Totalitarianism is inherently, not just contingently, connected to modernity

Evidence

In respect of administrative resources, tendencies towards increasing democratic involvement have as their dark side possibilities for the creation of totalitarian power. The intensifying of surveillance operations provides many avenues of democratic involvement, but also makes possible the sectional control of political power, bolstered by monopolistic access to the means of violence, as an instrument of terror. Totalitarianism and modernity are not just contingently, but inherently, connected, as Zygmunt Bauman in particular has made clear. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Giddens’s thesis that surveillance and trust in expert systems produce totalitarian potential — the same institutional power Stevens defers to in The Remains of the Day. — connects to: Totalitarianism concentrates state powers in ways traditional despotism could not — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 31; Modern capitalist societies experience themselves as pluralistic rather than unified; Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163 (+14 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies the inherent link between modernity’s administrative resources and totalitarian possibility.

Related

• Totalitarianism introduces unprecedented concepts of power and reality (similarity 0.89)
• Totalitarian government differs categorically from dictatorship and tyranny (similarity 0.88)
• Imperialism’s global politics supplied the preconditions for totalitarian rule (similarity 0.87)
• Totalitarianism concentrates state powers in ways traditional despotism could not (similarity 0.85)
• Modernity’s disaster is not backwardness but the domination machinery itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian ritual idolatry is an organizational device, not a religion (similarity 0.82)
• Tyranny is dissolved by predictability or by independent overriding power (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarianism works through manipulated needs, not terror (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian susceptibility persisted from technological and economic developments (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modernity’s globalising tendencies connect individuals to large-scale systems #expands (0.55) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 409
• Modern capitalist societies experience themselves as pluralistic rather than unified #complicates (0.50)
• Three mechanisms drive modernity’s dynamism and process of time-space distanciation #expands (0.50) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 131
• Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self #complicates (0.45) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163