Totalitarianism was the term employed by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), who took power in 1922, to describe the new type of regime he hoped to, and by 1927 partially did, establish in Italy. Although Mussolini did not invent the term, he brought it into common usage, and generations of political leaders, intellectuals, and scholars have continued to employ it, not in the positive sense that Mussolini intended, but as a description of a political system fundamentally at odds with basic human values.

Paradoxically, Italian fascism never did become truly totalitarian in the sense that the term itself indicates. That is, it was never able to establish total control over the entire range of social, economic, and political institutions that regulate society. Indeed, it is questionable that any totalitarian system has ever completely succeeded in this regard, and one must turn to such totalitarian novels as George Orwell's 1984 (1949) to...