Effects of the storage conditions on the stability of natural and synthetic cannabis in biological matrices for forensic toxicology analysis: An update from the literature

Totalitarian democracy is a term popularized by Israeli historian Jacob Leib Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.^[1] 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 which trusts the process of democracy to, through trial and error, help a society improve without their being only one correct way to self-govern.^[1]

The phrase had previously been used by Bertrand de Jouvenel^[2] and E. H. Carr,^[3] and subsequently by F. William Engdahl^[4] and Sheldon S. Wolin.^[5]

J. L. Talmon

J. L. Talmon's 1952 book The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy discusses the transformation of a state in which traditional values and articles of faith shape the role of government into one in which social utility takes absolute precedence. His work is a criticism of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose political philosophy greatly influenced the French Revolution, the growth of the Enlightenment across Europe, as well the overall development of modern political and educational thought. In The Social Contract, Rousseau contends that the interests of the individual and the state are one and the same, and it is the state's responsibility to implement the "general will".

The political neologism messianic democracy (also political Messianism)^[6] also derives from Talmon's introduction to this work:^[7]

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.

Supporter of totalitarian democracy

In his paper Advances in Chinese Social Sciences (2001), Mao Shoulong, a professor of Public Policy at Renmin University of China in Beijing,^{[unreliable source?]} supports the idea of totalitarian democracy, or what he terms "equality-oriented democracy," saying it is founded on the idea that it is possible, and necessary, that the complete rights and freedoms of people ought not be held hostage to traditions and social arrangements. Shoulong also holds that a law is not valid if it does not have the approval of the public. Shoulong argues that laws passed by the state do not require approval by the citizen on a case-by-case basis, arguing that some laws currently in place in liberal democracies do not have the approval of the majority of citizens.^{[citation needed]}^{[unreliable source?]}

Fundamental requirements

A totalitarian democratic state is said to maximize its control over the lives of its citizens by using the dual rationale of general will (i.e., "public good") and majority rule. An argument can be made that in some circumstances it is actually the political, economic, and military élite who interpret the general will to suit their own interests. Again, however, it is the imperative of achieving the overarching goal of a political nirvana that shapes the vision of the process, and the citizen is expected to contribute to the best of his abilities; the general is not asked to guide the plow, nor is the farmer asked to lead the troops.^{[citation needed]}

It can approach the condition of totalitarianism; totalitarian states can also approach the condition of democracy, or at least majoritarianism. Citizens of a totalitarian democratic state, even when aware of their true powerlessness, may support their government. When Germany started World War II, the Nazi government had the support of the majority of Germans^{[citation needed]} and it was not until much later, after Germany's losses began to mount, that support for Hitler began to fade. Joseph Stalin was practically worshipped by hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens, many of whom have not changed their opinion even today,^{[citation needed]} and his status ensured his economic and political reforms would be carried out. The term has also more recently been applied to South Africa under the rule of the African National Congress.^[8]

Cold War and socio-economic illustrations

The period of the Cold War following WWII saw great ideological polarization between the so-called "Free World" and the Communist states. In the East, religious and intellectual repression was met with increasing resistance, and the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring in 1968 are two well-known acts of defiance. The Tienanmen Square Massacre was a similar example of repressive violence leading to hundreds of deaths. In the United States, alleged Communists and Communist sympathizers were investigated by Senator Joseph McCarthy in what later generations would recall as a "witch hunt"; many accused Communists were forced out of their jobs or their reputations were scandalized. Shortly after the time of Talmon's book, the Vietnam War brought active hostility between elements in the U.S. government and political factions within the American people. One faction insisted that the U.S. government did not represent them in levying war in Southeast Asia, protesting the war, as well as undemocratic or oligarchical power-structures within U.S. society^{[citation needed]}; this faction occasionally saw repression from the government, such as through "dirty tricks" aimed at "subversives" by the FBI in COINTELPRO. This conflict within U.S. society rose to violence during the protests and riots at the Democratic National Convention of 1968 in Chicago, Illinois, and in the Kent State Massacre, where four anti-war protesters were shot dead by U.S. National Guard forces.^{[citation needed]}

Engdahl, Wolin and Žižek

Engdahl and Wolin add some new dimensions to the analysis of totalitarianism.

In his 2009 book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy and the New World Order, Engdahl portrays America as driving to achieve global hegemony through military and economic means. According to him, U.S. state objectives have led to internal conditions that resemble totalitarianism: "[it is] a power establishment that over the course of the Cold War 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 by miscalculation"^[9]

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, [inverted totalitarianism] gains 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.^[10]

Elsewhere, in a 2003 article entitled "Inverted Totalitarianism"^[11] 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: "[With] the 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."^[12]

Slavoj Žižek, in his 2002 book of essays Welcome to the Desert of the Real, comes to similar conclusions. Here 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 and Afghanistan. Since Western democracies are always justifying states of exception, he argues, they are failing as sites of political agency.^[13]

Notes

^ ^a ^b Talmon, J. L. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. Britain: Secker & Warburg, 1968.
^ de Juvenel, Bertrand. On Power: Its Nature and the History of its Growth, Salt Lake City: Hutchinson, 1948.
^ Carr, Edward Hallett. The Soviet Impact on the Western World. New York: MacMillan Company, 1947.
^ Engdahl, F. William. Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. Boxboro, MA: Third Millennium Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9795608-6-6.
^ Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
^ J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism – The Romantic Phase, 1960.
^ "Excerpts from the Origins of Totalitarian Democracy by Jacob L. Talmon". rousseaustudies.free.fr. Retrieved 2022-04-06.
^ Mynhardt, Monica (31 July 2020). "Nuuskommentaar: Diktatuur in die gedaante van demokrasie". Maroela Media (in Afrikaans). Retrieved 2 August 2020.
^ Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance, 2009, pg. viii.
^ Wolin, Democracy Incorporated, pg. xxi.
^ Wolin, Sheldon S. "Inverted Totalitarianism". The Nation magazine, May 19th, 2003.
^ Wolin, 2003.
^ Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real, London and New York: Verso, 2002

External links

[:0-1] Talmon, J. L. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. Britain: Secker & Warburg, 1968.

[2] Juvenel, Bertrand. On Power: Its Nature and the History of its Growth, Salt Lake City: Hutchinson, 1948.

[3] Carr, Edward Hallett. The Soviet Impact on the Western World. New York: MacMillan Company, 1947.

[4] Engdahl, F. William. Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. Boxboro, MA: Third Millennium Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9795608-6-6.

[5] Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.

[6] J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism – The Romantic Phase, 1960.

[7] "Excerpts from the Origins of Totalitarian Democracy by Jacob L. Talmon". rousseaustudies.free.fr. Retrieved 2022-04-06.

[8] Mynhardt, Monica (31 July 2020). "Nuuskommentaar: Diktatuur in die gedaante van demokrasie". Maroela Media (in Afrikaans). Retrieved 2 August 2020.

[9] Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance, 2009, pg. viii.

[10] Wolin, Democracy Incorporated, pg. xxi.

[11] Wolin, Sheldon S. "Inverted Totalitarianism". The Nation magazine, May 19th, 2003.

[12] Wolin, 2003.

[13] Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real, London and New York: Verso, 2002

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Authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government
Forms	Absolute monarchy Autocracy Tsarist Communist state Counterintelligence state Dictatorship Benevolent Constitutional Dictablanda Military Right-wing Dominant-party system Illiberal democracy Totalitarian Mafia state Managerial state Ochlocracy One-party state Oligarchy Police state Socialist state Theocracy Islamic state Tyranny Majoritarian Soft
Ideologies	Authoritarian conservatism Authoritarian capitalism Authoritarian socialism Marxism–Leninism Stalinism Maoism Caesaropapism Despotism Enlightened Soft Ecoauthoritarianism Fascism Eco Neo Imperialism Nazism Neo
See also	Democracy indices Deep state Inverted totalitarianism Left-wing authoritarianism Right-wing authoritarianism Social dominance orientation Statism Strongman List of totalitarian states