Richard Löwenthal
Encyclopedia
Richard Löwenthal was a Jewish German journalist
and professor who wrote mostly on the problems of democracy
, communism
, and world politics.
, economics
, and sociology
at Berlin University
and Heidelberg University
. His major intellectual influences were Max Weber
and Karl Mannheim
. From 1926 until 1929, Löwenthal was a member of the Communist Party of Germany
, which he left over opposition to the tactics of the Comintern. Remaining on the Left, Löwenthal was a member of several dissident breakaway groups from the KPD in the last years of the Weimar Republic
.
In 1933 Löwenthal was a prominent member of the anti-Nazi group Neu Beginnen
(New Beginnings) which sought to organize the German working class
to overthrow the Nazi regime. During this period, Löwenthal adopted the alias Paul Sering. In July 1933, the New Beginnings group broke up under the impact of a huge wave of Gestapo
arrests of its members. As a wanted man, Löwenthal continued to work for an anti-Nazi working-class revolution
until increasing pressure from the Gestapo led Löwenthal to flee to the United Kingdom
in August 1935. Subsequently Löwenthal moved to Prague
, Czechoslovakia
where he remained active in left-wing German émigré groups. From April 1936 until October 1937, Löwenthal worked as a researcher in London
before returning to Prague. Following the Munich Agreement
of 1938, Löwenthal fled to Paris
, France
and then in 1939 returned to London, which was to be Löwenthal’s home until 1959. During the 1930s, in his writings Löwenthal expressed strong criticism of the definition of fascism
proposed by the Comintern
, and in particular criticized the Comintern’s social fascism
theory which held that moderate left-wing groups such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany
and Labour Party
were much fascist as were the Nazi Party, and if anything were more dangerous because of their “disguised” fascist nature, in contrast to the “open fascism” of the Nazis. Starting in 1935, Löwenthal started to work on as his own definition of Fascism
, which was strongly influenced by the work of Otto Bauer
and Franz Leopold Neumann
. In these writings, Löwenthal concluded that Nazi Germany
was not a puppet of Big Business as the Comintern had claimed and that, in fact, the Nazi regime was in and of itself the supreme power in the land. During the late 1930s, Löwenthal decided that another world war was inevitable, and saw his main task as preparing the German left for that war.
During his time in Great Britain
, Löwenthal was close to the Fabian Society
and helped publish The International Socialist Forum. From 1940 until 1942, Löwenthal worked for the BBC
’s German language
program, Sender der europäischen Revolution. In 1941, Löwenthal published a book that argued after the war, it was highly necessary for the Soviet Union
to be given the lion’s share of the responsibility of governing Germany after the war as the best means of ensuring the triumph of the German Left. After 1943, Löwenthal disallowed this position and instead urged that the main responsibility of re-building Germany after the war be given to the Western powers, who were, in Löwenthal ’s opinion, the best powers for ensuring a democratic Germany. Löwenthal very much admired the Labour Party
and in several articles after 1945, urged that West Germany
adopted the British model for its economic organization. In 1945, Löwenthal joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany
. In his 1948 book, Jenseits des Kapitalismus, Lowenthal called for a Socialist reconstruction of the European system with an especially prominent role to be allocated to Great Britain as the most progressive of the European powers. An Anglophile, Lowenthal was much influenced by his time in Britain. Lowenthal was late to write that “In England the German socialist emigrants got to know an impressive model of a free democracy which proved its worth under extreme external pressure; thus they were essentially confirmed in their democratic conviction and prepared for the task that awaited them after the war. The English, at least those who lent the emigrant an ear and cooperated with them, gathered new hope that a true democracy might be established in Germany and contributed considerably to the realization of this model during the first harsh postwar years. After a lapse of several decades, I can thus state with conviction that in spite of all the initial difficulties, the encounter proved rewarding to both sides”.
Until 1958, Löwenthal worked as a reporter for Reuters
press agency and The Observer
newspaper
. In 1959 Löwenthal became a professor in political science
at the Free University of Berlin
. In 1974 Löwenthal became the Professor Emeritus at the Free University. Löwenthal ’s chief interests were Communism
and Eastern Europe
. In 1960, Löwenthal married the sociologist Charlotte Abrahamsohn. Löwenthal was a strong advocate of closer European integration and of an Atlanticist
orientation. In the late 1960s, Löwenthal was initially sympathetic towards student protestors, but turned against what he regarded as the destructive anarchism and “romantic relapse” into Marxism
of the New Left
and rejected their call for a West German pull-out from NATO as opening the door for the Soviet conquest of Western Europe
.
In work on the Soviet Union
, Löwenthal's major interests were the emergence of what he considered to an element of pluralism into Soviet politics, especially during the rule of Nikita Khrushchev
. Unlike other totalitarianism theories such as Juan Linz
and Karl Dietrich Bracher
, whose work was chiefly inspired by studying Nazi Germany
Löwenthal based his studies largely upon developments in the Soviet Union and East Bloc. One of Löwenthal’s more notable ideas was that under the rule of Joseph Stalin
, the Soviet Union had been a totalitarian
state, but what emerged after Stalin’s death was a system Löwenthal called variously “post-totalitarian authoritarianism” or "authoritarian bureaucratic oligarchy" in which the Soviet state remained omnipotent in theory and highly authoritarian in practice, but did scale down considerably the scale of repression and allow much greater level of pluralism into public life. In regards to foreign policy, Löwenthal argued that after Stalin, and even more so, after the overthrow of Khruschchev, the ideological commitments that underlined Soviet foreign policy were considerably weakened. Despite this, Löwenthal maintained that Soviet foreign policy remained basically antagonistic towards the West, and that the Cold War
would continue as long as the Soviet Union was an anti-democratic state. In the mid-1960s, Löwenthal was highly critical of the policy of United States
, or lack thereof, as Löwenthal asserted that the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson
had no policy of rallying together the states of Western Europe to resist Soviet encroachments, and was instead content to let matters drift. At the same time, Löwenthal was opposed to the French President Charles de Gaulle
's anti-American
policies, which Löwenthal felt were folly in light of the threat from the East.
In Löwenthal's opinion, the ending of the "revolution from above" also marked the end of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. Likewise, Löwenthal maintained that in the "post-totalitarian" system meant that henceforward the powers of Communist Party leaders over their Central Committees and Politburos were no greater than the powers of a Western Prime Minister over their Cabinets. Löwenthal argued "Those countries have not gone from tyranny to freedom, but from massive terror to a rule of meanness, ensuring stability at the risk of stagnation". Moreover, Löwenthal argued that the essence of Communist totalitarianism was an utopian faith. Löwenthal contened that Communist utopianism was doomed to failure "as it conflicted with, and eventually succumbed to, the necessity for economic modernization". Without utopianism, Löwenthal argued that "revolutions from above" were excluded as a policy option. In a 1960 article in Commentary, Löwenthal claimed that totalitarianism was a dead force in the East Bloc, even through none of the regimes were anything close to being "liberalized". Moreover, Löwenthal asserted it was impossible for the East Bloc regimes to return to totalitarianism, arguing that "that particular secular religion is dead-at least in those countries that have tried it out". Besides for writing on contemporary issues, in the 1980s, Löwenthal played a major role in the push for a Holocaust museum in Berlin, which as a German Jew was a cause that was of major interest to him.
In addition to his work in Soviet studies, Löwenthal was noted for his defense of the Federal Republic. Lowenthal felt that the best the Federal Republic was the most democratic government in German history, and criticized the left-wing philosopher Jürgen Habermas
for utopianism when the latter asserted in the 1970s that the Federal Republic was not democratic enough.
During the Historikerstreit
of the 1980s, Löwenthal argued for the "fundamental difference" in mass murder in Germany and the Soviet Union, and against the "balancing" of various crimes in the 20th century as he accused Ernst Nolte
of doing Löwenthal contended that comparisons between Hitler and Stalin were appropriate, but comparisons between Hitler and Lenin were not For Löwenthal, the decisive factor that governed Lenin’s conduct was that right from the onset when he took power, he was involved in civil wars within Russia Löwenthal argued that “Lenin’s battle to hold on to power” did not comprise “one-sided mass annihilation of defenceless people” Speaking of the Russian Civil War
, Löwenthal argued that “In all these battles there were heavy losses on both sides and horrible torture and murders of prisoners” Speaking of the differences between Lenin and Stalin, Löwenthal argued that “What Stalin did from 1929 on was something entirely different” Löwenthal argued that with dekulakization
, the so-called “kulaks” were to destroyed by the Soviet state as:
A major intellectual in the SPD, Löwenthal was often consulted by the SPD’s leaders, especially Willy Brandt
and Ernst Reuter
.
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and professor who wrote mostly on the problems of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, and world politics.
Life
Löwenthal was the son of Ernst and Anna Löwenthal. His father was a real estate agent. From 1926 until 1931, Löwenthal studied political sciencePolitical science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
at Berlin University
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
and Heidelberg University
Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg
The Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg is a public research university located in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386, it is the oldest university in Germany and was the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire. Heidelberg has been a coeducational institution...
. His major intellectual influences were Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
and Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim , or Károly Mannheim in the original writing of his name, was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology and a founder of the sociology of knowledge.-Life:Mannheim studied in Budapest,...
. From 1926 until 1929, Löwenthal was a member of the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
, which he left over opposition to the tactics of the Comintern. Remaining on the Left, Löwenthal was a member of several dissident breakaway groups from the KPD in the last years of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
.
In 1933 Löwenthal was a prominent member of the anti-Nazi group Neu Beginnen
Neu Beginnen
Neu Beginnen was a fringe opposition group on the socialist wing of SPD, which was greatly influenced by the ideas of Lenin. It was formed in 1929. After the Machtübernahme in 1933, the members of the small group discussed what the future of Germany should be after the National Socialist movement...
(New Beginnings) which sought to organize the German working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
to overthrow the Nazi regime. During this period, Löwenthal adopted the alias Paul Sering. In July 1933, the New Beginnings group broke up under the impact of a huge wave of Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
arrests of its members. As a wanted man, Löwenthal continued to work for an anti-Nazi working-class revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
until increasing pressure from the Gestapo led Löwenthal to flee to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in August 1935. Subsequently Löwenthal moved to Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
where he remained active in left-wing German émigré groups. From April 1936 until October 1937, Löwenthal worked as a researcher in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
before returning to Prague. Following the Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
of 1938, Löwenthal fled to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and then in 1939 returned to London, which was to be Löwenthal’s home until 1959. During the 1930s, in his writings Löwenthal expressed strong criticism of the definition of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
proposed by the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, and in particular criticized the Comintern’s social fascism
Social fascism
Social fascism was a theory supported by the Communist International during the early 1930s, which believed that social democracy was a variant of fascism because, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model, it stood in the way of a complete and final transition to communism...
theory which held that moderate left-wing groups such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
and Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
were much fascist as were the Nazi Party, and if anything were more dangerous because of their “disguised” fascist nature, in contrast to the “open fascism” of the Nazis. Starting in 1935, Löwenthal started to work on as his own definition of Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, which was strongly influenced by the work of Otto Bauer
Otto Bauer
Otto Bauer was an Austrian Social Democrat who is considered one of the leading thinkers of the left socialist Austro-Marxist tendency...
and Franz Leopold Neumann
Franz Leopold Neumann
Franz Leopold Neumann was a German-Jewish left-wing political activist, Marxist theorist and labor lawyer, who became a political scientist in exile and is best known for his theoretical analyses of National Socialism. He studied in Germany and the United Kingdom, and spent the last phase of...
. In these writings, Löwenthal concluded that Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
was not a puppet of Big Business as the Comintern had claimed and that, in fact, the Nazi regime was in and of itself the supreme power in the land. During the late 1930s, Löwenthal decided that another world war was inevitable, and saw his main task as preparing the German left for that war.
During his time in Great Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Löwenthal was close to the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
and helped publish The International Socialist Forum. From 1940 until 1942, Löwenthal worked for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
’s German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
program, Sender der europäischen Revolution. In 1941, Löwenthal published a book that argued after the war, it was highly necessary for the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to be given the lion’s share of the responsibility of governing Germany after the war as the best means of ensuring the triumph of the German Left. After 1943, Löwenthal disallowed this position and instead urged that the main responsibility of re-building Germany after the war be given to the Western powers, who were, in Löwenthal ’s opinion, the best powers for ensuring a democratic Germany. Löwenthal very much admired the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and in several articles after 1945, urged that West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
adopted the British model for its economic organization. In 1945, Löwenthal joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
. In his 1948 book, Jenseits des Kapitalismus, Lowenthal called for a Socialist reconstruction of the European system with an especially prominent role to be allocated to Great Britain as the most progressive of the European powers. An Anglophile, Lowenthal was much influenced by his time in Britain. Lowenthal was late to write that “In England the German socialist emigrants got to know an impressive model of a free democracy which proved its worth under extreme external pressure; thus they were essentially confirmed in their democratic conviction and prepared for the task that awaited them after the war. The English, at least those who lent the emigrant an ear and cooperated with them, gathered new hope that a true democracy might be established in Germany and contributed considerably to the realization of this model during the first harsh postwar years. After a lapse of several decades, I can thus state with conviction that in spite of all the initial difficulties, the encounter proved rewarding to both sides”.
Until 1958, Löwenthal worked as a reporter for Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
press agency and The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
. In 1959 Löwenthal became a professor in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
at the Free University of Berlin
Free University of Berlin
Freie Universität Berlin is one of the leading and most prestigious research universities in Germany and continental Europe. It distinguishes itself through its modern and international character. It is the largest of the four universities in Berlin. Research at the university is focused on the...
. In 1974 Löwenthal became the Professor Emeritus at the Free University. Löwenthal ’s chief interests were Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. In 1960, Löwenthal married the sociologist Charlotte Abrahamsohn. Löwenthal was a strong advocate of closer European integration and of an Atlanticist
Atlanticism
Atlanticism is a philosophy of cooperation among Western European and North American nations regarding political, economic, and defense issues, with the purpose to maintain the security of the participating countries, and to protect the values that unite them: "democracy, individual liberty and...
orientation. In the late 1960s, Löwenthal was initially sympathetic towards student protestors, but turned against what he regarded as the destructive anarchism and “romantic relapse” into Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
of the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
and rejected their call for a West German pull-out from NATO as opening the door for the Soviet conquest of Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
.
In work on the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Löwenthal's major interests were the emergence of what he considered to an element of pluralism into Soviet politics, especially during the rule of Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
. Unlike other totalitarianism theories such as Juan Linz
Juan Linz
Juan José Linz is a Spanish sociologist and political scientist. He is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University and an honorary member of the Scientific Council at the Juan March Institute...
and Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher is a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the Classics by the University of Tübingen in 1948 and subsequently studied at Harvard University from 1949 to 1950...
, whose work was chiefly inspired by studying Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
Löwenthal based his studies largely upon developments in the Soviet Union and East Bloc. One of Löwenthal’s more notable ideas was that under the rule of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, the Soviet Union had been a totalitarian
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
state, but what emerged after Stalin’s death was a system Löwenthal called variously “post-totalitarian authoritarianism” or "authoritarian bureaucratic oligarchy" in which the Soviet state remained omnipotent in theory and highly authoritarian in practice, but did scale down considerably the scale of repression and allow much greater level of pluralism into public life. In regards to foreign policy, Löwenthal argued that after Stalin, and even more so, after the overthrow of Khruschchev, the ideological commitments that underlined Soviet foreign policy were considerably weakened. Despite this, Löwenthal maintained that Soviet foreign policy remained basically antagonistic towards the West, and that the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
would continue as long as the Soviet Union was an anti-democratic state. In the mid-1960s, Löwenthal was highly critical of the policy of United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, or lack thereof, as Löwenthal asserted that the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
had no policy of rallying together the states of Western Europe to resist Soviet encroachments, and was instead content to let matters drift. At the same time, Löwenthal was opposed to the French President Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's anti-American
Anti-Americanism
The term Anti-Americanism, or Anti-American Sentiment, refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, culture or government of the United States...
policies, which Löwenthal felt were folly in light of the threat from the East.
In Löwenthal's opinion, the ending of the "revolution from above" also marked the end of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. Likewise, Löwenthal maintained that in the "post-totalitarian" system meant that henceforward the powers of Communist Party leaders over their Central Committees and Politburos were no greater than the powers of a Western Prime Minister over their Cabinets. Löwenthal argued "Those countries have not gone from tyranny to freedom, but from massive terror to a rule of meanness, ensuring stability at the risk of stagnation". Moreover, Löwenthal argued that the essence of Communist totalitarianism was an utopian faith. Löwenthal contened that Communist utopianism was doomed to failure "as it conflicted with, and eventually succumbed to, the necessity for economic modernization". Without utopianism, Löwenthal argued that "revolutions from above" were excluded as a policy option. In a 1960 article in Commentary, Löwenthal claimed that totalitarianism was a dead force in the East Bloc, even through none of the regimes were anything close to being "liberalized". Moreover, Löwenthal asserted it was impossible for the East Bloc regimes to return to totalitarianism, arguing that "that particular secular religion is dead-at least in those countries that have tried it out". Besides for writing on contemporary issues, in the 1980s, Löwenthal played a major role in the push for a Holocaust museum in Berlin, which as a German Jew was a cause that was of major interest to him.
In addition to his work in Soviet studies, Löwenthal was noted for his defense of the Federal Republic. Lowenthal felt that the best the Federal Republic was the most democratic government in German history, and criticized the left-wing philosopher Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
for utopianism when the latter asserted in the 1970s that the Federal Republic was not democratic enough.
During the Historikerstreit
Historikerstreit
The Historikerstreit was an intellectual and political controversy in late 20th-century West Germany about the historical interpretation of the Holocaust. The German word Streit translates variously as "quarrel", "dispute", or "conflict"...
of the 1980s, Löwenthal argued for the "fundamental difference" in mass murder in Germany and the Soviet Union, and against the "balancing" of various crimes in the 20th century as he accused Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte is a German historian and philosopher. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of Fascism and Communism. He is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 to 1991. He was previously a Professor at the University of Marburg...
of doing Löwenthal contended that comparisons between Hitler and Stalin were appropriate, but comparisons between Hitler and Lenin were not For Löwenthal, the decisive factor that governed Lenin’s conduct was that right from the onset when he took power, he was involved in civil wars within Russia Löwenthal argued that “Lenin’s battle to hold on to power” did not comprise “one-sided mass annihilation of defenceless people” Speaking of the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, Löwenthal argued that “In all these battles there were heavy losses on both sides and horrible torture and murders of prisoners” Speaking of the differences between Lenin and Stalin, Löwenthal argued that “What Stalin did from 1929 on was something entirely different” Löwenthal argued that with dekulakization
Dekulakization
Dekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929-1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies...
, the so-called “kulaks” were to destroyed by the Soviet state as:
“…a hindrance to forced collectivization. They were not organized. They had not fought. They were shipped to far-away concentration camps and in general were not killed right away, but were forced to suffer conditions that led in the course of time to a miserable death”Löwenthal argued that:
“What Stalin did from 1929 both against peasants and against various other victims, including leading Communists (among them, incidentally, Bucharin, who in 1929 had already publicly taken a position against the “new system”) and returned soldiers, was in fact historically new in its systematic inhumanity, and to this extent comparable with the deeds of Hitler. Certainly, Hitler, like all his contemporaries, had a preconception of the civil wars of Lenin’s time. Just as certainly his own ideas about the total annihilation of the Jews, the Gypsies, the “unworthy of life”, and so on, were independent of Stalin’s example. At any rate the idea of total annihilation of the Jews had already been developed in the last work of Hitler’s mentor, Dietrich Eckart, who died in 1924. For the reference to this source, which leaves no room for “balancing”, I am grateful to Ernst Nolte’s first large book, which appeared in 1963, Faschismus in seiner Epoche [Fascism in Its Epoch]
A major intellectual in the SPD, Löwenthal was often consulted by the SPD’s leaders, especially Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....
and Ernst Reuter
Ernst Reuter
Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was the German mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the time of the Cold War.- Early years :...
.
Work
- Co-written with Willy BrandtWilly BrandtWilly Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....
Ernst Reuter, ein Leben für die Freiheit; eine politische Biographie, München: Kindler, 1957. - “Diplomacy and Revolution: The Dialectics of a Dispute” pages 1–24 from The China Quarterly, Issue # 5 January- March 1961.
- “Factors of Unity and Factors of Conflict” pages 106-116 from Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 349, September 1963.
- World Communism : the Disintegration of a Secular Faith, New York : Oxford University Press, 1964.
- “The Soviets and the West: A European View” pages 83–91 from Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Volume 28, Issue 1, April 1965
- (Editor) Issues in the Future of Asia : Communist and Non-Communist Alternatives, New York : Praeger, 1969.
- Romantischer Rückfall, Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer 1970.
- Die zweite Republik; 25 Jahre Bundesrepublik Deutschland: eine Bilanz, Stuttgart, Seewald Verlag 1974.
- Vom Kalten Krieg zur Ostpolitik, Stuttgart : Seewald, 1974 ISBN 3512003648.
- Model or Ally? : The Communist Powers and the Developing Countries, New York : Oxford University Press, 1977 ISBN 0195021053.
- (Editor) End and beginning : on the Generations of cultures and the Origins of the West by Franz BorkenauFranz BorkenauFranz Borkenau was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in Leipzig, his main interests were Marxism and psychoanalysis...
, New York : Columbia University Press, 1981, 0231050666. - Widerstand und Verweigerung in Deutschland 1933 bis 1945, Berlin : Dietz, 1984 ISBN 3801230082.
- Social Change and Cultural Crisis, New York : Columbia University Press, 1984 ISBN 0231056443.
External links
- WAS STALIN INEVITABLE? by Richard Löwenthal