The free community and the totalitarian state

I'm looking at How to Pay for the War, the 1940 book by J. M. Keynes.

I'm posting this not because of war concerns, but for Keynes's observation of one difference between the free community and the totalitarian state. It seems somehow relevant.

First this, for context:

Is it better that the War Office should have a large reserve of uniforms in stock or that the cloth should be exported to increase the Treasury's reserve of foreign currency? Is it better to employ our shipyards to build war ships or merchant-men? Is it better that a 20-year-old agricultural worker should be left on the farm or taken into the army? How great an expansion of the Army should we contemplate? What reduction in working hours and efficiency is justified in the interests of A.R.P.? One could ask a hundred thousand such questions, and the answer to each would have a significant bearing on the amount left over for civilian consumption.

Now the political observation, from page 7:

In a totalitarian state the problem of the distribution of sacrifice does not exist. That is one of its initial advantages for war. It is only in a free community that the task of government is complicated by the claims of social justice.