Parties
Parties are characteristic of the political life of the nation-state. They represent class interests and are organizations of citizens. Central to Arendt’s historical analysis of the rise of totalitarianism is the liquidation of parties. This process began with the imperialist “party above parties” and the one-party dictatorships of many countries on the Continent, but the destruction of parties was only realized by the rise of totalitarian movements, which were against all parties and against the state. By analyzing the liquidation of parties, Arendt is able to argue for the novelty of totalitarian rule and distinguish it from previous political forms.
Movement
Movement is a common theme in Arendt’s book, which applies not only to the totalitarian movements of the 20th century, but also to the form imperialism took with its desire for never-ending expansion. Arendt identifies movement with “becoming,” which she contrasts to the “miracle of being” (469). Being and becoming are very common themes in modern philosophy, particularly in the works of Hegel, who argues that freedom is the “self-moving substance as subject” that is elaborated in a process of becoming (Phenomenology of Spirit), as well as Heidegger, who rejects becoming and is more concerned with the questions of being as a source of spontaneity (Being and Time). In this book, Arendt argues that becoming is not freedom, but rather the complete submission of human freedom to a process she calls “logicality.” "Movement," she argues, is vital to totalitarianism, which can only exist so long as it is in constant movement and claims to be the realization of the movement of history and nature.
Decadence of Bourgeois Society
Two figures often stand opposed in The Origins of Totalitarianism: the bourgeois, who is concerned with ever expanding wealth and later ever expanding power, and the citoyen, who is concerned with public political life and the preservation of freedom. For Arendt, the triumph of the bourgeois over the citoyen eventually lead to a series of crises in modern European society. This is most clearly seen in imperialism, which Arendt argues is instrumental in creating the fertile grounds for totalitarianism. Arendt calls imperialism the “political emancipation of the bourgeoisie,” meaning that what was during the era of the nation-state merely the imperative to increase wealth, held in check by the state and the body politic, transformed into the imperative to accumulate ever more power and capital through imperial ventures (138). These new imperatives of imperialism, the result of the dominance of the bourgeois class and their inability to rule as a class, exploded the form of the nation-state and introduced bureaucracy and racism as means to the end of the accumulation of capital. This transformation of government was a defeat of the citoyen and the destruction of the body politic as the source of political power and law. Out of this crisis came the great catastrophes of the first World War and totalitarianism.
Spontaneity
Spontaneity, for Arendt, is the essence of human freedom. It is the freedom to be, to participate in the miracle of being. This is an important theme in Arendt's work, because she argues that the purpose of the concentration camp is to stamp out all human spontaneity and make men into mere responsive machines, Pavlov's dog. According to Arendt, all men "become One Man" in a totalitarian government and all of their actions are for the purpose of the becoming of nature and history (467). This removes all space for men to move and be spontaneous in their action. By removing this ability to be spontaneous, totalitarianism could decisively destroy humanity, according to Arendt. The spontaneity of new "beginning" is the best hope for humanity in the face of totalitarianism (479).
Terror
Total terror is the "essence" of totalitarian government (466). Its indifference to individual circumstance rules over the completely subdued totalitarian population, exercising power in a seemingly irrational and random way. The purpose of terror is to stamp out the freedom afforded man by the birth and new beginning of an individual life, so that no form of spontaneity can inhibit the movement of history. Arendt argues that by "pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them," which proves to be much more than merely the abolition of essential freedoms, but rather amounts to the wholesale eradication of "the love for freedom from the hearts of man" (466).
Rights of Man
The Rights of Man come from a declaration of the same name written during the French Revolution. They create equality among all men by declaring them equal in their inalienable rights to life, liberty and property (or the pursuit of happiness, as rendered in the American version). For Arendt, the history of the 19th and 20th centuries is the history of the failure of the Rights of Man. The failure began with the triumph of the bourgeois over the citoyen and the death of the nation-state, and culminated with the crisis of the 20th century. When the world wars created a mass of stateless people, the nations of the world—which supposedly exist to realize and defend the Rights of Man—were unable to incorporate these refugees. Thus, their “rights” as men went unrecognized. Many of these minorities and stateless people were rendered superfluous since they weren't able to participate in laboring society or politics and eventually became the victims of totalitarian terror (269). For Arendt, the Rights of Man are untenable because they cannot be enforced by human political institutions, and Edmund Burke's alternative of the "Rights of Englishmen" is preferable since the nation offers stable ground which can serve as the source of rights.
Superfluousness
Superfluousness is a recurring theme in Arendt's work used to describe the status of men who have lost their relations to other men and have been rendered superfluous to society. First, this creates the mob that is at work in the Dreyfus Affair and the South African imperialism of the Boers. Later, the superfluous masses form the base for the triumph of totalitarian terror. Millions can be carted off to the concentration camps where they are truly superfluous to society, having lost all remnants of their connection with fellow man. The process which renders men superfluous is a central problem of modernity for Arendt. It ties in, for example, to her rejection of the Rights of Man since the superfluous men and capital of the 19th century lead to imperialism and the fall of the nation-state and the superfluousness of the stateless peoples is central to the inability of nations to incorporate them into society.
