(Wikipedia) Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism.
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.
The truth is so obvious that you cannot imagine any alternative?
I can imagine an alternative, but the reality is that such an alternative has never arisen.
The imaginary ‘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.
EDIT: Read this back and realised I’m describing the plot of Red Son!
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”.
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.
I can, but totalitarianism isn’t a viable alternative.
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.