CHAT: totalitarianism [was Re: Sexual terminology]

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
> > You are making one important assumption about concultures:
> > that any right-thinking person will make his or her
> > conculture according to the kinds of ideals that he
> > or she holds.  Unlike many people, I am not aiming to
> > build an "ideal" universe as a context for conlanging,
> > inasmuch as I do not believe that humans usually act out
> > on ideals, even if ideals exist.  Much the contrary:
> > with Phalera I am aiming to build a believeable society,
> > where human beings strive after self-interest much as in
> > this one, and cloak their self-interest in the phraseology
> > of idealism, much as in this one. This means that I
> > personally end up disagreeing with lots and lots of
> > aspects of Phaleran society, but changing it would break
> > [...] I mean, I totally disagree
> > with totalitarianism, but totalitarianism of some form
> > or another has been *far* more common in human history
> > than liberal bourgeois democracy.
>
> I don't think so, unless you class authoritarian societies with
> totalitarian ones.  Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin,
> China under Mao, Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge, are something
> qualitatively different from their precedessors and successors.
> (There may be others that belong to this list.)
It's true that it depends on how you define totalitarianism, but
under only a slightly broader definition of totalitarianism than
the one you are using, my statement IMO still holds. Lykourgos'
Sparta, e.g., was actually a model against which many modern
totalitarian regimes in some sense measured themselves, including
Hitler's, who had a fascination with Spartan regimentation. Egypt
under the Ptolemies was, if anything, even more totalitarian: every
aspect of personal life and the economy was under the direct control
of Ptolemaic regulators, everything from how much cattle peasants
in a certain region are supposed to raise and how much they are
supposed to get per head to which industries are crown monopolies
(many were, including olive oil production and glass-blowing). Much
less is known about life under the neighboring Seleucid and Antigonid
monarchies because Egypt's sands preserve far much more everyday
documentation of such state control, but what little we have suggests
that there were organized along similar lines. In Mesopotamia,
Naram-Sin, the grandson of Sargon the Great, is the first person
recorded in history to have deified himself in his own lifetime.
Because Agade's state revenues were all in theory linked with temple
worship, he assumed for himself absolute control of state finances
and with that created a schediasmatocracy:  rule by the whim or fancy
of the ruler. Most of the states of modern Central Asia are either
authoritarian (Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev, Uzbekistan under Karimov)
or outright totalitarian (Turkmenistan under Niyazov). So, totalitarian
regimes do not seem to be as uncommon as you seem to have suggested.
(I do not agree with you that there is a strict qualitative difference
between very authoritarian and totalitarian; there is a continuum of
oppression.)

So, what about liberal democracies? Democracies in general have been
rare, but to find one that we can describe as "liberal" would be
exceedingly hard.  Athens never had that hallmark of modern liberal
democracies, namely, institutional checks on the power of the majority
to do whatever it wants.  During the Peloponnesian War, Athens infamously
ordered all the male adult inhabitants of the island of Melos slain,
and their women and children enslaved, for nothing more than refusing
to side with one of Athens or Sparta.  And, let's not forget Socrates.
His case was not straightforward, since he was an oligarchical
sympathizer, but his charge was trumped up by his political enemies;
a more liberal regime would have safe-guards against his execution.
Only Rome, of ancient regimes, had anything like such modern safe-guards,
but it would be difficult to call Rome a democracy when the voting was
institutionally rigged to favor the wealthy and elite (imagine the US
electoral college, but based on property instead of geography). Late
medieval Italian democracies might count, but they didn't have personal
safe-guards either. Today's democracies are very unusual, in that you
have *both* wide-scale popular involvement in decision-making, *and*
protection for individuals *from* that wide-scale involvement.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>

             "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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