topics: |  china | history | essays

A fascinating look at totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism

A convenient and generally acceptable definition of totalitarianism is
provided by Leszek Kolakowski in his essay "Marxist Roots of Stalinism":

	I take the word "totalitarian" in a commonly used sense, meaning a
	political system where all social ties have been entirely replaced by
	state-imposed organization and where, consequently, all groups and
	all individuals are supposed to act only for goals which both are the
	goals of the state and were defined as such by the state. In other
	words, an ideal totalitarian system would consist in the utter
	destruction of civil society, whereas the state and its
	organizational instruments are the only forms of social life; all
	kinds of human activity-economical, intellectual, political,
	cultural-are allowed and ordered (the distinction between what is
	allowed and what is ordered tending to disappear) only to the extent
	of being at the service of state goals (again, as defined by the
	state). Every individual (including the rulers themselves) is
	considered the property of the state.

In 1971, when [emigrated author Chen Jo-hsi] was living in Nanking, she was
forced with thousands of other people to attend and participate in a public
accusation meeting. The accused person's crime was the defacing of a portrait
of Mao Zedong; the accused had been denounced by his own daughter, a
twelve-year-old child. On the basis of the child's testimony, he was
convicted and sentenced to death; as was usually the case in these
mass--accusation meetings, there was no right of appeal, and the sentence was
carried out immediately, by firing squad. The child was officially extolled
as a hero; she disclaimed any relationship with the dead man and proclaimed
publicly her resolution to become from then on "with her whole heart and her
whole will, the good daughter of the Party."

This episode was neither exceptional nor accidental... It should be remarked
that whatever feeling of scandal a Westerner may experience when confronted
with such an incident, it is still nothing compared with the revulsion,
horror, and fear that it provokes among the Chinese themselves. The episode
not only runs against human decency in general, but more specifically it runs
against Chinese culture - a culture which, for more than 2,500 years,
extolled filial piety as a cardinal virtue.

A second useful definition of totalitarianism is George Orwell's (in his
postface to Homage to Catalonia). According to his description, the
totalitarian system is one in which there is no such thing as "objective
truth" or "objective science." There is only, for instance, "German science"
as opposed to "Jewish science," or "proletarian truth" as opposed to
"bourgeois lies":

	The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in
	which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the
	future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event
	'It never happened' - well, it never happened. If he says that two
	and two are five, well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens
	me much more than bombs.

How does this definition square with Peking reality? Let us glance at Maoist
theory. In one of its key documents (the so-called May 16 Circular) we read
precisely:

Maoist theory on Truth

(from the so-called May 16 Circular)

    The slogan "all men are equal before the truth" is a bourgeois slogan
    that absolutely denies the fact that truth has class-character. The class
    enemy uses this slogan to protect the bourgeoisie, to oppose himself to
    the proletariat, to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. In the
    struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between Marxist
    truth and the lies of the bourgeois class and of all oppressive classes,
    if the east wind does not prevail over the west wind, the west wind will
    prevail over the east wind, and therefore no equality can exist between
    them.

In the book, Le Bonheur des pierres (1978), C. and J. Broyelle produce an
interesting quotation from Mein Kampf and show that by merely substituting in
Hitler's text the words "bourgeois" and "antihumanism" for the words "Jews"
and "antisemitism" one obtains orthodox, standard "Mao Zedong Thought."

On Rewriting history

[Consider] the predicament of the wretched curators of the History Museums,
who in recent years have been successively confronted with, for instance, the
disgrace, rehabilitation, re-disgrace, and re-rehabilitation of Deng
Xiaoping. These political turnabouts can be quite bewildering for the lower
cadres, whose instructions do not always keep up with the latest shakeup of
the ruling clique. As one hapless guide put it to a foreign visitor who was
pressing him with tricky questions: "Excuse me, sir, but at this stage it is
difficult to answer; the leadership has not yet had the time to decide what
history was."

Objectivism - the belief that there is an objective truth whose existence is
independent of arbitrary dogma and ideology - is thus the cornerstone of
intellectual freedom and human dignity, and as such, it is the main stumbling
block for totalitarianism. p.122

Totalitarianism and the Concentration camp mindset

    The most masterly analysis of totalitarian psychology is certainly the
one provided by Bruno Bettelheim in his book The Informed Heart , which was
rightly hailed as "a handbook for survival in our age." The great
psychiatrist observed the phenomenon firsthand in Buchenwald, where he was
interned by the Nazis. The concentration camp is not marginal to the
totalitarian world; on the contrary, it is its purest and most perfect
projection, since there the various factors of resistance to the system -
-the familial, emotional, and sexual relationships mentioned by Kolakowski -
have all been removed, leaving the subject totally exposed to the
totalitarian design.

Bettelheim noted that prisoners were subjected to a "ban on daring to
notice anything. But to look and observe for oneself what went on in the camp
- while absolutely necessary for survival - was even more dangerous than
being noticed. Often this passive compliance - not to see or not to know -
was not enough; in order to survive one had to actively pretend not to
observe, not to know what the SS required one not to know."

Bettelheim gives various examples of SS behavior that presented this
apparent contradiction - "you have not seen what you have seen, because we
decided so" (which could apply precisely to the blatantly falsified photo of
the Chinese leaders) - and he adds this psychological commentary:

    To know only what those in authority allow one to know is, more or less,
    all the infant can do. To be able to make one's own observations and to
    draw pertinent conclusions from them is where independent existence
    begins. To forbid oneself to make observations, and take only the
    observations of others in their stead, is relegating to nonuse one's own
    powers of reasoning, and the even more basic power of perception. Not
    observing where it counts most, not knowing where one wants so much to
    know, all this is most destructive to the functioning of one's
    personality.... But if one gives up observing, reacting, and taking
    action, one gives up living one's own life. And this is exactly what the
    SS wanted to happen.

Coming to love big brother

Bettelheim describes striking instances of this personality disintegration -
which again are of particular relevance for the Chinese situation. Western
apologists for the Peking regime have argued that since the Chinese
themselves, and particularly those who recently left China, did not show
willingness to express dissent or criticism (a questionable assertion...), we
had better not try to speak for them and should simply infer from their
silence that there is probably nothing to be said. According to Bettelheim,
the camp inmates came progressively to see the world through SS eyes; they
even espoused SS values:

    At one time, for instance, American and English newspapers were full of
    stories about cruelties committed in the camps. In discussing this event
    old prisoners insisted that foreign newspapers had no business bothering
    with internal German institutions and expressed their hatred of the
    journalists who tried to help them. When in 1938 I asked more than one
    hundred old political prisoners if they thought the story of the camp
    should be reported in foreign newspapers, many hesitated to agree that it
    was desirable. When asked if they would join a foreign power in a war to
    defeat National Socialism, only two made the unqualified statement that
    everyone escaping Germany ought to fight the Nazis to the best of his
    ability.

Jean Pasqualini - whose book Prisoner of Mao is the most fundamental document
on the Maoist "Gulag" notes a similar phenomenon. He confesses that after a
few years in the labor camps, he came. if not exactly to love the system that
was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for
the patience and care with which the authorities were trying to reeducate
worthless vermin like himself. Along the same lines, Orwell showed
premonitory genius in the last sentence of Nineteen Eighty-four: when Winston
Smith realizes that he loves Big Brother, that he has loved Big Brother all
along....

Totalitarianism is the apotheosis of subjectivism. In Nineteen
Eighty-four, the starting point of Winston Smith's revolt lies in this sudden
awareness: "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and
ears. It was their final, most essential command." (Once more, see the
falsified photos of the Chinese leadership on Tian'anmen!) "His heart sank as
he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him.... And yet he was in
the right! The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be
defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws
do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward
the earth's center.... If that is granted, all else follows."

Reason behind Western blind-eye to China

... Actually, Solzhenitsyn's unique contribution lies in the volume and
precision of his catalogue of atrocities - but basically he revealed nothing
new. On the essential points, information about Soviet reality has been
available for more than forty years, through the firsthand testimonies of
un-impeachable witnesses such as Boris Souvarine, Victor Serge, Anton Ciliga,
and others. Practically no one heard of it at the time because no one wanted
to hear; it was inconvenient and inopportune. In the foreword to the 1977
edition of his classic essay on Stalin, originally published in 1935,
Souvarine recalls the incredible difficulties he had in finding a publisher
for it in the West.  Everywhere the intellectual elite endeavoured to suppress
the book: "It is going to needlessly harm our relations with Moscow." Only
Malraux, adventurer and phony hero of the leftist intelligentsia, had the
guts and cynicism to state his position clearly in a private conversation:
"Souvarine, I believe that you and your friends are right.  However, at this
stage, do not count on me to support you. I shall be on your side only when
you will be on top (Je serai avec vous quand vous serez les plus forts)!" How
many times have we heard variants of that same phrase!

... I would like to examine successively the various methods that
have been adopted in the West to dodge the issue of human rights in
China. The first line of escape is the one I have just mentioned. It is to
say, "We do not know for sure, we do not have sufficient information on the
subject."

The second line of escape (and possibly the most sickening one) is to say
sadly, "Yes indeed, we know; there have been gross irregularities-even what
you might call atrocities - committed in the past. But this is a thing of the
past: it was all due to the evil influence of the 'Gang of Four.'"
Pretending shock and indignation, they now come and tell us horrible
stories-as if we did not know...  it all, as if they had not known it all-the
very stories we told years ago, but at that time they used to label them
"anti-China slander" and "CIA lies."

The third line of escape: "We admit there may be gross infringements of
human rights in China. But the first of all human rights is to survive, to be
free from hunger. The infringement of human rights in China is dictated by
harsh national necessity."

The fourth line of escape is articulated in several variations on a basic
theme: "China is different."
"Human rights are a Western concept, and thus have no relevance in the
Chinese context."