Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a system of government and ideology in which all social, political, economic, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual activities are subordinated to the purposes of the rulers of a state. Several important features distinguish totalitarianism, a form of autocracy peculiar to the 20th century, from such older forms as despotism, absolutism, and tyranny. In the older forms of autocracy people could live and work in comparative independence, provided they refrained from politics. In modern totalitarianism, however, people are made utterly dependent on the wishes and whims of a political party and its leaders. The older autocracies were ruled by a monarch or other titled aristocrat who governed by a principle such as divine right, whereas the modern totalitarian state is ruled by a leader, or dictator, who controls a political party.
Totalitarian Governments
Those countries whose governments are usually characterized as totalitarian were Germany, under the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler; the USSR, particularly under Joseph Stalin; and the People's Republic of China, under the Communist rule of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). Other governments have also been called totalitarian, for example, those of Italy under Benito Mussolini, North Korea under Kim Il Sung, Syria under Hafez al-Assad, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
The Party and Its Tools
Under a dictator, members of the ruling party become the elite of the nation. The entire society is subjected to a hierarchical organization wherein each individual is responsible to another in a position of higher authority-with the single exception of the supreme leader, who is answerable to no one. All nongovernmental social groupings are either destroyed totally or coordinated to serve the purposes of the party and the state.
Total subjection of the individual became possible only through advanced science and industrial technology. Among the decisive, technologically conditioned features of totalitarian dictatorships are a monopoly of mass communications, a terroristic secret-police apparatus, a monopoly of all effective weapons of destruction, and a centrally controlled economy.
Control of Mass Communications
By virtue of the monopoly of mass communications the ruling party and the government are in possession of all channels through which people receive information, guidance, and direction. All newspaper, magazine, and book publishing, as well as radio and television broadcasting, theater productions, and motion pictures, is centrally controlled and directed. All writers, speakers, actors, composers, and poets are enrolled in party-controlled organizations, and they are licensed by the government. Usually they are required to be members of the party. The party line, that is, the party's interpretation of policy, is imposed on all mass media through censorship.
The Secret Police
The secret-police apparatus employs the theories and techniques of scientific crime detection and modern psychology. It terrorizes the population in ways radically different from and much crueler than those of the police systems of earlier autocracies. The totalitarian secret police employs institutions and devices such as the concentration camp, predetermined trials, and public confessions. One of the dangers inherent in the totalitarian dictatorship is the possibility that the secret police might seize control of the party itself.
Control of Armament
The monopoly of all effective weapons of destruction is an attribute of all contemporary governments. In the totalitarian dictatorships, however, which provide no legal means of effecting a change of government, popular revolutions, such as the uprisings that occurred in East Germany (now part of the United Federal Republic of Germany) in 1953 and in Hungary in 1956, have scant prospects of success. Tanks, flamethrowers, jet airplanes, and other weapons provide the totalitarian dictators with strong defense against revolution.
Control of the Economy
The centrally controlled economy enables the totalitarian dictatorship to exploit its population for foreign conquest and world revolution. For example, all resources can be concentrated on a single important military project. The totalitarian type of economy enables the dictator to control the workers and make them dependent on the government. Without a work permit none can work. Work permits may be withdrawn for offenses such as objecting to foul working conditions. Thus the workers in a totalitarian dictatorship are sometimes called state slaves.
