His prophesy: ‘We shall have regimentation and conformity, without respect for the needs of the individual soul; the puritanism of a hygienic morality in the interests of efficiency; uniformity of opinion through propaganda, and art only encouraged when it flatters the official doctrines of the time.’
In 1938, T.S. Eliot wrote The Idea of a Christian Society. Eliot’s major theme—a sketched outline of what a Christian society might entail—is stimulating despite the limitations of its context: it deals with England’s situation with the prospect of war casting its grim shadow. But his minor theme—the slide of a liberal society into a type of totalitarian democracy—has a broader, provocative relevance. The degeneration of Italy and Germany into dictatorships and the malignancy of the Soviet Union provided Eliot with examples of nations whose governments made much use of the words freedom and democracy, but twisted them to fit their preferred meaning. Eliot saw this lamentable pattern developing in liberal countries. His nuanced vision is worth revisiting, nearly eighty years later.
Eliot thought that liberalism would do most to prepare the way for a type of totalitarian democracy. (Eliot capitalised Liberalism, but I won’t so that the political project isn’t confused with the Australian political party.) This “totalitarian democracy”—seemingly an oxymoron—would be:
a state of affairs in which we shall have regimentation and conformity, without respect for the needs of the individual soul; the puritanism of a hygienic morality in the interests of efficiency; uniformity of opinion through propaganda, and art only encouraged when it flatters the official doctrines of the time.