Totalitarianism represents a special and extreme form of authoritarian government, distinguished by the total, all encompassing power exercised by the state. This power goes far beyond the political sphere, overshadowing nearly every aspect of life; such unchecked power has left a devastating mark on history, exemplified by the German Holocaust. All authoritarian political systems, by their very nature, have the potential to become totalitarian political systems since they do not recognize any limits on political power. However, in actuality, the number of authoritarian states which make the transition to totalitarianism is very small, due to a fundamental difference between authoritarian rulers and totalitarian rulers; that difference is the vision of an ideal society possessed and pursued by totalitarian leaders.

The goals of totalitarian leaders stretch far beyond those of authoritarian leaders, who for the most part are simply seeking to maintain their power. Totalitarian government tends to arise when the leaders of a state have a strong will to change the world fundamentally so that the utopia, ideal society, they envision can be achieved. This change naturally encompasses spectacular mobilization of the citizenry, and possibly even a profound transformation of human nature. To attain such ends, the rule is arbitrary, rather than bound by law. Governance is based on coercion and fear which is arbitrarily used on any and all segments of society. This terror becomes an institutionalized means of deterring any opposition to the government or its vision of the ideal society. The totalitarian regime's belief in and emphasis on building a utopia is so intense that the leader(s) are willing to take extreme measures, violate socially accepted norms, take actions that violate the moral principles of other nations, and so on. Their tremendous dedication to the end goal of a perfect society is dangerous, as it makes no price appear to be to high.

Totalitarian regimes typically arise from violence and in the end, there must almost always be revolution if the utopia is to be realized. To be successful in this revolution, there must be effective tactics and methods of leadership, ideology, organization, propaganda, and violence. All of these factors are necessary to mobilize the public in pursuit of the utopia. The ideology is what sets the vision of the utopia. Since it is ultimately a force to transform an entire society, it is necessarily elaborate, covering all aspects of life. This ideology, directed at producing the perfect society, tends to depict the attainment of such qualities as community and equality. It tends to provide the egalitarian notion that there will be no social differences once the revolution is complete. Liberty and individuality are not an integral part of the ideology, as they are subordinate to the other values to be achieved. The main problem with utopias, especially guiding a state in pursuit of one, is that they are theoretical states. Although one can envision an ideal society, one cannot realistically create one.

Totalitarian government generally imposes a single mass party, to which no opposition is permitted, that permeates all aspects of society including the military, schools, and churches. This party, which is very disciplined, coordinates all of society, ensuring that all sectors are working together to achieve the utopia. This party is generally led by a single individual known as the dictator. This person controls the party and provides the ideology which the party promotes. This party controls the secret police who carry out the institutionalized terror to deter opposition forces. The party also controls all propaganda through its complete control of the mass media. In order to keep the citizenry mobilized and devoted to the utopia, no independent media sources are permitted to exist in a totalitarian system. Building the ideal society requires substantial economic resources, so the party has central direction over the entire economic system. The party controls every aspect of society that is crucial to the realization of the utopia and since the utopia is all encompassing, the totalitarian government's control over society will be all encompassing as well.

Totalitarianism serves as a means of organizing tyrannical or despotic rule in modern society. Its dominating feature is the presence of a revolutionary movement that claims to base itself on nature or history. This revolutionary struggle generally tends to be defined in terms of good versus evil. Therefore, there is always a clear enemy for the masses to strive to defeat in their utopian revolution. Furthermore, it inspires the masses to actually take actions that are said to be necessary to correct what is currently wrong with modern society. The leader is able to explain any problems of the past or present such as economic recession or military defeat by providing a scapegoat. They reinterpret the past so that this scapegoat is not only the cause of the state's current ills, but to show that they have always been the cause. This leads to the inspiration to defeat the enemy before this group causes further ills to fall upon society. The scapegoat is rarely picked arbitrarily, rather it is usually a clearly identifiable group that was previously hated, feared, or envied by the masses. For example, in the Soviet Union, Lenin blamed the disadvantaged state of the workers on the money hungry capitalists.

Ideology is a central concept in the totalitarian system. After all, the revolution will not take place if the ideology which drives it forward is not powerful enough to inspire the citizenry to make extraordinary sacrifices or commit extraordinary acts. It must provide an absolute, all inspiring truth in order to mobilize the masses, as a doctrine that merely appealed to rationality would not give way to such extreme devotion to the cause. Moreover, most of the time the activities which the regime asks the masses to partake in would be unquestionably rejected if the rational side of human beings was appealed to, as these acts often tend to lack rationality. The utopia must encompass a transformation of society that is desirable to the masses so that they will support the efforts of the revolution. Furthermore, it must appear attainable, for the general public would not devoutly commit themselves to a cause that did not seem achievable. For example, in the Marxist-Leninist utopia, there was a promise to take from the rich bourgeoisie class, the land owners, and give to the poor proletariat, working class citizens. It provided a guarantee of success in the revolution by a deterministic world view that such an end was inevitable because the inflexible laws of history dictated that it would be so. By failing to admit that any goal is beyond their political reach, their own confidence transcends into the general population and reinforces the commitment of the masses to the realization of the utopia.

Terror is a fundamental tactic in maintaining this mode of governance, as it must be used effectively to keep up the momentum of a society in transformation. If the revolution is to be successful, the regime must be secure in its governing position. Therefore, secret police, or special political police, partake in terrorist activities to support the rule of the regime and ensure that it has this security. Since they play such a fundamental role in the totalitarian system, this group of police report directly to the leader of the regime and are under no legal restraint. Their duty is simply to make sure that any opposition to the regime does not rise to the surface.

Law is not binding in a totalitarian society because the leaders who dictate it merely see it as a means to achieve the final end. They are above the law and as the revolution takes shape, they may change the law to conform with the goals of the utopian mission. Law is a tool, like terror, at the dictator's disposal. Thus, what the law states one day may be different from the next as the dictator perceives a need to change things for the sake of the revolution. Furthermore, individual or group rights only exist under the law and since the law is subordinate to the state, the state may infringe upon what were once rights at will.

A planned economy is crucial to the revolution's success, as the economy must be growing, or at least stabilized, both to fund the revolution and to keep the masses content. Therefore, the totalitarian regime either attempts to control the economy through direct ownership or close state supervision of private enterprise. It is not only the economy, but all aspects of society which require such great and sustained organization for the revolution to occur. Such complete control and organization often takes many years of preparation and planning even prior to the start of the revolution. For example, Mao's revolution in China took more than twenty years. Although sustained organization is crucial, there is always the problem of maintaining the monopoly on ideas and mass inspiration that is necessary to keep the revolution going. Thus, there needs to be a constant momentum and ideas opposite to those advocated by the regime cannot come to the forefront.

To prevent the rise of opposition forces, the totalitarian regime seeks to monopolize the flow of ideas in society by controlling all means of communication. Thereby, it is easier to indoctrinate the mass public into conforming with the utopian goal and to keep the momentum of the revolutionary movement going once it has begun. Propaganda, the broad dissemination of ideas and information deliberately designed to further a political cause, is an activity all totalitarian regimes must partake in out of necessity. In fact, this is one of the most powerful political tools the regime has, as it is the one that can most inspire the masses to conform and deter the opposition from rising to the forefront. Like ideology, the propaganda that is produced by the regime must appeal to the masses and be far more directed at emotion, than intellect or rationality.

Totalitarian regimes combine an all powerful leader with a utopian mission. In order for this mission to be achieved, everyone in society must adhere to it as it is prescribed by the dictator. Although the leader and the party maintain their stronghold on absolute power by force, they tend to rationalize it with pseudo-democratic argument. This allows them to keep the people on side by leading them to believe that their government is really doing what is in the best interests of the public. For example, Hitler argued that he represented the people in such a special way that elections were not necessary. In using such practices, dictators better their chances of maintaining power and rally popular support for their mission. The leaders of these regimes tend to be made the object of hero worship as the revolution is identified with and even personified in the leader. For example, central to the Chinese Revolution there was Mao and to Cuba, there was Castro. Without the presence of an outstanding leader, there would be no revolution. Indeed, without Hitler there would likely not have been a Nazi movement in Germany.

Totalitarian leadership is distinguished from simple tyranny by its efforts to transform all of society into the idealized, perfect society. Society is perceived as a substance to be sculpted into perfection by the state according to the regime's ideological design. The commonalties between totalitarian leaders are a tremendous will to transform all of society, to mobilize the people in order to achieve that end, and to use indiscriminate force against those who might oppose the end. Without these characteristic qualities possessed by totalitarian leaders, the revolution could not be realized. These leaders claim to derive their legitimacy in exercising absolute power from their inherent ability to bring about the realization of the utopian society. Consequently, they are able to justify forcing their own set of beliefs about this ideal society and how to achieve it upon society.

A key distinguishing feature of totalitarianism is how completely it pervades every aspect of society. For example, the North Korean government defines the acceptability of films and plays, determines what and how much of each crop will be produced on every farm, decides which families will live in which housing units, and so on. The state's domain may even reach into the personal lives of its citizens because every activity of the individual citizen is subject to scrutiny by the state in the name of the public interest. However, the public interest is really the regime's interest in realizing its ideal society. Totalitarianism can be seen as the complete opposite of pluralism; that is, rather than society dominating the state, the state dominates society.

The one fundamental aspect that those outside of the totalitarian state cannot seem to grasp is how the masses can be inspired to commit such irrational acts. Moreover, how these dictators can get away with, and convince others to subscribe to, their absurd allegations and falsehoods. The answer to this seems to be that they also address the real problems of the masses such as economic recession or political instability. Although the ideology may appear completely ludicrous to outsiders, to those inside the totalitarian state it is often providing an effective solution to the ills which have plagued society. For example, many Germans likely recognized the extremist nature of the Nazis' racial theories, but probably thought adherence to such absurd notions would be discarded once the real problems had been dealt with by Hitler. However, as the country became unified, the economy became revived, and the nation's lost honour became restored, the German people did not see such ludicrous absurdities discarded. Therefore, it is a logical conclusion that once the totalitarian revolution has taken hold of the masses, its ideals tend to be difficult to abandon. Hence, the danger in such a mode of governance.

Totalitarianism has left a devastating mark on modern history and many of those who have suffered under its rule still live to tell the tale. For example, the victims of Hitler's Holocaust or Stalin's Reign of Terror can still be found bearing the emotional and physical scars of their suffering. Consequently, there is a great desire to guard against the rise of such regimes in the future, as the recent past provides an ever present reminder of their dangerous nature and devastating impact on civilization. The horrours that the world has witnessed in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany or the labour camps of Stalinist Russia demonstrate how the unthinkable can become possible. In a mode of governance in which there is absolute power held by a dictator with a distorted vision of what social reality should be, such devastation can occur because there is nothing to prevent the government from carrying out its goals to the most violent and even self-destructive ends.

Totalitarian states stand as an exemplar of the dangers of idealism gone awry. Furthermore, even after the tremendous human suffering has occurred, none of these regimes have actually been able to achieve their utopia. This is mainly because these ideals are unrealistic. Furthermore, no regime has ever been able to master its citizens totally which is a necessary predecessor to the realization of the utopia. Even in the most repressive states, there has always been social institutions such as the family or the church which have been able to escape complete domination by the regime. It is the inevitable existence of these "islands of separateness" in society that has prevented the regime from ever becoming the complete master of its citizenry.

Totalitarianism has touched deeply into the lives of the individual members of the societies it has sought to transform into utopias because it does not stop at a transformation of the outward appearance of society. For example, in all twentieth century totalitarian revolutionary movements, history has seen an intense pursuit to transform the personality of the citizenry; to transform the innermost character of the society's individual members. This drive on the part of regime leaders was evident in Mao Tse-Tung's Chinese Revolution with what he coined rectification; the purging of all capitalist tendencies such as materialism and individualism in all levels of Chinese society.

Totalitarian states generally pass through distinctive stages. They began with the violent revolution through which the regime comes to power. Then this power must be consolidated in the hands of the totalitarian ruler. This phase involves the elimination of opposition parties, placing those who have been faithful to the party in positions of authority, and so on. These actions are necessary for the dictator to embody the absolute power needed to drive the revolution forward. Hence, the final stage of a totalitarian state's evolution is its attempt to bring about the total transformation of society through revolutionary means. These states have failed to move past this stage, as they have failed to achieve the utopia for which they have been striving.

Although totalitarianism has had a tremendous impact on the twentieth century, it appears to be on the decline in modern society. This is likely because of the rise of democracy on a global scale and that these regimes tend to burn themselves out. After all, a regime that requires absolute power, extensive and sustained organisation, devotion and mobilisation of the masses, and other extreme aspects which are generally not found in society cannot logically be expected to possess longevity. These efforts can only be sustained for so long and as it becomes obvious that the ideal is not being realized, the revolution will lose its momentum and the regime will lose its stronghold on power.