As a preliminary I want to
emphasise certain aspects of the approach taken in this volume in order to
avoid possible misunderstandings. Although the concept of totalitarianism is
central to what follows, my thesis is not that the current American political
system is an inspired replica of Nazi Germany’s or George W. Bush of Hitler.
(1) References to Hitler’s Germany are introduced to remind the reader of the
benchmarks in a system of power that was invasive abroad, justified preemptive
war as a matter of official doctrine, and repressed all opposition at home – a system
that was cruel and racist in principle and practice, deeply ideological, and
openly bent on world domination. Those benchmarks are introduced to illuminate
tendencies in our own system of power that are opposed to the fundamental
principles of constitutional democracy. Those tendencies are, I believe,
totalising in the sense that they are obsessed with control, expansion,
superiority, and supremacy.
The regimes of Mussolini and
Stalin demonstrate that it is possible for totalitarianism to assume different
forms. Italian fascism, for example, did not officially 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. The
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 being exhausted by its twentieth-century
versions would-be totalitarians now have available technologies of control,
intimidation and mass manipulation far surpassing those of that earlier time.
The Nazi and Fascist regimes
were powered by revolutionary movements whose aim was not only to capture,
reconstitute, and monopolise state power but also to gain control over the
economy. By controlling the state and the economy, the revolutionaries gained
the leverage necessary to reconstruct, then mobilise society. In contrast,
inverted totalitarianism is only in part a state-centered phenomenon. Primarily
it represents the political coming of
age of corporate power and the political demobilisation of the citizenry.
Unlike the classic forms of
totalitarianism, which openly boasted of their intentions to force their
societies into a preconceived totality, inverted totalitarianism is not
expressly conceptualised as an ideology or objectified in public policy.
Typically it is furthered by power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware
of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions. There is a certain
heedlessness, an inability to take seriously the extent to which a pattern of
consequences may take shape without having been preconceived. (2)
The fundamental reason for this
deep-seated carelessness is related to the 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 expectations.
Although societies throughout history have experienced change, it is only over
the past four centuries that promoting innovation became a major focus of
public policy. Today, thanks to the highly organised pursuit of technological
innovation and the culture it encourages, change is more rapid, more
encompassing, more welcomed than ever before – which means that institutions, values,
and expectations share with technology a limited shelf life. We are
experiencing the triumph of contemporaneity and of its accomplice, forgetting
or collective amnesia. Stated somewhat differently, in early modern times
change displaced traditions; today change succeeds change.
The effect of unending change
is to undercut consolidation. Consider, for example, that more than a century
after the Civil War the consequences of slavery still linger; that close to a
century after women won the vote, their equality remains contested; or that
after nearly two centuries during which public schools became a reality, education
is now being increasingly privatised. In order to gain a handle on the problem
of change we might recall that among political and intellectual circles,
beginning in the last half of the seventeenth century and especially during the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment, there was a growing conviction that, for the
first time in recorded history, it was possible for human beings to
deliberately shape their future. Thanks to advances in science and invention it
was possible to conceive change as “progress,” an advancement benefiting all
members of society. Progress stood for change that was constructive, that would
bring something new into the world and to the advantage to all. The champions
of progress believed that wild change might result in the disappearance or
destruction of established beliefs, customs, and interests, the vast majority
of these deserved to go because they mostly served the Few while keeping the
Many in ignorance, poverty, and sickness.
An important element in this
early modern conception of progress was that change was crucially a matter for
political determination by those who could be held accountable for their
decisions. That understanding of change was pretty much overwhelmed by the
emergence of concentrations of economic power that took place during the latter
half the nineteenth century. Change became a private enterprise inseparable
from exploitation and opportunism, thereby constituting a major, if not the
major, element in the dynamic of capitalism. Opportunism involved an unceasing search
for what might be exploitable, and soon that meant virtually anything, from
religion, to politics, to human wellbeing. Very little, if anything, was taboo,
as before long change became the object of premeditated strategies for
maximising profits.
It is often noted that today
change is more rapid, more encompassing than ever before. In later pages I
shall suggest that American democracy has never been truly consolidated. Some
of its key elements remain unrealised or vulnerable; others have been exploited
for antidemocratic ends. Political institutions have typically been described
as the means by which a society tries to order change. The assumption was that
political institutions would themselves remain stable, as exemplified in the ideal
of a constitution as a relatively unchanging structure for defining the uses
and limits of public power and the accountability of officeholders.
Today, however, some of the
political changes are revolutionary; others are counterrevolutionary. Some
chart new directions for the nation and introduce new techniques for extending
American power, both internally (surveillance of citizens) and externally
(seven hundred bases abroad), beyond any point even imagined by previous
administrations. Other changes are counterrevolutionary in the sense of
reversing social policies originally aimed at improving the lot of the middle
and poorer classes.
How to persuade the reader that
the actual direction of contemporary politics is toward a political system the
very opposite of what the political leadership, the mass media, and think tank
oracles claim that it is, the world’s foremost exemplar of democracy? Although
critics may dismiss this volume as fantasy, there are grounds for believing
that the broad citizenry is becoming increasingly uneasy about “the direction
the nations is heading,” about the role of big money in politics, the
credibility of the popular news media, and the reliability of voting returns.
The midterm elections of 2006 indicated clearly that much of the nation was
demanding a quick resolution to a misguided war. Increasingly one hears
ordinary citizens complaining that they “no longer recognise their country,”
that preemptive war, widespread use of torture, domestic spying, endless reports
of corruption in high places, corporate as well as governmental, mean that
something is deeply wrong in the nation’s politics.
In the chapters that follow I
shall try to develop a focus for understanding the changes taking place and
their direction. But first – assuming that we have had, if not a fully realised
democracy, at least an impressive number of its manifestations, and assuming
further that some fundamental changes
are occurring, we might raise the broad question: what causes a democracy to
change into some non- or anti-democratic system, and what kind of system is
democracy like to change into?
For centuries political writers
claimed that if – or rather when – a full-fledged democracy was overturned, it
would be succeeded by a tyranny. The argument was that democracy, because of
the great freedom it allowed, was inherently prone to disorder and likely to
cause the propertied classes to support a dictator or tyrant, someone who could
impose order, ruthlessly if necessary. But – and this is the issue addressed by
our inquiry – what if in its popular culture a democracy were prone to license
(“anything goes”) yet in its politics were to become fearful, ready to give
benefit of the doubt to the leaders who, while promising to “root out
terrorists,” insist that endeavour is a “war” with no end in sight? Might
democracy then tend to become submissive, privatised rather than unruly, and
would that alter the power relationships between citizens and their political
deciders?
A word about terminology. “Superpower”
stands for the projection of power outwards. It is indeterminate, impatient
with restraints, and careless of boundaries as it strives to develop the
capability of imposing its will at a time and place of its own choosing. It
represents the antithesis of constitutional power. “Inverted totalitarianism”
projects power inwards. It is not derivative from “classic totalitarianism” of
the types represented by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Stalinist Russia.
Those regimes were powered by revolutionary movements whose aim was to capture,
reconstitute, and monopolise the power of the state. The state was conceived as
the main centre of power, providing the leverage necessary for the mobilisation
and reconstruction of society. Churches, universities, business organisations,
news and opinion media, and cultural institutions were taken over by the
government or neutralised or suppressed.
Inverted totalitarianism, in
contrast, while exploiting the authority and resources of the state, gains its
dynamic by combining with other forms of power, such as evangelical religions,
and most notably by encouraging a symbiotic relationship between traditional
government and the system of “private” governance represented by the modern
business corporation. The result is not a system of codetermination by equal
partners who retain their distinctive identities but rather a system that
represents the political coming-of-age of corporate power.
When capitalism was first
represented in an intellectual construct, primarily in the latter half of the
eighteenth century, it was hailed as the perfection of decentralised power, a
system that, unlike an absolute monarchy, no single person or governmental
agency could or should attempt to direct. It was pictured as a system but of
decentralised powers working best when left alone (lassez-faire, lassez passer)
so that “the market” operated freely. The market furnished the structure by
which spontaneous 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 endeavours
toward the common benefit of all, even though the actors were motivated
primarily by their own selfish 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 revolutionised by the emergence and rapid rise
of the business corporation. An economy whose power was dispersed among
countless actors, and where markets supposedly were dominated by no one,
rapidly gave way to forms of concentrated power – trusts, monopolies, holding
companies, and cartels – able to set (or strongly influence) prices, wages,
supplies of materials, and entry into the market itself. Adam Smith was now
joined to Charles Darwin, the free market to the survival of the fittest. The
emergence of the corporation marked the presence of private power on a scale
and in numbers thitherto unknown, the concentration of private power
unconnected to a citizen body.
Despite the power of
corporations over political processes and the economy, a determined political
and economic opposition arose demanding curbs on corporate power and influence.
Big Business, it was argued, demanded Big Government. It was assumed, but often
forgotten, that unless Big Government, or even small government, possessed some
measure of disinterestedness, the result might be the worst of both worlds,
corporate power and government both fashioned from the same cloth of
self-interest. However, Populists and Progressives of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, as well as trade unionists and small farmers, went a
step further to argue that a democratic government should be both disinterested
and “interested.” It should serve both the common good and the interests of
ordinary people whose main source of power was their numbers. They argued,
perhaps naively, that in a democracy the people were sovereign and government
was, by definition, on their side. The sovereign people were fully entitled to
use governmental power and resources to redress the inequalities created by the
economy of capitalism.
That conviction supported and
was solidified by the New Deal. A wide range of regulatory agencies was created,
the Social Security programme and a minimum wage law were established, unions
were legitimated along with the rights to bargain collectively, and various
attempts were made to reduce mass unemployment by means of government
programmes for public works and conservation. With the outbreak of World War II, the New
Deal was superseded by the forced mobilisation 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 first large-scale effort at
establishing the tentative beginnings of social democracy in this country, a
union of social programmes benefitting the Many combined with a vigorous
electoral democracy and lively politicking by individuals and organisations
representative of the politically powerless.
At the same time that the war halted the
momentum of political and social democracy, it enlarged the scale of an
increasingly open cohabitation between the corporation and the state. That
partnership became ever closer during the era of the Cold War (1947-93).
Corporate economic power became the basis of power on which the state relied,
at its own ambitions, like those of giant corporations, became more expansive,
more global, and, at intervals, more bellicose. Together the state and
corporation became the main sponsors and coordinators of the powers represented
by science and technology. The result is an unprecedented combination of powers distinguished
by their totalising tendencies, powers that not only challenge established
boundaries – political, moral, intellectual, and economic – but whose very
nature it is to challenge those boundaries continually, even to challenge the
limites of the earth itself. Those powers are also the means of
inventing and disseminating a culture that taught consumers to welcome change
and private pleasures while accepting political passivity. A major consequence
is the construction of a new “collective identity,” imperial rather than
republican (in the eighteenth-century sense), less democratic. That new
identity involves questions of who we are as a people, what we stand for as
well as what we are willing to stand, the extent to which we are committed to
becoming involved in common affairs, and what democratic principles justify
expending the energies and wealth of our citizens and asking some of them to
kill and sacrifice their lives while the destiny of their country is fast
slipping from popular control.
I want to emphasise that I vew
my main construction, “inverted totalitarianism,” as tentative, hypothetical,
although I am convinced that certain tendencies in our society point in a
direction away from self-government, the rule of law, egalitarianism, and
thoughtful public discussion, and toward what I have called “managed democracy,”
the smiley face of inverted totalitarianism.
For the moment Superpower is in
retreat and inverted totalitarianism exists as a set of strong tendencies
rather than as a fully realised actuality. The direction of these tendencies
urges that we ask ourselves – and only democracy justifies using “we” – what inverted
totalitarianism exacts from democracy and whether we want to exchange our
birth-rights for its mess of pottage.
