“Totalitarian” is exactly the right word for this. This is a vision of the state giving and the state taking away, where all belongs to the state and personal property is to be justified by a plea of need.
There might be some terminological confusion here. To expand on what you’ve written, totalitarianism doesn’t necessarily describe repressive or ultra-nationalist governments, though historically totalitarian governments have often been highly nationalist and have almost always been repressive. Instead, it describes governments which claim total identity of state with society; or, to put it another way, where citizens’ behavior is accepted as legitimate by the government to the extent that it’s directed toward state goals and ideology.
I can think of some (more or less stable or scalable) societies which don’t include notions of private property as generally accepted in the modern First World, but which are not totalitarian. But if some state-defined utility function is governing resource allocations, that’s pretty hard to square with any other alternative.
I can think of some (more or less stable or scalable) societies which don’t include notions of private property as generally accepted in the modern First World, but which are not totalitarian.
What do you have in mind besides kibbutzim?
A highly relevant issue here is the freedom to exit. Many small communities (e.g. religious cults) can be quite totalitarian but as long as there is freedom to exit we don’t consider them horribly repressive. On the other hand I can’t imagine how a totalitarian society without the freedom to exit can be anything but repressive.
Most of the best examples are historical, although kibbutzim and certain other religious or social communities do seem to qualify. Feudal systems of property rights for example often held all property to ultimately belong to the monarch, but didn’t allow for enough centralized control to qualify as totalitarian.
There might be some terminological confusion here. To expand on what you’ve written, totalitarianism doesn’t necessarily describe repressive or ultra-nationalist governments, though historically totalitarian governments have often been highly nationalist and have almost always been repressive. Instead, it describes governments which claim total identity of state with society; or, to put it another way, where citizens’ behavior is accepted as legitimate by the government to the extent that it’s directed toward state goals and ideology.
I can think of some (more or less stable or scalable) societies which don’t include notions of private property as generally accepted in the modern First World, but which are not totalitarian. But if some state-defined utility function is governing resource allocations, that’s pretty hard to square with any other alternative.
What do you have in mind besides kibbutzim?
A highly relevant issue here is the freedom to exit. Many small communities (e.g. religious cults) can be quite totalitarian but as long as there is freedom to exit we don’t consider them horribly repressive. On the other hand I can’t imagine how a totalitarian society without the freedom to exit can be anything but repressive.
Most of the best examples are historical, although kibbutzim and certain other religious or social communities do seem to qualify. Feudal systems of property rights for example often held all property to ultimately belong to the monarch, but didn’t allow for enough centralized control to qualify as totalitarian.