Corporate power is no longer an external force that occasionally influences policies and legislation; it is an integral part of the government. What are the main aspects of its “management” of democracy?
| This post is part of a reading series on Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin. To quickly access all chapters, please click here. Disclaimer: This chapter summary is personal work and an invitation to read the book itself for a detailed view of all the author’s ideas. |
This chapter inquires into some of the political changes that are making Superpower and inverted totalitarianism possible, demoting democracy from a formative principle to a largely rhetorical function within an increasingly corrupt political system. “The crux of these changes,” adds Sheldon Wolin, “is that corporate power and its culture are no longer external forces that occasionally influence policies and legislation. As these have become integral, so the citizenry has become marginal and democracy more manageable. What follows is an account of these developments.”
The amalgamation between state and corporate power has “its own ‘constitution,’ its own ‘more perfect union,'” according to the author. Instead of emphasizing checks and balances and limitations of power, this unwritten constitution is about power itself, more specifically in the form of dominated markets and the prevalence of the military-industrial complex. At the difference of the Roman Empire, for instance, that had to extend the privilege of citizenship on physically conquered territories to maintain itself, “Superpower” exercises its own empire economically, enforcing treaties with comparatively weak client states instead of incorporating provinces.1 This is the unwritten constitution of the hierarchical and arcane power structures in the corporate and military world. As a consequence, “The insulated status ascribed to imperial affairs, the secrecy and inhibitions beginning to envelop domestic politics and the operations of globalizing corporations have the net result of excluding the public from a deliberative role in each and all of the major preserves of modern power.” Relying on organized science (including psychology and social sciences), technology, and capital, Superpower’s structures evolve on a totally different plane than the democratic ideal of politics as a public debate accessible to all citizens.