Honoring Sheldon Wolin (1922-2015)

Sadly, the distinguished political theorist and philosopher Sheldon Wolin has died in Salem Oregon. Wolin was 93.

 

Wolin was one of the US's leading political philosophers and someone who enlivened leftist and radical political philosophy, whilst retaining a commitment to the radical possibilities of democracy.

 

Sheldon Wolin's final book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism is without doubt the most important book I have read in the last decade.

 

In that book, Wolin describes inverted totalitarianism as the fusion of corporate and political power. Wolin makes clear that inverted totalitarianism is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany. 

 

Wolin argues that contemporary democracies and corporate capitalism have inverted the ways that authoritarian regimes politicize all spheres of life.  State and corporate power are increasingly enmeshed. He warns that the combination of state power and unchecked economic and corporate power now verge on total power and has created its own pathologies.

 

Wolin argues that political and corporate forces don't necessarily seek to replace democratic structures. Rather, they claim to honour democracy, electoral politics, freedom of speech and the right to assembly, whilst all the while capturing, manipulating and corrupting the levers of power to serve  political, economic, corporate and business interests.  

 

Wolin also examines the myths and mythmaking used  to justify this interlocking of corporate and state power, including the claim of a failing economy, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, privatisation and the never-ending war on terror.

Wolin warns that corporate power no longer answers to state or citizen control. The institutions of government, economy, civil society and society no longer play the role they were intended for. They primarily serve the interests of the political, corporate and business classes.

 

For Wolin,  corporate power and political power are now so closely intertwined and the much of the citizenry so demobilised, that genuine democracy is a remote possibility, expressed in what he described as  rare “fugitive” expressions of the popular will. 

 

Wolin argues that inverted totalitarianism destroys democracy, politically demobilises citizens, projects power and wealth upwards and creates instability, passivity and precarious existence for the majority of citizens.

 

Wolin writes that inverted totalitarianism:

 

'is not expressly conceptualised as an ideology of objectified in public policy but is furthered by decision makers, power holders and citizens who unaware of or blind to the deeper consequences of their actions or actions'

 

Chris Hedges, who is a passionate supporter of Wolin's work has written this piece in memory of his friend and colleague. A series of interviews with Sheldon Wolin by Chris Hedges are here and here.

 

Other pieces written in memory of Sheldon Wolin are here, here, here, here, here and here

Currently reading: Genealogies of Citizenship by Margaret Somers

Margaret Somers  book Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights is one of the finest books of contemporary social and political analyses I have read for a long time.

The book describes and analyses how decades of market fundamentalism have transformed increasing numbers of rights-bearing citizens into socially excluded internally stateless persons.  Somers argues us that the power and authority of the market is distorting the meaning of citizenship from non-contractual shared fate to conditional privilege, making rights, inclusion and moral worth dependent on contractual market value.

I rank it with Sheldon Wolin's remarkable book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism  as among the most prescient and significant diagnoses of our social, economic and political current malaise.

The politics of uprising

photo by AP Photo/M.Spencer Green from the Nation

Important  piece here from the  US Nation magazine by John Nichols on the new politics, which is arising not from established political systems or political parties, but from the streets.

As Nichols points out this is a politics of "uprising". This is a politics that challenges policies of austerity and corporate power and marches and votes to put human needs ahead of corporate greed.

The  focus of these uprisings is increasingly on the excesses of corporate capitalism and the merging of corporate power with political and state power, what the distinguished American political scientist Sheldon Wolin calls "inverted totalitarianism".

And importantly it is an uprising that positions itself outside the existing political structures and political parties. 

The proponents of austerity—from Madison to Washington to Berlin to Athens—would have us believe that nations, states and communities must sacrifice public education, public services and healthcare in order to balance budgets. Yet the same politicians who preach that there is no money for vaccinations and school lunches can always find the money for corporate tax breaks, payouts to defense contractors and wars of whim.

Politicians in both parties tell austerity lies.

But the people are pushing back.

There’s an uprising brewing, not just in Europe but in American states such as Wisconsin and Ohio. There’s a dawning recognition that it is neither morally nor fiscally prudent to sacrifice human needs in order to pay for wars—or to redistribute more of the wealth upward. We do not need “shared sacrifice” and the lie of austerity. We need new priorities.