Inverted totalitarianism, Superpower and managed democracy

[Cain]

This was taken from Prof Chalmers Johnson's article on Alternet today.  Link for the full detail.  Important details are highlighted.



Wolin introduces three new concepts to help analyze what we have lost as a nation. His master idea is "inverted totalitarianism," which is reinforced by two subordinate notions that accompany and promote it -- "managed democracy" and "Superpower," the latter always capitalized and used without a direct article. Until the reader gets used to this particular literary tic, the term Superpower can be confusing. The author uses it as if it were an independent agent, comparable to Superman or Spiderman, and one that is inherently incompatible with constitutional government and democracy.

Wolin writes, "Our thesis is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical one, to evolve from a putatively 'strong democracy' instead of a 'failed' one." His understanding of democracy is classical but also populist, anti-elitist and only slightly represented in the Constitution of the United States. "Democracy," he writes, "is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs." It depends on the existence of a demos -- "a politically engaged and empowered citizenry, one that voted, deliberated, and occupied all branches of public office." Wolin argues that to the extent the United States on occasion came close to genuine democracy, it was because its citizens struggled against and momentarily defeated the elitism that was written into the Constitution.

...

To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: "inverted totalitarianism," a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on "private media" than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events. It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison -- 751 per 100,000 people -- of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has "emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation's political traditions."

The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual. A demotion in the status and stature of the 'sovereign people' to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of 'popularizing' power to democracy as a brand name for a product marketable at home and marketable abroad. The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."

....

Among the factors that have promoted inverted totalitarianism are the practice and psychology of advertising and the rule of "market forces" in many other contexts than markets, continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the penetration of mass media communication and propaganda into every household in the country, and the total co-optation of the universities. Among the commonplace fables of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge. Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation. Wolin reminds us that the image of Adolf Hitler flying to Nuremberg in 1934 that opens Leni Riefenstahl's classic film "Triumph of the Will" was repeated on May 1, 2003, with President George Bush's apparent landing of a Navy warplane on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to proclaim "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.

...

The main social sectors promoting and reinforcing this modern Shangri-La are corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy, and the military-industrial complex, which is in charge of Superpower. The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. Its primary tool is privatization. Managed democracy aims at the "selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry" under cover of improving "efficiency" and cost-cutting.

.....

One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust. In Wolin's words, "The point about disputes on such topics as the value of sexual abstinence, the role of religious charities in state-funded activities, the question of gay marriage, and the like, is that they are not framed to be resolved. Their political function is to divide the citizenry while obscuring class differences and diverting the voters' attention from the social and economic concerns of the general populace." Prominent examples of the elite use of such incidents to divide and inflame the public are the Terri Schiavo case of 2005, in which a brain-dead woman was kept artificially alive, and the 2008 case of women and children living in a polygamous commune in Texas who were allegedly sexually mistreated.

Another elite tactic of managed democracy is to bore the electorate to such an extent that it gradually fails to pay any attention to politics. Wolin perceives, "One method of assuring control is to make electioneering continuous, year-round, saturated with party propaganda, punctuated with the wisdom of kept pundits, bringing a result boring rather than energizing, the kind of civic lassitude on which managed democracy thrives." The classic example is certainly the nominating contests of the two main American political parties during 2007 and 2008, but the dynastic "competition" between the Bush and Clinton families from 1988 to 2008 is equally relevant. It should be noted that between a half and two-thirds of qualified voters have recently failed to vote, thus making the management of the active electorate far easier. Wolin comments, "Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism." It remains to be seen whether an Obama candidacy can reawaken these apathetic voters, but I suspect that Wolin would predict a barrage of corporate media character assassination that would end this possibility.

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Foreign military operations literally force democracy to change its nature: "In order to cope with the imperial contingencies of foreign war and occupation," according to Wolin, "democracy will alter its character, not only by assuming new behaviors abroad (e.g., ruthlessness, indifference to suffering, disregard of local norms, the inequalities in ruling a subject population) but also by operating on revised, power-expansive assumptions at home. It will, more often than not, try to manipulate the public rather than engage its members in deliberation. It will demand greater powers and broader discretion in their use ('state secrets'), a tighter control over society's resources, more summary methods of justice, and less patience for legalities, opposition, and clamor for socioeconomic reforms."

Imperialism and democracy are, in Wolin's terms, literally incompatible, and the ever greater resources devoted to imperialism mean that democracy will inevitably wither and die. He writes, "Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire."*

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* Although it should be noted several academics have expressed support for such a project in glowing terms.  For examples, see Niall Ferguson, Michael Ignatieff and Frederick Kagan. [Cain]

[Golden Applesauce]

On the bit about managing the public:

I don't think the US media or government is intentionally trying to make potential voters apathetic.  The media sells its stories straight to the emotions of the public because that's what the public is buying with.  It's not like there's some shadowy figure pulling strings somewhere going, "Hmm, they're getting uppity and demanding rights again.  Give 'em two weeks of non-stop Britney Spears custody cases.  That'll throw them off."

Similarly, the Democrats and Republicans aren't conspiring to desensitize voters to issues.  They're just trying to out-message each other, with the result that there are too many sound bites, important ideas dumbed down to four-word clips, for anyone to pay attention too.

The government is trying to manipulate the media, though.  The only advantage of a free press seems to be that it's cheaper to get the pro-govt message out.  See those 'retired' generals who offered expert military analysis, the whole run-up to the Iraq war, those Terror Alert Levels, etc.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

The biggest problem with liberal democracy is that it works. It makes people comfortable, and people don't act or think when they are comfortable. They just go along. And, of course, they eat up the propaganda which besides keeping them mostly pacified, it makes them suspicious of one another, and it keeps them very much uneducated about what they should actually do when something happens that makes them realize their "liberal democracy" is gone.

So, it turns out that the best way to manage a government is also the worst way to plan for its continued success.

[LMNO]

Vex, that's a pretty good point.

[Dr. Pataphoros, SpD]

Vex, that's a pretty good point.

I've been going with Duocratic Aristocracy for some time, but I like Inverted Totalitarianism as a better term to describe where we are.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

The view that the Government officials are monsters that are consciously seeking total domination is, imho, a little naive. Government exists as it is allowed to exist. That's just a fact of social dynamics. When governments become insufferable, people eventually get rid of them, once enough of them agree on what about their government is insufferable. Government does tend by its nature to want to regulate and police everything under the sun, but that isn't a characterization of ethical or "conscious" behavior as much as it is a description of what Government's purpose is. One reason why bureaucracies survive is because of their ability to find gaps in regulatory coverage, and fill them.

A successful, liberal democracy does have the effect of pacifying the people. There's really very little difference between a "peaceful" population and a "pacified" one. When we speak of domestic peace and stability, don't we mean a society in which people defer to a common mediator (government) on matters they might otherwise take into their own hands? We're talking about being pacified and subdued, because the absence of pacification means a society where people can have no meaningful or reliable expectation of everyday life.

Humans are habitual creatures and we tend to favor whatever flavor of government allows us to form and keep our habits without interference. We can live under the most oppressive regimes and not buck the system so long as there is no painful shock to our daily rituals (see: Mussolini and Punctual Mass Transit) - and we can live under the most tolerant and liberal systems, but work automatically to undermine them when they challenge the habits and assumptions we have come to rely upon to define ourselves (see: Gay Marriage).

The rhetoric of "liberty" and "freedom" are tools used by all sides at various times, and like any rhetorical device, they can mean almost anything depending on how you phrase them. People like to use these words to encourage (or attack) each other, always using them in whatever way will best help their own cause, which is almost never in any real allegiance to freedom or liberty per se, but rather in an allegiance to their own worldview and set of habits, and whatever they think is most likely to secure those.

As for Inverted Totalitarianism, that is exactly what most people have been asking for. If you were able to explain the way this works objectively to most humans, and get an honest answer from them, they would think it's a terrible thing unless they were at the top. That's the real crux of the matter. Not that democracies are failing but that we want them to fail.

[Verbal Mike]

for you, Vex. Right on spot.
It seems democracy only really remains democratic when its constituents insist on keeping it so. Especially if they have guns.