Catholic social teaching does not deal with Totalitarianism directly as it is not a Catholic idea but a series of ideas that have come from outside Catholic Christianity including Machiavellianism (The political doctrine of Machiavelli, which denies the relevance of morality in political affairs and holds that craft and deceit are justified in pursuing and maintaining political power), Protestantism (a collection of vague and indefinite creeds resting on individuals' beliefs), the philosophy of Auguste Comte; positivism (Comtism), Hegelianism (the philosophy of Hegel that places ultimate reality in ideas rather than in things and that uses dialectic to comprehend an absolute idea behind phenomena), and Marxism (the political, economic, and social principles and policies advocated by Marx; especially : a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society)

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

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Totalitarianism. A theory of society that gives the State total control of the life and conduct of the citizens. Modern totalitarianism is a combination of five movements that were centuries in the making: Machiavellianism, which divorced the public and private morality; protestantism, which gave princes the right to pass judgment on popes and bishops; Comtism, which favored social development and organization based on exact biological norms; Hegelianism, for which history was the mark of the Absolute Idea through the world and incarnated in nineteenth-century Prussia; and Marxism, which merely changed Hegelian idealism to Communist materialism and adapted Hegel's "military class dictatorship" to "dictatorship of the proletariat." All totalitarian regimes in the recent past and the present are greater or lesser expressions of one or more of these contributing philosophies of society.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

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