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-although even the "holist" Stalin emphatically asserted the validity of
(traditional) logic. At stake is not the validity of logic but the adequacy
of the logic applied. But the notion that society is more than the mere
aggregate of its parts and relations does not imply that all or "nearly
all" public and private relations within society must be analyzed in
order to comprehend the "structure" of a society. On the contrary, the
hypothesis that such a structure prevails and asserts itself in and through
all institutions and relations (defining and determining them) does not
preclude but calls for a "selective" analysis-one which focuses on the
basic
institutions and relations of a society (a distinction which must,
of course, be demonstrated and justified logically as well as empirically) .
Similarly, for the totalitarian control of society it is not necessary to
control directly
all
or "nearly all" relations because control of the
key
positions and institutions assures control of the whole. Certainly, every
new control creates new social relations to be controlled, but far from
being an impossible infinite regression, this constellation perpetuates and
propels the controls once secured in the key positions and relations:
the "new" relations are preshaped and predetermined.
(It
might be ne–
cessary to point out that these comments do not imply or suggest that
totalitarian control, once established, is unbreakable, but that breaking
it depends on changing the very basis of totalitarian society.)
If
the critique of totalitarianism, instead of "constructing" its tar–
get, would look at the actual theories and at the reality of totalitarian–
ism, it could hardly assert that totalitarianism is a logical impossibility.
Popper cites Mannheim's proposition that "the power of the State is
bound to increase until the State becomes nearly identical with society";
he calls this proposition a "prophecy" and the "intuition" expressed in
it the "totalitarian intuition." Now I think it is rather obvious that
the cited passage has long since ceased to be a "prophecy" and has
be·
come a statement of fact. Moreover, one may criticize Mannheim on
many grounds, but to count him among the "holists" and to charge
him
with the "totalitarian intuition" is to confuse an analysis of observable
trends with their advocacy and justification.
This confusion is characteristic of Popper's concept of "holism,"
which covers and denounces equally theories with a totalitarian and
those with an anti-totalitarian "intuition." By the same token, the con–
cept obliterates the fundamental differences between the critical notion
of inexorable historical laws, which sees in these laws the feature of an
"immature" and oppressive society, and the conservative notion, which
justifies these laws as "natural" and unchangeable. The idea that the
Nation or the State or the Society are totalities over and above the
