Totalitarianism

Abstract

Totalitarianism has been defined differently since the 1920s (Schlangen, 1970; Linz, 2000) when the scientific analysis of a presumably new phenomenon began with the takeover of power by Communists in Russia, Fascists in Italy and later by National Socialists in Germany. Four definitions will be mentioned. The first takes the sphere of life subordinated to the dictate of the state as its characteristic. Mussolini’s definition in the Enciclopedia Italiana (1929: 847 f.) is an example: for the Fascist everything is within the state and there exists nothing human or spiritual … outside the state. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian and the Fascist state interprets, develops and multiplies the whole life of the people as a synthesis and unit of each value.