Movements aim to destroy the state, not merely seize its machine

Evidence

The state, even as a one-party dictatorship, was felt to be in the way of the ever-changing needs of an ever-growing movement. There was no more characteristic difference between the imperialist “above party group” of the Pan-German League in Germany itself and the Pan-German movement in Austria than their attitudes toward the state: while the “party above parties” wanted only to seize the state machine, the true movement aimed at its destruction; while the former still recognized the state as highest authority once its representation had fallen into the hands of the members of one party (as in Mussolini’s Italy), the latter recognized the movement as independent of and superior in authority to the state. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 652

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Draws the decisive line between imperialist ‘party above parties’ and totalitarian movement by their relation to the state.

Related

• A true movement seeks the state’s destruction, not merely its seizure (similarity 0.96)
• Totalitarian movements rise above both state and people for ideology (similarity 0.85)
• Totalitarian movements, unlike Fascism, must never achieve definite goals (similarity 0.85)
• Movements outlast parties because perpetual motion replaces fixed goals and programs (similarity 0.84)
• Fascist party dictatorship was a stable state apparatus, not a movement (similarity 0.83)
• Movements displaced parties by attacking the class system itself (similarity 0.82)
• Movements differ from parties by admiring bureaucracy as an organizational model (similarity 0.82)
• The term movement signified distrust of all party politics (similarity 0.81)
• Movements differ from parties by making ideology an organizing principle (similarity 0.81)
• Imperial parties transcended ordinary party competition by claiming state unity (similarity 0.80)
• The absoluteness of movements dissolves individual conscience and ends-means distinctions (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian movements require permanent motion and cannot survive stabilization. (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian movements pursue permanent motion rather than any final political goal (similarity 0.80)
• Italian Fascism remained continuous with the nation-state; totalitarianism broke from it (similarity 0.79)
• Pan-movements prefigured totalitarianism by discarding imperialist snobbery and exploiting hatred of representative institutions. (similarity 0.79)