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dations of Stalinism? More than anything else, I want to delineate a dis–
tinction that is implicit in Mme. Arendt's book, between bureaucratic
despotism and economic planning on the one hand, and totalitarianism
(that is, ideology and terror) on the other. Economic progress tends of it–
self to eliminate or attenuate the latter, but in no way does it exclude the
former.
As the social elite's intellectual level rises and a democratic bour–
geoisie becomes stabilized, terrorism and ideological fanaticism will be
more and more difficult to maintain because they will go against the
people's spontaneous aspirations, and because a party that is increasingly
recruited from among the technical elite and privileged people inevitably
loses the purity and fanaticism of a sect. On the other hand, bureaucratic
despotism remains the most useful superstructure of the Soviet-type
planned economy. It is doubtful that election procedures could be intro–
duced in such a regime, unless there was an unforeseen increase in avail–
able resources. But an authoritarian bureaucracy cannot completely do
without an ideology to justify itself, and such an ideology always carries
the risk of reviving revolutionary crises.
A more thorough analysis would have to take a number of factors
into account: Will one of Stalin's successors succeed in making himself
the absolute leader, that is, succeed in eliminating his rivals or in convinc–
ing the masses that he is in the process of eliminating his rivals? How
will
the international conflict evolve? How will the Chinese revolution effect
Russia's regime? Too many different elements are involved, too many
accidents and too many people can intervene, to allow predictions to be
formulated. Totalitarian phenomena, as we have known them in the first
half of the twentieth century, have been linked simultaneously to a revo–
lutionary party, to an authoritarian bureaucracy, and to drastic happenings
such as war or the frenzied accumulation of capital. We have not yet ex–
perienced a totalitarian revolution's return to normal life. This lack of ex–
perience calls for prudence in making predictions. It does not forbid us
from hoping that there might be an outcome other than apocalyptic catas–
trophe in response to the furors of the abandoned masses and faithless
pseudo-intellectuals.
It
would be wrong to insist that human irrationality
has won the day once and for all.
Translated from the French
by
Marc Le Pain and Daniel MahOlleJ
