UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper LV: August 25, 2008, 7:00 p.m.

Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, April 2008).

Preface. “[I]nverted totalitarianism . . . represents the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry” (x, emphasis in original). Inverted totalitarianism “is not expressly conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. Typically it is furthered by power-holders and citizens who [exhibit] a certain heedlessness, an inability to take seriously the extent to which a pattern of consequences may take shape without having been preconceived,” an attitude linked to “the well-known American zest for change” and their “good fortune in having at their disposal a vast continent rich in natural resources” (x). “American democracy has never been truly consolidated” (xi). The failure of the 2006 midterm elections to change the direction of U.S. policy is persuasive evidence that the U.S. is not democratic (xii). Terminology: “Superpower” means “the projection of power outward,” “inverted totalitarianism projects power inwards” (xiii). The combination is “the political coming-of-age of corporate power” (xiii). Checked by Populism, Progressivism, and the New Deal, corporate power revived during the Cold War, a time also inculcating political passivity in the citizenry (xiv-xv). The concept of “inverted totalitarianism” is “tentative, hypothetical . . . [it] exists as a set of strong tendencies rather than a fully realized actuality” (xvi).

Acknowledgments. Among others, Arno Mayer.

Preview. Leni Riefenstahl’s “The Triumph of the Will” (1934) compared to G.W. Bush’s landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln (2003)—both were “myth creation” spectacles using inherently “tyrannical” media (cinema, television) (1-3).

Ch. 1: Myth in the Making. With 9/11, a modern myth has been created that is governing decision-makers: 9/11 was a “symbolic event” revelatory of “American political life” (4-5). The media unanimity produced by 9/11 demands explanation (5-

8). That the myth, chaos-combating and predominantly Christian in its themes, is governing is demonstrated by the troop “surge” that followed the 2006 midterm elections (8-12). Science, technology, media, and advertising have facilitated the creation of a mythic credulousness (12-14).

Ch. 2: Totalitarianism’s Inversion: Beginnings of the Imaginary of a Permanent Global War. A “political imaginary” is a repertoire of notions used in politics but not really existing (15-18). Two sorts: “power imaginary” seeking to expand capabilities, and “constitutional imaginary” prescribing how power is legitimated and constrained (19-20). In contrast to FDR’s New Deal, with WW II an American imaginary centered on the projection of unprecedented power began to emerge, embraced by Cold War “vital center” liberals like Arthur J. Schlesinger Jr.; “war” with Communism was adopted as policy—NSC-68 (1950) was a key document (20-33). Corporate connections developed (34-35) and the ideological war turned inward: McCarthyism (35-38). The new imaginary included the notions of sacrifice, legitimation of state power over the people’s power, and elitism (38-40).

Ch. 3: Totalitarianism’s Inversion, Democracy’s Perversion. In analyzing the consequences of this project for domestic politics, the U.S. has developed “a new type of political system” which Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism” because it is “seemingly one driven by abstract totalizing powers” and “independent of any particular leader” (44; 41-45). “For our purposes an inversion occurs when seemingly unrelated, even disparate starting points converge and reinforce each other. . . . An inversion is present when a system, such as a democracy, produces a number of significant actions ordinarily associated with its antithesis . . . The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes to be the opposite of what, in fact, it is” (46). It is largely the creation of the Republican

Party’s “dynamic reactionary movement,” but compared to “classic totalitarianism” it is relatively benign (48-51). “[M]y denial that ours is a democracy . . . may be too stark” (52). But studies (Robert Paxton, Ernst Nolte) suggest that democracy and totalitarianism are not necessarily incompatible (52-54). “Our thesis . . . is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical one, to evolve from a putatively ‘strong democracy’ instead of a failed one” (54). “Inverted totalitarianism has learned how to exploit what appear to be formidable political and legal constraints, using them in ways that defeat their original purpose but without dismantling or overtly attacking them” (56). “Its genius lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual” (57). Unlike classical totalitarianism, in inverted totalitarianism “economics dominates politics” (58). Citizens, splintered into groups, become “patients” rather than agents, and are displaced by lobbyists (59-60). Inverted totalitarianism is Superpower’s “true face”; having devised under the Bush administration “a totalizing technology of power and an accompanying ideology that encourages the regime’s aspirations to global domination,” it continues an opposition to social democracy that can be seen in earlier periods of American history (e.g. westward expansion) (61-62). Inverted totalitarianism is achieved by political insiders and claims to defend civilization (63-65). It pursues depoliticalization of the citizenry (65-66). Like classical totalitarianism it is “resolutely capitalist, no friend of the working classes, and, of course, viscerally antisocialist,” but unlike it, it appears as “a scarcely noticeable evolution” of earlier tendencies (66-67). Rather than conscripting existing institutions of learning, it cultivates a loyal intelligentsia of its own through government contracts, foundations, donors, etc. (67-68).

Ch. 4: The New World of Terror. The rapid, official declaration after 9/11 that a “new” condition prevailed and the promulgation of documents like “The National Security Strategy of the United

States of America” (2002) (NSS) show an attempt “to reshape the political system” in the name of “fighting terror” (69-74). The development recalls Hobbes’s political theory (74-77). Dismissing the invocation of Hobbes in the name of constitutionalism is refuted by the fact of the expansion of the repressive powers of the executive without congressional resistance in the 2006 elimination of habeas corpus (77-78). Tocqueville foresaw democratic despotism and how complicity of the citizenry could be secured (79-81).

Ch. 5: The Utopian Theory of Superpower: The Official Version. “Superpower is . . . an attempt at reconstituting the nation’s identity” (82). The 2002 NSS is “the best evidence of the ideology,” both its totalizing nature and the primacy or “consecration of the economy” (82; 82-92). But the invasion of Iraq, meant to be a demonstration, has failed (92-94).

Ch. 6: The Dynamics of Transformation. Observations on the often paradoxical characteristics of the transformation into inverted totalitarianism, in which the 2000 election was the “crucial event” (101; 95-101). “The Florida events reveal concisely how inverted totalitarianism operates and, without ceasing to be totalitarian, differs from classic totalitarianism. . . . A corporate or economic model of governance has been superimposed upon a political form whose constitution consisted partly of republican, antipopulist elements and partly of democratic elements. . . . Congress . . . has been demoted to a position of power comparable to that of a corporate board. . . . Congress has lost its close connection with the citizenry” (101-03). The situation contrasts with the 1960s and early 1970s, when “democracy [came] to life” (104). But at present “[o]ne cannot point to any national institution(s) that can accurately be described as democratic” (105). During the Cold War, “warfare became normal” (106). Thanks to concentrated media ownership, which has virtually blacked out protests, since 9/11 the administration has “set about to manage” the citizenry (107-08). While war frightens an unmobilized citizenry, cultural wars provide a simulacrum of politics (108-13).

Ch. 7: The Dynamics of the Archaic. Whereas many regard the “dynamic” right’s embrace of “archaic” fundamentalists as merely tactical, Wolin argues that the two in fact “need each other, desperately,” in what amounts to “collusion” (114-30).

Ch. 8: The Politics of Superpower: Managed Democracy. In inverted totalitarianism, corporate power trumps democracy and “managed democracy” substitutes for it (131-58).

Ch. 9: Intellectual Elites against Democracy. The U.S., and in particular its institutions of higher education, have embraced an antidemocratic elitism and begun an effort to delegitimize elections (159-67). Two groups are criticized: the Straussians (167-73) and the followers of Samuel Huntington, e.g. Fareed Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) (173-81). But the Iraq disaster refutes their case for elitism (182-83).

Ch. 10: Domestic Politics in the Era of Superpower and Empire. Unlike classical totalitarianism, inverted totalitarianism “encourages divisiveness . . . promotes predomination—that is, rule by diverse powers which have found it in their interests to combine while retaining their separate identities. The key components are capital, the very rich, small business associations, large media organizations, evangelical Protestant leaders, and the Catholic hierarchy. . . . The aim is to control politics by settling the terms of competition in the spirit of [the other party is our friend, the active citizen is our enemy]” (185). “The contemporary Republican Party is both antidemocratic and illiberal. . . . The Republican Party is not, as advertised, conservative but radically oligarchical” (187). While domestically the Vietnam War was “actually a democratic victory—over [the country’s] own imperial power,” it was “short-lived” (190). “[T]he United States is an empire of a novel kind. Unlike other empires it rarely rules directly or occupies foreign territories for long, although it may retain bases . . . Its power is ‘projected’ at irregular intervals over other societies rather than institutionalized in them. Its rule tends to be indirect . . . Its principal concerns are military and economic . . . [D]omestic needs are subordinated to the

requirements of global strategies and to the economic needs of Superpower’s corporate partners” (191). “[I]mperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter’s conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how a the democratic citizen could ‘participate’ substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire” (192). “[E]mpires are not about justice,” and “justice has pretty much disappeared from the political vocabulary of domestic politics” (193). “Under empire the significant actors are not citizens but corporations” (193). For representatives, “[t]he district or constituent back ‘home’ shrinks in significance” (193). Domestic politics are increasingly marked by “an element of imperial ruthlessness” and, with lobbyists, “the institutionalization and normalization of corruption” (193-94). “Deregulation . . . declares that in a democracy the demos is to be denied the use of state power” (195). “Instead of collectivism, inverted totalitarianism thrives on disaggregation” (196). [T]he technicians of Superpower politics welcome voter apathy” (197). “The implicit message is that the citizen can do nothing except follow the instruction of ‘authorities’ . . . Unlike classical totalitarianism, which boasted of the unanimity of its citizens, inverted totalitarianism thrives on ambivalence and the uncertainty it breeds” (198). “[C]onservatives have succeeded in persuading the public that the military is distinct from government,” and present militarism as a form of patriotism while also exploiting it for corporate interests (199). Inverted totalitarianism has seen the Republican Party transformed “from deficit hawks to proponents of the largest deficit in governmental history; from isolationists to preemptivists; from a party renowned for its anti-intellectualism to a party that nurtures its very own intellectual luminaries and think tanks” (200). “The Democrats’ politics might be described as inauthentic opposition in the era of Superpower” (201). “The suppressed component of the prevailing ideology is the political status of corporate power” (201). Congress is in decline and gridlock is cultivated so as to

prevent majority rule, but corporate power still gets its way through executive orders, regulatory agencies, military spending, and tax breaks (202-03). The result, since “the Reagan counterrevolution,” has been “an ersatz consensus . . . that accepts as permanent the institutions and practices of corporate capitalism and the dismantlement of the welfare state; that equates taxation of the wealthy as ‘class war’; and that anoints Protestantism as the civil religion of the nation” (204). In 2004 the Democratic Party organization and its centrists “succeeded in squelching the bid of the antiwar candidates and threw their resources behind Kerry” (205). There is now no opposition party working on behalf of “the poor, minorities, the working class, anticorporatists, pro-environmentalists, and anti-imperialists” (206). “[R]adicalism has shifted its location and meaning” and “is now the property of those who, quaintly, call themselves ‘conservatives’ and are called such by media commentators” (206). By necessity, Democrats are now, paradoxically, “conservative” (206-08). The U.S. evolved under the assumption that “free politics” was compatible with expansionism; now that the assumption has failed, inverted totalitarianism has emerged, albeit without conscious design (208-10).

Ch. 11: Inverted Totalitarianism: Antecedents and Precedents. Historical antecedents, including the work of the elitist Founders of the Republic and the constitution they wrote, show that the management of democracy has long been implicit in the American system of government, both pragmatically and in principle; this accounts for the vilification of liberals (211-37).

Ch. 12: Demotic Moments. “Inverted totalitarianism marks the moment when corporate power finally sheds its identification as a purely economic phenomenon . . . and evolves into a globalizing copartnership with the state: a double transmutation, of corporation and state” (238). The empire seems to be weakening at present (240-41). Historically, there have been three moments of democracy: Athenian (242-49), the Levellers in the English Civil War (250-53), and the American colonies in the 1760s (254). The U.S. Constitution is only minimally

democratic and was in fact devised to contain democracy (255-57). “Today the challenge for democrats is to recover lost ground, to ‘popularize’ political institutions and practices that have become severed from popular control” (258).

Ch. 13: Democracy’s Prospects: Looking Backwards. “What is at stake today is the choice between the two forms of politics, Superpower and democracy” (260). The first requirement of democracy is truth-telling, a principle flouted by inverted totalitarianism (260-63). “[L]ying is the expression of a will to power,” with roots in Platonic philosophy (263; 263-67). New technologies of telecommunications and mass media have led to the “performance president,” first incarnated by Ronald Reagan (267-73). What we need now can best be described not by “progressivism” but by “redemocratization” (273-74). “The enemies of democracy are the radicals of our day” (274). But a “frenzy of rapid change” limits both “collective conscience” and “collective memory” (275). Thus “recovering political democracy presents a task that runs counter to the political dynamics of our time” (276). We see from Madison’s argument in the tenth Federalist that the constitution was devised to prevent majority rule (278-83). What is happening today can be compared to the 16th-century enclosure movement and rule by the construction of “artificial majorities” (283-86). There has been too much focus on individuals: “inverted totalitarianism will likely survive military defeat and public scorn of its leader” (286). “The political role of corporate power the corruption of the political and representative processes by the lobbying industry, the expansion of executive power at the expense of constitutional limitations, and the degradation of political dialogue promoted by the media are the basics of the system, not excrescences upon it” (287). “In the last analysis the much-lauded stability and conservatism of the American system owe nothing to lofty ideals, and everything to the irrefutable fact that it is shot through with corruption and awash in contributions . . . it is a simple act of bad faith to claim that politics-as-we-now-know-it can miraculously cure the evils which are essential to its very existence” (287). To revive democracy, we

must “distinguish popular from elite-managed democracy,” the difference between “communality” and “an economic polity” (287). We must act at the local level and recognize that “To become a democrat is to change one’s self, to learn how to act collectively, as a demos. It requires that the individual go ‘public’ and thereby help to constitute a ‘public’ and an ‘open’ politics” (289). “The demos will never dominate politically” (290). “Democratic experience begins at the local level, but a democratic citizenry should not accept city limits as its political horizon” (291). Also, a “counterelite of democratic public servants” must be encouraged and nurtured (291). What is at stake is “not what new powers we can bring into the world, but what hard-won practices we can prevent from disappearing” (292).

Notes. 73 pp. Of interest: American liberals, inspired by “Niebuhrian pessimism,” compromised democracy in the Cold War era by identifying a “vital center” they defended while accepting Cold War militarism (298). — Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (Random House, 2001). — Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale UP, 1989). — “Enrollment management” represents the ascendancy of capitalism in U.S. higher education (317-18). — The last three Supreme Court nominations (Miers, Roberts, Alito) “served long apprenticeships in Republican Party organizations and in Republican administrations (323). — “One of the striking features of the recent spate of literature celebrating the American empire is the near universal silence of its authors about the internal or domestic consequences of empire. See Ferguson’s Colossus and Walter Russell Mead’s Power, Terror, Peace, and War (New York: Knopf, 2004)” (330). — On U.S. history, [Gary] Nash, The Unknown American Revolution[: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking, 2005)] and his earlier work, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and The Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). Also Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1974),

and the essays in Jacob and Jacob, The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism. —

Index. 17 pp.

[About the Author. Born Aug. 4, 1922. Graduate of Oberlin College. A fighter pilot in WWII. Harvard Ph.D. Taught at Berkeley, 1954-1970, where he was involved in the Free Speech movement. Taught at Princeton from 1973 to 1987. Many of his students have become influential in the field of contemporary political theory, including Hanna Pitkin and Cornel West. Pursued divestment from South Africa during the apartheid era. Best known for Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton UP, 1960; 2nd ed. 2004). Wolin has defended a radical interpretation of democracy as a “form of political judgment” rather than a form of government. —Wikipedia, Aug. 23, 2008.]

[Critique by Paul Street. “Wolin’s book is not without problems. Its annotation and detailed reference to current and recent events is painfully thin. It spends too much time on classical antiquity and past thinkers (the U.S. Founders, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Tocqueville) relative to more modern U.S. business and political history and current events. It pays essentially no attention to the concrete empirical record of corporate evolution and rule and narrow-spectrum, business-friendly politics in U.S. history—a record that predates the Progressive Era (1900-1920) . . . Wolin seems remarkably unaware of, or unwilling to cite, Left thinkers who have written valuable works on capitalism, imperialism, and the trumping of American and Western ‘democracy’ by concentrated economic and political power. Some of the ignored names that come to mind are Charles Derber (who writes in interesting and informative ways about successive ‘corporate regimes’ that have ruled American politics since the late 19th century), C. Wright Mills [actually, Wolin does cite Mills on p. 317], G. William Domhoff, Ralph Milliband, Ellen Meiksens-Wood, Alex Carey (an expert on corporate propaganda’s longstanding war on U.S. democracy), William T. Robinson, Jeff Faux, Joel Bakan, William Greider, David Montgomery, and (last but not least) Noam Chomsky. . . . Wolin writes in often excessively abstract and academic

language . . . Wolin shows no appreciation of left ‘cultural theory’ since Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School . . . Wolin ignores the large number of Americans who do seem to represent efforts towards a mobilized far-right project. I am thinking here especially of the evangelical ‘American fascists’ that Chris Hedges has warned us about . . . And I can’t escape the possibility that a harder form of more explicitly fascist-like totalitarianism . . . awaits Americans who have been softened up by the ‘inverted’ variant Wolin describes. . . . Wolin’s terminology is problematic. Charles Derber’s more concrete historical notion (developed in his 2005 book Hidden Power) of successive and inherently authoritarian corporate regimes—Derber places us in the age of the ‘third corporate regime,’ dominated by the transnational corporation, aggressive global Empire, and rampant social insecurity at home—is much better than Wolin’s somewhat abstract and

potentially bewildering concept of ‘inverted totalitarianism.’ . . . Still, Wolin has done some very important and properly dark descriptive work on the United States’ dangerously constricted political culture at this terrible stage in the development of Brave New America. . . . And it is probably useful to have the full authoritarian darkness of this harsh reality acknowledged and described by someone like Wolin, who has long operated in the belly of the beast. He is an Ivy League academician who has long functioned within the elite mainstream of U.S. social science and not on the ‘lunatic fringe’ to which serious left-progressive thinkers are sadly consigned in the American ideological system—consistent with the notion that U.S. government and political culture are totalitarian” (Paul Street, “Totalitarianism: It Can Happen Here,” Dissident Voice, Aug. 23, 2008 [http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/totalitarianism-it-can-happen-here/]).]