totalisms

Noun

totalism (countable and uncountable, plural totalisms)

1. (rare, uncountable, usually) A social, economic and/or political system in which some authority (e.g. the state or "the market") wields absolute power; totalitarianism.
   • If the political totalism of the fascist and communist world once tried, at horrendous human costs, to subordinate all economic, social, and cultural activity to the demands of an overarching state, the economic totalism of unleashed market economics seems now to be trying (at costs yet to be fully...2010, Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy, →ISBN
2. (countable, rare) A philosophy, ideology or belief system that is total in its scope, one that covers everything.
   • To postmodernists, modernism gave the world science, reason, western civilization, Marxism, Freudianism, and other totalisms. Each of these totalisms tells a grand story that relates everything to everything else by using the system's universal principle as a theme.2004, Personal Epistemology: The Psychology of Beliefs, →ISBN, page 220
3. (rare, uncountable) Totality; (the) entirety (of something).
   • Once the totalism of Sagehood is grasped, the disciple can throw away his li-books; he will be a perfect ritual actor naturally.1900, Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, →ISBN, page 69
4. (rare, uncountable) Totalness, absoluteness; the characteristic of being absolute in nature or scope.
   • The ideological fervor, the abhorrence of compromise, the attraction to conflict, and the totalism of his family's rejection of white culture were the biographical themes that served him best as he tried to reach the hearts of his followers.1981, The Psychohistory Review, volume 10, parts 2-4, page 173