Inverted : A Preface by Sheldon S. Wolin

s a preliminary I want to “Certain tendencies in emphasize certain aspects of the approach taken in this our society point in a volume in order to avoid possible misunderstandings. direction away from AlthoughA the concept of totalitarianism is central to what follows, my thesis is not that the current American political system is an self-, the rule inspired replica of ’s or George W. Bush of Hitler. References to Hitler’s Germany of law, egalitarianism, are introduced to remind the reader of the benchmarks in a system of power that was and thoughtful public invasive abroad, justi!ed as a matter of o"cial doctrine, and repressed all discussion, and toward opposition at home—a system that was cruel and racist in principle and practice, deeply ideological, and openly bent on world domina- what I have called tion. #ose benchmarks are introduced to illuminate tendencies in our own system of ‘managed .’” power that are opposed to the fundamental principles of constitutional democracy. #ose tendencies are, I believe, “totalizing” in the sense that they are obsessed with control, expansion, superiority, and supremacy. #e regimes of Mussolini and Stalin demon- strate that it is possible for totalitarianism to assume di$erent forms. Italian , for example, did not o"cially adopt anti-Semitism until late in the regime’s history and even then primarily in response to pressure from Germany. Stalin introduced some “progressive” policies: promoting mass literacy and health care; encouraging women to undertake professional and technical careers; and (for a brief spell) promoting minority cultures. #e point is not that these “accomplishments” compensate for crimes whose horrors have yet to be fully comprehended. Rather, totalitarianism is capable of local variations; plausibly, far from

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being exhausted by its twentieth-century versions, past four centuries that promoting innovation would-be totalitarians now have available became a major focus of public policy. Today, technologies of control, intimidation, and thanks to the highly organized pursuit of mass manipulation far surpassing those of that technological innovation and the culture it earlier time. encourages, change is more rapid, more en- #e Nazi and Fascist regimes were powered by compassing, more welcomed than ever before revolutionary movements whose aim was not only to capture, reconstitute, and monopolize state power but also to gain control over the economy. Change became a private By controlling the state and the economy, the enterprise inseparable revolutionaries gained the leverage necessary from exploitation and to reconstruct, then mobilize society. In contrast, opportunism. is only in part a state- centered phenomenon. Primarily it represents the political coming of age of corporate power —which means that institutions, values, and and the political demobilization of the citizenry. expectations share with technology a limited Unlike the classic forms of totalitarianism, shelf life. We are experiencing the triumph of which openly boasted of their intentions to contemporaneity and of its accomplice, forgetting, force their societies into a preconceived totality, or collective amnesia. Stated somewhat di$er- inverted totalitarianism is not expressly concep- ently, in early modern times change displaced tualized as an ideology or objecti!ed in public traditions; today change succeeds change. policy. Typically it is furthered by power-holders #e e$ect of unending change is to under- and citizens who often seem unaware of the cut consolidation. Consider, for example, deeper consequences of their actions or inactions. that more than a century after the Civil War #ere is a certain heedlessness, an inability to the consequences of slavery still linger; that take seriously the extent to which a pattern of close to a century after women won the vote, consequences may take shape without having their equality remains contested; or that after been preconceived. nearly two centuries during which public schools became a reality, education is now he fundamental reason for this deep- seated carelessness is related to the T well-known American zest for change and, equally remarkable, the good fortune of Americans in having at their disposal a vast continent rich in natural resources, inviting exploitation. Although it is a cliché that the history of American society has been one of unceasing change, the consequences of today’s increased tempos are less obvious. Change works to displace existing beliefs, practices, and ex- pectations. Although societies throughout history have experienced change, it is only over the

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being increasingly privatized. In order to gain served the Few while keeping the Many in a handle on the problem of change, we might ignorance, poverty, and sickness. recall that among political and intellectual circles, An important element in this early modern beginning in the last half of the seventeenth conception of progress was that change was century and especially during the eighteenth- crucially a matter for political determination century Enlightenment, there was a growing by those who could be held accountable for conviction that, for the !rst time in recorded their decisions. #at understanding of change history, it was possible for human beings to was pretty much overwhelmed by the emergence of concentrations of economic power that took place during the latter half of the nineteenth The war enlarged the scale century. Change became a private enterprise of an increasingly open inseparable from exploitation and opportun- cohabitation between the ism, thereby constituting a major, if not the major, element in the dynamic of capitalism. and the state. Opportunism involved an unceasing search for what might be exploitable, and soon that meant deliberately shape their future. #anks to ad- virtually anything, from religion, to , vances in science and invention it was possible to to human well-being. Very little, if anything, conceive change as “progress,” an advancement was taboo as, before long, change became the bene!ting all members of society. Progress stood object of premeditated strategies for maximiz- for change that was constructive; that would ing pro!ts. bring something new into the world and to the It is often noted that today change is more advantage of all. #e champions of progress rapid, more encompassing than ever before. I believed that while change might result in the shall suggest that American democracy has disappearance or destruction of established never been truly consolidated. Some of its key beliefs, customs, and interests, the vast majority elements remain unrealized or vulnerable; of these deserved to go because they mostly others have been exploited for antidemocratic ends. Political institutions have typically been described as the means by which a society tries to order change. #e assumption was that politi- cal institutions would themselves remain stable, as exempli!ed in the ideal of a constitution as a relatively unchanging structure for de!ning the uses and limits of public power and the accountability of o"ceholders. Today, however, some of the political chang- es are revolutionary; others are counterrevolu- tionary. Some chart new directions for and introduce new techniques for extending American power, both internally (surveillance of citizens) and externally (seven hundred military bases abroad), beyond any point even imag-

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ined by previous administrations. Other changes because of the great freedom it allowed, was are counterrevolutionary in the sense of revers- inherently prone to disorder and likely to cause ing social policies originally aimed at improving the propertied classes to support a dictator or the lot of the middle and poorer classes. , someone who could impose order, ruth- How to persuade the reader that the actual lessly if necessary. But—and this is the issue direction of contemporary politics is toward a addressed by our inquiry—what if in its popu- political system the very opposite of what the lar culture a democracy were prone to license political leadership, the mass media, and think (“anything goes”) yet in its politics were to be- tank oracles claim that it is, the world’s fore- most exemplar of democracy? Although critics may dismiss this volume as fantasy, there are The emergence of the grounds for believing that the broad citizenry corporation marked private is becoming increasingly uneasy about “the power unconnected to a direction the nation is heading,” about the role of big money in politics, the credibility of the citizen body. popular news media, and the reliability of voting returns. #e midterm elections of 2006 indicated come fearful, ready to give the bene!t of the clearly that much of the nation was demanding doubt to leaders who, while promising to “root a quick resolution to a misguided war. Increas- out terrorists,” insist that endeavor is a “war” with ingly one hears ordinary citizens complaining no end in sight? Might democracy then tend to that they “no longer recognize their country,” become submissive, privatized rather than un- that preemptive war, widespread use of torture, ruly, and would that alter the power relationships domestic spying, endless reports of corruption between citizens and their political deciders? in high places, corporate as well as governmental, A word about terminology. mean that something is deeply wrong in the stands for the projection of power outwards. nation’s politics. It is indeterminate, impatient with restraints, and careless of boundaries as it strives to develop n the chapters that follow I shall try to the capability of imposing its will at a time develop a focus for understanding the and place of its own choosing. It represents I changes taking place and their direction. the antithesis of constitutional power. Invert- But !rst—assuming that we have had, if not a ed totalitarianism projects power inwards. It fully realized democracy, at least an impressive is not derivative from classic totalitarianism number of its manifestations, and assuming of the types represented by Nazi Germany, Fas- further that some fundamental changes are cist Italy, or Stalinist Russia. #ose regimes occurring, we might raise the broad question: were powered by revolutionary movements what causes a democracy to change into some whose aim was to capture, reconstitute, and non- or antidemocratic system, and what kind monopolize the power of the state. #e state of system is democracy likely to change into? was conceived as the main center of power, For centuries, political writers claimed that providing the leverage necessary for the mobi- if—or rather when—a full-%edged democracy lization and reconstruction of society. Churches, was overturned, it would be succeeded by a universities, business organizations, news and tyranny. #e argument was that democracy, opinion media, and cultural institutions were

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economic activities would be coordinated, exchange values set, and demand and supply adjusted. It operated, as Adam Smith famously wrote, by an unseen hand that connected participants and directed their endeavors toward the common bene!t of all, even though the actors were motivated primarily by their own sel!sh ends. One of Smith’s fundamental contentions was that while individuals were capable of making rational decisions on a small scale, no one possessed the powers required for rationally comprehending a whole society and directing its activities. A century later, however, the whole scale of economic enterprise was revolutionized taken over by the government or neutralized or by the emergence and rapid rise of the business suppressed. corporation. An economy where power was Inverted totalitarianism, in contrast, while dispersed among countless actors, and where exploiting the authority and resources of the markets supposedly were dominated by no one, state, gains its dynamic by combining with other rapidly gave way to forms of concentrated forms of power, such as evangelical religions, power—trusts, monopolies, holding companies, and most notably by encouraging a symbiotic and cartels—able to set (or strongly in%uence) relationship between traditional government prices, wages, supplies of materials, and entry and the system of “private” governance repre- into the market itself. Adam Smith was now sented by the modern business corporation. joined to Charles Darwin, the to #e result is not a system of codetermination the survival of the !ttest. #e emergence of the by equal partners who retain their distinctive corporation marked the presence of private identities but rather a system that represents the power on a scale and in numbers hitherto political coming-of-age of corporate power. unknown, the concentration of private power unconnected to a citizen body. hen capitalism was first repre- Despite the power of over sented in an intellectual construct, political processes and the economy, a deter- W primarily in the latter half of the mined political and economic opposition arose eighteenth century, it was hailed as the perfec- demanding curbs on corporate power and in- tion of decentralized power, a system that, %uence. Big Business, it was argued, demanded unlike an , no single person Big Government. It was assumed, but often or governmental agency could or should attempt forgotten, that unless Big Government, or even to direct. It was pictured as a system, but small government, possessed some measure of of decentralized powers working best when disinterestedness, the result might be the worst left alone (laissez-faire, laissez passer) so that of both worlds, corporate power and government “the market” operated freely. The market both fashioned from the same cloth of self- furnished the structure by which spontaneous interest. However, Populists and Progressives of

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the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, At the same time that the war halted the as well as trade unionists and small farmers, momentum of political and social democracy, went a step further to argue that a democratic it enlarged the scale of an increasingly open government should be both disinterested and cohabitation between the corporation and the “interested.” It should serve both the common state. That partnership became ever closer good and the interests of ordinary people whose during the era of the (l947-1993). main source of power was their numbers. #ey Corporate economic power became the basis argued, perhaps naively, that in a democracy of power on which the state relied, as its own ambitions, like those of giant corporations, became more expansive, more global, and, at The destiny of their intervals, more bellicose. Together the state country is fast slipping and corporation became the main sponsors and coordinators of the powers represented from popular control. by science and technology. #e result is an unprecedented combination of powers distin- guished by their totalizing tendencies, powers the people were sovereign and government was, that not only challenge established boundaries by de!nition, on their side. #e sovereign people —political, moral, intellectual, and economic were fully entitled to use governmental power —but whose very nature it is to challenge those and resources to redress the inequalities created boundaries continually, even to challenge the by the economy of capitalism. limits of the earth itself. #ose powers are also #at conviction supported and was solidi!ed the means of inventing and disseminating a by the . A wide range of regulatory culture that taught consumers to welcome change agencies was created, the Social Security program and private pleasures while accepting political and a minimum wage law were established, passivity. A major consequence is the construc- unions were legitimated along with the rights tion of a new “collective identity,” imperial to bargain collectively, and various attempts rather than republican (in the eighteenth- were made to reduce mass unemployment by means of government programs for public works and conservation. With the outbreak of World War II, the New Deal was superseded by the forced mobilization and governmental control of the entire economy and the conscription of much of the adult male population. For all practical purposes the war marked the end of the !rst large-scale e$ort at establishing the tentative beginnings of social democracy in this country, a union of social programs bene!ting the Many combined with a vigorous electoral democracy and lively politicking by individu- als and organizations representative of the politically powerless.

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century sense), less democratic. #at new identity “managed democracy,” the smiley face of involves questions of who we are as a people, inverted totalitarianism. what we stand for as well as what we are willing For the moment “Superpower” is in retreat to stand, the extent to which we are committed and “inverted totalitarianism” exists as a set of to becoming involved in common a$airs, and strong tendencies rather than as a fully realized what democratic principles justify expending actuality. #e direction of these tendencies urges the energies and wealth of our citizens and that we ask ourselves—and only democracy asking some of them to kill and sacri!ce their justi!es using we—what inverted totalitarian- lives while the destiny of their country is fast ism exacts from democracy and whether we slipping from popular control. want to exchange our birthrights for its mess I want to emphasize that I view my main of pottage. construction, “inverted totalitarianism,” as tentative, hypothetical, although I am con- is professor emeritus of politics at vinced that certain tendencies in our society . !is is the preface, drawn from his point in a direction away from self-government, recent book, Democracy Incorporated, © 2008 by the rule of law, egalitarianism, and thoughtful Princeton University Press and reprinted with their public discussion, and toward what I have called permission.

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