Totalitarian Democracy and After: International Colloquium in Memory of Jacob L. Talmon, Jerusalem, 21-24 June 1982

422 Pages·1984·7.448 MB·English

by  Yehoshua Arieli

TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY AND AFTER

TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY
AND AFTER
INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM
IN MEMORY OF JACOB L. TALMON
JERUSALEM, 21-24 JUNE 1982
THE ISRAEL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY
JERUSALEM 1984
ISBN 965-208-064-0
1984
The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University
Printed in Israel
at Alpha Press Ltd., Jerusalem
PREFACE
T he concept of totalitarian democracy gained widespread
currency among students of modem history largely after the publication
of Jacob L. Talmon’s first book and his analysis there. In this colloquium,
dedicated to his memory, the organizers decided to investigate further
the meaning of this formulation as well as to explore its repercussions
on contemporary historical and literary trends and its relevance to
the political traditions and dynamics of countries and continents today.
Talmon’s passionate interest in the Jewish situation and its expressions
in various ideologies, mainly their culmination in Zionism, have been
given attention in a special section of the colloquium.
Talmon served as Professor of Modem History at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem and was a long-time member of the Israel Academy of
Sciences and Humanities, until his untimely death in June 1980. The
colloquium is sponsored by these two institutions.
The present volume contains the major papers presented at the
colloquium, as well as those of the commentators who were invited
to participate in the discussions. We hope that this forum of distin­
guished contributors will serve its purpose in commemorating Jacob
Talmon’s opus and will elicit a response of continuous interest in the
challenges of this subject.
On behalf of the Hebrew University and the Israel Academy of Sciences
and Humanities we wish to thank the organizing committee for pre­
paring the programme of the colloquium, and Professor Yehoshua
Arieli who, as chairman of the Professor Talmon Memorial Foundation,
took part in all the arrangements. We wish to express our gratitude
to the participants who prepared their papers for publication as well
as to Mrs Yvonne Glikson who took care of the volume for press.
Nathan Rotenstreich

CONTENTS
PREFACE
Yehoshua Arieli: Jacob Talmon — An Intellectual Portrait 1
PART I: THE HISTORIOGRAPHY AND PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY IN RELATION TO HISTORICAL REAL­
ITY IN TERMS OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY
John Dunn: Totalitarian Democracy and the Legacy of Modern
Revolutions — Explanation or Indictment? 37
James H. Billington: Rival Revolutionary Ideals 56
Karl Dietrich Bracher: Turn of the Century and Totalitarian Ideology 70
PART II: TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY — CUL­
TURAL TRADITIONS AND MODERNIZATION
S. N. Eisenstadt: Totalitarian Democracy — Cultural Traditions and
Modernization. Introductory Remarks 83
Michael Heyd: Christian Antecedents to Totalitarian Democratic
Ideologies in the Early Modern Period 86
Shlomo Avineri: Different Visions of Political Messianism in the
Marxist European Tradition 96
Michael Confino: Russian and Western European Roots of Soviet
Totalitarianism 104
Moshe Zimmermann: The Historical Setting of German Totalitarianism 118
Hava Lazarus-Yafeh: Political Traditions and Responses in Islam 128
Uriel Tal: Totalitarian Democratic Hermeneutics and Policies in Modern
Jewish Religious Nationalism 137
Ben-Ami Shillony: Traditional Constraints on Totalitarianism in Japan 158
PART III: THE VARIETIES AND TRANSFORMA­
TIONS OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY IN DIF­
FERENT COUNTRIES AND UNDER DIFFERENT
REGIMES
George L. Mosse: Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian
Democracy Revisited 167
Yaron Ezrahi: Political Style and Political Theory — Totalitarian Democ­
racy Revisited. Comments on George L. Mosse3s Paper 177
vii
Michael Walzer: Totalitarianism and Tyranny 183
Yirmiahu Yovcl: Totalitarianism and Totality. A Response to Michael
Walzer 193
Zeev Sternhell: Aux sources de l'idéologie fasciste: La révolte socialiste
contre le matérialisme 197
Baruch Knei-Paz: Ideas, Political Intentions and Historical Consequences
— The Case of the Russian Revolution 232
Richard Lowenthal: Totalitarianism and After in Communist Party
Regimes 262
Harold Z. Schiffrin: Totalitarianism and After in Communist Party
Regimes. Comments on Richard LowenthaVs Paper 323
PART IV: THE IMPACT OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOC­
RACY ON THE JEWISH SITUATION
Jonathan Frankel: Democracy and Its Negations — On Polarity in
Jewish Socialism 329
Israel Kolatt: Zionism and Political Messianism 342
Anita Shapira: Zionism and Political Messianism. Comments on Israel
Kolatt’s Paper 354
Erik Cohen: The Israeli Kibbutz — The Dynamics of Pragmatic
Utopianism 362
Menachem Rosner: The Israeli Kibbutz — The Dynamics of Pragmatic
Utopianism. Comments on Erik Cohen9s Paper 377
Ben Halpem: The Context of Hannah Arendt9s Concept of Total­
itarianism 386
Ephraim E. Urbach: Between Rulers and Ruled — Some Aspects of
the Jewish Tradition 399
Jacob Talmon — An Intellectual Portrait
by
YEHOSHUA ARIELI
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
I am aware of the honour and responsibility in being asked to
open this colloquium with an evocation of the memory of the man in
whose honour we have convened and to draw for you here the image
of Jacob Talmon that will do justice to his personality and his work.
Let me remind you of some of the features familiar to all who knew
him : his emotional intensity and élan ; the sensitivity and generosity
of his mind and heart ; the never stilled thirst for knowledge and
experience ; his curiosity and open-mindedness concerning people and
the affairs of men ; his passionate participation in the affairs of his
country and his times ; his moral seriousness and sense of responsibility
as a citizen of his country and the world ; his need to give testimony
to his convictions, and his courage to do so in the face of a hostile
public.
Such a man could not and would not be a secluded scholar, an intel­
lectual who kept aloof from the rough and tumble of events, people,
causes and issues. On the contrary, though the centre of his life and
mind lay in his intellectual work, this was inseparably bound up with
the world in which he lived and with the predicaments of his times.
Talmon was possessed by a never-ceasing urge to size up intellectually,
to penetrate empathically the world of man, to capture its spirit and
aspirations and understand its dilemmas and perplexities. He did so
in order to recreate his insights as powerful works of historical critique
on the character and course of the modern world.
The life of Talmon was encompassed by the violent, chaotic and
revolutionary period of post-World-War I, first in his native Poland,
then in Mandatory Palestine, in France and England during World
War II, and eventually in the State of Israel from 1949. It was the
overwhelming power of the events of these times which determined
his choice of work as a historian and writer.
[1]
Totalitarian Democracy and After
At first sight Talmon seemed to be one of the many Jewish intellectuals
of our age who devoted themselves to the study and interpretation of
their times because of their basic insecurity and alienation and because
they were endowed with a rare sensitivity and almost prophetic capacity
of divination and insight into the great currents and undercurrents of
contemporary society. Like many of them he was a man whose pro­
vince was the whole world and who thought in terms of universal
history, in terms of the great movements which have shaped the fate
of man in our age.
There is little doubt that the unique position which Talmon held as
a historian and intellectual in Israel was due to his wider role as an
interpreter of the modem world and of its ideological and spiritual
forces, as an observer and a critic of the fundamental trends and
attitudes which characterize the entire human condition in our time.
Yet this was not the complete picture. Talmon was always part, and,
more to the point, felt himself always part, of an intensely experienced
community of belonging and aspirations. To him the Jewish world of
Eastern Europe with its life-style, passions, and visions, the Zionist
movement with its aspirations and loyalties and the new Jewish society
of Palestine and the State of Israel were his true home.
Despite growing alienation towards certain trends in Israel after 1967
Talmon remained totally committed, in loyalty and involvement, to
Israel as an idea and as a reality, its development and survival. This
feeling of rootedness and belonging gave Talmon a base of security
and self-assurance in relation to his own society as well as to that of
the wider world ; a sense of measure and balance as well as criteria
of reasonableness and reality in his approach toward events, ideas,
policies and people.
Jerusalem and the Hebrew University, its faculty and student body,
were integral to Talmon’s sense of partnership and community. Talmon
spent most of his life in the city of Jerusalem. He made his home and'
brought up his family there, becoming a member of the community
of scholars, public servants and intellectuals.
When he first came to the Hebrew University Talmon was part of a
small body of students who had only recently arrived from Central
and Eastern Europe. All of them were deeply aware of the unique
significance of the Hebrew University for the renascence of the Jewish
people in its ancient homeland and in its eternal city. From the
university on Mount Scopus, with its vistas over the Judaean Desert,
the Jordan valley and the mountains of Moab, in sight of the Old City
of Jerusalem with the Temple Mount, its spires and holy places, and
the new Jewish city growing outside the walls, Talmon first explored
[2]