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BOOKS7984 REVISITEDTOTALITARIANISM IN OUR CENTURYedited by Irving Howe(Harper Row; 276 pp.; 10.95/ 3.50)Gerald reundGeorge Orwells 984 did not prophesy anightmare society but, rather, warned usthat fascism or Stalinism could be perfectedinto an irreversible and complete totalitar-ianism. What made the warning so powerfulis that Orwells anti-utopia is a very plau-sible representation of what life would belike i a central authority were permitted toabuse technology and language to pervertthe past and create an unending tyranny.We identify with Winston Smith and Julia;and as a generation that stared into theHolocausts ovens, we find OBrien a morebelievable Satan than Dostoevskis GrandInquisitor, and Oceania a perfectly logicalextension of Hitlers Europe, Stalins Rus-sia, Maos China.Why has Orwe lls nightmare society failedto come about. Nor because we heeded hiswarning, but because corrosive forcessapped the revolutionary zeal of totalitari-anism from within-something Orwell didnot foresee. Nevertheless. in 1984 we livewith another nightmare vision: the horri- Ifying immediacy of total war. The threatof nuclear incineration, of the Big Bang thatwould signal the end of life on earth evenas it may have begun, has day-to-day effectsthat are interesting reflections of Orwellsnovel. Turned fatalistic about our doubtfulfuture, we become inured to mans inhu-manity to man, today more widespread thanever. As we play for time against the awfulapocalypse, we seem willing to narfow ourfreedoms and discard our aspirations forsocial justice. Out of fear we may be readyto give up more-perhaps much more-edging closer and cloher to accepting formsof authoritarianism that bear the earmarksof the authoritarianism into which the for-mer totalitarian powers have sunk.Winston Smiths journey from rebellionto absolute submission toa dialectic of powerin which power is sought for its own sakeis. given our present sense of helplessness,at least as understandable as it was in 1949when Orwell published his chilling wcirk.What are the objectives of,todays politicalleadership? Communist ideology is dead;Soviet Russias power is i n its military ar-senal. The vision of the democracies has

dwindled to a flash of doomsday light. Webristle with anns to deter or participate inthe mayhem; our purposes for living areeroded, and we are prepared to accept harshdisciplines that make living less worth-while. Terrified ourselves, Winston carriesus along in his terror, right up to his hor-rifying conversion to OBriens dictum:One does not establish a dictatorship inorder to safeguard a revolution; one makesthe revolution to establish the dictatorship.The object of persecution is persecution.The object of torture is torture. The objectof power it power.The touc stone of this wildly disparatecollection o thirteen essays under Irvingbrilliant book. whose title was chosen moreby chance than as a significant deadline,but a desire to take stock: What has becomeof the totalitarianism Orwell warned us of?What are its prospects now that 1984 hasarrived?Each of the thirteen contributors has dif-ferent points to make. Some hold that 984has already materialized or is well on theway to realization. For Mark Crispin M iller,political totalitarianism is merely one morecelebrated ugliness in our insatiable ap-petite for horrors, among which he lumpstogether nuclear destruction, child abuse,the Holocaust, toxic waste, and-unac-countably and obscenely-the works ofSamuel Beckett. For Germanys JohannoStrasser, the symptoms of 1984 are inscientific and technological advances thatare not resolutely tied to advances in de-mocracy and social justice. He warns us tobeware of technofanatics who beguile uswith a science-fiction future in which po-litical systems will become increasinglydistant from the citizenry. Professor JamesB. Rule of SUNY t Stony Brook sees signsof actual and potential political repressioneverywhere, especially in the states totalpower to investigate, therefore to control,every recess of private life. Electronic dos-siers on each of us, linked by a network ofcompute rs. have terrible potential. Rule citesNixons use of IRS files to hound politicalopponents; today the scope and scale of

Howe s edi rship is not really Orwells

such abuse is much greater. Mass com-munication can lead to mass surveillance.Two-way television exists; so far we canstill turn i t offOther of the essayists point out the changesin social relations that could result not onlyfrom the abuse of new technology but alsofrom the perversion of language. The termNewspeak has entered our vocabulary,and examples of it have entered our lives.The Defense Departments description ofthe invasion of Grenada by U.S. aratroopers as a vertical insertion would be com-ical if it did not have the frightening purposeof dulling the average citizens awarenessthat it was an invasion, a unilateral act ofaggression. In Orwells Oceania one of thepartys slogans was W ar is Peace. Thatseems to have been what many Am ericanswanted to believe at the time of Grenada.It was the official line, and those who ex-pressed an opinion overwhelmingly sup-ported barring the press from being thereand offering a different version. Why didso few speak up for the once-cherish ed free-dom of the press? According to a recentpoll. four out of five Americans believe Itwould be easy to assemble files on theirlives that would violate their privacy. andmany of those assumed that governmentagencies and banks were already doing so.Eighty-six per cent of the samplin g believedit possible that a government in Washing-ton will use confidential information to in-timidate individuals or groups it feels areits enemies.The m i x of complacency and fear, andthe approval of totalitarian techniqu es in oursociety. isworrisom e indeed, but this is notwhat Orwell warned us of. He did not en-vision incrementa l mind control. Rather, hewarned of a shatterin g and total qualitativetransformation, and ultimate change, asArthur Schlesinger, Jr.. put it in a recentreview, an act of creative daring to carrythe inner logic of Nazism and Stalinism tothe end of night. It is this understandingof theoretical totalitarianism at its ultimaterealization and then of what, in contrastwith Orwells fears, has actually happenedin the principal totalitarian powers of the1940s. that preoccupies the authors of themost importan t essays in this volume: Howein his introduction, Michael Walzer in anacute piece on Failed Totalitarianism. andRichard Lowenthal in his astonishinglycomprehensive historical interpretation ofthe evolution of Communist Russia andCommunist China.The conception of totalitarianism in thesethree essays differs mostly in emphasis. ForWalzer, a professor at the Institute for Ad-vanced Study in Princeton, totalitarianism

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is the idealization of authoritarian rule.Howe stresses its ideologk d fanaticism, akind of frenzy hat forces the individual intototal identification with the state. All threedefine totalitarianism in terms of the tyrannyof a ruchle~s.single-party dictato~hiphatis decisively distinguished from other dic-t torships by its ideological compulsion toachieve total and ultimately worldwideeaosformations of the structure of society.First Lenin and Hitler. then Stalin andMao failed in this effort. The pivotal reasonfor this as Lowenthal so clearly points out,is the dynamic nature of actual totalitari-anism which, devoted to unending, totallyplanned change. ultimately falls victim tounpl nned change. In this connection, at-tention is usually focused on problems ofsuccess ion-repla cing Big Brother. The es-says by Robert C. Tucker and, to a lesserextent, by the Yugoslav dissident MilovanDjilas s t r s s the cult of the individual asa key problem for one-party dictatorships.Walzer and Loweothal, on the other hand,point out that the inherent flaw in even themost virulent, S W t otalitarianism is that,ultimately, a choice must bemade betweentwo goals, Utopia or gradual modemiza-tion and the latter will invariably prevail,engendering a weakening of ideology. Los-ing its utopian rationale, it petrifies. Despitethe terror by which Stalin tried to imposepermanent revolution from above, Russiasdevitalization of purpose was discernibleeven before his death. Stalin used the secretpolice; Mao used a mass movement of youthbacked by the army to control the countryand revitalize revolutionary zeal. Followingthe death of these two tyrants he Patty inboth countries reasserted its central role,though with a stronger influence from themilitary than before.If institutionalized revolution is the es-sence of totalitarianism, then it has failed;it has withered away in both Russia andChina. The failure of revolution and thechanneling of energies into forced-paceeconomic change still leaves individualssuffering under the yoke of tyranny. Orwellforesaw the time when fanatic belief in atotal st te would crumble but its power anddominance survive. Walzer calls t h i s con-dition failed totalitarianism, which con-sists 0f.a relatively stable dominance ofrepression, censorship, torture, and mur-der, all of the largely traditional kind thoughthe traditionalism is sometimes masked byideological pretensions. Authoritarian ruleis the dominant fact today in m ost societies,and not only where it s the legacy of to-talitarian movements and parties. Walzerdelivers a stinging attack on contemporaryconservative intekCNdS who distinguish26

rigorously between the devitalized Com-munist authoritarian states, whom theject, and the authoritarian regimes s ch asthose that dominate Central and uthAmerica, whom they regard as acced bleand even desirable allies. Those who de ndantiCo mmu nist authoritarian regimes un-dkr the cynical banner the enemy of myenemy is my friend have, as Walzer con-cludes, Tailed to grasp the historical con-nection between what they defend and whatthey decry.Is there any es c a p for those forced tolive under the awful banalities of contem-por ry authoritarianregimes whatever theirorigin?Ow ell answers in termsof the claimsof the body. Winston finally succumbs tothe horrors of OBriens torture chamber,Room 101, and understands what OBrienmeans when he says: If you want a pictureof the future imagine a boot stamping ona huma n face-forever. But before he suf-fers thisultimate humiliation, Winston findsboth a plade and a mode for establishinghis individuality. Four of the essayists choseto point out that in the countryside, awayfrom the city. where traditionally humanfreedoms evolve and social justice is at-tained, W inston discovers Julias sexuality.Following Freuds understanding that the

libido is a means of liberation, O rwell-through Julias boldness in arranging thetryst-is saying that love, the dignity of ouremotions, annihilates tyranny. In 984 sex-ual freedom is a political act. Irving Howetells us he was moved-and we are movedbecause he w as -u po n rereading 984 bythe unabashed celebrations of the bodywhen Winston and Julia meet in the worldof nature and discover one another withcharming indifference to all ideologies.Though w e have escaped the 1984 Orwellwarned us of, we face a countdown to evenmore devastating res ull ~. ur imminent perillies in the inability of two superpowers tofind common ground hased on mutual self-interest to bind them in an accommodationwith one another. The United States andthe Soviet Union, their principal allies, andalso China share-if nothing els e-e qu all ygood reasons to dread the rise of a messianicrevolutioniq fervor that may be exacer-bated by racism among the countries of thedeveloping continents. Iran today is an ex-ample. S ome of these countries will becomenuclear powers, either by acquiring weap-ons on the international market or throughtechnological developments of their own.It does not take another Orwell to warn uswhat the consequences might be. [Wv

WOMEN, REASON AND NATUREby Carol McMlllan(Princeton University Press; 156 pp.; 17.50)WOMEN OF IDEAS AND WHAT MEN HAVE DONE TO THEM)by Dale Spender(Routledge Kegan Paul; 531 pp.; 9.95 [paper])Margery oxSeasoned feminists sense a loss of momen-tum, especially among a younger genera-tion that takes for granted the gains of thepast two decades. The radical core is dis-credited for bypassing children and the fam-ily, and organizations like OW re tryingto occupy the middle ground, hence to di-lute or mute radicalism. The moment ispropitious for philosophy, since, as somewag once said, the task of philosophers isto reassure men that what they are alreadydoing is all right. Arriving on cue in hisArcadian mantle is social philosopher IvanIllich, whose Gender presents a historicaland archaeological resurrection of the no-tion of separate and autonomo us spheres ofactivity for men and women. Such sepa-ration would obviate the gender com petitionat which women always come off secondbest.

Carol McMillan boards the conservativebandwagon with a different satchel of dis-ciplinary tools but similar objectives. Sheargues that there are erroneous assumptionsabout the nature of reason and of womensreasoning capacities common to feministsand antifeminists alike.In a nearly always lucid style, McMillancharts a promising course. She reviews theHegelian and Kantian rationalist concept ofhuman progress as resting on differencerath erth ano n romantic. intuitive union withthe natural world. The upshot of t h i s i sthat only those activities from which thereis no counterpart in the animal world andwhich are not contaminated by feelings canbe truly human and therefore based on rea-son. Her attack on the feminists is basedon this somewhat overstated dichotomy be-tween nature and the human.