Totalitarianism
Overview
History
Theory in Depth
Theory in Action
Analysis and Critical Response
Topics for Further Study
Bibliography
See Also
Overview
Political systems are often categorized according to the degree of freedom they afford their citizens or according to their degree of their responsiveness to citizen input. Democracies allow the most input; totalitarian systems stand at the extreme opposite end of the continuum. They offer the least amount of freedom and pay the least amount of attention to the voice of the people. In fact, as the name implies, totalitarian governments try to control the totality of human experience. A true totalitarian ruler attempts to take charge not only of the public life of the people, but also their personal and emotional lives. Until the advent of modern forms of travel, communication, and coercion, it would have been impossible to contemplate the total control of anything but a very small group of people. But, with mass media, electronic surveillance equipment, and prisons and torture facilities boasting the efficiency of advanced industrial operations, totalitarianism seemed within the grasp of leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—men with a limitless desire for control. Totalitarianism is a form of government that emerged only in the twentieth century.
This page contains 201 words.
Totalitarianism article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 17,249 words
(approx. 57 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Totalitarianism Article
