the “terror and apprehension” of unalleviated insecurity (Ibid., p. xix); and the literate complained that under Lord Shang's reforms “the people were terrorized, not knowing where to place their feet” (ibid., xxxiii). See The Book of Lord Shang, trans, by Duyvendak, J. J. L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).Google Scholar We should remember that Arendt distinguishes between genocide or mass killing that clearly has pretotalitarian origins (as in the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks) and the kind of killing carried out by Shaka which “is no longer a means to frighten people” (Arendt, , The Origins, p. 440).Google Scholar That Shaka did engage in mass murder, there is no doubt. Fynn admits that the number of deaths Shaka occasioned “has been left to conjecture, but exceed a million.” Bird, J., Annals of Natal (Pietermaritzburg: Davis, 1888), p. 67.Google ScholarHattersly, A. F. says that “Natal in 1824 was almost completely depopulated” (The British Settlement of Natal [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950], p. 13).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Arendt, , The Origins, pp. 365, 369.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, pp. 166, 173.Google Scholar

⁸² Ibid., p. 191.

⁸³ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 365 n. 62.Google Scholar She notes that Himmler disdained defining the word “Jew” lest it could not be changed.

⁸⁴ Arendt, , Between Past and Future, p. 164.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 78.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Ibid., pp. 374 n. and 325.

⁸⁷ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, p. 164.Google Scholar Cf. Isaacs, , Travels, p. 133.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Suetonius, , The Twelve Caesars (Baltimore: Penguin 1969), pp. 165–66.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 372 n. 82.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Ibid., p. 322.

⁹¹ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, pp. 153–55.Google Scholar

⁹² Moore, , Political Power and Social Theory, p. 71.Google Scholar

⁹³ Aristotle Politics 1313b1.

⁹⁴ Walter, , Terror and Resistance, p. 154.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Aristotle Politics 1313b5.

⁹⁶ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 440.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Ibid., pp. 438, 453, 455, 457.

⁹⁸ Ibid., p. 467.

⁹⁹ Ibid., p. 465.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., p. 466. In this respect, Arendt's view is the opposite of Joseph Gabel's which argues, in Bergsonian terms, that space, not motion, is the source of ideological thought and false consciousness. For Gabel, the “morbid rationalism” or the various neuroses including dissociation and depersonalization arise from reification, “the preponderance of static, anti-dialectical spatial experience” (Gabel, , False Consciousness: An Essay in Reification, trans. Margaret, and Thompson, Kenneth [New York: Harper, 1978], p. 22).Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 474.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Ibid., p. 475.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., p. 477.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., p. 477, citing Luther, , “Warum die Einsamkeit fliehen,” in Erbauliche Schriften.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Aristotle, PoliticsGoogle Scholar 1314a14.

¹⁰⁷ Politics 1311b36.

¹⁰⁸ Politics 1302b20.

¹⁰⁹ Politics 1313b1.

¹¹⁰ Politics 1313bl. See page 196 above.

¹¹¹ Arendt, , The Origins, p. 475.Google Scholar Italics added.

¹¹² Ibid., pp. 438, 453, 457.

¹¹³ Aristotle, Politics 1260b5, 1254b24, 16, 3.Google Scholar Cf. Plato, Phaedo 80a.Google Scholar As Newman puts it, “how any form of moral virtue can subsist without the deliberative faculty Aristotle does not explain” (The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 1, p. 149).Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Arendt, , Between Past and Future, p. 105.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Aristotle Politics 1313b5.

¹¹⁶ Aristotle Politics 1295a16. Cf. 1279b16, where tyranny is defined as “single-person government of the city on the lines of despots” (despotikē). W. L. Newman concludes that in the Politics “the name, tyranny, may be given to any office exercising despotic authority” (The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 4, p. lxi).Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Politics 1279b7.

¹¹⁸ Politics 1334a1–2. Cf. Plato, Laws 697.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ Politics 1279a21. Cf. 1292a17 and b8.

¹²⁰ Politics 1295a21.

¹²¹ Politics 1285b2. Cf. 1295a15.

¹²² Newman, W. L., ed., The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 4, p. lxi.Google Scholar Cf. the discussion of the benign despot at 1314b1 ff. and especially at 1315b 1.

¹²³ Politics 1285b1; 1295a16.

¹²⁴ Politics 1315b1–5, a5.

¹²⁵ Politics 1260b2–8.

¹²⁶ Politics 1252b6.

¹²⁷ Politics 1260b7, 1314a14, and 1325a25, where it is said that there is “nothing noble in having the use of a slave insofar as he is a slave; or in issuing commands about necessary things.”

¹²⁸ Politics 1252b7.

¹²⁹ Politics 1313b34–36.

¹³⁰ Politics 1313b40; 1325a29.

¹³¹ Arendt, , Between Past and Future, p. 106.Google Scholar