Inching closer to a total state

Totalitarianism is any political system in which a citizen is totally subject to state authority in all aspects of day-to-day life.
– free-definition.com

Britain and the United States are not what could be reasonably called totalitarian states. The ‘modern’ understanding of what a totalitarian state is falls within frames of reference conjuring up the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany: national systems which believed that the state was an all encompassing thing that superseded society, in fact replacing civil society, in the manner advocated by Rousseau and others. To be a totalitarian means a total state in which quite simply no aspect of human life is beyond the remit of the political state.

Because both of these well known forms of totalitarianism enforced their political will via mass murder on a biblical scale, that disguises the fact that National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union differed quite significantly in many ways. Just being ‘total states’ does not mean they were the same kind of total state. Whereas the Soviets simply nationalised literally everything (i.e. took direct political control of all means of production) and maintained control via the supply of, well, everything, Nazi Germany retained large numbers of privately owned companies which were ‘free’ to trade and make several profits provided they did so in ways which complied with regulations and essential national strategic objectives: Willi Messerschmitt was free to run his company, provided he did not decide to stop making aircraft and instead become a refrigerator manufacturing company.

Reasonable commentators have often pointed out that in modern times, totalitarian states have always come about due to cataclysmic events… it was the slaughter, privations and aftermath of World War One which lead to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union after all. However is this understanding of how a total state comes about the only way Totalitarianism one can come about? We in the First World live in a state of absolute abundance in which poverty is now little more than a relative measure of wealth. To find absolute objective poverty without a great deal of looking, one needs to look at the underdeveloped nations of the world. There is no risk whatsoever of starvation in the developed world (other than within highly paid sections of the fashion industry) even at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder. So does that mean a total state is quite simply something that cannot happen to us in the absence of a nuclear war or sudden unforeseen economic melt-down?

Far from it.

And whilst there are also (thankfully) countervailing trends to be seen, that we are indeed on the march towards a total state in the Western World is almost indisputable.

It is now hard to find any area of life which the state does not regulate. Ever more areas which were once ‘regulated’ by the evolving and emergent mores of civil society are increasingly being politicised (though the usual term used is ‘democratized’, which means the same thing) and interactions forced to conform to politically derived formulae. That governments feel they can ban advertising for certain types of ‘bad’ food, or ban the use of tobacco on privately owned property shows the extend to which nothing is now beyond the remit of the political state, which I would argue is a clear precursor to a total state. Does anyone seriously think ‘bad’ foods will not eventually be banned outright or (first) taxed into exclusivity in the long run? I can eventually see parents losing their children to the state for not sticking to government approved dietary directives. Absurd? Extreme? Yes, at the moment it is, but you do not need a tinfoil hat to see how that could happen.

And just as both the German National Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party were greeted with considerable and broadly based enthusiasm at their outset, do you really think the next total state(s) will be greeted with any less acclaim by considerable swathes of the Guardian and New York Times reading classes?

So when someone says to you “everything is political”, they are in fact suggesting they (and you) already live in a total state. They are wrong now but they might not always be so. A ‘total democracy’ in which the political completely replaces the social would be in no way less of a totalitarian state than the other forms of totalitarianism which have existed in the past. It would be interesting to see what future generations would call it. Suggestions anyone?