Critical Theory and the Challenge of Totalitarianism

In: Telos, Heft 135, S. 8-31

Abstract

Tracing the development of the concept of totalitarianism, it is noted that while, in the 1930s-1940s, Frankfurt school members applied critical theory to examination of National Socialism, after WWII ended, Stalinism became the target of their critique. This shift led to a more orthodox understanding of totalitarianism, in which there is no strong difference between communist & fascist totalitarian regimes. However, critical theory also holds the conviction that liberalism as an ideological formation has within it certain contradictions that, in efforts for their resolution, could lead to totalitarianism. A political system is best judged within its socioeconomic environment. For Habermas, in his early years, the entanglement of liberalism & totalitarianism was significant in analyses of the modern state & the modern masses, ideas in convergence with Hannah Arendt's analysis. While both Habermas & Arendt would have abhorred religious fanaticism & the terrorism i t has engendered, they probably wouldn't have merely accepted as its cause a dichotomy between Western civilization & Eastern fanaticism & would have sought an answer through dialectical methodology. J. Stanton