The cynical answer to your last question is that a totalitarian state is our name for an authoritarian state that we don’t happen to support (this week).
A dictatorship is a government in which the ultimate power rests in the hands of a single person (although that power may be distributed among various bureaucratic agencies, or even legislative bodies to handle the day-to-day decisions–with the dictator having ultimate veto and the right to “suggest” legislation that will be enacted).
The difference between a dictator and a monarch (king) is that the dictator achieves power through public acclamation or by siezing it, whereas a monarch either inherits that power or is voted that power through “normal” means.
In a Totalitarian state, the government has control of every aspect of a person’s life. In an Authoritarian state, the government has control of every aspect of a person’s life except their ability to trade with a Western Power for the duration of the current crisis. (The “current crisis” is generally identified as an attempt to overthrow the government, purportedly by “commmunists” but more likely by people who just want to run their own country in a democratic or republican fashion. “Current crises” tend to run for 30 or 40 years unless the economy gets so bad the the Western Powers allow the dictator to be overthrown.)
Communism (in an ideal world) is a method of economy in which all goods are held in common by all people. The government provides for all the services to the people and money ceases to be needed, since the material goods are simply distributed to those who need them. This was the goal that Karl Marx envisioned that all governments would come to through natural (by his standards) revolt of the masses of people who were suppressed by the holders of money–the capitalists.
Communism actually works in a very limited way, usually among small religious groups, where the possession of property is not their prime purpose of association. Such groups (such as religious orders) can continue for hundreds of years. The one absolute requirement for communism to succeed appears to be celibacy. Every group that has tried communism but allowed the procreation of children has eventually broken up as the parents have attempted to establish “property” to make their children’s lives secure.
The various revolutionary groups who thought that they were carrying forward Marx’s vision tended to call themselves communists, so the name stuck, but none of them ever achieved communism, generally bogging down in a form of socialism. Since there were many people who did not want to surrender their property to the state, the Marxist-inspired governments tended to become authoritarian–holding the country until the “current crisis” of reactionary-capitalists-in-rebellion had been suppressed. Under such shining exemplars of humanity as Josef Stalin, those countries developed governments that were so heavy-handed that they earned the epithet “totalitarian.”
Socialism is a form of economy that allows for personal ownership of property, but requires that all major industries be owned by the government, in exchange for which the government will provide all the social benefits required by the population for “free” (aside from a very high tax rate). To the extent that any government provides any social service (health, housing, education), there is an element of socialism in that government. A great many countries have provided a wide range of socialist programs throughout the twentieth century, allowing historians and economists to try to figure out which mixture of socialism and capitalism will work the best. (Anyone who claims that either pure socialism or pure capitalism will lead us to a bright future of perfect harmony and contentment is delusional. Many very smart people can disagree quite sharply as to how much capitalism or socialism should go in the mix.)
Fascism was a specific form of government that used a modified socialist economy combined with an appeal to the ethnic heritage of the governed (with an implied–or, often, explicit–denial of the quality of any person not of that ethnic heritage). Mussolini, in Italy, was the first proponent of Fascism. Hitler used it effectively to gain and hold power. In his rise to power, Hitler made a big deal of opposing the (Marxist) “communists” and so people on the Left tend to equate Fascism with a right-wing form of government while people on the Right point to the (modified) socialist economy and equate it with a left-wing form of government. In popular parlance, Fascism is more frequently asociated with right-wing authoritarian or “police” states (such as Franco’s Spain), so the Leftists won the battle of words (although not necessarily by being accurate).
Labelling Nixon a fascist was an attempt to equate his “Law and Order” platform with the police state maintained by Hitler. It had nothing to do with the economy or any valid use of the word Fascism.
(I have capitalized Fascism and not socialism or communism for the purposes of noting that it was a specific political movement rather than an economic theory. Historians and stylists can point out the error of my decision at their leisure.)
