Back when words had meaning, which is usually only for as long as the first book describing the word is published, 'totalitarian' was used as a way to describe a system with 'totalizing' control and authority, i.e. full control over every aspect of society.
In practice, it was and is used by American political scientists to describe both the Soviet and Fascist systems of government, with full control of the every aspect of society, with the assumption, of course, that our system operates with different, particular controls, such as privatized media, private financial markets, etc.
Under such analysis, capitalism is simply a natural phenomena, and not a 'totalizing aspect', because American political scientists don't really recognize the concept of political-economy. This is one of the glaring axiomatic flaws. The particular flaws of the analysis are also quite poor, as not only was there massive privatization under Nazism, but there was fairly large latitudes in judgement that Soviets could use to pursue goals set out by the Central Soviet, and it was only during the 30's that the central soviet pursued major dictation of society (because Stalin and his advisors (the Central committee really) correctly predicted Germany would try to expand again, and military economies have pretty strict requirements ).
This is besides the fact that even under this model of analysis, modern Russia cannot be considered totalitarian. It now shares so much similar political institutional make-up with U.S. the U.S. would also be a totalitarian government, which was explicitly not the case by the creators of this analysis.
Needless to say, it's an incredibly flawed model that is unfortunately still taught in schools across the U.S., not just the 'bad ones', and tested for on standardized testing. However now it mostly has even been divorced from it's original flaws meaning to mean 'bad country I don't like's government'
...and what does totalitarian actually mean?
Back when words had meaning, which is usually only for as long as the first book describing the word is published, 'totalitarian' was used as a way to describe a system with 'totalizing' control and authority, i.e. full control over every aspect of society.
In practice, it was and is used by American political scientists to describe both the Soviet and Fascist systems of government, with full control of the every aspect of society, with the assumption, of course, that our system operates with different, particular controls, such as privatized media, private financial markets, etc.
Under such analysis, capitalism is simply a natural phenomena, and not a 'totalizing aspect', because American political scientists don't really recognize the concept of political-economy. This is one of the glaring axiomatic flaws. The particular flaws of the analysis are also quite poor, as not only was there massive privatization under Nazism, but there was fairly large latitudes in judgement that Soviets could use to pursue goals set out by the Central Soviet, and it was only during the 30's that the central soviet pursued major dictation of society (because Stalin and his advisors (the Central committee really) correctly predicted Germany would try to expand again, and military economies have pretty strict requirements ).
This is besides the fact that even under this model of analysis, modern Russia cannot be considered totalitarian. It now shares so much similar political institutional make-up with U.S. the U.S. would also be a totalitarian government, which was explicitly not the case by the creators of this analysis.
Needless to say, it's an incredibly flawed model that is unfortunately still taught in schools across the U.S., not just the 'bad ones', and tested for on standardized testing. However now it mostly has even been divorced from it's original flaws meaning to mean 'bad country I don't like's government'