Maria: Calling any state totalitarian is misleading: it implies total state control of all aspects of life. The real world contains no political entity exercising literally total control over even one such aspect. This is because and, therefore, its degree of control is partial.
James: A one-party state that has tried to exercise control over most aspects of a society and that has, broadly speaking, managed to do so is totalitarian. Such a system's practical inefficiencies do not limit the aptness of the term, which does not describe as it describes the nature of a state's ambitions.
What this question is testing
Your task
Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.
Common trap
Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.
Winning move
Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence gap.
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