Democracy Incorporated Reviewed By Chris Hedges

  Democracy Incorporated
  Managed Democracy
  and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

  By Sheldon S. Wolin

  Princeton University Press. 376 pp. $29.95

  Reviewed by Chris Hedges

  The United States, if it does not radically alter course, will become a totalitarian state. That is the argument of Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy Incorporated.

  This is no political screed. It is a brilliant, nuanced, and detailed dissection of the abject failings of the American political system by one of the nation's preeminent political theorists. It is a work that will rank as one of the most important pieces of political philosophy of the new century. By the time Wolin, who taught political philosophy at Berkeley and Princeton, is finished, it is clear that unless Barack Obama radically restructures corporate and military industrial power, our democracy is doomed.

  Wolin uses the term inverted totalitarianism to describe our descent into despotism. "Inverted" totalitarianism does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, as "classical" kinds of totalitarianism do. The power centers of inverted totalitarianism are corporate and usually anonymous. It does not openly discredit democracy. It pays homage to the democratic ideal, patriotism, and the Constitution while quietly subverting democratic institutions.

  The New Deal was the closest the nation came to a popular democracy, according to Wolin. But the rise of the country as a superpower after World War II led, in Wolin's eyes, to an increasingly tamed or "managed democracy." The unchecked power of a corporate elite made possible inverted totalitarianism. It has developed "imperceptibly," he writes, "unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation's political traditions."

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