The General Characteristics of Totalitarian Dictatorship

Abstract

Totalitarian regimes are autocracies. When they are said to be tyrannies, despotisms, or absolutisms, the basic general nature of such regimes is being denounced, for all these words have a strongly pejorative flavor. When they call themselves ‘democracies’, qualifying it by the adjective ‘popular’, they are not contradicting these indictments, except in trying to suggest that they are good or at least praiseworthy. An inspection of the meaning the totalitarians attach to the term ‘popular democracy’ reveals that they mean by it a species of autocracy. The leaders of the people, identified with the leaders of the ruling party, have the last word. Once they have decided and been acclaimed by a party gathering, their decision is final. Whether it be a rule, a judgment, or a measure or any other act of government, they are the autokrator, the ruler accountable only to himself. Totalitarian dictatorship, in a sense, is the adaptation of autocracy to twentieth-century industrial society.