Antecedents to Pragmatic Politics: Karl Popper

Popper commenting on confirmation bias in politics and life generally

In one recent essay in a series on the origins of modern liberalism, The Exiles Fight Back, the Economist describes the reaction of three Viennese intellectuals in responding to the tyranny and terror that both centralized power, e.g., fascism, and collectivism, e.g., socialism, lead to in the years leading up to and after World War 2. The three, Frederich Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Popper, were reacting to extremist political ideologies and, in their own ways, criticizing the dangers of centralized power: “Each was troubled by the Anglo-Saxon countries’ complacency that totalitarianism could never happen to them. Yet warning signs abounded. The Depression in the 1930s had made government intervention seem desirable to most economists. Now the Soviet Union was a wartime ally, and criticism of its terror-based regime was frowned upon. Perhaps most worryingly, in Britain and America war had brought centralised authority and a single collective purpose: victory. Who could be sure that this command-and-control machine would be switched off?”

According to the Economist essay, the three men did not cooperate, but instead a division of thinking arose spontaneously: “Popper sought to blow up the intellectual foundations of totalitarianism and explain how to think freely. Hayek set out to demonstrate that, to be safe, economic and political power must be diffuse. Schumpeter provided a new metaphor for describing the energy of a market economy: creative destruction.”

Popper’s war effort: Popper's 1945 book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, begins with an attack on historicism, which the Economist describes as “grand theories dressed up as laws of history, which make sweeping prophecies about the world and sideline individual volition.” That may be a definition that at least some people would dispute.

The Economist comments on Popper’s thinking: “Hegel’s metaphysics and his insistence that the state has its own spirit are dismissed as ‘mystifying cant’. Popper gives a sympathetic hearing to Marx’s critique of capitalism, but views his predictions as little better than a tribal religion.

In 1934 Popper had written about the scientific method, in which hypotheses are advanced and scientists seek to falsify them. Any hypothesis left standing is a kind of knowledge. This conditional, modest concept of truth recurs in ‘The Open Society’. ‘We must break with the habit of deference to great men,’ Popper argues. A healthy society means a competition for ideas, not central direction, and critical thinking that considers the facts, not who is presenting them. Contrary to Marx’s claim, democratic politics was not a pointless charade. But Popper thought that change was only possible through experimentation and piecemeal policy, not utopian dreams and large-scale schemes executed by an omniscient elite.

Taken together, in the 1940s Hayek, Popper and Schumpeter offered a muscular attack on collectivism, totalitarianism and historicism, and a restatement of the virtues of liberal democracy and markets. Capitalism is not an engine for warmongering exploitation (as Marxists believed), nor a static oligarchy, nor a high road to crisis. Accompanied by the rule of law and democracy, it is the best way for individuals to retain their liberty.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s vindicated Popper’s searing attack on the stupidity of grand historical schemes.”

Since this is about political theory, criticisms are to be expected: “The three Austrians are vulnerable to common criticisms. The concentration of their intellectual firepower on left-wing ideologies (rather than Nazism) can seem lopsided. Schumpeter had been complacent about the rise of Nazism; but for Popper and Hayek, the devastation unleashed by fascism was self-evident. Both argued that Marxism and fascism had common roots: the belief in a collective destiny; the conviction that the economy should be marshalled to a common goal and that a self-selected elite should give the orders.

Another criticism is that they put too little emphasis on taming the savagery of the market, particularly given the misery of unemployment in the 1930s.”

In addition to political and philosophical criticisms, advancing science arguably has brought some of the logic basis for Popper’s thinking into question. For example, one analyst argued that Popper’s thinking rested on assumptions such as (1) no precise predictions are possible in the social sciences, and (2) no short term predictions are possible in the social sciences. Depending on how one defines a ‘precise’ or ‘short term’ prediction in the social sciences, Popper appears to be wrong about both of those beliefs. Both kinds of predictions are have been documented.

Also different is new technology, which appears to be undermining Popper’s 1940s point of view that knowledge was contingent and dispersed: “A free, decentralised society allocated resources better than planners, who could only guess at the knowledge dispersed among millions of individuals. Today, by contrast, the most efficient system may be a centralised one. Big data could allow tech firms and governments to “see” the entire economy and co-ordinate it far more efficiently than Soviet bureaucrats ever could.

Schumpeter thought monopolies were temporary castles that were blown away by new competitors. Today’s digital elites seem entrenched. Popper and Hayek might be fighting for a decentralisation of the internet, so that individuals owned their own data and identities. Unless power is dispersed, they would have pointed out, it is always dangerous.”

If digital elites are entrenched and fairly resistant to creative destruction, then it would seem that regulation is one way to deal with the danger inherent in accumulated power. Today, some see giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft as being in, or having made, a transition from benign to malicious. Part of the logic is simple. There is so damn much money to be made. One problem with jumps right out: To some extent, all that damn money has bought government so intelligent regulation is off the table. The other problem, which exacerbates the first, is sweeping anti-government, pro-business political ideology that currently dominates American politics. Together, the two problems are positively toxic. An intelligent balance cannot be struck.

Popper & Pragmatism: The Economist comments: “Popper was deeply concerned about workers’ conditions; in ‘The Open Society’ he lists approvingly the labour regulations put in place since Marx wrote about children toiling in factories. He thought pragmatic policies could gradually improve the lot of all.” That accords with Popper’s belief in experimentation and piecemeal policy.[1] That mindset is also compatible with the brand of politics advocated here, a pragmatic, biology-based, anti-bias ideology.

Footnote:
1. In his 1998 book (pages 394-395), The User Illusion, Tor Norretrander argues that information theory (the complexity of social forces) shows that free markets are a more efficient way forward to social progress than planned economies. The argument is that free markets are more efficient at allowing successes to succeed and failures to fail: “The collapse of communism is a manifestation of the low bandwidth of the social domain, the low capacity of language compared to the actual wealth of information in our needs. Feedback from society to planners cannot take place efficiently enough over the conscious linguistic bandwidth. Supply and demand are better at returning this information. This is ironic, for the whole idea of socialism is that barter and the market economy discard too much information.”

Norretranders may or may not be right about what the ‘whole idea of socialism’ is. Nonetheless, his point about information content in social reactions to offers of various goods and service in the economy compared to what elites and central planners would provide seems self-evident on the basis of unbiased common sense (logic). That argument seems about as powerful as any that a planned economy will not be as efficient in the long run as a free market economy. As always, the trick is for free market economies is how to regulate to balance unfettered capitalism’s tendency toward corruption, brutality and misery without crippling it. Unfortunately, balancing is not generally compatible with political, economic, religious or philosophical ideologies that do not look to trial and error pragmatism as a core value.

B&B orig: 8/31/18

Chapter Review: Plato, Aristotle and the Origins of Political Psychology

Plato

In his 2103 book, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics and Politics, political science professor George Marcus describes the origin of the Western intellectual framework that shapes and constrains how social sciences approach the science of politics. That framework both reveals and hides questions for research. For the most part, Marcus conveys a cautionary tale about the modern mindset and its conceptions of time, reason and emotion.

He is trying to teach self-awareness and some humility in the face of the subtle power of the modern intellectual framework. It is a lens or mindset that can distort reality and understanding. Nonetheless, we view politics through that modern Western lens even though it sometimes misleads us. The trick for the open-minded is to be self-aware and on guard. The following is based on chapter 3, A Short History of a Long Tradition.

The short history and its lessons were written for students of political psychology and related disciplines such as sociology. However, the core facts and ideas are helpful, maybe necessary, for people who want to be informed, rational citizens operating on the basis of objective evidence to the extent that influencer is available to the public. Even though social sciences knowledge and reality is constrained by empirical data and error-correction by peer-review, there is a powerful, subtle agenda that operates mostly unconsciously.

The Enlightenment Agenda: That modern agenda is grounded in the 17th and 18th century intellectual ferment in the Europe and the US. The ferment is called The Enlightenment and it constitutes a powerful social science agenda. Marcus points out that an agenda identifies ideas that are seen as important and what one would expect to find based on those ideas or assumptions. Regarding The Enlightenment, he comments: “Those ideas, and the agenda that they defined, have become so widely shared and so deeply embedded that they have become largely invisible with few to challenge its assumptions. And, as Plato argued, shared beliefs are not only likely to become invisible, when a rare iconoclast raises a challenge to accepted wisdoms, the response is hardly a welcome one.” Plato in his classic work, The Republic, in defense of philosopher kings and enlightened aristocrats as the best form of government, writes that the iconoclast will be killed. That is definitely not a welcome response.

Marcus points out that the human mind both hides and protects the unity we think we see. That Enlightenment unity gives the world coherence and meaning, even in situations where there is no rational basis for coherence. Regarding how the mind operates and self-deceives, Marcus comments: “As we shall see, Plato anticipated this research by more than two millennia. . . . . Rather, we all evince this same protective shield. The goal of the sections that follow is to make the invisible visible. This chapter is intended to ruffle some feathers: yours in particular.” One can only wonder what it is like to take professor Marcus’ political psychology class.

Also, one can only wonder how it was that Plato, by simple observation alone in his lifetime (c.428-347 B.C.), observed and correctly interpreted the fundamentally self-deceiving basis by which the mind operates when dealing with politics. That must have been some mind.

Aristotle

Two Western Conceptions of Time: Pre-Enlightenment & Enlightenment: Professor Marcus’ short history described two different Western conceptions of time. He argues that understanding the two different conceptions of time are necessary to understanding politics. Existing evidence shows that most people are inconsistent about which conception of time they apply in their thinking, and instead “most of us adhere haphazardly to one or the other as circumstances warrant.” The pre-Enlightenment mind conceived of time as operating in cycles. In that mindset, political regimes started, grew, matured and then lost vitality and withered. It was an endless cycle. The parallels to spring, summer, fall and winter are obvious. The modern or Enlightenment conception of time see it as a one-way arrow, always moving forward with increasing knowledge and social progress.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt is credited with pointing out that the distinction between the premodern and the modern conceptions of time constituted a radical mindset change. In the premodern mind, political regime change was seen as a ‘revolution’, which reflected the view of time as cyclical. Both mindsets have major implications for how the world is perceived and understood. In the case of the premodern mindset: “We search for the recurring patterns that provide us with confidence that our past foretells our future.” In other words, the cycle of time defines our fate. In turn, that leads many people to a belief that it is best not to go against our fate or destiny because that can lead to disaster. At this point, Marcus argues: “Time as cyclical, especially when married to the idea of fate and destiny, is inherently conservative, protective of the established social order, established political authority, and dominant traditions.” That thought leads to this important point:

“In addition, with time as cyclical, the debate between advocates of democracy, such as Aristotle, and those who advocated aristocratic rule, such as Plato, is stable. Nothing new will alter that debate as human nature is fixed and our natures either suit us for democracy, as some have it, or for aristocracy as others have it.”

Marcus then points out that with the premodern view of time as cyclic, the role of political psychology is limited because what government and politics can do, at most, is ease the passage of time for people. Trying to challenge the limits that cyclical time imposes is pointless folly. From that point of view, an important political psychology goal would be to develop knowledge of what leads to virtue and what leads to corruption. Obviously, that is an important goal for adherents of the modern linear, or probably any other, view of time. At least, that is how it appears to this observer.

By contrast with the premodern continual vision of self-renewing cycles of time, the modern or Enlightenment thinkers “reconceived time as an engine that, as a train on tracks, drives along a line from past to future. Time as progress replaced time as cyclical repetition. . . . . The modern conception of time understands time as a linear progression from an older and archaic way of life to a new, younger, and more progressive way of life.” Here, life is seen to progress from early, immature stages of political belief and behavior to later, more refined stages. The later stages are better able to adapt to changing forces such as social, economic and environmental changes.

For example, Karl Marx saw politics as an inevitable progression of class conflict from feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism, to socialism and finally to communism. In a way, time is seen as an arrow. For Marx, the engine of progress is class struggle. For Immanuel Kant, the engine is war. For Alexis de Tocqueville, based on his direct observations of, and thinking about, the new US democracy in 1831 and thereafter, the engine of progress is democracy: “Hence, democracy becomes the institutional regime most likely to accelerate progress because a democratic regime enables more people to engage in private and public deliberation on the means by which their sundry preferences can be justified and realized.”

Pre-Modern vs Modern Visions of the Role of Emotion and Reason: Disagreements on the nature and political importance of emotion and reason date at least back to Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s view led him to the conclusion that the masses are too influenced by emotion and thus enlightened and trained aristocrats and/or an enlightened philosopher king constituted the best form of government. Plato argued that knowledge alone should be the basis for governance, and as mentioned above, people will kill in defense of the false beliefs, myths and illusions that most people live by. He saw that as placing beliefs over truth: “Plato argued that to give the public a role in public affairs would introduce assertive opinion, what today political psychologists would call ‘motivated reasoning’. Hence, it is no surprise that Plato predicted that when truth confronts belief, the result would be the killing of truth-sayers.”

By contrast, Aristotle advocated for democracy based on the collective wisdom of the crowd as a source of intellectual and situational diversity. Aristotle believed rule by many was a better basis for governance than intellectual and situational diversity of one or a few rulers. In his view, collective public wisdom was superior to the wisdom of the one or the few. He saw governance as best based on a combination of objective knowledge and subjective goals of the people. Aristotle correctly understood that emotions and passions cannot be ignored in political thinking.

Marcus points out that Plato’s teacher, Socrates, was put to death by a democratically elected Athenian jury precisely for the crime of challenging sacred Athenian beliefs. Could that have influenced Plato to some extent? It is also interesting to note that Aristotle was an Athenian where political leaders were elected. Plato was citizen of Sparta, which was governed by kings.

Marcus commented on reason and emotion: “The interest in reason and emotion arose because it addressed the foremost question that has long engaged us: Where can we find the knowledge so that whichever regime we adopt it will be virtuous?” That arguably is the central question of our time. For example, why is the obvious corruption of President Trump seemingly acceptable to so many of his supporters and populists in general?

Emotion was generally viewed by all observers as an impediment to rational, good government and thus something that people should and can set aside. Modern cognitive science and neuroscience has shown it is impossible to separate emotion from politics. Emotion is biologically unavoidable. And, it can be very helpful. What needs to be kept in mind is that emotion can mislead and sow deep civil divisions, misery and war. When that happens, self-awareness is necessary for conscious reason to temper irrational, destructive emotions. Marcus argued that emotions are not rational.

The Three Key Influencers: Reason, Emotion & Interest: In view of the possibility, if not inevitability, of emotion in politics, philosophers have long struggled with how to deal with that reality. Enlightenment thinkers came up with the concept of interest, meaning self-interest and the public interest, to account for differences between conscious reason and emotion, which exerts effects in mostly unconscious ways. Pre-Enlightenment thinking held that reason and emotion were the main influencers. Enlightenment thinking held that reason, emotion and interest were the driving influencers. Current research has shown that interest is a powerful unconscious influence on perceptions of political reality and thinking or reasoning about it.

Therein lies a major issue: “Because interests do not reside in the self-aware mental region, we may not know what our ‘interests’ are.” That can lead to false beliefs about what objectively a person’s or the public’s interests are. The power of interest arises from a combination of unconscious calculating emotion and conscious reason heavily influenced by the emotion. The evidence that interest exerts major influences on both perception and reason is solid and not debated among experts. Evidence that people are significantly unaware of their own and the public interests is strong, maybe close to the point of being settled science.

Conservatism vs Liberalism: Marcus points out that most social scientists self-identify as liberals. One study found more than 95% of social scientists are liberals.[1] Therein lies a problem for the social sciences. Shared liberal values become invisible. That can obscure the conservative point of view and its values. Marcus cautions: “Perhaps the answer is that in any given case, our species is better off for having both orientations distributed among us than having just one modal position.” He argues that there are potential dangers and rewards in taking either a liberal or a conservative path. He also criticizes the Enlightenment view that has unduly downplayed emotions, thereby skewing visions of reality. He sees progress as both an empirical tale and a moral story.

The Human Condition: Marcus gives a sobering assessment. Progress has not been a straight line. Politics has not gone according to the Enlightenment plan. Accumulating evidence continues to show that reason and rationality is not displacing the role of emotion. Interest helps explain some aspects, but emotion continues to be a powerful influencer. The issue is coming to terms with what it is to be human. In reference to economics, sociology and social psychology there is an ongoing problem: “Blindness to the constraints induced by progressive convictions is not limited to political psychology. . . . . The problem of explanation without a clear recognition and understanding of the normative foundations of political psychology [] will limit the value of our research to show us what is and what is not plausible, let alone possible.”

Clearly, the evidence-based anti-bias ideology advocated here at B&B crashes directly into this concern about the nature and limits of the human mind acting alone and in groups, tribes and societies. How much more and what more, if anything, are possible in terms of evidence- and reason-based politics? The answers are unknowable. So far, no major ideology and social institution predicated on elevating the role reason to some non-trivial extent has had a fair test on a large, nation-size scale. Given that, the immense power of social institutions as sociologist Peter Berger described in his 1963 book, Invitation to Sociology, has never been tested in human history.

The situation is not all bleak. Marcus point out that neuroscience is rapidly changing our view of time, reason, emotion and knowledge, all of which can point to new possibilities. Therein lies the best hope for new understandings in how to try to deal with the problems that political psychology has been struggling with at least since Plato and Aristotle engaged in their sparring match over two thousand years ago.

Footnote:
1. One observer pointed out that maybe conservatives avoid the social sciences because much of what has been found contradicts conservatism to some extent. Some research suggests that conservatives are generally more uncomfortable with cognitive dissonance associated with ambiguity and contradictions than most liberals tend to be. In other words, social science just might be too psychologically uncomfortable for most conservative minds to find much appeal in that branch of the sciences.

B&B orig: 11/22/18

Chapter Review: Time, Memory & Unconsciousness

CONTEXT: A defensible belief holds that existing political ideologies are more bad than good for various reasons related to cognitive biology and social behavior and influences. That is what B&B argues. Ideologies tend to foster in-group thinking and behaviors and that tends to make it easy to distort reality, facts, truths and thinking into beliefs that are unreasonably detached from reality, facts and truths. It makes politics more irrational than it has to be. One idea would propose that people simply adopt a science mindset that looks to impose more rationality into politics.

In his blog post at Neurologica entitled, Against Ideology, skeptic Steven Novella discusses some thinking about problems with existing political ideologies. Novella comments on problems with ideology and the exhilarating experience of walking away from one: “The skeptical movement has always struggled with some unavoidable ironies. We are like a group for people who don’t like to join groups. We actively tell our audience not to trust us (don’t trust any single source – verify with logic and evidence). Our belief is that you really should not have beliefs, only tentative conclusions. Essentially, our ideology is anti-ideology.

This approach is both empowering and freeing. One of the most common observations I hear from those who, after consuming skeptical media for a time, abandon some prior belief system or ideology, is that they feel as if a huge weight has been lifted from their shoulders. They feel free from the oppressive burden of having to support one side or ideology, even against evidence and reason. Now they are free to think whatever they want, whatever is supported by the evidence. They don’t have to carry water for their ‘team.’

At the same time, this is one of the greatest challenges for skeptical thinking, because it seems to run upstream against a strong current of human nature. We are tribal, we pick a side and defend it, especially if it gets wrapped up in our identity or world-view.”

That, in a nutshell, is one of the biggest problems with standard ideologies, all of which are fairly called ‘pro-bias’ ideologies. Existing ideologies are powerful motivators to distort reality, facts, truths, and reason whenever those any of those things contradict or undercut the chosen ideology. Distortion and ensuing irrationality is probably the norm, not the exception.

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The Anti-Bias Ideology: A Simplified Explanation: Some years ago, it made sense to reject ideology as a framework for doing and thinking about politics. The science mindset of pragmatic, evidence-driven trial, error and course corrections seemed to be the best approach. Then, after some years of looking into cognitive biology and social behavior, it seemed that one cannot eliminate emotion and morals from the process. That lead to a science- and morals-based 'anti-bias' political ideology that focuses on the the key sources of irrationality, incivility and failure. Four core moral principles seem to be the most anti-biasing. The morals are (i) fidelity to seeing less biased fact and truth, (ii) fidelity to applying less biased conscious reason, service to the public interest (defined as a transparent competition of ideas among competing interests) based on the facts and reason, and (iv) willingness to reasonably compromise according to political, economic and environmental circumstances point to.

After considering politics through human history, most or all bad leaders (tyrants, oligarchs, kleptocrats, etc.) seem to share the four key traits. They generally disregard, deny or hide facts and truths when it is politically convenient to do so, which is most of the time. Bad leaders also routinely apply biased (bogus) reasoning to facts, fake or not, typically to foment unwarranted emotional responses such as fear, anger, bigotry, racism and distrust-hate toward out-groups or ‘the enemy’. All of that irrationality is focused in service to a corrupt self-serving conception of the public interest, and it is reinforced by a corrupt, self-serving unwillingness to compromise.

If one accepts that those four bad traits of bad leaders are real and the norm, then arguably the four core moral values of a pragmatic, evidence-based anti-bias political ideology would seem to make sense if one wants to fight against the rise and ability of bad leaders to gain power and then do bad things to people and societies.

The question is, would this ‘anti-bias’ mindset or ideology work. Maybe. Maybe not. The experiment appears to not have been tried in modern times with modern means for mass communication of dark free speech (lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity, unwarranted emotional manipulation, mostly fomenting unwarranted fear, intolerance, anger, and hate, etc.). Testing an anti-bias ideology for success or failure is a multi-generational social engineering experiment. It would be great to see it tried. Even if it failed, the failure might shed enough light on the human condition and politics to reveal another more civilized, sustainable and efficient way to do politics.

Anti-bias is not just the scientific method applied to politics: The anti-bias ideology isn't just adoption of a scientific method mindset. It expressly includes moral values and treats them as such. In science, there tends to be less outright lying and grossly bogus reasoning. Those things tend to get called out and careers then tend to crash and burn if a course correction isn't made. In science, errors happen, but they are typically mistakes, not lies. Flawed reasoning in science tends to be honest support of a hypothesis, not sloppy thinking in defense of an indefensible ideological belief. In these regards, the anti-bias ideology directly accounts for human nature. Science tends to downplay that in a belief that fact and logic will quench errors to a reasonable extent. That may be generally true for science, but it is clearly not true for politics. Science and politics are simply not the same thing, at least not yet with existing pro-bias ideologies that dominate.

White-faced whistling ducks guarding the waterfall 

 B&B orig: 10/30/18

Chapter Review: A Classless Society

Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975

INTRODUCTION: In her 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, political theorist Hannah Arendt traces the historical origins of anti-Semitism, racism, imperialism and totalitarianism. Regarding Arendt, Wikipedia comments: “Arendt is widely considered one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century.” Arendt’s political ideology is hard to pin down, but maybe it can best be described as anti-totalitarian and pragmatic rationalist-realist. Her depiction of the human condition is cold, realist and disquieting.

Arendt, born in 1906, was an educated intellectual and a German Jew. She escaped Nazi Germany a few months before Europe closed its borders. She was thus personally familiar with the social moral hypocrisy and decay of European nations and the rising horrors the hypocrisy and decay engendered. Although anti-Semitism and racism predated the industrial revolution, Arendt argues it led to the modern foundations of anti-Semitism, racism as a political ideology, imperialism and totalitarianism.

This review was inspired by a search for where President Trump might fit among Western demagogues and tyrants from the point of view of someone who never knew Trump as a political leader. Trump was five years old when Arendt published her book. Regarding the book, Wikipedia comments: “The book is regularly listed as one of the best non-fiction books of the 20th century.”

Apparently, this reviewer's thought is not unique. Trump has inspired others to look to books on political theory for insight into whatever it is that Trump is. One reviewer wrote in 2017: “The book whose success is a surprise, however, is Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). At 752 pages, Arendt’s magnum opus is not brief, and with its panoramic exploration of history, philosophy, politics and psychology, the book can exercise a reader’s mind. But recently it sold out on Amazon . . . . .”

The Origins of Totalitarianism is organized in three parts. Part one, Antisemitism chapters 1-4, Imperialism, chapters 5-9, and Totalitarianism, chapters 10-13. Given Arendt’s dense writing style and the length of the book, reviews of individual chapters are necessary to reasonably summarize the content and tenor of what Arendt is trying to convey. A review of the entire book seems inadequate, or at least beyond this reviewer’s capacity.

REVIEW: The Classless Society (chapter 10): Arendt opens chapter 10 with the observation that totalitarian regimes are transient. The conditions that lead to the possibility of a totalitarian regime are so unusual that only two existed in her time, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Other contenders from the past might include Mussolini in Italy. Arendt does not put Mussolini in the totalitarian category, relegating him instead to the status of mere dictator. Totalitarians are different from dictators. Totalitarians seek global control and they ‘atomize’ their populations such that social classes, groups and even families are broken down. Atomized societies are classless societies.

Morality, truth and history are swept away as impediments to total control. Absolute, unquestioning loyalty to the leader is the only acceptable norm for the citizen. The propaganda and lies employed does not just play on “ignorance and stupidity”:

For the propaganda of totalitarian movements which precede and accompany totalitarian regimes is invariably frank as it is mendacious, and would-be totalitarian leaders usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones. The Nazis ‘were convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction’. Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of communist propaganda, and experience has proved time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics. The attraction of evil and crime for the mob mentality is nothing new. . . . . .

Arendt elaborates on propaganda and the alliance between the mob and intellectual elites, who in their cynicism at the time were attracted to shiny and strange new things. In their cynicism, the elites were even willing to see the collapse of civilization “for the fun of seeing how those who had been unjustly excluded in the past forced their way into it.”

To this aversion of the intellectual elite for official historiography, to its conviction that history, which was a forgery anyway, might as well be the playground of crackpots, must be added the terrible, demoralizing fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition. Not Stalin’s or Hitler’s skill in the art of lying but the fact that they were able to organize the masses into a collective unit to back up their lies with impressive magnificence, exerted the fascination.

That paints a bleak picture of significant portions of societies drowning in cynicism and willing to accept social collapse in exchange for something different, or at least entertaining. In that milieu, neither democracy nor the cold morality of a relentless quest for acquisition of greater wealth by the bourgeoisie seemed worth defending. Arendt argues that the morals, or lack thereof, of the capitalists had subverted democratic norms and put economic and property concerns before all other things. In essence, European nations had been conquered by a ruthless economic ideology and many people in society saw that, or at least felt the sting.

Arendt describes the sources of social cynicism and deep distrust she sees in the historical record.

An atmosphere in which all traditional values and propositions had evaporated (after the nineteenth century ideologies had refuted each other and exhausted their vital appeal) in a sense made it easier to accept patently absurd propositions than the old truths which had become pious banalities, precisely because nobody could be expected to take the absurdities seriously. . . . . In the growing prevalence of mob attitudes and convictions – which were actually the attitudes and convictions of the bourgeoisie cleansed of hypocrisy – those who traditionally hated the bourgeoisie and had voluntarily left respectable society saw only the lack of hypocrisy and respectability, not the content itself. Since the bourgeoisie claimed to be the guardians of Western traditions and confounded on all moral issues by parading publicly virtues which it only did not possess in private and business life, but held in contempt, it seemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregard of human values, and general amorality, because this at least destroyed the duplicity on which the existing society seemed to rest.

Thus, despite the bleak pictures of societies that Arendt describes, one can see in the reaction to a hypocritical and morally bankrupt bourgeoisie, many people were clearly repulsed by the corrupt sleaze at the top. That reaction is not one coming from pure apathy. That may have led to political apathy and grudging, silent tolerance of democratic governments. But at the least average people were looking for moral consistency, even if they could not see it was the morality of an insanely vicious and evil totalitarianism.

Arendt argues that totalitarians rise to power in two steps. First they rely on the mob for initial support, and then they harvest the masses and stay in power as long as the masses stay loyal to the leader. For Arendt, the mob is not the industrial working class or the people as a whole, but it is “the refuse of all classes . . . . . the riff-raff of bohemians, crackpots, gangsters and conspirators.” She asserts that although totalitarian leaders rise from the mob, the early supporters are cast aside or killed once the leader has power. What seems to attract the mob to totalitarians is their status as social castaways and the promise of social destruction with a new world order. The mob sees and rejects the deep hypocrisy of the dominant bourgeoisie morals and social norms that nation states of the time were built on. In a sense, the mob was the collateral damage of the industrial revolution, including its grotesque concentration of wealth at the very top.

Arendt’s vision of totalitarianism includes two other necessary components. One is a circumstance where the masses, normally apathetic, non-political citizens have “acquired the appetite for political organization.” This reflects a disaffected population that tolerates democratic government without enthusiasm. The totalitarian leader relies on charm, charisma and relentless propaganda to help create and shape the political appetite. These previously apathetic populations can be captured by totalitarian movements. The other component is a sufficient population of the masses. “Only where great masses are superfluous or can be spared without disastrous results of depopulation is totalitarian rule, as distinguished from a totalitarian movement, at all possible. . . . . they [German and Russian totalitarian movements] recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention.” Arendt asserted that totalitarian movements in Eastern European countries all led to mere dictatorships because they did not have sufficient populations for the human slaughter necessary to atomize subject societies or nations. In all of this, Arendt casts the masses in a constantly negative light, e.g., inarticulate, apathetic or stupid.

With the necessary support of the masses, Arendt sees the end of two illusions that democratic governments deluded themselves with:

The first was that people in its majority had taken an active part in its government and that each individual was in sympathy with one’s own or somebody else’s party. On the contrary, the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country . . . . . The second illusion exploded by the totalitarian movements was that these politically indifferent masses did not matter . . . . . democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country.

Arendt makes many other important points. One is her assertion that, for the typical citizen, it does not make much difference what brand of totalitarianism one lives under. “Practically speaking, it will make little difference whether totalitarian movements adopt the pattern of Nazism or Bolshevism, organize the masses in the name of race or class, pretend to follow the laws of life and nature or of dialectics and economics.” In an atomized, classless society, the underlying ideology is as irrelevant as truth and reason.

Another assertion Arendt makes is that neither Nazism nor Bolshevism constituted a new form of government or that their political goals were ever attained, even after the movements attained power and control.

Their idea of domination was something that no state and no mere apparatus of violence can ever achieve, but only a movement that is constantly kept in motion; namely the permanent domination of each individual in each and every sphere of life. The seizure of power through means of violence is never an end in itself but only the means to an end, and the seizure of power in any given country is only a welcome transitory stage but never the end of the movement. . . . . a political goal that would constitute the end of the movement simply does not exist.

That seems to argue that totalitarianism, in view of its disregard for truth, morals, social class and most everything else, is simply an endless process of demanding and receiving loyalty and not much else. Whether one can count that as a form of government or an ideology seems to be open to debate.

Is Trump a would-be totalitarian, or just a would-be dictator?: Based on chapter 10, Trump does not look to be a true totalitarian. Not only are circumstances in America not ripe, with powerful institutions standing in his way, Trump himself is too shallow and self-centered to aspire to the kind of brutal rule that Hitler and Stalin conceived. Aspects of Trump fit the totalitarian mold, e.g., his constant mendacity, ability to play on people’s discontent, contempt for democratic institutions and a lack of any cognizable moral compass are all there. But Trump just does not have it in him to kill millions by playing on racism and/or class conflicts. That is the case even if the independent press and independent law enforcement and our independent judiciary were swept away, which is what Trump would very much like to see. Trump wants to be a dictator and he makes that very clear in his public statements. Nonetheless, he clearly falls short of the creatively vicious mind and the work ethic it would take. Trump likes looking at himself in the mirror far too much for that kind of a project to appeal.

That said, Trump’s authoritarian successor just might consider it. Conditions will be better. Trump has done much to plow and prepare the soil for a serious totalitarian to make a run at total power. Trump has weakened the press by fomenting baseless distrust and his party is now openly favoring single-party rule status and willing to break laws to get it. Trump and his party are packing federal courts with unqualified and/or extremist ideologues, which is an important step in destroying judicial independence. Trump’s view of the rule of law is also clear – he hates it. For Trump, the law only applies to enemies, not himself or friends.

The 2020 elections will be interesting, to say the least. Whether they turn out to be frightening is a key question.

B&B orig: 1/4/18