Totalitarian power aims to render human beings superfluous, not merely to rule them

Evidence

What makes conviction and opinion of any sort so ridiculous and dangerous under totalitarian conditions is that totalitarian regimes take the greatest pride in having no need of them, or of any human help of any kind. Men insofar as they are more than animal reaction and fulfillment of functions are entirely superfluous to totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous. Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. Precisely because man’s resources are so great, he can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core conceptual definition: totalitarianism’s goal is superfluousness of man, not despotism — a mechanism to carry into readings on dehumanization.
• SEED: Essay angle: societies that frame groups as ‘superfluous’ rather than ‘opposed’ — the shift from enemies to redundancies.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that human greatness is why full domination requires reducing man to species-being — a dense, paradigm-level formulation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025
• XREF: connects to: Total domination consumes population so heavily it needs excess human material; Totalitarian rule requires destroying all autonomous activity, not merely equalizing conditions; Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Disciplinary power produces individuals rather than suppressing them. #complicates (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 264
• Totalitarian regimes legitimize eliminating opposition as unnecessary and weak #exemplifies (0.82)
• Totalitarianism concentrates state powers in ways traditional despotism could not #expands (0.78) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 31