DEMOCRACY INCORPORATED – Sheldon Wolin

WHY DON’T WE GET WHAT WE VOTE FOR?

Sheldon Wolin wrote this book at the end of President George W. Bush’s presidency in 2008. He observed a change in American politics and cultural life that heralded system that he wouldn’t call a real democracy.  Instead, he called it a managed democracy, where everyday citizens had very little power over what policies came out of Washington, DC and our state capitals. Instead, major corporations received much more say than the average citizen over what the government should be doing.  In fact, corporations and the government were part of the same beast, with corporations at the top of the hierarchy between them. You might have heard this idea discussed before under the name corporatism.  Meanwhile average citizens are overworked, exhausted, distracted and discouraged. Few take part in more than the occasional opinion poll or a casting of their ballots at the polls every couple of years.

The subtitle of Democracy Incorporated is Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. I will go into more detail about what both the terms “managed democracy” and “inverted totalitarianism” mean when Wolin brings them up. I’ll also discuss what they might mean in American life today, in 2022.

I read Democracy Incorporated during the second week of February in 2021.  Former President Trump had been out of office for a couple of weeks. President Biden was settling in, and the discussion on Capitol Hill was about two things above all else. Legislators fought about the deadly attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6th, 2021. Meanwhile, they debated a proposed COVID stimulus package. Congress meant it to provide relief to citizens, businesses, and governments. I wondered whether this book might help explain why this attack occurred. I also wondered why President Biden’s campaign promise to send $2000 relief checks to Americans seemed to be slipping away.

Large corporations and their owners received hundreds of billions in relief. Meanwhile Americans made do with $1200 or $600 checks if they met the means-tested income requirements.  News media kept pointing out that Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Elon Musk of Tesla had increased their wealth astronomically.  The government funds that benefited them always made it through Congress with a great deal of speed and very little debate.  Meanwhile, there was little discussion about whether Americans needed $2000 monthly checks, like many countries had done. Even proposals for a smaller, one-time check dragged on for months.  

You hear all this in the news, or on your social media feed, and the thought might occur to you – this is a democracy, isn’t it?  If all the American people vote, and the people voted for their tax dollars to go toward relief checks or whatever else we want, why isn’t it happening?  Doesn’t our voice matter?  As it turns out, it might not, at least not nearly as much as we tell ourselves it does.  In 2014, professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page published a study which looked at how often everyday people, versus elites got their way in terms of public policy. Keep in mind this study reviewed what happened when these classes differed in what they wanted. What they found is that when what average people wanted something, they got their way about 5% of the time. Compare this with about a quarter of the time for interest groups, and a little under half the time for business-based lobbyists. Things worked out almost 80% of the time for the wealthiest Americans.

In other words, the wheels of government appear to turn for the wealthy, not for you and me.  That study stuck with me for a long time. It’s been in the back of my mind for several years as I watched our democratic process continue to decay. I say “continue” instead of “start to decay” because this process did not begin with Trump, or Obama, or even Bush and Clinton.  Sheldon Wolin, the author of Democracy Incorporated, doesn’t think this is a particularly new phenomenon either. He wrote his text at the end of the Bush years. The era of corporate dominance, mass disenfranchisement, and endless war he saw unfolding at that time horrified him.  He believed these trends served the wealthy over everyday people. He also believed he could build a framework that explained why that was happening.

9/11 was a pivotal event in our transition to what Wolin calls a state of inverted totalitarianism.  He notes that instead of symbols of American democracy, symbols of American military power and financial power were hit by terrorists on that day.  By this we mean the Pentagon and the World Trade Center instead of the Capital and the White House. A society that prides itself on having a diverse array of opinions and ideas, including a fierce history of dissent, was suddenly speaking with one voice. Such is the way patriotism works. This can be incredibly powerful, sure, but also can help lead a people toward grave mistakes without giving them the freedom to question their path.

We crafted a narrative around the attack intended to justify our actions going forward.  That narrative stemmed from how we understood our enemy’s motives.  Al Qaeda attacked us because they hate our freedoms, our president told us.  They hated our diversity, our ways of governing, the liberties our citizens enjoyed.  Because of this, we were blameless for their attack.  We couldn’t consider anything else that could have led to them declaring war on us.  The history before 9/11 didn’t matter.  They were evil, we were good.  Furthermore, this struggle between us had no end in sight.  Hell, it could last forever.  We had to accept it as a new normal.

But here’s the good news!  Most of us don’t have to fight it.  There will be no draft. No large scale sacrifices are expected of us beyond some security theater at our airports, stadiums, and public buildings.  As the war went on, we would see less and less of our troops in the news and on television.  The wars would fade into the background.  Except for military families and their members in the fight, it wouldn’t feel much like we were at war at all.  And what was expected of us?  The two most patriotic things possible: to report those we thought were suspicious, and to buy things; to consume.  The economy would be the ultimate metric over whether the country had recovered, and could be considered healthy and whole again.

DUELING IMAGINARIES

Wolin argues that this all sets the stage for totalitarianism – and then asks us if we can recognize the signs of it.  Is it an executive branch (in America, the presidency) that has expanded its powers far beyond any administration before it?  Is it aggressive wars that turn out to have no justification, or with justifications based on lies?
The book is dense with political science terminology to describe what he means – and I believe a decent amount of it is coined by the author himself.  He sees inverted totalitarianism emerging in our political system. Wolin tries to envision this through three conceptions of what’s possible in our civic life. He referred to each of these ranges of possibility as an imaginary. Each of them is fluid, and changes with the times and circumstances:

• political imaginary – the idea, of what is possible within society and the political ideas that take hold in that society among those in charge.

• constitutional imaginary – the idea of what ways power is wielded, exercised, reinforced and checked.  Not just what it can do, but what it can’t do.  In the end, it’s a function of what people believe it can be made to do.

• power imaginary – the idea of the unceasing desire of people in power to increase that power. They wish to increase the conception of what they can accomplish, or get away with, or have dominion over.

Wolin describes the American political imaginary during the administration of FDR (1933-1945). Then, it contained the idea that government intervention could save capitalism from its own excesses. In so doing, FDR could save the American system from collapsing.  The Great Depression had exposed many of American capitalism’s faults. Citizens suffered few protections for their livelihoods, savings and homesteads. One of capitalism’s inevitable crises led to a lasting and severe downturn.  The solution, the New Deal, was an attempt to soften the edges of capitalism’s contradictions so that the system did not break down. This was to ensure that the next political imaginary did not include revolution.  The system being built in this period, where government would be used to prevent capitalism’s excesses, but harness its energy to provide for the welfare of all citizens, is called social democracy.

Social democracy was ascendant for a time between the 1930s and 1960s. Major tenets of it were upheld by both major parties in the US even if they didn’t admit to it. If you doubt it, check out Dwight Eisenhower’s political platform.  That political imaginary was worn down through the Cold War and finally destroyed with the one-two punch of Nixon and Reagan.  Nixon used the Southern Strategy to pull white southerners away from the Democratic Party. Ronald Reagan gutted those social democratic programs and the taxes on the wealthy that helped fund them. Meanwhile, he worked to loosen the restrictions on businesses placed during the Great Depression. This process has continued since, under both Democratic and Republican parties.

All the while, the ruling power in both American political parties stressed the need for a stronger national defense.  Rarely did anyone make cuts, though. The general trend was expansion and an increase in the power of what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.  A consensus was reached on foreign policy, in many ways, between Republicans and Democrats.  No matter their other fights, they agreed on the broad priorities. These included projecting American military and economic power abroad. They also stressed the containment and eventual destruction of communism and socialism in all its forms.   Through it all, our ruling class valued the opinion of “experts” on these matters over their voters.  Society put more and more stock in credentialed bureaucrats, businessmen, professionals and intellectuals. This is a trend that a lot of the authors I’ve read discuss as elitism or the “professional class.”

Wolin’s careful to note that he’s not saying America resembles, in most ways, a totalitarian system. That’s when a government directly controls all aspects of life and directs them to the benefit of the state. Usually this happens under the rule of a charismatic dictator figure.  But when he uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” to describe the US, he’s talking about a different idea. This is one where the people don’t rule in reality and neither does the government.  Instead, other forces control us, while wielding government and influencing votes to their ends.  We still have elections, and we still vote in them, but our votes don’t really make a difference.  Plenty of people sense this already, and say it.  Plenty of everyday people can describe some ways we get there.  They can tell that the preferences of voters don’t become policy unless the elite sectors of society want them implemented, too.

WHAT ARE THE FORCES PUSHING US TO INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM?

Empire: Military power, and its use abroad, is central to this system according to Wolin.  He’s talking about troops stationed abroad, and American naval vessels patrolling shipping lanes. He’s also talking about “counter-terrorism”, drone strikes and even preemptive war.  This all helps preserve American strategic and financial strength. It makes us the sole remaining superpower, even if countries like China are waiting in the wings.  The military action used to prop up our superpower status becomes ubiquitous to us. We’re encouraged to support it, and see it all as a defense of our freedoms. But we’re rarely encouraged to look too hard at it .  During the War in Vietnam, graphic combat footage aired on American televisions. That helped turn public opinion against the war. This kind of footage was absent during much of the War on Terror, unless you went digging for it on the internet.  During Vietnam, almost everyone knew somebody serving. In today’s conflicts, many don’t have any strong connections to the professional military.  I was part of a military family and grew up on Army bases. I remember my father wearing green-and-brown camouflage BDUs home after drills. AS such, it’s hard for me to remember that many Americans don’t think about overseas conflicts in the same way. We’re encouraged not to think of ourselves as at war at all. We’re rarely expected to make sacrifices for it. That’s left to the families whose loved ones get deployed to these wars.

Propaganda: in traditional totalitarian systems, the media is usually state-owned and official. Most media sources here in the US are private. Still, they publish and broadcast propaganda to reinforce the official version of events.  For a great look at how this works, check out Manufacturing Consent and our review of it.  Our news stories divert our attention to wedge issues of about culture, sex and spectacle. These include prayer in schools and same-sex marriage. Or they might involve what Kanye West said yesterday about Kim Kardashian.  But how often does news media look into socioeconomic classes, and question “who gets what?”  Our leaders see such stories as destabilizing element. They’re right – the system is no longer working when our attention focuses here.

Continuity:  inverted totalitarianism doesn’t tear down the old order, or doesn’t claim to.  It tries to tie itself into the existing and old traditions and systems. This suggests it’s “more of the same”, or a perfection of the old order.  As the US moves toward inverted totalitarianism, ruling elites push a similar line. They argue they’re upholding the same system we inherited from George Washington.

Corruption: rules for thee, not for me.  This is more than just out-and out bribes, or giving implied job offers to congressmen so they vote your way.  It also takes the form of tax laws where we know that the wealthy and corporations will find a loophole.  It’s government contracts given to corporations that mismanage the project. They drag it out, inflate costs, and still don’t deliver.  Former corporate executives sit on regulatory commissions for the very industries where they got rich.  The mega-corporations that control our levers of power are engaging in unethical, criminal conduct. There’s a good argument that their profits are the result of theft from their workers. We can also argue they steal from the earth that provided them the resources to produce anything at all.  Wolin believes that Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, wouldn’t have recognized the modern corporation.  We might even suspect he’d be appalled by it.  Right wing politicians like to cite The Wealth of Nations, but hope you won’t actually read the book.  Karl Marx did, and built a good deal off of Adam Smith’s theories.  I plan to read both Karl Marx and Adam Smith as part of PROLE ACADEMY.

Management:  Our leaders act in this capacity for the elites. Our politicians get massaged, re-educated, pressured or bribed into conforming to elite desires.  Popular policies, if not in the interest of these elites, get shifted, watered down or blocked.  And yet we’re led to believe that if we vote more, and vote harder, we’ll break that logjam.  It’s a lot like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football Lucy is holding for him.  Bureaucratic roadblocks, corruption, distraction and voter suppression are all common tactics. They’re all used to check our ambitions in a managed democracy.

Discouraging Participation:  The system thrives if citizens don’t give a damn about changing it.  It relies on all citizens being so disgusted and defeated by that system that they don’t bother doing it.  It wants you to believe the system is corrupt and it isn’t worth getting deep into it. Yet it also needs you to believe that it’s all working well enough for your everyday life. That way, you’re not compelled to overthrow it.  Inverted totalitarianism wants some of us to show up on Election Day to give one of the two parties our vote. Then it wants most of us to “kind of forget” about actual political participation for the rest of the year.  You can still be a spectator, though, like a fan watches their team play football after church on Sunday.  It wants you to think of politics as a horse-race, and measure it only in election cycles.  The less you think about the actual policies that get implemented, the better.  We’re not citizenry, we’re an electorate.  God forbid you protest, lobby as a citizen, write or call your congressperson. They hope you won’t make a fuss that isn’t directly related to getting someone elected or defeated.  Inverted totalitarianism has all the “right people” figuring the big stuff out. They’ll call you when they need you, thank you very much.

Consumption and Precarity: You’re encouraged to buy things. Spend your money, take that trip, run up that bill because you’re told it keeps the country strong.  Of course, it also directly helps the bottom lines of the very people who are really pulling the strings.  At the same time, the cost of living rises a little every year and we end up making the same amount of money or less.  As Wolin says,

“Superpower, despite its affluence, makes fear the constant companion of most workers. Downsizing, reorganization, bubbles bursting, unions busted, quickly outdated skills, and transfer of jobs abroad create not just fear but an economy of fear, a system of control whose power feeds on uncertainty”. 

Your work and your spending leads to the prosperity of those in control of your society.  Their work, and their spending, has no obligation to do the same for you.  You keep working to survive, to earn distraction, and to hope that may you’ll join the ones for whom the system really works.  They’re the Inner Party.  We’re the proles.

WHO IS BEHIND ALL THIS?

On some level, the trend of managed democracy that Wolin says is ascendant now isn’t new in our history.   He suggests that our checks-and-balances system keeps citizens from passing policies against the wishes of elites.  If those in power wanted the same thing that most regular citizens did, they’d grease the skids and get it done. The system the founders instituted gave them that wiggle room.  But if there was a populist movement that wealthy elites wanted to stop cold, they’d have the tools to do it. This is part of the reason for the Electoral College’s use in presidential elections. It’s also why Senators were not elected by popular vote until the early 20th century.

But of course, the best defense is a good offense.  So is Wolin right to suggest that wealthy, educated, white elites discourage many of us from voting because it could work?  If we doubt the system can work for us, we won’t show up to change it.  Then the “grown-ups” with education, credentials and wealth can govern without us.  A lot of this I knew –  I bet a lot of it you know, too.  But Sheldon Wolin uses his decades of experience to put all this together into a cohesive model. It describes a system with enormous military, financial and cultural power, directing its bounty to the top. Meanwhile, that system leaves those at the bottom anxious and disinterested. It manages to control the course of society and benefit the powerful with a seemingly loose grip.

Wolin writes with passion as he sketches out how inverted totalitarianism works.  He brings in contemporary politics with as much ease and poetic eloquence as he does ancient Greece.  Wolin frequently quotes other political scientists, and freely cites early American politicians like Madison and Jefferson.  I’m sure he made a fascinating professor, with something to say on virtually every part of his field.  His magnum opus, Politics and Vision, is sitting atop my Western Philosophy bookshelf. I haven’t read much on that shelf yet – I’m hoping to get to it somewhere down the road, but couldn’t tell you where.   Whenever it happens, though, I plan to take my time, and step up my note-taking game.

STYLE NOTES (AND IDENTIFYING BLAME)

I wish I’d been that diligent with note-taking here.  Even this book is demanding in a lot of ways.  For every beautiful, haunting description of our society, there’s a sentence so dense and meandering that I can get lost in it.  Let me be clear about what I mean, though. Sometimes when I’m reading a book that doesn’t capture my attention, I’ll go most of a page before I realize I haven’t been absorbing it.  My mind has gone elsewhere..  That’s not what I’m talking about here.  I kept circling back to re-read passages and make sure I understood their the implications.  I still think it’s an effort well-made – what you get out of the book is more than worth the trouble.

Time to talk about weaknesses beyond the writing style.  As sharp as Wolin is at describing how inverted totalitarianism operates, he’s less clear on how exactly we got to this point. It’s even foggier when he describes how to get out.  Let me explain what I mean. Wolin suggests that elites unintentionally built this “managed democracy.” It wasn’t meant to come to this.   This reminds me a lot of how I felt reading Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States. While reading Zinn’s narrative, I realized that many of our leaders’ and elites’ made decisions with class consequences. But those didn’t always have class motivations behind them.  Plenty did, but the point is that this system isn’t the result of some overarching master plan, or a coherent ideology.  It’s the result of several competing forces and trends. They’re put in motion by people with other goals. Often those goals are to preserve themselves, their career, or their revenue stream.   In the author’s own words:

“inverted totalitarianism comes into being, not by design, but by inattention to the consequences of actions or especially of inactions.  Or, more precisely, inattention to their cumulative consequences.”

Although Wolin’s theory describes our politics well, he frustrates me by not naming a culprit. Now that we’ve established that we’re screwed, I want to know who exactly it was that screwed us over.  Wolin reaches the precipice of repudiating capitalism, or the Founding Fathers themselves. But never actually makes this happen.  He still sees it all as something that could have worked, should have worked, and maybe did for a time. It just doesn’t anymore.  Perhaps Wolin would never have pulled off the mask of the villain, like a Scooby-Doo episode. There’s too many actors, too many moving parts here..

AND I’D HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT, TOO, IF IT WASN’T FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS – AND YOUR DOG!

By the time the book ended, I felt well-educated, but dispirited.  Wolin’s brilliant at naming the disease, describing its spread, and identifying the symptoms.  But is there a cure?  He refers several times to the concept of the demos. This is the Greek term for the collected free citizens of a polity, like a city, state or nation. The best one-sentence summary I can make of inverted totalitarianism is “a rotting of democracy where the system no longer responds to the needs the demos, actively nudging them into perpetual unease and apathy while it caters to the needs of ruling elites and concentrates power in their hands”.  Wolin’s solution, if he has one, is for us to be conscious of what’s happening. He urges us to agitate for a society where that demos participates and gets counted.  In order for that to happen, we need to lift the veil behind which those in power work. We must understand their power and the language they use to describe how their system works.  Those who benefit from inverted totalitarianism make it hard to see their tricks at work. They intend their language and jargon to be inpenetrable. That’s by design, Sheldon Wolin argues.  He writes:

“A distinctive and common feature of organized science, technology, and capital, and of imperial power and the globalizing corporation, is their distance from the experience of ordinary beings. Military and corporate structures are hierarchical, complex, and arcane. Both science and technology employ an esoteric language familiar mainly to the initiates, while military-speak is a language unto itself. Democracy, whose culture extols the common and shared, is alien to all of these practices and their modes of communication.”

This kind of jargon, based in elite professions (and academia), can help discuss complicated issues.  But it can also complicate them further. It’s too often used to obscure them from prying eyes, and close them off from us.  We should know what they’re up to, what’s valuable and truthful, and what’s useless or propaganda.  That’s something that I hope to fight for as part of PROLE ACADEMY‘s mission.