Democracy Incorporated, by Sheldon Wolin

An unprecedented combination of corporate and state power has progressively shaped itself up in the U.S. after WWII, characterized by Sheldon S. Wolin as “Inverted Totalitarianism.” What is behind this concept?

Preface

Totalitarianism is, in a sense, the opposite of dictatorship. Contrary to the rule of a dictator which is based only on the power lust of an insecure ego, totalitarianism is the expression of a formal ideology embracing all aspects of reality. Historically, Nazism and communism were indeed dictatorial, but beyond Hitler and Stalin’s personalities, each respectively served a doctrine alleged to be scientific truth. In practical terms, the exercise of power could then only be total, ruling the entirety of individual lives and seeking world domination. To achieve the revolution they envisioned, these ideologies consequently needed to indoctrinate and mobilize the masses, which is why communism or Nazism surfaced in the first instance as political fights.

Inverted totalitarianism, on the contrary, does not proceed from a theoretical fantasy but from the very practical aim of amalgamating state and corporate power. Its totalitarian nature does not derive from an intellectual view pretending to unveil the meaning of everything; it derives from the assumption of some innate benevolence and wisdom of corporations. It is nevertheless a totalitarian form of government, in the eyes of Sheldon Wolin. Similarly to the Nazi and communist ideologies of the past, it transforms the political space into the appendix of a greater cause than the exercise of democracy. As nature or history then, the “law of the market” is now—specifically in the United States—supposed to ultimately drive human destiny.

The difference between then and now is that making the political space irrelevant and unnecessary has operated in two very different ways. Where overtly ideological forms of totalitarianism thrived on political indoctrination, inverted totalitarianism does on political demobilization. Instead of openly opposing democratic institutions, it hollows out the concept and the reality of democracy.

Its psychological vehicle, according to Sheldon Wolin, has been the cultural sacralization of change. Change has always been valued in American society, and today change is more rapid, encompassing, and welcomed than ever before. We are, in the author’s words, “experiencing the triumph of contemporaneity and of its accomplice, forgetting or collective amnesia.” Unsurprisingly, while change for the sake of change might be the drive of technological innovations, such a mantra does not equate with the betterment of the human condition: “Consider, for example, that more than a century after the Civil War the consequences of slavery still linger; that close to a century after women won the vote, their equality remains contested; or that after nearly two centuries during which public schools became a reality, education is now being increasingly privatized.”

Change was associated with Progress at the dawn of the modern era because the universality of scientific knowledge meant that it would benefit the whole of humanity. Science was seen as a common good, in that sense, and its applications in the public sphere as “a matter for political determination by those who could be held accountable for their decisions.” This vision of progress as a collective matter was, unfortunately, “pretty much overwhelmed by the emergence of concentrations of economic power that took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century.” Instead of having its roots in the common good, change began to be dealt with by and for corporations. Quite logically, progress itself became the dubious justification of exploitation and opportunism, “the mere object, says Sheldon Wolin, of premeditated strategies for maximizing profits.”

Since corporate grip on political power has only tightened in time, one can only wonder about genuine social, economic, and political progress in recent decades. Americans now live under a surveillance state while social policies aimed at improving living conditions for the poorer and middle classes have been steadily reversed. In total contradiction with “the ideal of a constitution as a relatively unchanging structure for defining the uses and limits of public power and the accountability of officeholders,” money is at the helm of power and officeholders do its bidding.

Democratic institutions are hardly an issue for inverted totalitarianism. The very opposition between democracy and tyranny was rendered obsolete by the emergence of trusts, monopolies, holding companies, and cartels able to set prices, wages, and supplies of materials as well as entry into the market itself. Unconnected to a citizen body, this concentration of corporate power has introduced a new political alternative that formally maintains democratic institutions but effectively privatizes them. In consequence, by opposition with the manifest act of will from a tyrant or the well-defined totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, inverted totalitarianism can only be acknowledged through a set of tendencies: “I want to emphasize that I view my main construction, ‘inverted totalitarianism,’ as tentative, hypothetical, although I am convinced that certain tendencies in our society point in a direction away from self-government, the rule of law, egalitarianism, and thoughtful public discussion, and toward what I have called ‘managed democracy,’ the smiley face of inverted totalitarianism.”