The Third Totalitarianism

In Political Sciences, the concept of totalitarianism is subtended in communist and fascist ideologies, who openly proclaim the superiority of the whole (class and society in communism and socialism; State, in fascism; race in national-socialism) over the private (individual).

 

They oppose the liberal ideology, to whom, on the contrary, the private (individual) is put above the whole (as if this whole could not be understood as is). Liberalism then combats totalitarianism in general, including that of communism and fascism. But, by doing so, the very term "totalitarianism" reveals its connection with the liberal ideology–and neither communists nor fascists would agree with the term. Thus, everyone who uses  the word "totalitarianism" is a liberal, independently of their awareness about it.

 

At a first glance, the picture is perfectly clear and leaves no room to ambiguity–communism is the first totalitarianism, fascism is the second. And liberalism is its antithesis, as such denying the whole and placing the private above it.  If we stop here, we will recognize that the Modern Era developed only two totalitarian ideologies–communism (socialism) and fascism (nazism), with their variations and nuances. But liberalism, as a political theory that appeared before the other two and outlasted them, could not be called totalitarian. Hence, the expression "third totalitarianism", which suggests a stretching of the nomenclature of the totalitarian ideologies, including liberalism, makes no sense.

 

However, the theme of the "third totalitarianism" may well appear in the context of classic French Sociology (Dürkheim school) and that of Postmodern Philosophy. Dürkheim's sociology maintains that the contents of the individual consciousness are entirely formed on the bases of collective consciousness. In other words, the totalitarian nature of any society, including an individualistic and liberal one, cannot  be canceled. Thus, the very fact of declaring the individual the highest value and measure of things (liberalism) is a projection of the society, that is, a form of totalitarian influence and ideological induction. The individual is a social concept–without society, human being alone does not know if his is or not an individual, and whether individualism is or not the highest value. The individual learns that he is an individual, a private person only in a society where liberal ideology dominates and performs the function of the environment in operation. Therefore, that which negates the social reality and affirms the individual one also has in itself a social nature. Consequently, liberalism is a totalitarian ideology that insists, through classic methods of totalitarian propaganda, that individual is the highest instance. 

This is the beginning of a sociological critics of bourgeois society, not a social one, but one from a sociological standpoint, although often in France and in the West socialism and sociology have approached each other almost to the point of complete identification (for example, in Pierre Bourdieu's mode). In this sense, the totaliatarian character of liberalism is scientifically proven and the term "third totalitarianism" acquires logic and coherence, instead of being a shocking paradox. Henceforth, a series of sociological conecpts, such as "the lonely crowd" (la foule solitaire - David Riesman) and others.

 

Liberal society, opposing itself to the mass societies of socialism and fascism, has become in itself a massifyed, standardized and stereotyped one. The more man aspires to be extra-ordinary in the context of liberal paradigm, the more he becomes similar to everyone else. What liberalism brings with itself is precisely stereotyping and uniformization of the world, destroying diversity and differentiation.

On the other hand, there is the postmodern philosophy. In the spirit of the search for radical immanence–characateristic to the whole Modernity–postmodernists raise the question of the figure of individual. According to their view, individual is a synonym for totalitarianism, but transposed to a micro level. Individual is a micrototalitarianism that projects a suppression apparatus upon which normal  totalitarianism is built in the individualistic and subindividualistic levels. In a freudian spirit, postmodernists, explaining reason as an instrument for suppression, displacement and also as a projection, identify it with the totalitarian State, who refrains citizens'  freedom imposing on them its own point of view. Individual is then a concept, a projection of the obliteration and violence of a totalitarian society in its lowest levels. The desires and the creative force of the individual are constantly effaced. Most of all, postmonernists turn out social totalitarianism–fascism and communism–just because of the strict hierarchical totatalitarian structure of the rational individual. Thereby, the concept of liberal totalitarianism as a "third totalitarianism" gets full meaning and lies on total legitimate ground.

Hence, liberalism is a totalitarian and violent ideology, a means to direct and indirect political repression, to educational pressure and ferocious propaganda, self-proclaiming to be non-totalitarian, that is, concealing its very nature. This is a scientific fact. The third totalitarianism is entirely coherent with the whole perspective of its political concept.

The Fourth Political Theory completely accepts that notion, once it allows to see the total picture that unifies all three classical political theories of Modernity–a) liberalism, b) communism and c) nationalism (fascism). All of them are totalitarian, although distinctively. Right in another context, 4PT reveals the racist character of all three theories: the biological racism of the nazis, Marx's class racism (universal progressism and evolution) and the civilizational-cultural and colonial racism of the liberals (which was explicit up to mid 21st century and became subliminar after that–see John Hobson in "The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics"). 4PT rejects all types of totalitarianism–communist, fascist and liberal. The third totalitarianism (liberal type) today is the most dangerous, once it is the ruling one. Fighting against it is a fundamental task.

4PT proposes a total new understanding of both the whole and its parts, aside from the three political ideologies of Modernity. This understanding may be called an existential Mit-sein. But in this existentinal comprehension of the presence (Dasein), there is no atom (parts, individual), nor sum of individuals (totalitarianism). In 4PT, being together means to exist, to constitute a presence–a living presence in face of death. We are together only when we are facing our own death. Death is always deeply personal and, simultaneously, there is something common, something that affects each one of us. So, it is necessary to talk not about totalitarianism (a mechanic conception connecting parts and the whole), but about an organic existential holism. And its name is People. Dasein existiert völkisch. In plain opposition to a "third totalitarianism". For a being-to-death. Mit-Sein.  We are the People.