Totalitarianism theory was a central conceptual innovation of the twentieth century, animating Cold War intellectual life and informing foreign-policy decisions across the Western world. In conclusion, this striking affinity with Marxism in Arendt's early work is contrasted with the emergence of classical totalitarianism theory-a project with which Arendt was soon eager to associate herself and which makes a unified and consistent reading of The Origins of Totalitarianism so difficult. Third, it shows that Arendt wrote in these languages and contributed to the same debate. Second, it shows how these languages underpinned a central controversy in Marxist theories of totalitarianism during World War II, a debate conducted in the languages of imperialism and Bonapartism and turning on the relationship between the political and the economic. First, it reconstructs two core languages of interwar Marxism (imperialism and Bonapartism). Building on a novel genealogy of Marxist theories of totalitarianism, the article traces this inheritance into Arendt's early work on the subject, demonstrating that her “languages” (in the Pocockian sense) were basically continuous with those of interwar Marxism. This article offers a new reading of the place of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism in the history of totalitarianism theory.
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