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?
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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.