The Pathology of
Modern American Governance
A Trek Into Inverted Totalitarianism?
Modern American Governance
A Trek Into Inverted Totalitarianism?
Introduction
In our society today we often have come to see our government and culture as two cognizant parts of one greater whole, both conjoined and benevolent (most of the time), with the general inclination that our needs as a society-at-large will be properly represented within our chambers of power. This has seemingly been the narrative of the last century, domestically; that our democratic structures work to meet society’s greater overall legal, social, and economic needs. Sociologists know better though and have proven to the contrary many times over this period. This is why I personally switched to Sociology from CIS when I started at University of Michigan – Dearborn last year; this is mostly due to a keen and sharpening understanding of the world around me which I’ve always watched over from afar in the safe confines in my home with increasing dismay towards the American body politic and society’s seemingly ever expanding tolerance for this. At first I tried to better understand this with structural explanations within Classical and Analytical Marxism as a means of framing what was happening in the larger picture.
These theoretical frameworks proved to be too broad and basic to fully tackle the issue of what was happening in America at large, particularly in the last 30-35 years. So next I looked into Antonio Gramsci’s earlier work and I felt it had a lot of credence in explaining why a society such as the one in the United States functions the way it does; the original and Gramsci-style theories of Marxism did a lot to explain the issues of how the culture of the US can function the way it does. Mainly in theories such as the Superstructure, Alienation [1], Exploitation, for Marx; and Cultural Hegemony for Gramsci[2]. But again, I ran into some problems in the sense that, in spite of many claims, much of the US population doesn’t just openly submit or consent to a ruling class’ wishes. Then last semester I took a class in American Social Classes which presented a more updated picture of class hierarchy in the US. Included was the book ’The New Class Society’, which argued that the structure of classes in America had shifted to a double-diamond configuration [3] with an upper diamond of the “superclass” making a staggering one-half to three of the wealth in the US (by various differing reports). After receiving this heavy deluge of info I had much information but it still felt foggy as to what was really going on underneath the surface of American society; I still felt like I had an incomplete picture.
Then after I wrapped up my semester I left for an internship with the House of Commons of Canada, after seeing their governing bodies at work I came with two conclusions. One, our system of government is almost purposely dysfunctional. And then two, that the legitimacy and connection with the American people was far more distant and remote in nature than what Canada considers being democratic. This led me to some serious questions about the nature of American government and its legitimacy and nature of rule. I felt I needed to understand in way that seemed to fit the observations I had seen thus far. First, I happened to run across a gentleman named Chris Hedges, I watched a speech he gave on YouTube for roughly 45 minutes and to me he seemed to put into focus everything I had felt about America in the last two decades in a stark and frightening focus. I read his book, which was entitled: The Death of The Liberal Class
This was a book I had come across while in Ottawa, Ontario for my internship but I put it into the back of my mind as a title because I wanted to focus entirely on my internship. But when I returned and read the book it led me to the poly-sci theorist named, Sheldon Wolin. The book which I had inevitably found on this path was titled: Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and The Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
Both books, while being separate and different works are heavily related, as Hedges’ work is very much influenced by Wolin’s and seems to compliment it in a few veins. While Wolin’s work tends to be highly theoretical and focuses mostly on the systemic and a question of our democratic egalitarianism vs. the current elite practices. Hedges’ work tends to focus down mostly on what he sees as a failure of the ‘Liberal Class’ in America to perform a checking function which has allowed this pathology to develop in such a way that it has intensified a more destructive end result for society at large.
I finally had found the two works I had felt that tied everything I had learned in the last year or two years together. While the styling of both books has different methodologies the argument I drew from them is both the same. Which is that our governing institutions, large private corporations, and the military-industrial complex are slowly being drawn together by a unifying pathology and ideology that at end result can become a totally new conflagration never before seen; that form being termed ‘Inverted Totalitarianism. This in practice is a paradoxical pathology or set of pathologies that has unintentionally brought about this end result, and through the workings of both books I intend to bring about points and arguments which will bring about a better understanding of these trends in government and society at large. Finally, this paper will at best serve as a summary explanation of the texts I have at hand, from this we will be able to draw conclusions to bring about a better understanding of the common information we have at hand.
Advent of Inverted Totalitarianism
First we have to understand something about Sheldon Wolin and his concept on how he views the relation of democracy and the state, Wolin has always maintained since the early 1960s the concept that the democratic government and the institutional state were two separate entities from each other [4]. This kind disassembled logic continues in his thinking throughout the 2008 book, Democracy Incorporated. Wolin gages inverted totalitarianism by contrasting and making some critical points about the past of totalitarian movements and our general understanding of them. First he stipulates an idea; that totalitarianism has many local variations, i.e. progressivism programs in Stalinist Russia like public education and state-run housing [5]. Second, is the concept that totalitarianism is not antithetical to democracy, as commonly believed, but can actually coexist with it in the same culture [6]. Third, inverted totalitarianism requires no central figure for the state to rest upon, it has no need for the power of a centralizing figure, and the figure is in fact interchangeable for other figures [7]. I’ll take some time and expand upon these ideas, first is the various versions of totality that Wolin speaks of, that is classical totalitarianism this type of system is set in motion in opposition to democracy. It totally shows disdain for all electoral and parliamentary politics. These movements are usually coalesced behind a single charismatic leader whom power of the state is entirely centered around or at least an intricate bureaucracy is rooted from.
Inverted totalitarianism seems to take this concept and puts it on its own head, as hinted in the name ‘inverted’:
In classic totalitarianism the conquest of total power did not result from a coalescence of unintended consequences; it was the conscious aim of those who led a political movement. The most powerful twentieth-century dictatorships were highly personal, not only in the sense that each had a dominant, larger-than-life leader, but each system was peculiarly the creation of a leader who was a self-made man. Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler did not just invent their personae; they literally built the organizations of their respective dictatorships.
(Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 35). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
He then makes the one key difference in inverted vs. classical totality, “Among the classical dictatorships only Stalin died while still in power, although his dictatorship did not survive the century. In the inverted system the leader is a product of the system, not its architect; it will survive him.” (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 35). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.) This is the most important point of an inverted totalitarian state in that it transcends all other previous totalities before it, it doesn’t rely on a sole leader and centralized movements to fundamentally change the system, its leaders are perfectly interchangeable. Another major inversion is the way that the two opposing types of totality present themselves, classical totalitarianism boasts, advertises, and openly lauds its system of government as a triumph over the weaknesses of democracy.
Inverted totalitarianism is the polar opposite in this regard, it will deny, misdirect, or find any means necessary to identify itself as a totality which brings us to one of the paramount reasons of why this is:
Unlike the classic totalitarian regimes which lost no opportunity for dramatizing and insisting upon a radical transformation that virtually eradicated all traces of the previous system, inverted totalitarianism has emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation’s political traditions. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (pp. 36-37). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
Unlike in a classical totalitarian system, the inverted style of totalitarianism is a seemingly true believer in democracy, just not democracy as the populace may conceive it. The idea of this conception as ‘managed democracy’ is a democracy that in some ways is actually a sham. Wolin further points this out:
Inverted totalitarianism works differently. It reflects the belief that the world can be changed to accord with a limited range of objectives, such as ensuring that its own energy needs will be met, that “free markets” will be established, that military supremacy will be maintained, and that “friendly regimes” will be in place in those parts of the world considered vital to its own security and economic needs. Inverted totalitarianism also trumpets the cause of democracy worldwide. As we shall point out in later chapters, “democracy” is understood as “managed democracy,” a political form in which governments are legitimated by elections that they have learned to control, the most recent example being the presidential election in Egypt in September 2005. President Mubarak, who had served for more than two decades, easily triumphed over a dozen rivals. Intimidation, corruption, unequal access to the media, and similar tactics reportedly were widespread. Managed democracy is centered on containing electoral politics; it is cool, even hostile toward social democracy beyond promoting literacy, job training, and other essentials for a society struggling to survive in the global economy. Managed democracy is democracy systematized. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (pp. 37-38). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
If democracy is a sham of power then who, or whom, actually runs the country?
In Wolin’s thinking it’s the economic and business elites that run the country, these elites use managed democracy as a means of controlling and filtering the flow information, the nature of discussion, and what is and isn’t considered ‘legitimate’ discussion in the body politic. Because in this model of political power and society, and unlike in a classic totalitarian situation; the economic powers that be, trump, the state power. In this power structure two thought processes are brought forth to the surface which Wolin has labels for ‘constitutional imaginary’ and ‘power imaginary’ [8]:
I want to sketch two contrasting types of imaginary. One I shall call the “power imaginary,” the other the “constitutional imaginary.” On the face of it, the two seem mutually exclusive; I shall treat them as cohabiting uneasily. The constitutional imaginary prescribes the means by which power is legitimated, accountable, and constrained (e.g., popular elections, legal authorization). It emphasizes stability and limits. A constitution partakes of the imaginary because it is wholly dependent on what public officials, politicians in power, and, lastly, citizens conceive it to be, such that there is a reasonable continuity between the original formulations and the present interpretations. The power imaginary seeks constantly to expand present capabilities. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 10). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
Wolin demonstrates a passage that encapsulates the idea of a ‘power imaginary’ giving rise to a ‘Superpower’ in the way it functions alongside a democratic state:
Thus far the promoters of American superpower have evinced no interest in abolishing a system that enables them to maximize power: a free politics, under the right conditions and controls, interposes no barriers to their kind of totalizing powers and may even serve as their auxiliary. The “right conditions” refers to the porousness of institutions that enables a different form of power—one ostensibly nonpolitical in its origins, unbound to constitutional limits or to democratic processes (call it “corporate power”)—to turn access or simple influence over legislators and policy-makers into copartnership: not as in a corporate state of Mussolini’s fantasies but as in the incorporated state. Why negate a constitution, as the Nazis did, if it is possible simultaneously to exploit porosity and legitimate power by means of judicial interpretations that declare huge campaign contributions to be protected speech under the First Amendment, or that treat heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations as a simple application of the people’s right to petition their government? To invert Marx: the first time, totalitarianism as tragic farce; the second, as farcical tragedy. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 42). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
The power imaginary is rooted seemingly in the aftermath of World War II and the beginnings of the military-industrial complex which came forth with it; and to a larger extent the Cold War. It bequeathed a co-stateship of sorts in which the ‘Superpower’ element of American state is extended and allowed to work in ways that are outside the limits of American constitutional power, thereby giving this corporate state a certain level of carte blanche that is unseen with the realms of domestic politics, at least initially [9]. When combined with the modern practices of managed democracy in the US, which limits democratic options, choices, and views in the modern culture; Superpower makes for a potent force, and is defined by Sheldon Wolin as being the ‘true face’ of inverted totalitarianism. This makes sense given the earlier posit that in inverted totalitarianism, economic power trumps state power, as opposed to classical totalitarianism in which the reverse is true [10]. In this sense private interests are given far more latitude in matters of seeking their self-interest but they still depend heavily on the artifice of the state for legitimacy. In fact if they didn’t have the artifice of state they wouldn’t be able to exercise any kind of power in society as ‘Superpower’ is meant to provide practical power, in an unlimited scope both temporally and spatially [11].
In this, as we come to see, is where some strange paradoxes start to form, to stay legitimate ‘Superpower’ has to lean on the state, but the state is in a ‘constitutional imaginary’ and the constitution has certain fundamental issues with democratic legitimacy which Wolin points out and I will highlight in the next subsection.
Managed Democracy
To reiterate, in his book Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin defined two elements of inverted totalitarianism as being central to the construct, one, Managed Democracy; is the element that keeps democratic abilities of the populace ‘contained’, for lack of a better word. Managed democracy has very deep roots in our culture dating back to the inception of the Constitution of 1787 and the Federalist debates of that time. Two major contributors to the concept that would as rooted in managed democracy, as Wolin puts forth Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison:
Despair not: the geographical expanse, ideological differences, and socioeconomic complexity of the new system would splinter the demos—“the society . . . broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens”—and thereby prevent it permanently from gaining the unity of purpose necessary to concert its numerical power and dominate all branches of government. (The Federalist, No. 51, p. 351.) (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 225). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
Madison particularly, in lengthy debates with Hamilton, had highlighted a major distrust by the Founding Fathers of a system of majoritarian democracy. They believed that this form would lead to a type of a seemingly pathological ochlocracy or ‘mob rule’. Not that this didn’t have any rationality, many democracies dating back to ancient Greece had strains of ochlocracy which led to some chaotic and destabilizing factors. So due to this reasoning and their seeming belief in Platonic and Machiavellian ideas of republican rule; leading to a distant republican construct of checks and balances that had a lot of basis in Platonic ideas of an enlightened ruling class that could properly represent society [12]. To ensure that this system would never be co-opted by a mob rile that had gone awry and had elected representatives that would express its larger will; Madison shrewdly designed a system that unlike other systems of republican democracy had a differing driving force, according to Wolin. In Wolin’s terms he changed a crucial stake that Plato had thought of in his designs for an enlightened ruling class, a factor of disinterestedness. By Wolin’s analysis Madison seemed to design a system that was ran in such a way that a driving self-interest, as opposed to disinterestedness, in the elites would guide the system and keep it from imploding under majoritarian strain [13]. The system had some many checks and balances that it would promote near gridlock most, if not all, of the time. This would render majoritarian efforts nearly meaningless, the self-interest ideal ran counter to Plato’s ideal of a celebrated intellectual disinterestedness of the state and thereby for the common good of the people.
Unfortunately this has slowly caused a progressive problem in the last century according to Wolin, the elites within the body politic have become very much intertwined with the corporate class with whom they also share a pathology, and ideology, of self-interest. This causes a systemic conflict of interest in the long term for democratic practices and systemic integrity on the whole. What this has progressed into is the gradual seepage of corporate thinking into a democratic culture, all due to like thinking between the elected elites and other parts of the society in the upper class stratum. Managed democracy is in many ways about keeping everything divided, and keeping a politics that is non-political. Managed democracy, by Wolin’s account, seems to be paradoxical as the concept of inverted totalitarianism itself. In this state the management of democracy is tightly controlled through the micromanagement of staying on message and using spectacle as means of conveying a message. Managed democracy is about stoking and conveying divisions in the body politic to keep the populace disinterested and de-mobilized; in a word non-political.
One example cited by Wolin of this nature:
Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements. Actually they are a substitute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute to a cant politics of the inconsequential. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (pp. 102-103). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
By keeping this climate of a fictional branding of politics, the inverted totality is allowed to thrive. It only needs the electorate when called and reinforces the marginalization of democratic culture. Managed democracy is ultimately about making a mockery of democratic culture itself by defining to the populous what is and isn’t acceptably political, by the elites. [14].
Superpower
The next element defined within inverted totalitarianism is defined under a title (not to be confused with status) of ‘Superpower’, Superpower is the true face of inverted totalitarianism. Whereas the state provides a limited authority via its constitutional imaginary; the power imaginary is the basis for all ideas within the realm of Superpower:
Accordingly, we need to broaden our definition of Superpower: power unanticipated by a constitutional mandate and exceeding the political abilities and moral sensibilities of those who employ it. Superpower does not automatically guarantee super(wo)men, only outsized temptations and ambitions. The formlessness of “Superpower” and “empire” that accompanies concentrated power of indefinite limits is subversive of the idea of constitutional democracy. Although, strictly speaking, traditional accounts of political forms do not anticipate superpower, some writers, notably Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) and James Harrington (1611–77), proposed a distinction between a political system content to preserve itself rather than expand and a political system, such as that of ancient Rome, eager to “increase” its power and domain. 3 Applying that distinction, we might say that the United States combines both. In the view of those who venerate the “original Constitution,” the Founders had established a government of limited powers and modest ambitions. The constitution of Superpower, in contrast, is meant for “increase.”4 It is based not on the intentions of the framers but on the unlimited dynamic embodied in the system whereby capital, technology, and science furnish the sources of power. Accordingly, when certain reformers, such as environmental activists and anticloning advocates, seek to use constitutional authority to control the powers associated with the “constitution for increase” (e.g., regulating nuclear power plants or cloning labs) they find their efforts blocked by those who invoke the conception of a constitution as one of limited authority. But typically when representatives of the “constitution for increase” press for favors from those who man the “constitution for preservation,” they get their way. While Superpower’s constitution is shaped toward ever-increasing power, but has no inherent political authority, the constitution for preservation has limited authority while its actual power is dependent upon those who operate the constitution for increase. The two constitutions—one for expansion, the other for containment—form the two sides of inverted totalitarianism. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (pp. 90-91). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
The Superpower of inverted totalitarianism looks to a different rationale of democracy, one that paradoxically exports democracy abroad while retarding it at home. Through this idea it requires ever vaster sums of liquidity, science, and technology to further its aim of securing democracy. This paradoxical rationale is furthered by the fact that pathologically Superpower seeks to dismantle all social democratic institutions and advertises the increasing privatization of those services [15].The rationale of Superpower is ultimately the rationale of permanent war. A mentality which ultimately creates anti-democratic sentiment at home in the elites that portray it [16]:
As Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed, imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering inequalities among its citizens. Resources that might be used to improve health care, education, and environmental protection are instead directed to defense spending, which, by far, consumes the largest percentage of the nation’s annual budget. Moreover, the sheer size and complexity of imperial power and the expanded role of the military make it difficult to impose fiscal discipline and accountability. Corruption becomes endemic, not only abroad but at home. The most dangerous type of corruption for a democracy is measured not in monetary terms alone but in the kind of ruthless power relations it fosters in domestic politics. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 236). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
As we can see now, in many ways inverted totalitarianism’s two main elements mirror the idea of the corporation; in that a corporation is doppelganger for the rich, so too is managed democracy for inverted totalitarianism (or in a sense, right now, Superpower). The two elements have become so intertwined as to crucially depend on each other’s artifice.
The Elite Culture of Inverted Totalitarianism
Wolin traces the elite, self-interested mentality of inverted totalitarianism to being attributed to ‘Straussian’, and Machiavellian roots. But at the same time it is very systemic:
The reproduction of elites is an instance of the phenomenon of “rationalization.” The existence of elites doesn’t just happen; it is systematized, premeditated, refined to a practice assuring that those who are selected as “promising leadership material” will prove to have the right stuff, thus validating the methods of selection and, in the process, perpetuating the system that has made them possible. It is said that at night, when elitists look at themselves in a mirror, they mutter, “The system cannot be all bad . . .” (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 155). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
The elites of inverted totalitarian culture tend to have philosophic bents towards Leo Strauss in philosophy, according to Wolin; this is an ideology that promotes the idea of fraternity, an anti-modernistic view of virtue, largesse ambitions, and goals [17]. This in turn has fuelled an elitist culture that undermines the traditional senses of elitism in general, in Wolin’s case, he espouses that the tradiditonal elite is supposed to be rational, disinterested and logical, however the opposite seems to be true in inverted totalitarian society:
Unlike the irrational populace, elites are supposed to be rational actors, not opportunists who constantly “push the envelope” in order to test the limits of power while publicizing the role of faith in their decisions. One would hope that those entrusted with awesome power, especially those whose electoral legitimacy was originally shadowed by doubts, would weigh counterevidence carefully, employ power judiciously, and, above all, consider the consequences of a course of action, especially if it involves grave risks or harm. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 173). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
This I personally can attest to when I was in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; a disinterested and judicious use of power is something not often contemplated by the common person but it’s a very important dynamic when we observe democratic processes in action. For a good example in Canada there is major debate about the status of the Senate, the appointed upper house of Canada’s Parliament. Prime Minister Steven Harper and the Senate have very differing views on the very basis of the Senate’s legitimacy in the modern era. But what’s most important to understand is the argument made by the members of the Senate in opposition to Steven Harper’s plans.
The argument by the members of the Senate was this, that a body such as it is reserved as a proper check, one which used its powers in very a sparing fashion, and if transformed into an elected body with same great powers it currently has; the Prime Minister would quickly come to realize that he had a very powerful and woeful competitor on his hands.
This in many ways shows the difference between American republican and Canadian democratic pathologies and how it works in almost an asymmetrical fashion with system it has sprung from. While the Canadians have institutions that espouse unlimited power that has few checks internally; asymmetrically is pathologically checked by the people, institutions of accountability, and opposition parties internally.
The US runs opposite to this, it has concurrent status-quo, limited government; but a pathology that seems to grasp for unlimited, self-interested, yet instrumentally rational power. As result we have evolved an elite stratum that has designs that could be considered anti-democratic and anti-liberal, that is, in the purely academic sense [18].
In this sense I would say Wolin seems to lean towards the idea of two different republics, put forward as model by Machiavelli between a republic that espouses the status-quo or one that espouses an ever-expanding realm. It would seem that the elites of our current time tend to prefer the latter as opposed to the former [19].
In this sense given the political character of the elite and the pathology of elites thus far it’s not surprising that Wolin says of the Republican Party, “The contemporary Republican Party is both antidemocratic and illiberal… The Republican Party is not, as advertised, conservative but radically oligarchical.” (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 178). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
Thus we have our inverted totalitarian’s version of a state party for the elite, and given the description put forth thus far should we expect it to be any less?
With the inversion of totality, comes the evidence of the turn that American politics takes from moral, intellectual principals to a practical politics which Wolin refers to as Realpolitik. It is a rational and ruthless form of politics that has little regard for moral consequence. It seeks imperial self-interest with no regard for life, limb, or cost [20]. This ultimately is the gestational development of the course towards an inverted totalitarian future.
The Collapse of the Liberal Class
The next segment in relation to the elites is based on a separate work, one by Chris Hedges of whom I mentioned earlier. His work, Death of the Liberal Class he charts a certain characteristic that is important to the development of the model of inverted totalitarianism, the role of the major liberal institutions. Hedges writes about how, since World War I, liberalism and progressivism has been slowly sublimated by the greater systems of capitalism and democracy at large in the United States. His arguments are clearly stated as such; that the liberal class in any democratic society is designed to function as a pressure valve for social change in democracy [21].
Hedges’ argument is that in the United States all of the major institutions; the press, social religion, the arts, organized labor, the major public and private universities, and above all the Democratic Party have collapsed; and as a result will be to our greater detriment as a society [22]. He sees this mostly due to the willing collaboration between the power elite and the liberal class. The liberal class as a result has become something of a hypocrisy, which over time has caused a great deal of society in the US to resent it [23]. This can eventually lead to a right-wing backlash that Hedges says will not be without justifiable reasons [24]. Because of the liberal class’ inability to defend its own moral and ethical edicts, this happened mostly due to what he sees as a slow moral death that the liberal class has self-inflicted. This collapse is due to the paradoxical nature the liberal class is in, that being, it has functions that it serves that makes the power elite tolerate it. One, it serves a disqualifier for other more radical alternatives [25]. Two, it serves to help legitimate the causes of the power elite by putting forth alternative explanations that help the system relate with the populous at large [26]. Finally, it serves a function of the power elite of purging its own moral adherents, this serves in allowing it to maintain connections to power but it comes with a cost which Hedges speaks of [27].
Hedges assertion is that in purging moral adherents to its cause, the liberal class has bankrupted its own knowledge base and as a result cannot serve its purpose for the democratic populous at large. Without these ideas he claims that the class becomes nothing more than a ‘useless appendage’ for a greater society desperate for change in its struggle for greater equality. Due to the purging of all its ideologues and intellectuals the liberal class loses it ability in competition for ideas, it becomes just as illiberal as its power laden opponents which leaves it ripe to be swept away by angry populations bent on retaliation [28].
Hedges cites that this exactly what happened in other societies such as the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and Germany in the 1930s, when the liberal class becomes weak, impotent, and non-functional societal upheaval and moral nihilism are not far behind [29]. He fears that this is likely where the United States is eventually headed. He sees signs of it all around him, but unlike the other historic examples that show the quick end of liberal democratic tradition in Germany and the former Yugoslavia; ours will be the rise of inverted totalitarianism.
The ‘demos’
At last we come to the masses, the state that inverted totalitarianism puts them in is described by Wolin as, “Instead of collectivism, inverted totalitarianism thrives on disaggregation, on a citizenry who, ideally, are self-reliant, competitive, certified by standardized testing, but equally fearful of an economy subject to sudden downturns and of terrorists who strike without warning. Classical totalitarianism mobilized its subjects; inverted totalitarianism fragments them.” (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (p. 187). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
This is in many ways ground zero of where inverted totalitarianism strikes, because it is in many ways democracy co-opted, and hijacked from the masses, manipulated, managed, and kept under foot by the constant noise of a politics that is essentially non-political. This results in frustrations for a growing underclass with no one to turn to. With the lack of a truly functioning set of liberal institutions fighting for a moral standard that adheres to the baser needs of the majority of the underclasses (by this I mean what Wysong and Perrucci referred to as ‘The New Working Class’) and the further dispossessed will come to resent the state they are in. Stuck in a divisive non-politics with a system that refuses real democratic recourse to the political issues the demos’ needs solved becomes further isolated, disaggregated, and finally the demos just gives up on democratic involvement altogether. This is the kind of behavior inverted totalitarianism thrives on and as a result truly makes the citizen an unwillingly participant in the structure by robbing him of any real effective recourse.
Epilogue
The theory of inverted totalitarianism that Wolin proposes and Hedges further elaborates on is still only theory but a plausible direction for where the US may be headed after the politics we have encountered in the past 50 – 60 years. The maturation of inverted totalitarianism hasn’t been brought forth yet but Sheldon Wolin has an idea of what will happen when it does:
Inverted totalitarianism marks a political moment when corporate power finally sheds its identification as a purely economic phenomenon, confined primarily to a domestic domain of “private enterprise,” and evolves into a globalizing copartnership with the state: a double transmutation, of corporation and state. The former becomes more political, the latter more market oriented. This new political amalgam works at rationalizing domestic politics so that it serves the needs of both corporate and state interests while defending and projecting those same interests into an increasingly volatile and competitive global environment. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (pp. 229-230). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
As a result how do we stop or resist this possibility from occurring, in this both Hedges’ work and Wolin’s seem to reach the same conclusion, find ways to reassert local democratic involvement and the collective needs they entail:
As I have argued earlier, the local character of democracy can provide a crucial reality check on the conduct of national politics and governance, perhaps even inhibit the elite’s temptation to foreign adventures. But that will require serious changes in the quality of public discussion, which, in turn, would depend upon the reclamation of public ownership of the airwaves and encouragement of noncommercial broadcasting. This contemporary version of the old struggle between “enclosure” and the “commons,” between exploitation and commonality, pretty much sums up the stakes: not what new powers we can bring into the world, but what hard-won practices we can prevent from disappearing. (Wolin, Sheldon S. (2009-01-15). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (pp. 282-283). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)
In this Wolin also speaks of nurturing a new ‘counter-elite’ for the society coming, as the only means of dealing with inverted totalitarianism’s rise. Hedges speaks more of simply reinforcing politics locally and waiting out the coming storm, and of practicing a non-violent resistance against the legitimacy of the state.
While these solutions seem in Wolin’s case utopian, and in Hedges’ case, simplistic at best, it’s clear that both authors seem to have disdain for the current practice which is simply trying to change the status quo via voting. Chris Hedges in fact said in a speech that, “..[ anyone thinking that will work at this point is no less living outside of reality than the religious right]..”, or something to this effect, I am paraphrasing him. At this point I find myself agreeing with books immensely, many of the arguments they made were complex and at times difficult to understand, I only hope that my paper does them proper justice.
References
Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and The Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Notes
1. Marx, Karl. The Marx-Engels Reader, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pps. 72 – 78
2. Gramsci, Antonio. The Prison Notebooks, Social Theory Vol. 1, pps. 279 – 293
3. Perriucci, Robert and Wysong, Earl. The New Class Society, p. 30
4. Wolin, Sheldon S. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought
5. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Preface
6. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 3, p. 45
7. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 3, p. 35
8. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 2, pps. 10 – 29
9. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 6, p. 90
10. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 6, p. 90
11. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 6, p. 90
12. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, pps. 255 – 257, 272
13. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, pps. 142, 145, 224 – 225
14. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, pps. 127, 128, 131, 134
15. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, pps. 184 - 187
16. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, chapter 8
17. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, pps. 109, 150, 159 – 170
18. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, p. 178
19. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, p. 144
20. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, p. 234 – 239
21. Hedges, Chris. The Death of The Liberal Class, p. 9
22. Hedges, Chris. The Death of The Liberal Class, p. 9
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