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tailed the destruction of half the livestock and the catastrophic reduction
of crops. Concentration camps are absurd, in view of production effi–
ciency.
These very examples bring to the fore a question that recurs in a vari–
ety of ways. In a sense, Mme. Arendt is right. The pragmatic interpret2-
tion of totalitarian behavior is indeed erroneous, but this is so because
through such an interpretation we lose sight of the very system of
values
and passions held by the actors. Extermination was indeed a war objective
of the Hitlerites. Perhaps they even wished to attain it before the end
of
hostilities so that, whatever the outcome, their hatred might be satisfied.
However, more serious doubts arise regarding the Soviet examples Mme.
Arendt gives. The collectivization of agriculture did become irrational,
but this was due to the resistance of the peasants. Collectivization did
have a rational motive - increased production yields - but the plannen
were unable to seduce the peasants with higher prices. In order to do so,
they would have had to provide consumer goods, the demand for which
their industrial output could not meet. The irrationality of the labor
camps, too, is more open to debate than Mme. Arendt contends. In any
case, forced labor does not appear irrational to its planners because of
the
very possibilities it offers. But let us suppose her theses to be true as
granted. Then, is Hitlerism essentially the universe of the SS, the
gas
chambers, the extermination commandos? Are the ravages of collectiviza–
tion or the labor camps the trappings of industrial construction? Mme.
Arendt replies with confidence: they are the
essence.
Totalitarian regimes are defined neither alone by the suppression of
representative institutions and multiple parties, nor by the absolute power
of a team or a man. The regimes of the colonels in Poland, of Franco
in
Spain, even ofMussolini belong to a species of which history offers many
examples. Fascism holds little or no originality. The single party occupies
the place of a police force, aids in the recruitment of upper- and middle–
level administrators, gathers together the leader's principal partners and
makes it possible for them to reap the rewards of their complicity, and
offers access to certain union or government positions for young people
seeking them. Up to the time of its alliance with Hitler, fascism contained
no trace of anti-Semitism or of permanent revolution. To the very end, it
did not shake the traditional structure of Italian society.
Totalitarianism seems to be characterized by a certain number of in–
stitutional phenomena that Mme. Arendt analyzes admirably: the prolifer–
ation of bureaucracies, poorly linked to one another in an inextricable
tangle of official spheres; the split between the party of the masses and the
inner circle; the maintenance of a kind of conspiracy within the party that
controls the state; the unconditioned authority of the leader, who is indis-
