Fascism vs totalitarianism
Fascism vs totalitarianism, the short answer
Fascism is a specific ultranationalist ideology; totalitarianism is a structural category describing a government's attempt at total control over public and private life through a comprehensive ideology, a mass party, and systematic terror. Some but not all fascist governments reached the totalitarian threshold; the two describe different things, content versus degree of control.
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What fascism holds
Fascism holds that the nation is a singular organic community, calling for national rebirth under a single-party authoritarian state, a specific ideological content that varied in how completely it was implemented across different fascist movements.
- What it is: a specific ideology, ultranationalist, anti-liberal, anti-Marxist.
- Degree of control: varied historically; Fascist Italy's actual control over private life was, by most historical accounts, less complete than Nazi Germany's.
- Defining feature: the specific doctrinal content described above.
- Relationship to totalitarianism: some, not all, fascist governments reached the totalitarian threshold of comprehensive social control.
What totalitarianism holds
Totalitarianism describes a structural degree of control, a comprehensive ideology, single mass party, and systematic terror aimed at total control of public and private life, achievable by governments of different specific ideological content.
- What it is: a description of the degree and completeness of state control, not a specific ideological content.
- Degree of control: by definition, total or near-total, extending into private and civic life.
- Defining feature: the comprehensiveness of control and the methods used to achieve it, not any particular doctrine.
- Relationship to fascism: fascist ideology is one of several specific ideological contents that has, in some historical cases, been implemented in totalitarian style.
Where they overlap
The two concepts describe different things, ideological content versus degree of control, so they overlap in specific historical cases without being the same category.
Historical fascist and totalitarian states substantially coincide
Nazi Germany is widely classified as both fascist in ideology and totalitarian in the degree of control it achieved; the two classifications describe different features of the same historical case, content and degree, rather than competing labels for it.
Both reject liberal pluralism
Fascism rejects liberal pluralism as a matter of ideological doctrine; totalitarianism, whatever its specific ideological content, requires eliminating independent institutions as a matter of achieving total control. Both land on the same practical rejection of pluralist competition, for related but distinct reasons.
Where they actually differ
| Axis | fascism | totalitarianism |
|---|---|---|
| What it describes | A specific ideological content | A degree and method of control |
| Requires comprehensive control of private life | Not necessarily; varied by specific movement and case | Yes, by definition |
| Can occur without the other | Yes; a fascist movement need not reach full totalitarian control | Yes; totalitarian control can be organized around non-fascist ideologies, such as Marxism-Leninism |
| Best-known joint historical case | Nazi Germany, as ideology | Nazi Germany, as achieved degree of control |
Why they get confused
Because the most-studied historical case, Nazi Germany, was both fascist in ideology and totalitarian in its degree of control, the two terms are frequently treated as synonyms, obscuring that they classify different features of a government.
Fascist Italy is commonly cited by historians as having pursued totalitarian ambitions in its own rhetoric while achieving a less complete degree of actual control over private and civic life than Nazi Germany did, illustrating that fascism as ideology and totalitarianism as achieved control are genuinely separable, even in the historical cases most associated with both terms.
Sources
Sources here draw on the foundational academic literature distinguishing ideological content from degree of achieved control.
- 1.Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1951.
- 2.Paxton, Robert O. The Anatomy of Fascism. 2004.
- 3.Encyclopaedia Britannica. Totalitarianism.