Totalitarianism and Political Religion

An Intellectual History

A. Gregor

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780804783682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Moderne Geschichte

The totalitarian systems that arose in the twentieth century presented themselves as secular. Yet, as A. James Gregor argues in this book, they themselves functioned as religions. He presents an intellectual history of the rise of these political religions, tracing a set of ideas that include belief that a certain text contains impeccable truths; notions of infallible, charismatic leadership; and the promise of human redemption through strict obedience, selfless sacrifice, total dedication, and unremitting labor. Gregor provides unique insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism that dominated our immediate past. He explores the seeds of totalitarianism as secular faith in the nineteenth-century ideologies of Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Richard Wagner. He follows the growth of those seeds as the twentieth century became host to Leninism and Stalinism, Italian Fascism, and German National Socialism—each a totalitarian institution and a political religion.

CHAPTER ONE

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Introduction

The State is based on religion. . . . It is only when religion is made the foundation that the practice of righteousness attains stability, and that the fulfillment of duty is secured. It is in religion that what is deepest in man, the conscience, first feels that it lies under an absolute obligation, and has the certain knowledge of this obligation; therefore the State must rest on religion. . . . In this aspect, religion stands in the closest connection with the political principle.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel¹

Since time immemorial, thinkers have acknowledged, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, an intimate relationship between religion and politics. The relationship has not been characterized to everyone’s satisfaction, but few have denied that it exists. Preliterate societies have rarely, if ever, attempted to consistently distinguish the sacred from the politically profane—and the fact is that the sacred and the political overlap in intricate fashion in the least, as well as in the most, advanced communities. In tribal societies, as in pharaonic Egypt and Imperial Rome, rulers were cloaked in the trappings of divinity. In modern times, the industrializing Japanese chose to imagine their emperors as linearly descended from the sun god.

Among contemporary social scientists, there is easy talk of “civil religions,” and “sacralized politics,” by virtue of which politics in industrial democracies is imbued with some of the features of faith. Belief in the sacred is invoked to render business transactions more reliable, institutions more just, witnesses more truthful, and children more obedient. Belief in the divine prompts citizens to conform their conduct to public law, moral sanction, and collective conscience. Faith prompts individuals to sacrifice in the service of the community. Public ceremonies often take on the properties of worship, and things—flags, songs, and offices—become invested with special significance, requiring unusual deference and respect.

Although sometimes intricate and often inscrutable, the relationship between faith and politics in industrialized democracies is generally functional in character. In such environs, the profane allocation of responsibilities, for example, is often legitimated by invocations to one or another divinity through the swearing of oaths. Politicians speak, with easy familiarity, of “God,” the “Almighty,” and “Providence”—and their declamations are thereby held to be more binding.

Among citizens in industrial democracies, God is expected to provide stability and respect for law and common practice in peace, and protection and victory in conflict. All of which is advanced with sufficient imprecision to allow any and all citizens the freedom to choose their own divinity, as well as their own church affiliation. In general, “valid” laws are understood to somehow conform to some set of ill defined, but divine, enjoinments. All these forms of sacralization are readily recognized, granted, and, in general, considered benign, if not beneficent.

Conversely, throughout history there have been practices associated with sacralization that have been, and are, deplored: the ritual sacrifice of human beings to demanding deities; the insistence on absolute conformity to dogma; the attendant punishment of heresy; as well as the explicit or implicit call for the immolation of all that, and all those, considered offensive to powers transcendent.

It has been considered the unique accomplishment of the industrialized democracies to have rendered sacralization, at least in large part, inoffensive to modern sensibilities. Young men and women still imagine themselves directed by the Almighty to defend their countries with homicidal violence. Moral evil is still, more often than not, defined in terms of a decalog found in a revered text. Amid all that, individuals are allowed choices, and offenses to public morality and security are judged by regulations conceived fair rather than sacred. However it works, sacralization in industrial democracies is generally expected to contribute to the stability, promise, and predictability of organized society, redounding to the benefit of everyone.

Unhappily, over time, and most emphatically over the past two centuries, the sacralization of politics in modern settings has taken on ominous features. Since at least the end of the nineteenth century, political sociologists and theorists, in developing or industrialized countries, have chosen to identify a category of political movements and institutionalized systems of governance as “political religions.”² Political religions are understood to be phenomena essentially peculiar, though not exclusive, to the twentieth century. Though secular in character, such “religions” are understood to share some properties of generic religion—properties conceived negative in import—fanaticism, intolerance, and irrationality.

Some contemporary political systems, industrialized or not, are avowedly religious—informed by legal systems that are dictated by revelation (a form of jus divinum)—in which, behaviors and systems of observances are prescribed in order to provide for collective and individual redemption and salvation. They are systems in which priests and prophets have an affirmed place. Such systems are overtly religious and license their political power through their candid and overt religiosity. Their populations are animated by faith, and infused by a sense of duty. Citizens perform individual and group rituals in order to evoke, maintain, and renew a sense of collective identity. The priests and prophets of such a system are the embodiments of an ineffable charisma, the proper recipients of adulation and unqualified obedience. “Islamic republics” are contemporary members of such a class.

All political systems, to some degree, feature at least some of those properties. As has been suggested, some of the symbols and rituals in industrialized democracies are treated with seemingly religious deference; presidents and political leaders in such systems certainly enjoy a measure of respect denied others. Nonetheless, analysts insist on the qualitative and quantitative differences between explicitly “politicized religions,” as such, and the “civil religions” of industrial pluralisms. There are clear differences between an unqualifiedly religious system that has assumed sovereign political power, and an industrial democracy animated by a “civil religion.” There are manifest differences in allowable public conduct between religious systems that have assumed jealous political power and the systems that permit the religious pluralisms with which we are familiar.

What those differences imply for public policy and public conduct need not detain us here. For present purposes, it is important to acknowledge that there are also arresting qualitative and quantitative differences between avowedly religious systems, the civil religions of industrialized democracies, and the political religions of “totalitarianisms.”

“Totalitarianism”³ is a term that refers to a relatively distinct set of political arrangements that, while professedly secular, have an unmistakably religious cast. They are systems led by the inspired—those who are considered possessed of unassailable truths, as well as being invariably wise in calculation and correct in judgment. The leaders of such systems are spoken of as “charismatics”⁴ —and generally assume leadership responsibilities for life. They are addressed, deferentially, as “The Leader,” and their behaviors understood to fully embody the will of the community.

Of the movements they lead, each is infused by a faith that brooks no reservation or opposition; any suggestion of an alternative politics is abjured. In principle, such movements aspire to single party control. The aspiration is vindicated by a conviction that the charismatic leader and his party boast qualities that ensure flawless judgment and unmatched virtue. Obedience and sacrifice in the service of such leadership will assure the movement, and its party, merited success.

Because the instruments of special purpose, the movement, the party, and the state it constructs, conceive any opposition, however bland, to be indecent at best, and immoral at worst. Given the political environment of the totalitarian state, any opposition is held to be the product of either ignorance or malevolence—requiring alternatively reeducation or punishment.

Animated by an irrepressible conviction regarding the rectitude of their cause, totalitarians feel compelled to marshal all others to their mission. Totalitarians tend to seek total control of all aspects of life lived and business conducted. Those ends are pursued through monopoly control of production and distribution, education and communication, as well as welfare and well-being. What results is a real or factitious sense of community—a seamless unity of all members of a body of believers—each prepared to obey and sacrifice in faithful service.

Clearly each such system differs in its particulars. Each leader will have unique properties; each movement its own belief system. Controls will vary in extent and intensity, and punishment in frequency and lethality. Nonetheless, the sense is that the twentieth century was host to a peculiar set of political systems that shared the general species traits of religious fundamentalism. They are not accounted religious. Many, if not most, claim to be antireligious and secular in principle. Many, if not most, disclaim interest in transcendent matters—in questions of immortality and final judgments. Nonetheless, the features of religion are unmistakable. Totalitarian systems are animated by “political religions”⁵ —a concept with which the present discussion will occupy itself.

“Political religions” will be spoken of with the conviction that, in the course of discussion, the scope and reference of such a concept increasingly will become evident. The account will occupy itself with their intellectual origins, something of their history, as well as allusion to what is implied by their postures. In substance, the account will be, largely, an intellectual history of totalitarianism—as a peculiar political system that has taken on some of the distinguishing characteristics of what historically has been identified as religion—and which, because of the technological appurtenances of our time, has acquired the abilities to control, and shape to its purposes, entire, complex societies.

Ideologies

There are no generally accepted definitions for many of the most important terms, and their associated concepts, employed in studied social science discourse. Most terms are very loosely defined—but sufficiently understood to allow a reasonably effortless exchange of ideas among the initiated. Thus, there are no generally accepted definitions for the terms “religion,” “political,” “democracy,” or “totalitarianism.” Nonetheless, we are perfectly comfortable speaking of “religion” as “that system of beliefs, together with those attendant rules and observances, dealing with things considered sacred.” We speak of the “political” as any arrangement dealing with “the authoritative allocation of resources...