Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism is a classic of social and political thought. According to her own account, Arendt uses the term 'totalitarianism' to face up to the 'previously unthinkable reality' actualised in the camps. It makes sense not so much as a fixed and top-down type of political system that can be defined according to certain specifiable criteria, but rather in terms of the imaginary identity (found notably in Gentile) of total domination and total freedom. The crucial point is not to fall for the illusion that this conceptual hubris should be actualised but to see the consequences of its radical incompletion. It is perhaps not impossible in theory that the self-consciousness of the individual can be fully identified with the state, so that nothing is left over and there is no supplement. But the import of Arendt's argument is that it is not the success of totalitarianism that led to 'escalating orgies of destruction', but rather its repeated failure.