Marcuse (1964: 13) argues that in modern automated consumer
societies:
the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to
which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills and
attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations.... Technology
serves to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of
social control.It may be worth looking in a little more detail at some actual exam-
ples before returning to an evaluation of these criticisms.
Nazi government
From the point of view of political and governmental machinery, it
could be argued that Hitler’s Germany was less innovatory than
either Soviet communism or even Italian fascism. Hitler took over
the machinery of the existing German state as Chancellor and left
much of it unchanged. The army functioned largely on the pro-
fessional basis it had done before the Nazi victory in a democratic
election. Grim additional features were grafted onto the existing state
machinery in the shape of the Gestapo (the secret police) who used
torture and terrorism to stamp out resistance; the SS (Black Shirt)
and SA (Brown Shirt) sections of the Nazi Party were accorded state
powers and recognition. Loyalty to the Führer and to the state were
identified. Hitler played off one section of the party against another
and confused normal lines of bureaucratic reporting.
Although there was much rhetoric about total mobilisation,
American strategic bombing surveys suggest that ultimately the
German economy was actually less fully mobilised in the war effort
than was the British. In practice the economy was largely left in the
hands of its existing owners (where they were non-Jewish). In the
wartime economy, slave labourers from or in the concentration
camps and from conquered areas supplemented normal labour but
were a grossly inefficient resource.
Programmes of mass extermination of Jews, communists, Gypsies
and the mentally deficient were a horrific feature of the regime, but
seem to have affected the rest of the population to a surprisingly
small degree. Their loyalty was mainly secured by propaganda
STATES 151