PLATO AND HITLER
KECSKEMETI, PAUL
Plato and Hitler Paul Kecskemeti, our guest columnist this week, is a Hungariantrained philosopher now working at a social scientist for the Rand Corporation of California. A former War...
...It cannot be*denied that this grim picture contains an element of truth...
...The totalitarian personality creates a new "moral" universe' within which its power urge operates...
...For no personality and no institution is governed by just one motive...
...For them, he says, power itself has become the solt aim...
...Since the decisions of these rulers are determined merely by what is just and right "in itself," they cannot be said to exercise, .strictly spcakmg, any power at all...
...I think this criterion alone would he sufficient to define totalitarianism, without mentioning its "radical" goals...
...The totalitarian personality does seek power as an end in itself, apart from what is achieved with the help of power...
...By PAUL KECSKEMETI WHAT DISTINGUISHES TOTALITARIAN RULERS from non totalitarian ones...
...But at the origin of totalitarian regimes wo always find hate motives which can in no way be explained in terms of a power calculus alone...
...Kecskemeti has written for Partisan Review and Modern Review...
...The result is hell on earth: apart from the inner circle itself, human beings exist only to enable their rulers to exercise a mad lust for power...
...I would even say that "idealistic" tyrants are often worse and more tyrannical (totalitarian) than cynical tyrants...
...SEEKING CRITERIA BY WHICH TO DISTINGUISH totalitarian from non-totalitarian regimes, we should not ask whether motives other than the power motive exist, but rather focus out attention upon two other questions: What ends is power supposed to achieve...
...The "benevolence" ol the Platonic rulers suggests one further consideration...
...I would argue that it is misleading to define the totalitarian personality as one for whom no motive exists other than power, or to explain totalitarian regimes as those which merely serve the power aims of a ruling clique...
...Even the most accomplished tyrants have motives other than power- they have loves and hates independent of their power interests...
...There is a great and crucial difference between individuals who relish the exercise of power in this sense, and those who derive satisfaction from crushing other people as a pleasure sui generis, regardless of what else may be achieved through it...
...The totalitarian personality or regime wants to use power to destroy certain groups and to glorify others...
...A former War Department historian, Mr...
...As regards the first question: tyrannical or totalitarian power is distinguished from non-totalitarian power in that its ends are "radical" in a very specific sense...
...It is important, however, to note the "radical" drive in order to distinguish genuine totalitarianism from another kind of society in which decision-making is monopolized, namely, Plato's Republic, in which all authority is vested in a body of perfectly wise and benevolent rulers...
...Put this does not hold...
...others love "kitsch" as Hitler did and Stalin pr^autftghly d6es (to .judge from the pictorial output encouraged by the SoweTr^sfc^eJ Hate is more closely related to the power motive: the tyrant hates primarily those in whom he sees a threat to his power...
...It is not the absence of "idealism" which makes totalitarian rule anti-human and terrible, but its monopolization of power and its forcing upon all human life of the inexorable alternatives of destruction or glorification...
...it revels in domination, in breaking other people's will...
...If power wefce the sole motivation of totalitarianism^ we would have to conclude" that no totalitarian personality or regime could exist, except in the imagination...
...They seek nothing but complete domination of their fellow men They are interested only in imposing their will and breaking that ol others in the most complete and tyrannical fashion...
...A society in which all power is concentrated in the h;inds of one undivided group is totalitarian...
...The basic intentions are more complex passions are at work which do not fit into a neat scheme...
...The second criterion of totalitarian power is closely related to the first—such power (whatever ends it is supposed to serve) is monopolistic...
...ft20c-d...
...It is often said that for the former powei is an end in itself, whereas for the latter power is merely t means for achieving some end clearly distinguished from the powei of the ruling group...
...The Platonic state is conceived of as a non-power society (cf...
...Those who say that the only goal of the totalitarian is maximum power often imply that if the members of a ruling group arc sincerely convinced that their power serves some "ideal" purpose, such as the general welfare or the establishment of some ultimate' stele of freedom, thev are not really "totalitarian...
...Some love arL, as did .the Renaissance tyrants...
...In his new novel, "1984," George Orwell characterizes the hideous totalitarian regime of a future nightmare stati in such terms...
...such "radical" ends are repulsive to them...
...For nontotalitarian persons or groups, neither destruction nor glorification is the chosen end of power...
...And how is power limited and distributed...
Vol. 32 • August 1949 • No. 33
