Totalistic organizations

the long version

Alexander Korchak compares the organizational and functional structure of four types of totalistic organizations that pose the greatest danger to democratic society: mafias, terrorist groups, religious cults, and mature corrupt bureaucracies. The author shows how mafias penetrate the other three types of totalistic organizations and how such organizations converge in modern democratic societies. One example of such convergence is the use by criminal cults of a religious ideology (Aum Shinrikyo); another is the link between totalistic organizations and totalitarian regimes.