Or is the idea that America isn't a democracy too shocking, even for readers of this blog?
It's old news to readers of this blog.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
It is more of a malign fusion of the control mechanisms of the industrial state with the robber baron mentality of the proto-industrial state.
I need to do that diary on Reich's Supercapitalism...
Successful totalitarianism perhaps, or Modern totalitarianism. Even New totalitarianism would be better then inverted. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I admit "inverted totalitarianism" is a bit awkward. But I think it's pretty clear that it means a variety of totalitarianism, which by definition excludes democracy.
As for "successful totalitarianism": I think that at some point Wolin suggests that in the same way that despotism is the corrupted form of monarchy, classical totalitarianism (e.g. Nazism) was the "corrupted" form of inverted totalitarianism. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
But as a persuasive term it sinks immediately upon launch. 'Totalitarianism' by the general public is associated with (if they associate it with anything) Hitler and Stalin, and it just common-sensically doesn't feel that way here in the States. So, anybody have a better term that still captures what he's getting at and connects with the 'sorta totalitarian' way it feels to experience this hopeless and regressing political system? fairleft
Though I still think something like 'sold out system', 'post-democracy', or 'stage-managed society', some term that focuses on the fakeness of the democracy-related institutions, would resonate with most people's common sense without bringing in the extreme (You're saying we're just like Nazi Germany??) connotations of the word totalitarianism. fairleft
The only mainstream "general circulation" publication I've found to review the book is The Times Higher Education Supplement.
It of course makes members of the American elite uncomfortable to entertain the idea that the US is not a democracy, but a new, postmodern political form. But it makes European elites uncomfortable, too, largely, I think, because of NATO and all the American military bases that exist across Europe. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
Recalling the Soviet slogan
Communism = Soviet power + electrification of the whole country
Inverted totalitarianism = managed democracy + neoliberalism + American empire
I know it's not all about oil, but oil is a big part of it, and it's nice and concrete and something people can relate to. It's also already associated with big money and shady colonial wars.
And the oil lobby is pernicious enough to be a worthwhile target, even though they aren't the whole (or even the biggest) story.
Besides, the oil lobby is entrenched enough and powerful enough that the process of taking them out will of necessity involve tearing down much of the same infrastructure the MIC and FIRE sectors use to buy politicians.
But, hey, I don't have a solution, a really good alternative name for 'inverted totalitarianism' either. fairleft
That was a cop-out argument. The simplicist level of the 'war for oil' argument is indeed faulty to consider short-term corporate interests, but serious arguments focused on imperial interests pursued by neocon strategists: control over reserves in a post-Peak-Oil environment. Which was more or less explicit in the pre-war arguments by Cheney or Baker. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Another key term for Wolin is managed democracy. Perhaps that term would be more digestible by the masses.
It should be kept in mind, by the way, that why Wolin considers America to be totalitarian is that the economic dominates everything else: thus the implicit idea is that neoliberalism is in essence totalitarian. I think that's a very important insight, something completely beyond the intellectual reach of a Hayek or a Krugman. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
And I kind of like the way 'post-democracy' implies that what is emerging still has democratic forms and procedures but that they're used for purposes that 'move past' democracy to something new. But, my fave is not very specific on what that new something is, and how evil it is, which is a flaw. fairleft
