Drucker on Totalitarianism and Salvation by Society

It permeated his beliefs about the empowerment of individuals, and the moral responsibility of organizations
to empower the individuals within their sphere.
This collection emphasizes the principles of human choice, dignity; self-worth; and society’s role to achieve these ends, within a fair and equitable system.
It was based on this shared belief system that my father and Ming Lo Shao developed a warm friendship—a friendship nurtured and maintained, with mutual respect, for many years until my father’s passing in 2005.
This collection demonstrates the timeliness of my father’s writings, and their applicability to some of the critical situations facing our world today, almost 90 years after they were first penned.
The Drucker family thanks Ming Lo Shao for his work in creating this anthology, and for his dedication to keeping Drucker’s writings alive and relevant for a new generation.
Joan Drucker Winstein
Denver, Colorado, USA
August, 2020

TO OUR READERS
I have long wanted to compile a volume that brings together Peter Drucker’s discourses on totalitarianism and salvation by society to make them easily accessible to readers. Now the work has finally been completed.
The book is comprised of selections from five of Peter Drucker’s works, The End of Economic Man, The Ecological Vision, Landmarks of Tomorrow, Adventures of a Bystander, and A Functioning Society. My job was to sort the content into nine chapters, draw up titles, and write related introductions
to the chapters. Drucker’s reflections on and critiques of totalitarianism run through most of his works, but they are more focused and systematic in the five books mentioned above. Known as “the father of modern management”, Peter Drucker had a lifelong hatred of totalitarianism. He studied management because he felt that only the effective management of pluralistic social organizations—including non-profit organizations, industrial and commercial enterprises, and government agencies—could provide options or alternatives to resist totalitarian rule.
Totalitarianism is an ugly phenomenon in human society and politics, and it is also a terrifying disease. It has caused more suffering to humankind than any other tyranny in history. What it seeks is to fully and thoroughly manipulate and control every individual, both in body and mind, turning humans not only into animals but also into machines and tools as well. Totalitarianism aims for absolute power, but no one except the Creator has such power. Hence, it manifests as a state of absurdity and madness in which “the movement (persecution) is everything, yet there is no purpose.” By its nature, totalitarianism cannot tolerate the existence of even a tiny bit of humanity. The Nazis’ “final solution” (genocide), the mass murder of Jews, is its logical result. Today, highly developed new technologies are also providing imaginative physical and psychological methods of manipulation, giving those with totalitarian ambitions the means to carry out a “final solution,” the extinction of unmankind (the extinction of human nature; that is, essentially exterminating the human species.)
Totalitarianism is the result of the failure of “salvation by society”.
History has repeatedly proven that any perfect, or nearly perfect society that claims to have no conflict, no class differences, complete fairness, justice, benevolence, and harmony, is a utopia. However, using society to eliminate evil in human nature, to save human beings from depravity, and transform them into perfect people, is merely a naïve fantasy. Marxism is the most recent, most rigorous, and most alluring social rescue plan but also the utmost failure at “salvation by society”. Today, political parties and nations still under the banner of Marxist communism or socialism have essentially sunken into totalitarianism.
From the perspective of philosophy, “Salvation by society” belongs to the category of absolute rationalism. It originates from human beings’ pride and conceit, is the notion that people can grasp absolute truth and become the master of everything in the world, including their own destiny.
Tracing their respective roots in different fields of knowledge, people regard their discoveries as the only correctness. They develop various “isms,” including progressivism, scientism, economic utilitarianism, rational liberalism, nationalism or ethnocentrism, and socialism and communism.
These doctrines may be impeccable logically, and some are emotionally moving. But they all have an a priori hypothesis that cannot be empirically proven or falsified—that is, human beings can be absolutely rational and can comprehend absolute truth.
Now we finally know this priori hypothesis is wrong, not because of logic’s merits or demerits, but because it simply doesn’t work in real life. So, where is the way out? Peter Drucker suggested that we return to spiritual values and faith: to experience and recognize there is a higher authority beyond society and above human beings. That authority has already planted compassion and justice in human’s hearts, what we usually call “conscience.” If humans indeed have a purely rational nature, conscience is its master. With conscience derived from faith, rationality can perform its beneficial functions. Like the conservatism’s counterrevolutionary movement that took place in the United States and Great Britain more than two hundred years ago, it shines with the glory of true freedom and genuine rationality: Those movements were constructive, not
destructive; they appealed to the love, faith, and humility of Christ. Based on religious conviction, they firmly rejected human’s absolute rationality, or irrational absolutism, and were solemnly committed to human dignity.
Peter Drucker inherited the tradition of the conservatism’s counterrevolution in the United States and Great Britain. Inspired by observing social and political realities in the United States, he formed a social concept that differs from a social rescue plan (salvation by society): lesser
evils instead of greater good. Although imperfect, it would create a less painful and tolerable society. Such a society should have the following characteristics:
1. It would replace solipsistic “isms” with an open and tolerant attitude.
2. It would replace centralized and uniform structures with diversified social organization and decentralized power centers.
3. It would replace revolutionary dogma with experimental, gradual improvement and review from time to time.
4. It would replace the rigid social relationship that mutually exclude and negate between individual and the whole, or between the different parts of the society, with the principle of mutual
dependence and mutual benefit to establish a dynamic equilibrium between the individuals and society, freedom and order.
Such a society would not follow a preset scientific design, nor would it need to rely on charismatic leaders or supermen. It would not be perfect, but it would be better and achievable.
It should be emphasized that Drucker’s openness, tolerance, diversity, and eclecticism are not without a bottom line. The bottom line is that he will never tolerate any form of totalitarian autocracy. Drucker noted that human beings have two essential qualities that other creatures don’t
have—knowledge and power. These attributes can neither be removed nor avoided, and their aims and uses must be regulated and restricted. He was wary of sovereign states and modern governments. He believed that regardless of whether they adopted a democratic system or an autocratic system, they were essentially the same but only different in extent, to which they infringed on individual rights and freedoms. Therefore, within every sovereign state and modern government, there exists a gene for the growth of totalitarianism. When any nation abuses its knowledge and power to violate human rights, the international community must restrict or even deprive it of its sovereignty.
However, Drucker believed that thus far, the United States may be the only country that has never entirely accepted the concept and system of a sovereign state. Therefore, as the leader of the free world and developed countries in the West, the United States is best suited to be the first to serve as a model for global actions to resist totalitarianism. Constructive frontiers of work are more important and decisive than confrontations in the military sphere. Such frontiers are not found in the East, where totalitarianism is firmly rooted and far-reaching, but in the free world, especially in the West, where the U.S. has an advantage. These “West” frontiers are:
• the educated society;
• the world economy of dynamic development;
• the new political concepts and institutions needed in this pluralist age, internationally, nationally and locally; and civilizations that can take the place of the East that has vanished.
Ultimately, when the “West” constructive endeavors bring forth the tolerable new society that Ducker envisioned, restoring confidence in freedom and equality, totalitarianism will evaporate just as the sun rises and the dew will naturally be disappeared, losing its deceptive magic.
For those who are not free today, who unfortunately live under totalitarian rule or in totalitarian revolutionary movements, Drucker offers advice on how to deal with the environment based on his personal experiences in Europe as a teenager. The first is what not to do. Power has the potential for absolute and comprehensive control, and human nature is weak, unable to withstand the threats and temptations of power, let alone face the opening of “Pandora’sBox”—totalitarianism.