Totalitarianism, Globalization, Colonialism

The Destruction of Civilization Since 1914

Harry Redner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351471695
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The century that began in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War was catastrophic. Over the course of that one-hundred-year span, civilizations were destroyed in the Old World, the New World, and the Third World, the latter represented by China, India, and Islam.In Europe the main agent of destruction was totalitarianism; in America it was globalization, ushered in by modernity; and in the non-Western world it was colonialism, followed later by totalitarianism and globalization. Harry Redner examines each of these processes, providing theoretical and historical accounts of their emergence. He considers the effects of Nazism and Bolshevism on the morale and morals of Europe; studies the effects on the United States of the nation's emergence as a major world power; and describes the impact of modernization on China, India, and Islam as they underwent Europeanization, Sovietization, and Americanization.Redner confronts us with a paradox: in the midst of unprecedented material affluence and organizational efficiency, one that uses advanced technologies and cutting-edge scientific knowledge, we are also sinking into an unprecedented cultural, moral, intellectual, and spiritual decline. He locates the origins of this condition in the violently contradictory processes of the twentieth century.

I

 

The Old World

1

Totalitarianism and Civilization

Section I—Look Back in Horror

......these two intertwined lives [Stalin and Hitler]

contain the essential horror of the century.

François Furet

.. .Oh, horror, horror, horror

Heart nor tongue can conceive nor name thee.

Macbeth

The further we recede from the twentieth century, the more we look back on it in horror. It was the most horrendous time in Western Civilization, perhaps in the whole of human history. For not only were hundreds of millions of lives cut short in wars, exterminations, and famines, but the very fabric of civilized life was severely damaged, not just temporarily during the time of troubles but permanently so. The two world wars were the epicenters from which devastation spread like waves of violence in all directions until they encompassed the whole earth. As the historian Arno Mayer writes:

With these two monstrous conflicts the twentieth century very likely became the most violent century in recorded history. Its wars were so uniquely bloody and savage because they were an amalgam of conventional war, civil war and Glaubenskrieg. Culminating in Auschwitz, Dresden and Hiroshima, they punctured what remained of the pretense that advanced civilization was measured by man's progressive mastery of violence.¹

The latter view, advanced by Norbert Elias in 1939 on the very eve of the Second World War, in his magisterial work, The Civilizing Process, has recently been taken up by Steven Pinker; we shall criticize such theories of a "civilizing process" elsewhere in another work, but clearly everything we have to say in this work goes against it.²

The main source of the violence of the century was undoubtedly totalitarianism. It was the cause of what Mayer calls "conventional war, civil war and Glaubenskrieg" a synonym for totalitarianism seen in religious terms, which, as we shall show in the next chapter, is not altogether correct. We shall refer to this conjunction of events as the Events of the Twentieth Century for short. It is important to stress right from the start that these were events brought about by people, acting singly and in groups, and not just impersonal occurrences caused by forces or systems beyond the control of individuals, though such were also in operation. The question will, of course, arise as to how these two ways of looking at human behavior relate to each other, which we shall tackle in chapter 3, section III. Among the countless individuals involved, the most influential, and therefore most important, were the dealers of death, foremost among whom were Stalin and Hitler, at least in Europe; in Asia, Mao must also be included. It is to these lives that the "essential horror of the century," as Furet puts it, must be primarily attributed.

What made such individuals so omnipotent and prone to so much evil was not anything inherent in themselves, of course; they were in most respects ordinary men and in some even deficient, though exceptional in their talents for influencing people and so acquiring and wielding so much power. Rather, it was the Events of the Twentieth Century, the historical context in which they operated, that gave them the opportunity to rise to the very top and acquire the undisputed leadership of nations. Their abilities came into play because in the troubled and anguished times of that epoch there were masses of people waiting and wanting to be led. The movements and parties they formed or controlled were not altogether unprecedented. Similar ones had arisen before, but only in this period could they make a bid for supreme and unchallenged domination over everyone. They assumed the monstrous form of totalitarianism, which became the fate of the times, as Irving Louis Horowitz declares:

If the century can be politically summarized in a word, one would be hard-pressed to find a more appropriate term than collectivism. . . . But beyond politics as such is the need to define the century in systemic terms, or in terms that go beyond the political in any conventional sense. In doing so the most appropriate word to be developed is "totalitarianism."³

It is to totalitarianism that we shall devote our initial attention in coming to an understanding of the destruction of civilization in the twentieth century. This does not mean that totalitarianism was every-where dominant; it certainly was not in the New World. Nor does it mean that totalitarianism was in the end victorious—far from it; it was ultimately defeated, though it still survives. What it does mean is that the struggle surrounding it, the battle for or against it, consumed most of the energies and resources of nearly all people on earth. Nearly all Europeans were directly involved, most Asians were either directly or indirectly implicated, and North Americans were drawn in by the conflicts of both Europe and Asia. Only South Americans and Africans south of the Sahara were left relatively untouched.

As we shall see, totalitarianism did not begin of its own accord. For its start it had the First World War to thank, for which it was in no way responsible, since that was caused by quite other forces. Had there been no such war, totalitarianism would not have arisen, as we shall seek to substantiate in what follows. If the Great War was an accident of history, though one waiting to happen, then so was totalitarianism. It was in no way preordained or inevitable. However, once the war started and developed into the wholesale carnage that it became, then totalitarianism or something approximating it became very likely. As Norman Davies puts it, "despite the victory of the Western democracies, the most dynamic political product of the Great War lay in the antiWestern, anti-liberal and anti-democratic monster of totalitarianism."⁴ Totalitarianism in other parts of Europe was the cost that Western Europe and America incurred for victory.

The outcome of the war in the East led directly to the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, the first totalitarian one in history. From that beginning others followed. Bolshevik revolutions in Germany and Austro-Hungary failed, but "red" insurrection in Italy provoked in reaction the first Fascist totalitarianism. A second might have ensued in Germany, if Hitler, acting in conjunction with Ludendorff, the former chief of staff and near-dictator of Germany in the last stages of the war, had not been so precipitate and reckless in initiating a putsch in Munich in 1923; he had to wait ten more years to come legally to power with the compliance of Hindenburg, another great wartime general, who was president. Totalitarianism in China came much later under Mao, when with Stalin's help he defeated Chiang Kai-shek in the civil war in 1948. From that victory other Asian and African totalitarianisms followed.

Once totalitarianism was launched, it became the main driving-force of world events, with the one possible exception, the Great Depression, which was America's contribution to global turmoil and the precipitating cause of Hitler's election victory in Germany. The Great Depression inaugurated a period of great instability in most countries both internally, giving rise to strikes and repressions, and, externally, giving rise to military adventures. Totalitarianism and other forms of dictatorship were everywhere promoted. All these outbreaks of violence precipitated the world into the Second World War.

This war and its outcome are too well known to need repeating here. In brief, the defeat of the far-right totalitarians, the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy, led to the triumph of the far-left totalitarians, the Bolsheviks in Russia. The further spread of Communist totalitarianism in Europe, beyond the East where Soviet military might prevailed, was stopped by American military and economic intervention. Out of the resulting stalemate, largely due to the fear of mutual nuclear annihilation, arose the Cold War, which lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. That was the end of totalitarianism in Europe, but not in China and other parts of Asia. Now a new kind of competition is emerging between America and China, so the history of totalitarianism is far from over, though it is perhaps not as decisive in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth.

Some historians, particularly German ones, now refer to the main period of totalitarian conflict as a European civil war, but that is a tendentious exaggeration that makes it seem as if this was a war of brother against brother, so it does not matter who was on which side during it. However, Europe in that period was not anywhere near unity. It was divided into separate states at war, as had been the case throughout European history, and it mattered crucially whether one was fighting for democracy or for totalitarianism. But there is, nevertheless, a point to this way of putting it, for ideological conflict, for or against the totalitarian ideologies, became endemic within every European country and every totalitarian movement had its imitators and supporters, so-called fellow travelers, everywhere. So in that respect there was a kind of ideological civil war going on, although it did not always lead to outright violence, hardly ever so after the Second World War once the Iron Curtain was down, except for the insurrections in East Europe, most notably in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland.

It was this type of ideological warfare that was so inimical to culture and so destructive to civilization in general. It became all-pervasive, and everything was caught up in its toils and traps. Nothing touched by it could any longer be presented as pure and innocent, unbiased and of good intent, or perfectly harmless and promoting no particular political cause. Everything became suspect; everyone was doubted, disbelieved, and accused of partisanship, whether intended or not. And there were most frequently good grounds for suspicion and doubt, for lies and deceptions of all kinds came to proliferate. Propaganda outstripped information; disinformation took the place of knowledge; even science could no longer be trusted, for it was often falsified. "Truth" became that which people could be persuaded to believe by any means whatever. In short, there was no truth, for who could be trusted to tell it? People of the highest integrity and achievement were caught up in the networks of lies and came to repeat them either unknowingly and innocently, or knowingly and cynically, or themselves no longer able to tell the difference. Philosophers, scientists, writers, artists, intellectuals of every stripe and color were complicit in making themselves available for one ideological cause or another. This was perhaps the most egregious degradation of civilization that Europe had ever suffered. Its spirit was broken and could never be fully repaired.

The "civil war" surrounding the totalitarian ideologies was by no means confined to Europe alone; it spread across the Atlantic to America as well. The need to wage the Cold War called forth a fierce, often fanatical anticommunism at home as well as abroad. Many Americans in high places resorted to totalitarian methods in order to combat totalitarianism. Such methods, practices, and tactics infused themselves by a kind of unthinking osmosis into many cultural spheres, invading areas of professional competence from which they had been ethically excluded before, such as universities, the arts, and the higher reaches of the press and media in general. Witch hunts, boycotts, blackballing became quite common. Those who defended themselves against possible charges or accusations, whether justified or not, had most often no hesitation in resorting to equivocations, prevarications, and outright lies. Thus, many became embroiled in tangles of suspicion and self-protective deceit.

This was particularly the case in academia, where the freedoms of research, publication, and self-expression became casualties of conformity, and truth became a sop to ideology. Presses and journals were suborned, often with the justification that a good cause was served, as might well have been the case, but it was rarely the case that the ends justified such means. Associations and organizations were infiltrated by spies and agents provocateurs. So who could be trusted? The knowledge that such things were done with impunity and could be done again can never be retracted. Now new concerns have arisen, given that electronic surveillance has become all-pervasive. "Big Brother is watching you" is no longer an idle threat confined to fiction. The problem of means and ends is once again uppermost in the so-called war on terror. What still remains of our civilization, after the battle against totalitarianism had destroyed so much of it, might now fall victim to the very effort to save it from fundamentalist barbarism.

It is true that those countries that did not fall under totalitarian domination did not suffer as much as those that did. And of the latter, the longer they were subject to totalitarian rule, the worse the outcome for their people and their culture. Western Europe had only a small dose of the totalitarian poison and could get over it much better than Italy or Germany. In Italy, the totalitarian poison was a much weaker version than in Germany, which suffered the full brunt of prolonged Nazi rule, and in East Germany totalitarianism continued in another form under Communism for much longer. East Europe in general was subject to the same kind of totalitarian yoke following the Second World War. Russia came off worst of all, for it had suffered totalitarianism since the Revolution and for a period of twenty-five years in its worst Stalinist form. What this has meant for Russian culture and its civilization can easily be gauged by comparing where it stood under the autocratic Czar Nicholas II and the aristocrats before the First World War and what it is like now under President Putin and the oligarchs.

In the next section we shall go on to investigate the numerous ways in which totalitarianism destroys civilization. It is not a matter of a single blow, such as barbarian hordes invading a country, leveling cities, and ravaging the land. Now the destructive impulse does not come from the outside but is internally generated; it comes from some kind of wrong turn within civilization itself that we do not fully understand. Why a civilization, apparently at its apogee, like Europe before 1914, should go so terribly wrong will be the main question to answer.

Section II—How Civilization Perished

Prior to 1914, Europe was at the height of its power and cultural achievement. Not only was it politically and economically dominant throughout the world, but European civilization seemed the only one with any claim to being considered a civilization. All the others, or what was left of them, were not only deemed to be inferior versions but were destined to disappear before the inexorable march of Progress. Central and Eastern Europe in particular were culturally in a remarkably flourishing state though backward in many other respects. Ruled by the three dynasties—Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Romanov—the main cities of their empires were as advanced culturally and intellectually as any others in the world: Berlin, Munich, and Dresden; Vienna, Budapest, and Prague; Moscow and St. Petersburg—these were the places where new and exciting things were happening. In the West only Paris and London could hold a candle to them. And as bad luck or fate would have it, these were precisely the places where the worst depredations of totalitarianism occurred. It is as if European civilization in the East was nipped in the bud by a Siberian winter wind before it could come to fruition.

Of course, a large part of the explanation for this misfortune is that these were the cities on the losing side in the First World War. The Events of the Twentieth Century took a particularly grim toll in these parts of Europe, for it was there that totalitarianism emerged and persisted far longer than elsewhere. If one can metaphorically speak of a civilization committing suicide, then this is what happened in those key parts of Europe. Our task will be to elucidate how and why this happened.

The process began in Russia as soon as the Bolsheviks seized power and the Cheka was constituted and set to work to eliminate or exile all those opposed to the Revolution or who could not bring themselves to pay lip service to the new regime. Later, under Stalin, it became much worse: intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists, and academics in general were decimated in the various purges that unrolled before and after the Second World War; the war itself was almost welcomed by such people as a temporary respite from terror. Only those who were prepared to denounce others or who were too useful or well-known to be liquidated were spared. The cultural devastation did not just touch on the elites, it also affected ordinary people in countless ways. The peasants were deprived of their traditional Orthodox faith and folk beliefs and customs bound up with it, such as the celebration of Christmas and Easter. Oddly enough, it was the aristocratic-bourgeois high culture of the czarist era, such as the Bolshoi ballet, that was retained, for that catered to the pretensions of the Party bosses who saw themselves as the inheritors of the glories of the past.

In Germany the cultural devastation was nowhere near as severe, and much of traditional culture was maintained, though little new was added. However, it was severely purged of all undesirable influences and anything contributed by Jews, though even that was not honestly implemented: the words of "Die Lorelei" were attributed to Anonymous, and the Jewish provenance of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's librettist, was left in obscurity. Otherwise, all condemned books were burned, a process begun by university students themselves, and paintings mocked in exhibitions of so-called degenerate art. As Heine had once prophesied, the b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Part I The Old World
• 1 Totalitarianism and Civilization
• 2 Ideology
• 3 The Metamorphoses of Totalitarianism
• 4 The State and Fate of Europe
• Part II The New World
• 5 America Comes of Age
• 6 The Destruction of American Civilization
• Part III The Third World
• 7 East and West
• 8 China
• 9 Islam
• 10 India
• Conclusion