Use of the Word “Ideology”

In what sense do we use the term “ideology” when we talk about “the conflict of ideologies”?

In a column dated July 2, 1941, Miss Dorothy Thompson made frequent use of this term. She says:

The Soviet-German war has ideological consequences, the first being that the Red Army chooses to rally the people around the battle cry of homeland and Russian soil, rather than world Communism. . . . What the ideology of the Red Army may be, time will tell. We suspect that it is nationalist and Russian. . . . In fact we suspect that three ideologies will be liquidated by this war—Communism, Nazi-ism, and Toryism.

Page 106 →In the latter part of her column, Miss Thompson advocates that the United States spend “the cost of one battleship” to finance a “gargantuan propaganda campaign” to present the broad outlines of an American peace to the world—“openly on the air waves of the planet, and twenty-four hours a day.” But she says:

Such a campaign should not be ideological—it should be addressed to the reason, realism, common sense, and heart-broken yearnings of the people of the whole world. . . . Precisely, because the ideologies have all proved themselves to be unmitigated buncombe, the voice of reason—reason combined with power—has an audience.

In these passages, one of the masters of journalistic prose seems to have used the term “ideology” as meaning some system of ideas which has come to be the accepted scheme of thinking of a group, e.g., of the Communist Party, the Nazi Party, or the English Tories, or, as Miss Thompson suggests, possibly of the Red Army of Soviet Russia as a result of the new phase of the war. It is significant to note that Miss Thompson seems to have regarded “ideologies” as having “all proved themselves to be unmitigated buncombe” and as opposed to “the voice of reason.” When a set of ideas, such as “the broad outlines of an American peace,” is addressed to the reason, realism, and common sense of the people, then it is not ideological, even though it be aggressively preached by means of a “gargantuan propaganda campaign,” in all languages “and twenty-four hours a day.”

Here the question arises: Must the term “ideology” be limited to “unmitigated buncombe”? If, according to Miss Thompson, Toryism is an ideology, how about Whiggism and Liberalism? And if the Red Army of Soviet Russia should actually abandon the ideology of world revolution and adopt an ideology which is nationalist and Russian, would it necessarily be another “unmitigated buncombe”?

Since the conflict of ideologies could not be easily and summarily dismissed as merely a conflict among the various schemes of unmitigated buncombe, it seems advisable to regard the term “ideology” not as implying adverse judgment, but merely as a neutral term, meaning any set or system of ideas about life, society, and government, originating in most cases as consciously advocated or dogmatically asserted social, political, or religious slogans or battle cries and, through long processes of propaganda and usage, Page 107 →gradually becoming the characteristic beliefs or dogmas of a particular group, party, or nationality.

In this sense we may better understand the conflict of ideologies of our own times. This conflict is a real conflict among the several contradicting and opposing systems of ideas about life, society, economic organization, and political institutions. It is not merely a conflict between the ideologies of the Left and the Right—between the ideology of the communism of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and the ideologies of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. No. A more real and more fundamental conflict has come about because each of these totalitarian systems has undertaken to condemn, combat, and destroy what all of them regard as their common antithesis, their common enemy, namely, the system of democratic ideas, ideals, practices, and institutions.

Democracies Were Unprepared

The conflict of ideologies is therefore in reality an aggressive onslaught of the totalitarian systems against the ideologically defenseless and unprepared democracies.

The liberal and democratic peoples were unprepared for such an offensive assault because, ever since the great democratic revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the movement of political democracy had carried the day and was triumphantly and confidently beginning to convert the whole civilized world to its several slightly divergent but essentially similar systems of constitutional, parliamentary, democratic forms of government. The age of heated debate and pamphleteering on the pros and cons of republicanism and democracy, of human equality and liberty, had long passed, and the democracies had settled down to consolidate and enjoy their historic gains and had contented themselves with merely making minor modifications or reforms here and there to perfect their social and political institutions. They had least expected, on the eve of winning a stupendous world war waged to make the world safe for democracy, to find themselves suddenly caught in a world revolution which sought to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and to “smash” all bourgeois parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy—a world revolution which openly justified the dictatorial rule of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, “a rule unrestricted by law, based on force,” and which set up the new totalitarianPage 108 → form of government that recognized only the leadership and dictatorship of one party “which does not share and cannot share their leadership with other parties.”

The self-complacent democracies were not prepared to deal with this new movement. Indeed they did not know what to do with it. They were horrified by its ruthless excesses. At first they sought to fight it with armed force. Later they tried to isolate it.

But neither armed force nor diplomacy nor isolation could stop the spread of this antidemocratic movement throughout the world. And the world had not been made safe for democracy. Wherever there was confusion, disorder, and discontent, there was fertile soil for the rise and growth of dictatorship. Autocratic rule seemed to point the way to Order, Strength, Employment, Prosperity, and Glory. Indeed it promised Utopia.

Thus in the course of two decades, antidemocratic movements have taken possession of many lands and large populations. By 1922 Mussolini’s fascism captured Italy. By 1933 Hitler’s national socialism conquered Germany. International communism and nationalistic fascism and Nazism, while they differ in numerous details, agree in their attack on the democratic ideas and ideals and in their totalitarian dictatorial political systems.

Role of Propaganda

This new despotism was forceful, unscrupulous, ruthless, and self-righteous. It had vigor, freshness, and glamour. It was, above all, aggressive in its attacks on the democracies. The democracies were dazzled and puzzled by this aggressive and destructive criticism. They were not ready to answer back. They were vaguely conscious of the historical value of their own institutions; they vaguely talked about their own “way of life” as being worth preserving; but they were backward and inefficient in organizing propaganda and in working out a simplified and unified scheme of ideological defense. They are too proud and too self-complacent to defend themselves against what they consider unmitigated bunk. And they are too individualistic ever to undertake organized propaganda effectively. For it is propaganda which has been chiefly responsible for the great success in the spread of antidemocratic movements and in the attack on and discrediting of democratic ideas and institutions. In the words of Adolf Hitler, the greatest master of the science and art of propaganda, the task of propaganda

Page 109 →has not to search into truth as far as this is favorable to others, in order to present it to the masses with doctrinary honesty, but it has rather to serve its own truth uninterruptedly . . . it has to confine itself to little and repeat this eternally. . . . The purpose of propaganda is not continually to produce interesting changes for a few blasé little masters, but to convince; that means, to convince the masses. The masses, however, with their inertia, always need a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and they will lend their memories only to the thousandfold repetition of the most simple ideas.122

It is this “thousandfold repetition of the most simple ideas” which has gradually undermined the faith of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in the ideas and ideals of the democratic movement which had become fairly generally accepted by the intelligentsia and the people of the modern world. “Representative democratic government is the political concomitant of economic capitalism.” “Democracy is the decadent form of government.” “The goddess of Liberty is dead and her body is already putrescent.”123 “Down with bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy.” Against the powerful propaganda of such simple ideas, the democratic peoples, in their traditional disdain and self-complacency, have made no attempt to defend their own institutions and the philosophies behind them.

Democracies Are Aroused

It is only during these last years of the second World War that a few great leaders of the democracies have begun to fight back the organized attack of the totalitarian nations. It has taken an unprecedented war and the rapid conquest of a dozen free and democratic nations to make these leaders realize the seriousness of the antidemocratic campaign. The great tragedy of Europe and the great threat to the Anglo-Saxon world have now begun to force upon the surviving democracies the real gravity of the conflict of ideologies—a conflict which, in the last analysis, is no more and no less than a well-planned and powerfully directed ideological propaganda against the very foundations of democratic institutions and democratic civilization.

Page 110 →Of the few great leaders who are fully aware of the dangers of this antidemocratic attack stands pre-eminently President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his Dayton speech of October 12, 1940, President Roosevelt said:

We are determined to use our energies and our resources to counteract and repel the foreign plots, the propaganda, the whole technique of underground warfare originating in Europe and now clearly directed against all of the republics on this side of the ocean.

That propaganda repeats and repeats that democracy is a decadent form of government. They tell us that our old democratic ideal, our old traditions of civil liberties are things of the past.

We reject that thought. We say that we are the future. We say that the direction in which they would lead us is backward to the bondage of the Pharaohs, backward to the slavery of the Middle Ages.

In his Third Inaugural Address of January 20, 1941, he sounded the same battle cry:

There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate—that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future, and that freedom is an ebbing tide. But we Americans know that this is not true. . . .

Most vital to our present and to our future is this experience (of the last eight years) of a democracy which successfully survived crises at home; put away many evil things; built new structures on enduring lines; and, through it all, maintained the fact of its democracy.

For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The co-ordinate branches of the government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have their dire predictions come to naught.

No, democracy is not dying.

We know it because we have seen it revive and grow.

We know it cannot die because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.

Page 111 →We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will.

We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.

In these utterances the conflict is defined, the challenge accepted, and the battle joined. It is a conflict of democracy versus tyranny, of freedom versus slavery, of government by constitution and law versus absolute dictatorial power, of free expression of men’s enlightened will versus blind and unconditional obedience to party and “leader.”

In a remarkable communication published in The New York Times on May 11, 1941, Mr. Max Eastman (who was twice tried and barely escaped a jail sentence for having too vigorously opposed American entrance into the last World War) strongly advocates that “vicarious belligerence” in the form of all-out aid to Britain is not enough and that the American Nation

ought to be ready, in case of certain need, to fight by England’s side . . . this war is not merely a struggle for national power, but a struggle between democracy and tyranny. This war is, if any war in history ever was, a war between two ways of life. . . . The conflict between Babylon and Judea, Egypt and Assyria, Athens and Sparta, Greece and Persia even, showed no cultural contrast to compare with that between modern democracy and totalitarianism.

Characteristics of Totalitarianism

To prove this emphatic statement of the gigantic struggle Mr. Eastman enumerates twenty-one major traits of totalitarianism, “every one of them to be found in Germany, Italy, and Russia, not one in England or the United States.” As his “condensed list” represents a concrete method of describing the two opposing ways of life lying behind the conflict of ideologies, I reproduce it here in further condensed form. The twenty-one major traits of totalitarianism are:

1. 1. Nationalistic emotion is exalted to the point of religious frenzy.
2. 2. A single party, disciplined like an army, takes over the power of the state.
3. Page 112 → 3. Dissenting opinion is ruthlessly stamped out.
4. 4. Supernatural religion is subordinated to the religion of nationalism.
5. 5. The “leader” forms the focus of devotion and becomes to all intents and purposes a god.
6. 6. Anti-intellectualism in the form of flattery to the ignorant and severe penalty to honest thinking.
7. 7. Anti-intellectualism in the form of destruction of books and distortion of historical and scientific truth.
8. 8. Anti-intellectualism in the form of abolishing disinterested science and honest scholarship.
9. 9. Dogma replaces debate and the press is controlled by the party and the state.
10. 10. Cultural isolation of the population in order to prevent it from knowing the real condition of the outside world.
11. 11. Party control of creative art.
12. 12. Immoralism in all forms of political lying and governmental hypocrisy.
13. 13. Immoralism in the form of state-planned crimes.
14. 14. Encouragement of the people to bait and torture the so-called public enemies.
15. 15. Revival of the barbaric principle of family and tribal guilt for the crime of such public enemies.
16. 16. Preparations for perpetual war and complete militarization of the population.
17. 17. Reckless encouragement of increase in population.
18. 18. Subordination of women.
19. 19. Liberal use of the phraseology of working-class revolution against capitalism.
20. 20. Prohibition of strikes and protests from labor, and the destruction of labor movements.
21. 21. Industry, commerce, and agriculture are controlled by the party and the leader.

President Roosevelt refutes the charge that democracy is the decadent and dying form of government by showing that the democratic system has the vitality to revive and grow. Mr. Max Eastman dramatizes the sharpness of the fundamental struggle by enumerating the evil and barbaric features peculiar to totalitarianism and absent in the democracies. These represent two distinct Page 113 →and valuable ways to meet the antidemocratic challenge and attack. They present two approaches to the study of the “conflict of ideologies.”

But there seems to be room for a third and possibly other approaches to the problem. In the remaining portion of this article, I propose to resolve the conflict of democratic and antidemocratic ideologies into a few deeper and more basic philosophical conflicts.

What, then, are the basic concepts which differentiate the democratic way of life from the antidemocratic way of life?

Going beyond the old and familiar slogans and ideas (such is “liberty, equality, fraternity,” and “natural and inalienable rights,” etc.) I should like to suggest that the real conflict between the democratic and antidemocratic way of life is centered around two basic contradictions or antithesis: (1) It is the technique of radical and cataclysmic revolution versus the technique of progressive and piecemeal reform. (2) It is the principle of uniformity versus the principle of diversified individual development.

Radical Revolution Versus Piecemeal Reform

The first basic characteristic of totalitarian regimes is that they all stand for radical and catastrophic revolution and that they all scorn and spurn specific reforms as superficial and useless. Not only have they achieved absolute political power through revolution and violence, but they have all invariably sought to perpetuate the technique of violent revolution and to universalize that technique in order to bring about similar cataclysmal revolution throughout the whole world. They are the self-appointed apostles and champions of “total revolution,” of “world revolution,” of “permanent revolution,” of “eternal war.”

The Communist Manifesto of 1848 calls for a world-wide communist revolution:

Communists scorn to hide their views and aims. They openly declare that their purpose can only be achieved by the forcible overthrow of the whole extant social order.

All the totalitarian systems that have arisen since 1917 have been revolutions of the radical and cataclysmal kind in the sense that they all seek, in the words of Adolf Hitler, “to pull down a world and build up a new one.” Page 114 →Moreover, their leaders were all obsessed by the idea that it was not possible to overthrow the whole extant social order in any one country without at the same time overthrowing the same social order in the neighboring countries. Hence the necessity of world revolution, of “total” revolution. And the technique of revolution must be violent and catastrophic: it must destroy everything of the old order. “There is nothing,” says Hermann Rauschning in his Revolution of Nihilism, “that this destruction would spare. And nothing will be taken over from the old order into the new, neither army nor church, neither the institutions of property nor the elements of culture.”124

It is this eternal stress on the necessity of radical and violent revolution, both as an internal political technique and as world policy, which constitutes the first basic concept differentiating these totalitarian systems from the modern democracies. I say “modern democracies” advisedly, for, as we can recall, one hundred and fifty years ago there were apostles of republicanism, like Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Babeuf, who believed in and practiced the technique of violent revolution. Even Thomas Paine gloried in the prospect of a general revolution in the system of governments of Europe. He wrote to Lafayette in February 1792: “When France shall be surrounded by Revolutions she will be in peace and safety.”

Progress as Viewed by the Democracies

But the modern democracies have in general abandoned the idea of radical revolution and are content with piecemeal processes of social, economic, and political reform. Vaguely and unconsciously, but unmistakably, the basic philosophy of modern democratic political procedure is that progress is not made by violent and destructive upheavals, but by the steady accumulation of specific improvements and reforms.

American philosophers have tried to make this unconscious tendency into a conscious and articulate philosophy. William James used the word “meliorism” to denote an ethical philosophy which teaches that the world is imperfect and incomplete but that man has the power to aid its betterment. John Dewey has developed a theory of progress: “Progress is not a wholesale matter, but a retail job, to be contracted for and executed in sections.”125 This Page 115 →conception of progress calls for neither radical revolution nor fatalistic laissez faire, but for individual effort, devotion, intelligence, and patience. In the words of President Roosevelt: “Democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.” As the history of the centuries has shown, that progress in the improvement of human life has been in the main brought about through what Dewey calls “a retail job.”

This difference between radical catastrophic revolution and piecemeal improvement I consider the most fundamental antithesis between the democratic and the totalitarian ways of life. This basic difference explains almost everything else in the conflicting systems.

It explains, for instance, why antidemocratic regimes must be dictatorial and totalitarian. All social radicalism must inevitably lead to political dictatorship, because only absolute power can achieve the task of radical revolution; only violence and unlimited terroristic despotism can accomplish the complete overthrow of the extant order and prevent its return or revival. As Lenin put it:

Revolution is undoubtedly the most authoritarian thing in the world. Revolution is an act in which one section of the population imposes its will upon the other by rifles, bayonets, and other such exceedingly authoritarian means.126

For such a revolution, it was thought absolutely necessary to have dictatorship, which Lenin himself defined as “an authority relying directly upon force, and not bound by any laws.” Marx had said that a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat was probably necessary for the period of transition from capitalist to communist society. But the task of cataclysmic revolution can never be completed; and there is always the danger of the return to power of the dispossessed and overthrown opposition. The much-heralded world revolution seems so slow in coming. And there have arisen counterrevolutions in those countries where revolutions had been expected. So the dictatorships must continue indefinitely!

Page 116 →Dictatorial Power Rarely Needed

On the other hand, the democratic regimes which have been accustomed to the method of piecemeal legislative remedies and reforms have rarely felt the need for absolute dictatorial power. In time of war or grave internal crisis, they can always delegate special powers to their executive leaders. But in time of peace, they are content with their “retail job” of meting out specific measures to meet the particular needs of the nation. It may take twenty years to make a Federal income tax possible. It may take a decade to repeal national prohibition. In the life of a nation the apparent wastage of a few days of debate or even a few years of discussion is nothing compared with the loss of basic liberties under an absolute totalitarian rule.

The same fundamental difference also explains why so many idealistic spirits are much attracted to antidemocratic systems. The democratic procedure of specific remedial reforms is often so slow and so superficial and inadequate that impatient souls are naturally attracted to the so-called “revolutionary” systems in which dictatorial power seems to promise more thorough, more radical, and more rapid realization of their idealistic dreams. It often requires long years of hard experience and sad disillusionment before these idealistic dreamers can realize that there is no short cut to progress, and that the peaceful and piecemeal process of reform and amelioration is after all the truly democratic way of life.

Uniformity Versus Diversity

The second basic characteristic of totalitarian civilization is that it cannot tolerate diversity or individual variation, but always seeks to bring a whole people to conform to a uniform pattern. This is true of political belief, religious faith, intellectual life, as well as economic organization. Political activity is directed and controlled by a minority clique which is regimented like a military machine and which pledges its absolute obedience to the leader. All opposition and dissent are proscribed and stamped out. In religious life, the leaders of these totalitarian regimes claim to have been emancipated from the shackles of the traditional supernatural religion; but they seek to impose their antireligionism upon the entire population and to suppress all freedom and independence in religious groups. In intellectual life, no freedom of thought and expression is permitted. Science and education must be subordinatedPage 117 → to the interest of the party and the state, and thought must not deviate from the “party line.” In economic life, the state seeks to impose a uniform system on the whole society in accordance with the determined economic policy of the time. Whether it be communism, state socialism, or collectivization of agriculture, it is always a uniform system enforced by the ruthless power of the state. Labor movement is nonexistent in all totalitarian regimes, because industry and production are carried on by the state. There is no strike, no protest of labor; and sabotage, the only method of passive protest, is a crime punishable by the most severe penalties.

In every one of these various phases of life, it is always the leader, the party, or the state—which are one and the same thing—that decides upon the “norm” to be accepted by all. No individual is allowed to differ, deviate, or dissent from the official policy or party line. “There is no freedom of the individual,” says Dr. Goebbels, “there is only freedom of peoples, nations, or races.” Dr. Goebbels defends the right of the party to be intolerant to nonconformity in these words: “As we are convinced that we are right, we cannot tolerate any other in our neighborhood who claims also to be right.”

It is this extreme desire for uniformity and suppression of diversity in all phases of life that clearly characterizes the antidemocratic civilization as distinct from the democratic way of life.

The democratic way of life is essentially individualistic. Historically it began with religious nonconformity. It was this primary religious individualism which inspired the first ideas of freedom. The defenders of religious freedom were willing to sacrifice their lives and property in their struggle against oppression and interference. The freedom of the individual to worship his God in his own way was at the root of all the historic beginnings of the modern democratic spirit and institutions.

The same spirit of nonconformity is responsible for the other liberties: freedom of thought, of the expression and publication of thought, freedom of assembly, and so forth. The fundamental thing is the desire of the individual to secure free development and expression of his personal and private feeling, thought, and belief. It is a fight for the right to differ—the right not to conform to an established or dictated pattern.

Democratic institutions have been the products of this spirit of nonconformity in religious belief, in intellectual conviction, in social and political opinion, and in life in general. Democratic civilization is the creation by those individualistic and freedom-loving persons who valued their liberty above their bread, and truth above their life. The political systems which Page 118 →have come to be called democratic are no more and no less than the political safeguards which these nonconformist free spirits have devised or evolved for the protection of their liberties.

Even the economic aspect of democratic civilization is not uniformly capitalistic as it has often been thought to be. If private ownership and free enterprise have been long maintained and at a time even elevated as a natural and inalienable right, it was because historically they were efficient and conducive to the development of individual initiative, and because they were thought to have made possible a standard of economic well-being higher than any other economic system had ever attained.

Diversity of Economic Development

But the distinctive feature of the economic aspect of modern democratic civilization is best shown in the rich diversity of economic development. As has been pointed out by a contemporary economist,127 modern American economic life, for example, can be analyzed into at least five divergent systems, flourishing simultaneously side by side. There is (1) the traditional capitalist system of small individual owners of stores, farms, laundries, teashops, and so on. There is (2) the economic system of Big Ownership—the great corporations. There is (3) the economic system of the public utilities. There is (4) the economic system of public corporations such as the Post Office and the T.V.A. And there are (5) the various types of “private collectivisms”—the universities, the churches, and the consumer and producer co-operatives. All these and possibly other various “systems” are functioning simultaneously to satisfy the economic needs of the people. And the same picture is more or less true of the other democratic countries. The important thing to note is the absence of any serious attempt to bring these various systems under a single scheme.

Thus we can say that the second basic concept which differentiates the democratic from the totalitarian civilization is the rigid uniformity in the one and the rich diversity and individuality in the other. This contrast cuts through all phases of life. The desire for uniformity leads to suppression of individual initiative, to the dwarfing of personality and creative effort, to intolerance, oppression, and slavery, and, worst of all, to intellectual dishonestyPage 119 → and moral hypocrisy. On the other hand, the traditional respect for and encouragement of diversity and nonconformity leads to enrichment of personality and associated life, to the development of free institutions, to the free flowering of disinterested and creative scholarship and thought, and, above all, to the spirit of tolerance and the love of freedom and truth.

Conclusion

In conclusion, therefore, I should like to suggest that the real conflict of ideologies can be resolved into a conflict between these basic concepts: It is, on the one hand, a conflict between the technique of radical and catastrophic revolution and the technique of patient, piecemeal, and specific amelioration; and, on the other hand, it is a conflict between the desire to enforce uniformity in all phases of life and the respect for free and diversified individual development. The defense of the democratic way of life and democratic institutions can only be based on a clear understanding of the value of a wholesome individualism of free and nonconformist personalities and a deep appreciation of the importance of patient forbearance for the slow but truly democratic technique of piecemeal reforms. Progress is always a retail job, and civilization is barren without individual diversity and initiative.

Hu Shih, Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D., D.C.L., is Chinese Ambassador to the United States. He has been professor of Chinese philosophy, professor of history of Chinese literature, and dean of the College of Letters at the National Peking University, Peiping, China. He is author of numerous works in Chinese, including a History of Chinese Philosophy and fourteen volumes of Collected Essays. His writings in English include “The Development of Logical Method in Ancient China” (1922) and “The Chinese Renaissance” (1934).128