Soviet totalitarianism functioned through interpretive ambiguity, not just coercion

Evidence

If Kafka is valuable as a commentator on totalitarianism, it is by revealing that there was a dimension of totalitarianism which cannot be understood on the model of despotic command. Kafka’s purgatorial vision of a bureaucratic labyrinth without end chimes with Žižek’s claim that the Soviet system was an ‘empire of signs’, in which even the Nomenklatura themselves –including Stalin and Molotov – were engaged in interpreting a complex series of social semiotic signals. No-one knew what was required; instead, individuals could only guess what particular gestures or directives meant. What happens in late capitalism, when there is no possibility of appealing, even in principle, to a final authority which can offer the definitive official version, is a massive intensification of that ambiguity. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 101

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the paper-trail/interpretation ambiguity of the LSC (parsed below), which seems to echo the Soviet ‘empire of signs’ but needs a careful check against the actual literature on whether the Nomenklatura were truly deferring to signs rather than exercising power behind the fiction.
• XREF: Chimes with The Frankfurt School chapter on how Institute members like Horkheimer saw Soviet events as driven by meaning-interpretation, and the Kafka material throughout contemporary theory of surveillance. — connects to: Authoritarian measures can persist within nominally democratic structures via normalized crisis — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 7; Totalitarianism works through manipulated needs, not terror — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 109; Confused hierarchies make totalitarian rule shock-proof and command-certain — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 922 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Confused hierarchies make totalitarian rule shock-proof and command-certain #corroborates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 922
• Totalitarian coercion works through a fear of self-contradiction, not the ideology itself. #corroborates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1071
• Totalitarian rule deliberately maintains a gap between official words and actual deeds #expands (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 930
• Totalitarian ideology coerces through the fear of abandoning a first premise #expands (0.80)
• Totalitarianism works through manipulated needs, not terror #expands (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 109