Abstract

Totalitarian, totalitarianism are twentieth‐century words. They are used to describe states, ideologies, leaders and political parties that aim at total transformation and control of their own societies or, at least, at total control of everything that is actually or potentially politically significant within those societies. More positively, ‘totalitarians’ may see themselves as promoting a total conception of life and an organically cohesive state and community. They have been accused of aiming, inevitably, at a total transformation of the world. Applied to a whole society, ‘totalitarian’ is, quixotically, a success word – to call a society totalitarian is to suggest the ruler's control measures up to this programme.