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Comment on Totalitarianism. What are the good things about it?

There aren’t any.

Totalitarian regimes are fundamentally not a sensible way of organising society at any level, even if we for some reason decide to ignore the manifold human rights violations committed by totalitarian governments. There is a longheld belief that they are in some ways more ‘efficient’ than democracies (as expressed in the myth that ‘Mussolini made the trains run on time’ – he didn’t) but this isn’t true.

To take two obvious points of comparison, North Korea, the closest to a completely totalitarian regime of any country on Earth, is one of the poorest countries in the world. South Korea, a democracy, is one of the wealthiest.

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dope@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The truth is so obvious that you cannot imagine any alternative.

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- frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I can imagine an alternative, but the reality is that such an alternative has never arisen.
  
  The imagianry ‘good’ version of totalitarianism, I assume, is one where there’s a ‘good’ dictator who is also so intelligent they’re able to run everything very efficiently, where everyone enjoys or at least accepts the dictatorship because everything gets better for everyone. But that’s a very odd utopian daydream. In reality, being a dictator and being good are mutually incompatible.
  
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  - dope@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Not looking for a good totalitarianism. Looking for a thing that is good about totalitarianism.
    
    One example that has been offered in this thread is, “decisions can be made fast”.
    
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    frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    There aren’t any, because if there were, there would be good totalitarianisms.
    
    I partially addressed the ‘fast decisions’ myth above in my comments about efficiency and in more detail here.
    
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- PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I can, but totalitarianism isn’t a viable alternatives.
  
  It’s like asking me if I’m so dirty, am I so accustomed to the comfort of showers that I can’t imagine the benefits of an acid bath. Like…no, I’m not taking an acid bath regardless of how clean it makes me.
  
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