Nonutilitarian structure makes totalitarian politics unpredictable to outsiders
Evidence
The structurelessness of the totalitarian state, its neglect of material interests, its emancipation from the profit motive, and its nonutilitarian attitudes in general have more than anything else contributed to making contemporary politics well-nigh unpredictable. The inability of the non-totalitarian world to grasp a mentality which functions independently of all calculable action in terms of men and material, and is completely indifferent to national interest and the well-being of its people, shows itself in a curious dilemma of judgment: those who rightly understand the terrible efficiency of totalitarian organization and police are likely to overestimate the material force of totalitarian countries, while those who understand the wasteful incompetence of totalitarian economics are likely to underestimate the power potential which can be created in disregard of all material factors. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 938
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- QUESTION: The ‘dilemma of judgment’ — overestimating police efficiency while underestimating material waste — is a two-sided analytic trap worth carrying into readings of state power that treat it as purely material.
Related
- Totalitarian power operates independently of material interest and profit motives (similarity 0.90)
- Confused hierarchies make totalitarian rule shock-proof and command-certain (similarity 0.81)
- Totalitarian indifference to mass interest shattered utilitarian assumptions in politics. (similarity 0.80)
- Totalitarianism replaces all independent talent with loyal mediocrity to ensure predictability (similarity 0.79)
- Totalitarian government differs categorically from dictatorship and tyranny (similarity 0.79)
- Totalitarian government is not monolithic but a shapeless dual authority of party and state (similarity 0.79)