Xi and Putin also believe in doctrines, but their characteristics are radically different. The two dictators certainly speak to us of a new world order, but each one understands that order in his own way. The only thing that is clear to them is that this new order will mean the economic and political defeat of the United States first, and of the West later. But from a theoretical, ethical, political and even utopian point of view, that new order is empty. This explains why the ideologies used by the new totalitarianisms are far from being futuristic, as were those of communism and fascism. On the contrary, they are rather – if you allow me the term – «retro».

Although some Weberian academic may disagree, neither history nor politics allow themselves to be governed according to typologies. Well, if we think that historical processes assume multi-determined movements, typological reason must be satisfied only with detecting situations and pointing out characteristics in the same way as when we photograph a landscape knowing that the next day after a rain it will no longer be the same. Neither, by the way, should we renounce the making of “types”. On the contrary: we need them to compare structures and processes. After all, all knowledge is comparative. It is enough to handle the “types” with prudence, knowing that they are not “things” but, to say it with Norbert Elías, simple “figurations”. Or perhaps instead of “types” we should talk about forms or formations (the fascist form, the dictatorial form, the democratic form, etc.) And naturally, the totalitarian form, the easiest to define for a very simple reason: totalitarianism alludes to all forms of concentrated power, be it in one person, in the state, in a party. Totalitarianism is total power. If that totality of power does not exist, there is no totalitarianism .

THE TOTALITARIANISM OF THE POST-INDUSTRIAL ERA

In previous phases of history we have been governed by a scale of non- or anti-democratic forms of domination, which can, under certain conditions, culminate in that phase called totalitarianism. Thus we have spoken of authoritarian, autocratic, dictatorial and, finally, totalitarian governments, which are the ones that accumulate the totality of power, of a power that by politicizing everything, ceases to be political. On this point there is a certain consensus: totalitarianism was a phenomenon of the twentieth century that crystallized in three countries: Hitlerite Germany, Stalinist Russia and Maoist China.

After the collapse of communism, not a few authors came to think that the possibility of a resurgence of new totalitarian regimes was ruled out. However, after two decades of the 21st century , we can say that such hope lacked foundations. In fact, there are already two countries that we can unhesitatingly characterize as totalitarian (or at least neo-totalitarian): Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China . The first alludes to a personal totalitarian power and the second, collective (the PCCH) although in the last two years this has drifted from partisan collectivism towards an exclusive personalism represented in the figure of Xi Jinping.

It is important to mention that, both in China and in Russia, it is about totalitarian «reappearances», which indicates that the elements of totalitarian domination verified by Hannah Arendt remained latent, without disappearing, in both countries. In post-Maoist China (which Hannah Arendt did not study ) all the structures of totalitarian domination were maintained, but power, especially under Deng Xiao Ping (1979-1997), assumed deliberative forms, tendencies were allowed and the discussions circulated under the public light. Under the Xi Jinping era, according to what was shown in the pharaonic 20th. Congress of the PCCH, the party returned to undemocratic centralism and the disgraceful system of «purges».

In Russia, the process that has led to the (re) totalization of power has moved more slowly. During Gorbachev (and his entry into the «European house») and during the early days of Yelsin , Russia seemed to undergo a process of Westernization. Putin, since his arrival in 2000, until 2007, with his unexpected verbal attack on the West at the Munich Conference , had maintained the post-dictatorial opening, complying at least with electoral forms. The conversion of authoritarian power into a personalist autocracy would begin to crystallize with the attacks on Chechnya and Georgia in 2008, thus fulfilling a premise of Arendt’s, in the sense that totalitarianism is driven by imperialism (See  Origins of Totalitarianism ).

At the moment it is not possible to clarify exactly whether it was the wars in Russia that led to totalitarian domination, or it was the totalitarian project that Putin cherished, the reason that prompted Russia’s wars of expansion. The indications –(especially since the invasion of Crimea in 2014)- point rather to the second possibility. The important thing is that the process that led from autocratism to totalitarianism is articulated with Russia’s territorial expansion. What is explicable: during a war the state of exception governs, and if that exception is not transitory but permanent, it ceases to be an exception.

In the case of China, it was not wars, but geostrategic challenges that probably prompted the ruling party to institute a «permanent state of exception.» China’s economic growth convinced its political leadership to recognize the turning point where the nation should not only be an economic power but also a political one. For Xi and his followers, the time had come for China to claim hegemonic rights as the driver, not only of the economy, but of international political relations worldwide.  The era of globalization – that is an evident conviction of Xi – demanded a global and not a regional China: Political, military and not only economic.

From this self-recognition , Taiwan is not only of interest to China for economic reasons but also for symbolic ones. This means that if China manages to establish political sovereignty over Taiwan, it will show the world that it is already in a position to break the political-military hegemony, if not the Western one, at least the North American one. And to face this global escalation, China needs its atomic attack dogs. It already has at least three: Kim Jong Un in North Korea, the Iran of the ayatollahs, and naturally, Putin’s Russia.

Putin’s Russia has followed a different path on the road to the totalization of power. For Putin, he has said it himself, it is not about achieving a bright future, but about recovering a sacred past: that of Holy Mother Russia. Thus, while Chinese totalitarianism can be defined as post-modern, Russia’s is evidently pre-modern (an imperialism of the post-imperial era according to Timothy Garton Ash).

In both cases, however, we do not just find ourselves with a simple reissue of Maoist and Stalinist totalitarianism, but with new totalitarian forms, in keeping with their time. Both totalitarianisms, in short, are totalitarianisms of the 21st century . And that means, while the totalitarianisms of the recent past arose in the framework determined by the era of industrialization, those of the present can be seen as post-industrial totalitarianisms.

To give an example, the social base that leads to the emergence of the totalitarian phenomenon came, in the case of Nazism and Communism, from the conversion of classes in masses. But here we must point out this: the masses that are emerging in China and Russia today are different from those described to us by Arendt and other authors (Gene Sharp, for example) who have dealt with the issue of totalitarianism. It means that, while those of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century were impoverished masses, used as cannon fodder to achieve meta-economic objectives through forced industrialization, the masses of the post -industrial period are consumerist masses, tightly linked to the local market.  In that sense (only in that) Putin’s masses are more like Hitler’s than Stalin’s and Mao’s.

Hitler, let us remember, raised the income, consumption and well-being of the masses of workers (full employment, paid vacations, social security, automobiles). The slave labor imposed by Stalin in urban factories and collective farms (kolkhozes) was reserved by Hitler for the hell of concentration camps, which also existed in numbers in Russia and communist China. We could even say that under Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism, that process of original accumulation (Marx) took place, and in a very short time, which in the capitalist world extended over centuries. On and not during this phase of accumulation, the totalitarianisms of the 21st century were erected .

ECONOMIC WESTERNIZATION , POLITICAL DE-WESTERNIZATION

If we go back to remember Hannah Arendt, we will find two elements inherent to the totalitarian domination of the 20th century: terror and ideological indoctrination . Both certainly exist under the dictatorships of Xi and Putin, but at a lower and different level. The terror continues in a more subtle way. It is no longer so much about house-to-house police surveillance, but rather a digitalized, less strict, more efficient one. It is enough simply that citizens do not participate in politics, an activity reserved in China for the communist caste, and in Russia completely suppressed.

Rarely, only rarely, are the masses of both countries mobilized to cheer their leaders. More important is that they stay at home, informed by state television, and in free time, that they go to the markets to consume products, even if some are invented in the hated West. Contradiction that does not seem to matter too much to the administrators of power. They are not against the western market, they are only against western ideas and human rights. Or what is the same: neither Xi nor Putin are against the westernization of the market but they are against the westernization of politics .

That the masses of the respective countries consume all the junk they want, follow all the fashions, dance and sing Western music, they don’t care. Even said inclinations are stimulated from high power. But woe to women if they assume Western feminism, woe to citizens if they demand political pluralism, woe to those who defend the fundamental rights of the human being.

THE IDEOLOGIES OF NEO-TOTALITARIAN POWER

From a doctrinal point of view, there is also a great difference between the totalitarianisms of the 20th century and those of the 21st . The holders of the power of the old totalitarianism believed they were acting in the name of doctrines, the fascist and the Marxist-Leninist, to which two characteristics were conferred: universality and futurism. According to these doctrines, the three dictators imagined that their ideologies were valid everywhere and that the world would end up, sooner or later, being fascist, for some, communist for others. The Third Reich was going to be global and so was communism. In one way or another, the totalitarian dictators of the 20th century believed they had universal history on their side.

Xi and Putin also believe in doctrines, but their characteristics are radically different. The two dictators certainly speak to us of a new world order, but each one understands that order in his own way. The only thing that is clear to them is that this new order will mean the economic and political defeat of the United States first, and of the West later. But from a theoretical, ethical, political and even utopian point of view, that new order is empty. This explains why the ideologies used by the new totalitarianisms are far from being futuristic, as were those of communism and fascism. On the contrary, they are rather – if you allow me the term – «retro».

Putin’s dictatorship, incapable of offering a splendid future, offers a return to a supposedly glorious and heroic past: that of the old Russia, be it that of the tsars, be it that of Stalin. For some Russians that return –(in a psychoanalytic vocabulary: that regression)- can be fascinating. But it is difficult for the great apolitical mass of the country to adhere to Putin’s reactionary utopias. Much less attractive may be the “retro” cult for inhabitants of nations that yesterday belonged to the Soviet empire. It is impossible, for example, that the nations of Central Asia, mostly Muslim, feel too enthusiastic about once again being part of a Russia, no longer Soviet but Christian-Orthodox.

Putin’s doctrine is nationalist, but not globalist. Worse still: it is “Russian”. As a means of international ideological domination, it is useless. What can Russia offer us apart from repression, religious fanaticism, and tsarist glories? Ukrainians rightly wonder. In the words of the German writer Peter Schneider: “The only clearly stated goal that Putin promises his Russians and the peoples who are to return to the Russian Empire is the restoration of past power and greatness and a share in the splendor of the resurrected empire.”

The Xi Jinping dictatorship, for its part, seems to have understood that Marxist doctrine is no longer an ideological export product. In the best of cases it is only consumable for the cretins who govern in countries like Nicaragua or Venezuela. That would explain why, under Xi, the Chinese hierarchs seem to be increasingly concerned with promoting the spiritual unity of their people by intensifying and propagating the Confucian philosophy, now mandatory in all educational establishments.

In a way, the Chinese Communist Party has adopted a Confucian Marxist doctrine (something like a glass of milk mixed with chili) whose purpose is to vindicate a national and nationalist tradition and thus keep the great masses of the immense nation ideologically held. In other words, the Chinese and Russian totalitarianisms are no longer internationalist but traditionalist. Orthodox religion and the philosophy of Confucius, both magnificent creations of the human spirit, have passed, under the neo-totalitarian aegis of our time, to become state ideologies. Its function is not at all spiritual: to maintain, thanks to the charisma (Weber) of religion and tradition, the cohesion of the internal front in order to advance economically towards the construction of a new world order where democracies are the exception and dictatorships the rule.

The problem is that that goal is not impossible. In fact, the two totalitarianisms of the 21st century have the direct or tacit support of all the anti-democrats in the world, of almost all the dictatorships and autocracies of the world, of many technocratic minds in the world.