Since WWII, the U.S. official doctrine is that it is the legitimate guardian of freedom in the world. To Sheldon Wolin, this signs the ideological drift from an open “constitutional imaginary” to a dictatorial “power imaginary.”
Domestic Politics in the Era of Superpower and Empire
By its military and economic weight on the international stage, the U.S. rightly fits the definition of an empire. To stand, it needs to deny ordinary Americans a genuine democracy.
Pathways to a Post-Capitalist World
Organized around exchange-value, not use-value, the capitalist system is over-productive and steadily worsening a multi-faceted ecological crisis. Is a post-growth, post-capitalist world conceivable?
Demotic Moments
Democracy is, by nature, a work in progress, and Western history has had very few occurrences when the “demos” became a politically self-conscious actor. What do these moments teach us?
Intellectual Elites against Democracy
James Madison’s reference to the “confusion and intemperance” of the multitude used to be the rationale of a government by the elite. What is the intellectual legacy of elitism in the United States today?