Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism: Mass Politics and Evil

Introduction: Arendt's Theory of Totalitarianism as a Mass Phenomenon

Since the publication of her 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt has received much criticism as both a philosopher and a historian for her theory of the human, historical development of notions of society — or what Arendt terms "the social." From the social organizations of the salon, which were loose and diffuse and based on ideological alliances, human beings evolved in their organization, she suggests, to alliances upon material interests in the form of classes. But the nationalist and imperialist movements of the nineteenth century perverted these earlier mental and material social alliances to create the manifestation of "the masses" that enabled totalitarianism to take hold in Germany, Russia, and other areas of the world.

The Masses, Majority Rule, and the Mechanics of Tyranny

Critical to Arendt's conception of totalitarianism is her notion of it as a social or mass-created phenomenon, rather than an individually driven form of leadership. "It would be a still more serious mistake to forget, because of this impermanence [of Nazi Germany], that the totalitarian regimes, so long as they are in power, and the totalitarian leaders, so long as they are alive, command and rest upon majority rule." In other words, without majority rule — without the will of the masses — what we now call totalitarian regimes would have been, and would be, impossible. "Hitler's rise to power was legal in terms of majority rule, and neither he nor Stalin could have maintained the leadership of large populations…if they had not the confidence of the masses" (Arendt, Totalitarianism, 4).

"Nothing is more characteristic," moreover, "of the totalitarian movements in general and of the quality of fame of their leaders in particular than the startling swiftness with which they are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced" (3). Cults of individual personality come and go. The machinery that enables the figureheads of such cults to function is the masses themselves, and the mass structures of social relationships within a country.

Ultimately, Arendt conveys the human social animal as a collective with the power to produce its own form of brute force as a channeled historical actor. The masses have evolved as an entity, forming a kind of code of ethical conduct apart from the individual — one that can create a mental environment and force producing horrific collective actions that no individual would precipitate alone. "The attraction of evil and crime for the mob mentality is nothing new" (5). Despite the acknowledged evil of individual political leaders such as Hitler and Stalin, it is really the collective will operating beneath the supposed leadership of such individuals that makes historical horrors happen.

Thus, Arendt controversially shifts the blame from individual leaders — according to a kind of comforting "great tyrant" theory of history that allows individuals to eschew responsibility for social horrors — to all individuals participating in a historical moment of infamy, whether actively or passively. Even those who do not actively participate in tyranny, Arendt suggests, participate in it nonetheless. Even those who are tyranny's victims and remain passive are, in a sense, participants. The system is to blame, rather than the images that come to represent the system, such as the personality of Hitler or the swastika.

Controversy: Victims, Communism, and Comparative Criticism

It is important to note that Arendt herself was Jewish, and she therefore incurred criticism from Jewish leaders who accused her of "blaming" the victims of Hitler and engaging in an act of self-hatred when she discussed Nazism as a dialectical system.

Her book was also controversial among liberal intellectuals because of the way it compared the then-present mentality of totalitarian Stalinist Russia with Nazi Germany. In 1951, when the book was first published, Stalin was still the acknowledged leader of Russia. Russia, it must be remembered, had helped the West win World War II despite the potential threat it posed, and the Cold War had not yet reached its fullest intensity, as it would during the later 1950s.

Some more locally focused scholars in both Russia and Germany — rather than broader philosophers of social theory — were also critical of the way that Arendt, as an historian, failed to distinguish local and regional differences between the German and Russian situations, subsuming specifics beneath theories of the development of "the masses" as social actors distinct from previous intellectual and class alliances. Yet Arendt notes, interestingly, that the "Nazis, who had an unfailing instinct for such differences, used to comment contemptuously on the shortcomings of their Fascist allies while their genuine admiration…for Russia…was checked only by their contempt for Eastern European races. The only man for whom Hitler," says Arendt, "had unqualified respect was Stalin the genius" (7). Even between intellectually opposing regimes, there existed a kind of mutual respect, grounded in both men's capacity to channel and direct the masses' political energy.

But Arendt did not simply outrage Jewish leaders, historians, and communist critics. Conservatives were angered by her central allegation that totalitarianism was the ideological, cumulative effect of nineteenth-century imperialist racism, and that it also had parallels with capitalism's "totalizing" mindset of pleasing the masses rather than encouraging individuals to seek out positive forms of enrichment that could better their intellectual and material standing.

The Salon, Classes, and the Origins of the Social

Arendt defines "the salon" as the intellectual dimension of human social gathering. The positive aspect of the salon was its semblance of equality — if one could talk, one could participate in the conversations of the day. Salons were often private in nature, taking place in the homes of wealthy women, yet by commingling the sexes, women were able to establish a degree of equality in the intellectual realm. Hostesses could select whom they wished to admit, and status within this created society was based upon wit, eloquence, and intellectual contribution rather than upon wealth.

Unlike the coffeehouses, social classes could be commingled in the salon if the host or hostess desired, along with the sexes — creating a community not unlike college campuses today, which foster rough, albeit imperfect, communities of equality where intellectual prowess rather than ostentatious displays of wealth determines one's standing. Of course, admittance to either university or salon was based upon one's ability to be inculcated into the intellectual values of the day, as is true of education at elite institutions. The salon's discourse also tended to be confined to words rather than deeds. Nevertheless, it offered a vital space for discussion outside the immediate control, interests, and reach of the state — unlike the propaganda machines of totalitarian regimes.

Through salons, common interests could be identified in the form of class allegiances. Classes are another form of social unity, according to Arendt. Through salon discussions, classes could be identified and organizations such as labor unions — which perform real and independent work in the social world — could evolve. But "totalitarian movements aim at and succeed in organizing masses, not classes, like the old interest parties of Continental nation-states" (6).

Conclusion: The Individual Against the Machinery of the State

Thus, the engineered fall "of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, unstructured mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed" (13). The masses — the new and threatening organization of the social — are subsumed in their identity by a state that claims an interest in the private realm, subverting the salon, and in the public realm, sublimating connections that might otherwise form across national borders between individuals.

The only defense of the individual against such threats, Arendt implies, is an internal and psychological belief in the value of the human individual, and alliances between individuals that exist beyond the borders of machinery, capitalist factories, and the ideological, subsuming frameworks of totalitarianism.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt and Brace, 1951.

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. U of Chicago Press, 1998. Originally published 1958.