The issue was discussed in my high school government class. Although colloquially they are often used as synonyms, an authoritarian style of government and a totalitarian form were distinctly different, my text book explained. The only thing is, it has been so long, I forget what the difference was. (I do seem to recall though, England under Queen Elizabeth I was given as an example of an authoritarian regime, not a totalitarian one .)
I really have wondered for some time now what the difference is. I recently looked both words up in my dictionary. But they seem to treat them as synonyms to a certain degree too .
BTW, I have put this under GQ and not GD because I am looking for a simple definition answer.
If I recall correctly, at one time the Reagan government attempted to develop an authoritarian/totalitarian distinction very much along the lines Punoqllads suggests. Even the administration’s supporters found this embarrasssing - and some of them were quite difficult to embarrass.
As I understand it, a totalitarian government claims the right to control, or at least to interfere in, every aspect of society, and of citizens’ lives. Fascist governments would be the best example, where the nation is considered to be greater than the sum of the individuals who make it up, and the state is considered to be the ultimate expression of the nation. There is nothing in which the state cannot intervene, and all other social organisations, and all individuals, are subordinate to the state.
An authoritarian government is one which relies more on coercion, and less on the rule of law, consensus, contract or persuasion, to achieve its ends.
Most totalitarian governments would have a tendancy to authoritarianism, but the reverse is not necessarily true. A conservative military dictatorship, for instance, would be authoritarian but not usually totalitarian.
Leftists tried to deny that there was any distinction, but there is a significant one.
Let’s look at two loathsome 20th century dictators: Francisco Franco and Mao Tse-tung. Did both imprison, torture and/or kill their enemies? Absolutely. The difference is, Franco only wanted people’s obedience and deference- not their souls. Franco had an unstated bargain with his subjects in Spain: don’t mess with me, and don’t question my power. If you can agree to that, I’ll leave you alone. Cross me, and you’re dead- but as long as you’re no threat to me, I don’t really care what you do in your day to day lives.
Mao Tse-tung, on the other hand, believed that practically EVERY aspect of EVERYONE’S life was his concern. It was dangerous to be on Franco’s “enemies list,” but it was pretty hard to get onto it, and everyone knew what behaviors to avoid to stay in Franco’s good graces. But nobody in China knew what would get them on Mao’s enemies list, because Mao changed his mind about what he wanted constantly.
In an authoritarian country, the implied rule is “Here’s a list of things you mustn’t do. Anything that’s not on this list is okay.” In a totalitarian country, the implied rule is “NOTHING is okay except what we tell you to do.”
I can’t remember which, but a cartoonist once parodied Kirkpatrick’s doctrine more-or-less thusly:
“Totalitarian governments repress their citizens, crush opposition, and deny basic human rights. Authoritarian governments, on the other hand, leave these functions to the private sector.”
Example, Walloon, I said fascist states were the best example of totalitarianism. I didn’t assert that all totalitarian states were fascist. But fascist ideology does lend itself particularly easily to totalitarianism, and fascist states are therefore a useful illustration.
The Historical Atlas of the 20th Century has a page on systems of government that addresses this issue towards the bottom. It uses a two-axis system of classifying governments according to personal and economic freedoms. It argues that a state with severe restrictions on both personal and economic freedoms is ‘totalitarian’, while states with few personal freedoms and a greater degree of economic freedoms is ‘authoritarian’. This is compatible with the idea that anti-Communist dictatorships are ‘authoritarian’ and pro-Communist ones are ‘totalitarian’. The page also argues that only Mussolini and Hitler were ‘fascists’. But there were marked differences between Italian and German fascism (or Spanish fascism, for that matter). The classification of non-Communist states with severe limitations on personal freedom as ‘fascist’ probably arises from the late 30’s and the Second World War, when the world was divided into Communist states (the Stalinist USSR), fascist states (Italy and Nazi Germany), and democracies (the Western Allies).
Under fascist governments such as in Franco’s Spain and Germany’s Third Reich, private ownership of property and industrial production continued. That would make both bad examples of totalitarianism.
Punoqllads’ definition is certainly not without merit, but astorian has raised a good point. Compare Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan. Saddam was authoritarian. As long as you played by his rules, you could live your life without too much trouble. The Taliban were totalitarian. They wanted to control how people lived. All men must have beards; all women must be fully covered when in public. That sort of thing.
I am not sure there is such a clear distinction between Mao’s China and Franco’s Spain. Both regimes attempted to influence how you behaved and thought. In the case of Mao’s China, espousing capitalism would most likely shorten your potential lifespan. The same would be true of advocating communism in Franco’s Spain.
With regards to Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems to me that the key difference was one of religion. Saddam Hussein led what was largely a secular government. The Taliban, by contrast, enforced religious laws. In practical terms, that is quite a significant difference. I do not think is it a distinction, however, that allows one to separate authoritarian and totalitarian.
I quite like Punoqllads definition as well. If I could add another view, it would be that totalitarians are more authoritarian than authoritarians.
It seems to me that Punoqllads nailed it way on up toward the beginning of the thread. It was a fine example of hair splitting that allowed the US to support unconscionable governments that claimed to be anti-communist.
There was actually some truth to this: the states that the USSR supported tended to learn from their example, though the reverse was not neccessarily true. USSR advisors often helped them set up Secret Police systems and so forth that very few authortarian states managed to match.
If they were US allies we didn’t much care if they had a Secret Police, but they had to do it themselves.
Well, they certainly got the “great leader” persona, racial superiority complex, and absolute control. But economically its different from how fascism was practically applied.
Quite probably true. Castro doesn’t have much of the control he once did.
Only partly true. Franco, unlike Mao or other Communist nations, didn’t send out legions of teens to waste their lives in “class struggle”, beating or killing and imprisoning anyone with the slightest connection to anything Mao found threatening. In fact, in some areas they actually wiped out every book and magazine except their Holy Writ: copies of Mao’s sayings.
Incidentally, Mao’s successors pretty much ruined the lives of the Red Guards, partly out of fear and partly out of vengeance.
And of course, the people advocating Capitalism in China weren’t saying the people should rise up and murder all the Communists. The Communists in Spain count among their number and allies many of the most despicable and evil men in history, who publicly demanded the murder of anyone who wasn’t one of them. There’s a difference between violent revolutionaries and peaceful ones.
So, if I may sum up, the difference between what people mean when they describe a government as authoritarian versus totalitarian is that the latter involves the regulation of all aspects of the lives of its population by a central authority, while the former is absolute rule but without any meddling in the private aspects of the population’s lives.
The labeling of specific regimes as authoritarian versus totalitarian, on the other hand, depends upon the political perspective in question, and is a topic suited for Great Debates.
Not quite. We occupied Nicaragua for quite some time in the 1930s, setting up their National Guard and helping out the Somoza dynasty.
The US even had a school dedicated to training officers and military personel for Latin America-the School of the Americas. There was a good reason it’s known as the School of the Assasins.
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