The success of totalitarian movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled countries in general and of European nation-states and their party system in particular. The first was that the people in its majority had taken an active part in government and that each individual was in sympathy with one's own or somebody else's party. On the contrary, the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country, that therefore a democracy could function according to rules which are actively recognized by only a minority. The second democratic illusion exploded by the totalitarian movements was that these politically indifferent masses did not matter, that they were truly neutral and constituted no more than the inarticulate backward setting for the political life of the nation. Now they made apparent what no other organ of public opinion had ever been able to show, namely, that democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country. Thus when the totalitarian movements invaded Parliament with their contempt for parliamentary government, they merely appeared inconsistent: actually, they succeeded in convincing the people at large that parliamentary majorities were spurious and did not necessarily correspond to the realities of the country, thereby undermining the self-respect and the confidence of governments which also believed in majority rule rather than in their constitutions.
It has frequently been pointed out that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them. This is not just devilish cleverness on the part of the leaders or childish stupidity on the part of the masses. Democratic freedoms may be based on the equality of all citizens before the law; yet they acquire their meaning and function organically only where the citizens belong to and are represented by groups or form a social and political hierarchy. The breakdown of the class system, the only social and political stratification of the European nation-states, certainly was "one of the most dramatic events in recent German history" and...favorable to the rise of Nazism....--Hannah Arendt (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3: Totalitarianism (Chapter 10: "A Classless Society"), New Edition, pp. 312-313. ]
I often return to the quoted passage. It's not unfair to say that quite a bit of existing normative and deliberative democratic theory (alongside much social theory) tacitly continues to adhere to the illusions diagnosed by Arendt. It's often treated as bad taste or, worse, a sign of one's reactionary sensibility to point this out. And if you don't believe me, recall all the good things that are supposed to flow -- as you probably also believe my dear reader -- from (say) the abolition of the electoral college once pure majoritarianism can work its magic.
While it is easy to be distracted by Arendt's argument for the functionality of social hierarchy to democratic political life, the key historical claim that she makes is that the ideology or commitments of governments (and the minority of rotating elites that can form one) are central to the survival of liberal democracy or parliamentarianism. And she implies that if (ruling) political elites had been less respectful of majoritarianism and more willing to defend constitutional government, the collapse of liberal democracy could have been prevented.
The point is not a historical (or moral one), but rather follows from her observation that [liberal] "democracy could function according to rules which are actively recognized by only a minority." That is to say, that as long as elites are willing to adhere to constitutional norms because these are part of their esprit des corps or shared ideology liberal democracy can survive. Lurking in Arendt's argument are the ideas of Pareto, Michels, Mosca, and Schumpeter. (She cites Michels a few pages before, and mentions Pareto in passing later.)*
Of course, the more fundamental point is that for there to be elites in the relevant sense, society needs to have the right sort of social hierarchy that maps onto political hierarchies as instantiated by political parties and social intermediaries. On her view liberal democracy is compatible with mass society -- notwithstanding Arendt's own recurring nostalgia for the ancient Polis -- as long as social differentiation can be made politically functional.
I don't mean to deny that one could respond to Arendt's claim by arguing that if liberal democracy is to be secure one could also aim to convince the vast majority that it should adhere to constitutionalism. Surely civic religion -- with ceremonial pledges to constitutions not to monarchs/presidents/flags -- can be organized to promote this. And one may well believe that by serving the interests of the majority, constitutional elites can gain its approbation and support. I don't think Arendt would disagree as long as the elites don't assume that this is sufficient for constitutional survival (that's one of the exploded illusions).
It's pretty clear today that the enemies of liberal democracy are better students of earlier collapses of democracy than its defenders are. For in many countries they aim, while drawing on all kinds of conspiracy theories, to convince the people at large that parliamentary majorities are spurious and do not correspond to the realities of the country. In fact, they relentlessly aim to show that all kinds of elites (medical, legal, political, academic, etc.) are 'out of touch' or 'in a bubble' or lacking in 'common sense.' (Recall also Michael Polanyi's diagnosis.) This is why the unwillingness to pay lip-service to abide by electoral outcomes, or to suggest that these are fictitious (based on fraud etc.), are themselves signs that one is unwilling to act according to the rules of democratic and constitutional life, but that one stakes one's political fortune on a truer reality.
In larger context, Arendt is predicting that the spirit of totalitarianism is not defeated permanently in Europe because the grounds of its revival -- "isolation and lack of normal social relationships" (317) -- are not gone with the end of war. (One fears the pandemic may well be an accelerating cause.) In mass society the views of the fundamentally unpolitical majority are shaped by "all-pervasive influences and convictions which [are] tacitly and inarticulately shared by all classes of society alike." (314) And these convictions are even with a robust civic religion never fundamentally about constitutional life; they are about nation, religion, a cult of financial success, celebrity, etc.
It may seem that Arendt rests her hopes on the prudence or interest of political elites in the status quo to fight off the would-be-usurpers. But as she notes, this cannot be expected when respectability and playing by the rules are treated as naïve (that is, when the gangster's practices becomes admired), and when constitutional order itself is taken to be the barrier to action and the true destiny of society.
The Origins of Totalitarianism is not a manual for the survival of liberal democracy. In fact, as Arendt explicitly notes in the book there are, in addition to totalitarianism, more ways democracy can end (e.g., fascism, military dictatorships, plebiscitary dictatorship, etc.). But it's very hard not to read chapter 10 without coming away thinking that liberal democracy is doomed. Nearly all the examples she mentions of the anticipations of democratic decay in the arts and social culture can be updated to our age. And if one is familiar with Arendt's essays from the 1960s, one can't help but think this pessimism stayed with her. Yet, it's seventy years on, and European liberal democracy with its re-founded parties turned out to be much more robust in a mass age than Arendt seems to have thought possible. Why this is so --memory of the earlier collapse or a side-effect of cold war, American empire, years of prosperity, or a new kind of stratification (based on education) -- I do not know. Perhaps, social differentiation was made politically functional. But even in our post-post-modern age, dancing on the precipice of environmental catastrophe, it is worth figuring out.
*There is no mention of Popper, but we're clearly in the ambit of his views on how to defend democracy from its enemies.
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