What does the word "totalitarian" actually mean? I guess it's supposed to conjure an image of one man magically controlling the actions of millions of people - but that's never actually happened in history.
Why are capitalist regimes - in which a handful of capitalists exert total control over society - never classified as "totalitarian"?
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Authoritarian is just a way to call someone that gets things done.
Totalitarianism mean even societal ascpect of society are managed by the state authority. As opposed to say, a liberal democracy (which is still authoritarian = rule of law).
Huh?
So something that has never happened?
Yes, it's called an abuse of language.
real totalitarianism has never been tried
From what I've understood, it means a society organized on holistic rather than antagonistic grounds. All are united in purpose and treated with equal respect. Nobody's left behind or segregated, and each in their particular function benefits the whole. Unlike with barbaric "laissez-faire" dynamics, no effort is wasted on compulsive competition and parallel development – two companies offering the same shitty product – but a single combined, collaborative, consolidated effort is made to provide what is desired. If that's the definition, totalitarianism is what we should all be aiming toward.
Totalitarianism is when the government does a lot of stuff.
Totalitarian is basically a 'weasel word' I think we can all agree, but I think it's still meaningful to a point.
As for capitalists never being described as it, I don't think that's true, try the Nazis, or Papa Doc, or the Saudis, et cetera.
Because capitalist regimes are the ones that do the classifying. Duh?
Totalitarianism is everything the american bourgeoisie dislikes, and the more they dislike it the more totalitarian it is.
Jews
The abolition of social antagonism is a fascist aim, not communist. Communists seek to bring social antagonism to its fullest expression. Communists believe that antagonism can be holism and vice versa.
Not a big fan of this. If all are united in purpose, all you get is self-sameness. Solidarity is great because it manages to unite a great diversity of purpose, and thereby unleashes an unprecedented richness of human experience.
People shouldn't be valued for the function they perform to "the whole." We should value the excess beyond this function, appreciate people in their strange and disruptive uniqueness. We should expect people to perform a social function only in service to this proliferation of personality.
One thing to keep in mind though: Communism isn't a turn away from free association, but a more radical instance of it. It's what you get when the individual becomes aware of their power as part of the collective, and knows how to leverage this power to meet his ends within the economy. This more powerful pushing and pulling of contradicting interests is exactly what forms the basis for better economic unity.
I disagree.
this may help
Totalitarianism is a contronymic term used by gentiles to describe the receiving disparity of gentiles levied against them by the world government caste system of judaism and its slave system of noahidism, aka Christianity, islam, communism, capitalism.
A history teacher I had used a definition I like. Basically he said totalitarianism is when all or nearly every aspect of a society is in one way or another conected to the dictatorial state. One example he gave was how in Nazi Germany before a football match would start the players would give a nazi salute. Not even football was free from nazism there.
So wouldn't this apply to Stalinist USSR in some cases?
When going solely by this logic, a little I suppose. But I think most people here would agree that the soviet government was indefinitely more democratic than Germany's. Besides I don't think football playes had to praise Stalin or shit like that before matches.
Or, when in nearly all countries, they do just the same with their national anthem before playing? By this definition, all of those nations (especially the US, with their near cult of the flag, anthem and such) are "totalitarian".
Now that i think about that is a really shitty example, every country with a small taint of nationalism does that, unless they were at gunpoint it's not the best example to call Nazi Germany authoriatian.
The Stalinist USSR was pretty totalitarian. I don't mean this in the utterly disqualifying way a liberal would, but it's definitely a negative about that time.
It should be good to avoid totalitarianism in the future. Leave plenty of spaces in civil life outside of the immediate scope of politics. We can't give liberals too much ammo.
It's different, this isn't even about the nation, it's about the ruling party. The nazi salute isn't a german thing, it's a nazi thing. That's totalitarianism.
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National symbols, values, and narratives depend on the ruling party or class. They often change along with the dominant ideology.
I think the term "totalitarian" is completely useless.
I don't think North Korea is any more "totalitarian" than the US, for example. Seriously threatening either government will get you taken out. In both countries, people are brainwashed/educated (depending on your perspective) with propaganda. As a result, they believe things that the rest of the world considers bizarre (the Kim family are superheroes/the US spreads freedom around the world). The lives of most citizens of either society are largely pre-determined before they are even born.
I suppose you can't really protest Kim in the DPRK like you could protest Trump in the US. But this is a purely aesthetic element - it doesn't actually entail more freedom. For example, 10s of millions of Westerners protested against the Iraq war. But because of the totalitarian nature of capitalist oligarchy, the protests accomplished literally nothing - they invaded Iraq anyway.
This demonstrates the totalitarian nature of advanced capitalism - a tiny elite clique has total control over political decision making, undemocratically imposing their will on the population.
Some might say that Western oligarchies allow greater freedom of choice But what does this actually mean in practice? The "choice" is between McDonalds and Wendy's - between slaving your life away to rich Capitalist #897347 or doing the same for Capitalist #897348.
There is just as much "brainwashing" going on in capitalist oligarchies as there is in the DPRK. It's just that capitalist brainwashing is a lot more subtle and multi-faceted, and thus more effective. Many of those living under capitalism don't even realize they are being propagandized and controlled on a daily basis. Thoughts are being implanted in their minds that originated from some capitalist to serve his interests. How is this any less "totalitarian" than North Korea?
Some laws in the DPRK render their citizens more freedom than Westerners. From what I have read, drugs including marijuana and methamphetamine enjoy widespread use and social acceptance. Meanwhile, you can get life in prison in the US for making DMT, LSD, and synthetic mescaline - non-addictive compounds which have never killed anybody.
ITT: bourgeois HURR
The fact that people actually think there is a clear-cut distinction between "liberal democracy" and "dictatorship" is genuinely one of the top 5 reasons why socialism is dead. All states are dictatorships with total power. Only the general population that is barred from government or another state can check the power of a state, to think it can check it's own power is utterly absurd bourgeois propaganda and nothing more.
Totalitarianism is more like a recent phenomenon starting in the 20th century. It is a great irony that the republics (supposedly) setting out to limit the responsibilities of the state now have authority eclipsing even the absolutist states of the 18th century many times over.
My personal definition of totalitarianism is just an increasing encroachment of society itself (not necessarily the state) onto all aspects of life, which is mostly accelerated by increasing communication technology and capitalist bureaucracy. It's an inevitable outcome of the technological development of capitalism doing away with all forms of communal life, such as the extended family. In feudalism, even during late feudalism of the absolutist Ancien Régimes, societal integration represented by the state never reached modern levels, it lacked technology and administrative power, which allowed for relatively isolated social life on a communal level. This is pretty much represented by the big divide between the countryside and Paris during the French Revolution - if any such a revolution would occur in modern times, it would encompass all milieus of society.
So in practice totalitarianism means to be integrated in a highly standardised reproduction of daily life, you can easily see this with social media such as Facebook, or "trends" that are now even more dynamically enforcing themselves onto the majority of people due to the Internet. Whether or not this type of control and integration is state-enforced or private doesn't matter, because that is a false dichotomy in late capitalism.
Sure, in the DPRK you have to put up your portrait of the Kims in your living room, not because state agents will come check on you, but you're probably gonna be shamed by your community if you don't. How is this any different from the peer pressure exercised on you in the West? Unless you are a complete psychopath, you are dependent on social feedback systems with all their little totalitarianisms enforcing themselves on you. So, in the end, what is totalitarianism? If you follow my definition, it is pretty much a useless term to categorise things, because unless you are living in a rather communal form of life within a subsistence economy in the Global South, chances are you are living in a totalitarian society. Indicators like "football players had to do the Hitler salute before the game" are useless, because they only stand out because we recognise them as such, due to the crimes of the murderous Nazi regime, but we don't recognise all these internalized rituals we do every day in liberal society which are organised not within the spectre of the family or the commune, but on a national level, and, since 1991, increasingly on a global level.
bourgeois states are ultimately bourgeois dictatorships but you'd be a fool to think there's no difference between liberal democracy and fascism, thats just leftcom autism
I guess what I was trying to say, essentially, is that despite the lack of participatory freedom on a political level, the late feudal Ancien Régimes of the enlightenment era did allow for a level of self-determination on a communal level, it was possible that you go into another village and you experience completely different people with different traditions. One village may still be believing in witches, while another village might consider such a belief barbaric.
Modern late capitalist society doesn't allow for this. The remaining cultural idiosyncrasies are commodified now - a village might still have some traditions but now it's a tourist attraction and the real life is liking stuff on Facebook.
There is a difference between liberal democracy and fascism, and make no mistake, I'd fight for my liberal democracy if fascists are about to take power, but what people argue is that "totalitarianism" as a category is useless and lacks any scientific palpableness.