Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin to describe an "ideal type" government. Wolin uses the term to describe the government of the United States as it has evolved since World War II. Wolin contrasts the inverted totalitarianism of the United States with the totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.#1, #2
Totalitarianism and superpowers
Since Aristotle, three archetypal political forms were broadly discussed: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. A particular state could be a hybrid of these forms, and each form had an associated "pathological" form: tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy, respectively. "Liberal democracy" came into widespread use during the twentieth century, signifying a hybrid of the democratic and aristocratic forms: democracy tempered by a constitution which de facto delegated political power to the elites.#3
By the middle of the twentieth century, it was recognized that two new political forms had appeared. Hannah Arendt – among others – argued that the governments of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with their ability to control every aspect of society, could not be understood in terms of the old typology; the name of this new form would be totalitarianism.#4 With the emergence of a bipolar world with two powers dominating their own sphere of influence, the term "superpower" came into wide use. Superpowers were something new, because they possessed power that was qualitatively different from that of other states. In addition to their possessing vast nuclear arsenals, their being involved in an ideological struggle with each other led to each being in a state of permanent military mobilization, something that was new for countries in a time of peace (hence the term "Cold War"). Each superpower possessed extraterritorial power to influence countries within its sphere of influence: The Soviet Union mostly through military occupation, and the United States through its domination of multilateral institutions that were set up at the end of World War II.#5 With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the world's sole Superpower (or hyperpower). Wolin capitalizes the word "Superpower" to mark the United States' uniqueness as being an actual form of government and not an ideal type.
Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy
Given the transformations that the United States has undergone during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers, and during the subsequent campaign of containing the Soviet Union during the Cold War, does the United States continue to resemble a liberal democracy domestically, or is it itself taking on totalitarian tendencies? Wolin suggests that the latter possibility is closer to the truth:
While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, the United States represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries. It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “master race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”#6
There are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism. First, whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism corporations and their lobbying dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This isn't considered corruption, but "normal".#7
Second, while the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.#8
Totalitarianism and superpowers
Since Aristotle, three archetypal political forms were broadly discussed: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. A particular state could be a hybrid of these forms, and each form had an associated "pathological" form: tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy, respectively. "Liberal democracy" came into widespread use during the twentieth century, signifying a hybrid of the democratic and aristocratic forms: democracy tempered by a constitution which de facto delegated political power to the elites.#3
By the middle of the twentieth century, it was recognized that two new political forms had appeared. Hannah Arendt – among others – argued that the governments of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with their ability to control every aspect of society, could not be understood in terms of the old typology; the name of this new form would be totalitarianism.#4 With the emergence of a bipolar world with two powers dominating their own sphere of influence, the term "superpower" came into wide use. Superpowers were something new, because they possessed power that was qualitatively different from that of other states. In addition to their possessing vast nuclear arsenals, their being involved in an ideological struggle with each other led to each being in a state of permanent military mobilization, something that was new for countries in a time of peace (hence the term "Cold War"). Each superpower possessed extraterritorial power to influence countries within its sphere of influence: The Soviet Union mostly through military occupation, and the United States through its domination of multilateral institutions that were set up at the end of World War II.#5 With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the world's sole Superpower (or hyperpower). Wolin capitalizes the word "Superpower" to mark the United States' uniqueness as being an actual form of government and not an ideal type.
Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy
Given the transformations that the United States has undergone during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers, and during the subsequent campaign of containing the Soviet Union during the Cold War, does the United States continue to resemble a liberal democracy domestically, or is it itself taking on totalitarian tendencies? Wolin suggests that the latter possibility is closer to the truth:
While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, the United States represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries. It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “master race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”#6
There are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism. First, whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism corporations and their lobbying dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This isn't considered corruption, but "normal".#7
Second, while the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.#8
Third, while the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world:#9 Wolin writes:
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.#10
Managed democracy
Wolin calls this form of democracy, which is sanitized of the political, managed democracy. Managed democracy is "a political form in which governments are legitimated by elections that they have learned to control".#11 Under managed democracy, the electorate is prevented from having a significant impact on policies adopted by the state through the continuous employment of public relations techniques.#12
This brings us to one major respect in which the United States resembles Nazi Germany without an inversion: the essential role that propaganda plays in the system. Whereas the production of propaganda was crudely centralized in Nazi Germany, in the United States it is left to highly concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a "free press". Dissent is allowed, although the corporate media serves as a filter, allowing most people, with limited time available to keep themselves apprised of current events, only to hear points of view which the corporate media deems to be "serious".#13
The United States has two main totalizing dynamics. The first, directed outward, finds its expression in the Global War on Terror and in its doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars. This amounts to the United States seeing as illegitimate the attempt by any state to resist its domination.#14 The second dynamic, directed inward, involves the subjection of the mass of the population to economic "rationalization", with continual "downsizing" and "outsourcing" of jobs abroad and dismantling of what remains of the welfare state created by U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.#15 (Thus, neoliberalism is an integral component of inverted totalitarianism.) The state of insecurity in which this places the public serves the useful function of making people feel helpless, thus making it less likely that they will become politically active, and thus helping to maintain the first dynamic.#16
References
1. ^ Chris Hedges, "Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction"
2. ^ Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
3. ^ Wolin 2004, pp. 557–558.
4. ^ Villa 2000, pp. 2–3.
5. ^ Wolin 2004, pp. 558–560.
6. ^ Wolin 2004, p. 591.
7. ^ Wolin 2008, pp. 51,140.
8. ^ Wolin 2008, p. 64.
9. ^ Wolin 2008, p. 52.
10. ^ Wolin 2008, p. 66.
11. ^ Wolin 2008, p. 47.
12. ^ Wolin 2008, p. 60.
13. ^ Wolin 2004, p. 594.
14. ^ Wolin 2008, pp. 82–88.
15. ^ Wolin 2008, pp. 27,64–65.
16. ^ Wolin 2008, p. 195.
Bibliography
Villa, Dana Richard, ed (2000). The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. ISBN 0521645719.
Wolin, Sheldon S. (2004). Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (expanded ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691126275.
Wolin, Sheldon S. (2008). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691135665.
External links
Inverted Totalitarianism - Article by Sheldon Wolin published in The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030519/wolin
Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled - Review by Chalmers Johnson of Democracy Incorporated.http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9031
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/02/16/chris-hedges-the-us-government-is-inverted-totalitarianism-2/
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