Definition: Totalitarianism is a system in which the state has, or pretends to have, total control over all entities, including human beings, operating within its jurisdiction.
Pure totalitarianism has never been achieved in practice (there are always methods that one can use to circumvent government authority), but the illusion of totalitarianism can be maintained if the state makes regular, violent displays of force as a way of deterring disobedience.
Examples of totalitarian states include Nazi Germany and North Korea, but the only totalitarian states that achieved their objectives can be found in literature. Oceania, the country in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), is successfully totalitarian; so is the eponymous community in B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two (1948), a rare example of a totalitarian utopia.
Pure totalitarianism has never been achieved in practice (there are always methods that one can use to circumvent government authority), but the illusion of totalitarianism can be maintained if the state makes regular, violent displays of force as a way of deterring disobedience.
Examples of totalitarian states include Nazi Germany and North Korea, but the only totalitarian states that achieved their objectives can be found in literature. Oceania, the country in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), is successfully totalitarian; so is the eponymous community in B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two (1948), a rare example of a totalitarian utopia.
Common Misspellings: totallitarianism, totallitarienism
