Vision of Democracy - Essay Example

Vision of Democracy s Submitted by s: Introduction Inverted totalitarianism is a phrase that was created by Sheldon Wolin; to define what he believed was the developing type of political structure in the US. In Wolin’s view, the United States is progressively evolving to become an illiberal democracy and he employs the phrase “inverted totalitarianism” to demonstrate the likenesses and dissimilarities existing between the US structure of government and the totalitarian administrations like the Nazi Germany as well as Stalinist Soviet Union1. Wolin refers to the United States as a Superpower in an effort to create emphasis on the prevailing position of the country as the sole superpower and believes it has been slowly adopting totalitarian tendencies. This is as a consequence of the transformations that it has experienced in the process of military mobilization needed to fight the Axis powers and the subsequent campaigns to contain the Soviet Union while the Cold War continued. Wolin considers the egalitarianism of the US as excluding political involvement of the people and perceives it to be a managed democracy. He goes further to explain managed democracy as a political structure that legitimizes the governments through elections that are controlled whereby the electorate is disallowed from having a considerable effect on the policies that are embraced by the state through the continuous use of public relations approaches. Wolin compares the United States to the Nazi Government in one key manner without any inversion, which is the fundamental role that is associated by propaganda in the system. In Germany during the Nazi era, the creation of propaganda was a national affair but in the US, the greatly concerted media conglomerates develop it, which creates the impression of a free press. In the United States, opposition is permitted but the corporate media acts as a filter that allows people who have been limited by time to maintain their awareness of public affairs, only to be bombarded with opinions that the corporate media considers as serious. Development of Corporate State Starting from the nineteenth century, there was a considerable shift in wealth and power from the owners of properties and merchants to corporations2. This change was augmented in the industrial revolution era when the corporations acquired more economic and political powers while most of the wealth was controlled by a few barons who utilized it for political leverage. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln gave the warning that corruption was highly likely to follow this increase in corporate powers. Productions in large quantities and newer types of energy as well as transport systems enabled the industrialists to amass wealth quickly. This wealth was utilized in the accumulation of more resources and control structures over the nation. The industrialists managed to deal with their competitors through buying them out and consequently developing monopolies. In the process, they made themselves richer using cheap labour with labourers being accommodated in unhygienic factory towns while being forced to work in a hazardous environment. They were also lowly paid while being charged exorbitantly for the basic commodities that they could only acquire from the stores that were owned by the factories. Majority of the wealthy people in the United States amassed their possessions in the course of the industrial revolution and this era was also associated with a lot political venality that included politicians and bureaucrats being bribed with political positions and contracts in return for string pulling and allegiance. The outcome of all this was two political parties that were loyal to the elites with selfish agendas that were not willing to confront the status quo in any significant manner. The court were also involved in this issues and the Fourteenth Amendment that was enacted in 1868, with the aim of providing due processes of the law to the slaves who were freed, was utilized generally in the empowerment of the conglomerates. In 1886, the Supreme Court abolished two hundred and thirty state legislations that were meant to regulate corporations, especially the freight rates that were charged to farmers, on the supposition that these laws disadvantaged the corporations of property without any due process. The Supreme Court addressed more than three hundred Fourth Amendment cases in 1890 through to 1910, of this, 288 involved the protection of corporate rights and only nineteen about the rights of the people. It was at this time that the courts decided to consider the corporations as legal people and at the same time protected corporate owner from any form of criminal prosecutions. The situation escalated under the Roosevelt administration who was elected after the depression had already started. The Roosevelt family was one of the oldest banking families in the United States as his great grandfather was the founder of the bank of New York that started operating in 1784 with five generations going on to head the same bank. Prior to the concentrating on banking, the family assisted in funding the American Revolution while President Roosevelt’s uncle at one point was appointed in the Federal Reserve Board in 1914. President Roosevelt’s first employment was at JP Morgan and he resided in the home of Thomas Lamont, who was a JP Morgan partner. In the twenties prior to Roosevelt becoming the governor of New York, he was an investor in Wall Street, a banker and practiced law. In the course of his term as president when he deviated from gold standard and created numerous government jobs, the corporations and businesses with big interests that had funded his campaign were stunned. Some businesspersons arranged a coup and communicated with General Smedley Butler, who was the most decorated marine in history, to become some sort of Mussolini and reduce the president to a figurehead or ultimately remove him from power. The general blew the whistle and regardless of the fact that a congressional committee established the scheme, no prosecutions took place. Majority of the corporations that were bailed out of the financial crisis that took place recently originated from the same corporations that were apparently involved in the attempted coup demonstrating that maybe a more refined coup has occurred. After the Second World War, newer institutions were developed and they escalated the rise of the international corporate states and in 1944, members of forty-four nations met for discussions on how to recreate the international economy3. At this meeting, the US was the most dominant power, and the meeting developed the Bretton Woods Systems that linked the official reserves to the United States dollar rather than the gold. This conference also created the IMF as well as the precursor of the World Bank, then a short time after, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs was established decreasing the barriers to trade that existed between nations. The agreement consequently became the WTO in 1995, which was a significant shift as unlike the GATT, the WTO possessed powers that allowed it to impose regulations meaning that countries were obliged to adhere to the regulations that the WTO developed. Currently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the biggest trade agreement in history, is being negotiated by the administration under president Obama in confidence with the exception of six hundred corporate advisors, and will lead to a worldwide corporate coup. Ever since the eighties, which was considered as the period of free trade, the world has experienced the intensification of transnational corporations, which has, enabled off shoring of jobs, which has affected the labour market in the United States causing the share contributed to the GDP by labour to slump considerably. It has also lead to the free flow of finances abroad, circumvention of more than one hundred billion in corporate taxes and the development of international tax havens that house tens of trillions of dollars in offshore accounts leading to the neoliberalism that is evident in the world acquiring a home in the US. Inverted totalitarianism in the United States There has been a lot of criticism as a consequence of the pre-emptive war that the United States instigated against Iraq, which as an error of colossal proportions but most of the American citizens still fail to acknowledge it. Rather, most of the American citizens still argue about whether the country should continue with the war to the end when even the high-ranking military personnel state that a military success in the current time is almost implausible. The economy of the US has been affected by the extreme spending on military activities that has taken place for decades while the country’s competitors have focused on investing in profitable fresher industries that serve the needs of their people. Critics consider the United States political structure of checks and balances to be wrecked by widespread cronyism as well as venality in Washington D.C. and by a presidency that lasts for two terms that allows the presidents to be the deciders, which is a principle that is essential hostile to the constitutional system. The country has allowed its elections, which is a non-negotiable institution in democracy, to be degraded without any form of complaint from the citizens or members of the Fourth Estate. The country engages in the torturing of defenceless prisoners regardless of the fact that this vilifies and disheartens the nation’s armed forces and its intelligence agencies. The main issue is that there are numerous things that are not functioning properly at the same instance for the people to have a comprehensive appreciation of the disasters that are associated with the country and the measures that can be taken to return the country to a constitutional government or some level of democracy. Numerous books have addressed the specific features of the circumstances in the United States that include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq along with the ballooned defines budgets, the imposing presidency and the contempt or civil rights that are associated with it. These books have also dealt with the topic of prevalent denationalization of typical governmental utilities and a political structure that does not allow the leaders to speak of militarism and imperialism in the public domain. Sheldon Wolin is among the people who have dwelt on the state of affairs in the United States in their writing including coming up with an all-inclusive diagnosis of the failings of the country as a democratic policy. For more than two generations, Wolin has been teaching history of political philosophy while authoring books like Politics and Vision and Tocqueville Between Two Worlds among numerous other books and publications. His book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, is a shattering assessment of the modern administration of the United States along with what has taken place in the recent times. It also includes the measure that are supposed to be taken to avoid the United States disappearing into history the same way the classic totalitarianism forerunners such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Bolshevik Russia. Time is running out and the probability of the citizen of America paying attention on what has gone wrong and taking the tough measures of avoiding a national collapse are slim. Nevertheless, the analysis that has been done by Wolin best demonstrates why the 2008 presidential elections did not have any effect on the mitigation of the country’s fate. The book creates a demonstration of why political science, if practiced in the right way, is the most prevalent and effective social science. Appreciating the arguments that Wolin develops in his book does not need any possession of specialized knowledge, as his work is fully accessible. The assessment he develops of the modern American crisis depends on a historical point of view that dates back to the initial constitutional agreement of 1789. It also encompasses specific attention to the advanced degrees of social democracy achieved in the New Deal and the modern mythology that the United States, Starting from the Second World War, is the custodian of unparalleled power in the world. Wolin develops three new concepts based on this historical setting to assist in the analysis of what the United States has lost as a country. His main idea is inverted totalitarianism, which he continues to complement with two secondary ideas that support and supplement it; managed democracy and Superpower4. “Superpower” is always capitalized and employed without a direct article as the author utilizes it as an autonomous agent that can be compared to Superman, making it characteristically incompatible with the constitutional government as well as democracy. Wolin states that, “Our thesis is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical one, to evolve from putatively ‘strong democracy’ instead of a ‘failed one’.”5 His egalitarianism perspective is conventional and at the same time mainstream and only partially embodied in the US Constitution. He considers democracy as the environment that facilitates for the ordinary citizens to make their lives better through political activities and through making power become receptive to the wants and anticipations they possess6. All this is dependent on the presence of an electorate that is politically involved and enabled, and one that take part in elections. According to Wolin, USA in some instances neared a genuine democracy as a consequence of its people struggling against and briefly defeating the exclusivity entrenched in the constitution. Wolin explains that the working people as well as the ordinary farmers were not involved in the drafting of the constitution therefore implying that the political system of the United States was not developed based on democracy, rather with a predisposition against democracy7. It was developed by the section of people who either had scepticism concerning democracy or those with some form of hostility to it. Advancements in democracy have proved to be sluggish, difficult and eternally incomplete. The United States was in existence for more than seventy-five years before formal slavery was abolished and another century before the black Americans were guaranteed their right to vote. It was not until the twentieth century that womenfolk got assurance of voting while trade unions earned the rights for collective bargains. In all of these accounts, success has not been complete as women still lack complete equality, racism is still rampant, and the obliteration of what is left of trade unions remains an objective of the corporate strategies. Democracy in the United States has defied the norms and the forms on which the economies and politics of a nation are designed8. Wolin controls his passion for James Madison who was the chief writer of the Constitution and considers the New Deal as possibly the only era in the history of America when rule through a real demos prevailed. To reduce the complicated arguments to its simple form, since the depression, the two elements of managed democracy and Superpower have led to the creation of inverted totalitarianism, which greatly resembles the classical form but is founded on internal co-optation. It is also based on the illusion of freedom, political detachment instead of mass organization and the dependence on private media more than on public organizations to distribute propaganda that strengthens the formal account of occurrences. It is considered inverted, as it does not need the use of compulsion, power of the police and a messianic philosophy like the ones associated with the Stalinist, Nazi and Fascist versions regardless of the fact that the US has the biggest ratio of citizens who are imprisoned compared to all other nations in the globe. Wolin is of the opinion that the inverted totalitarianism has occurred subtly, unpremeditatedly and in superficially uninterrupted continuity with the political traditions of the country. The brilliance associated with the inverted totalitarianism structure of the United States is demonstrated in the wielding of total power without the appearance of, without the establishment of concentration camps, or the putting into practice of ideological equivalence, or forceful suppression of rebellious elements as long as they remain indecisive. Demoting the position and importance if the independent people to become patient subjects are an indication of a change in the system, from democracy as a means of power popularization to democracy as a marking for a product that can be marketed both within the United States and abroad. The new inverted totalitarianism structure works through professing the reverse of what it actually is making the United States become an example of how the management of democracy can take place without the indication of suppression. Some of the factors that have encouraged the development of inverted totalitarianism are the activities and mind-sets associated with advertising as well as the rule of market forces in numerous other settings than markets and progressive advancements in technology that promote ostentatious fantasies. Others include the infiltration of communication linked to the broadcasting and propaganda into the nation together with the complete co-optation of the institution of higher education. Some of the most common tales in the United States society include worshipping heroes and accounts of individual aptitudes, external youthfulness, beauty created by surgeries and actions measured in fractions of a second. Others include a culture burdened with dreams of ever-increasing controls and possibility whose expertise are predisposed to illusions because a huge part of the majority has imaginations but limited particular knowledge9. Wolin brings back the images of Hitler’s flight to Nuremberg in 1934 through equating it with President Bush’s landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 as a proclamation of an accomplished mission in Iraq. Regarding the self-pacifying university campuses in comparison with the typical intellectual turmoil that surrounds autonomous learning centres, Wolin considers that the intellectuals, researchers and academics have been integrated into the inverted totalitarianism system. This integration has taken place through a blend of government contracts, funds from various corporations and foundations, projects that involve the universities and corporate researchers as well as donations from affluent individuals. Therefore, for once in the history of America, the top professors in the higher education of the country have become wealthy as a consequence of the system through earning the salaries that could be envied by potential CEOs. Managed democracy in the United States The key social segments that promote and strengthen this modern structure are the corporate powers, which are responsible for the managed democracy, along with the military complex that is responsible for the Superpower10. The main goals of the managed democracy include increasing the profits of the bigger conglomerates, pulling to pieces the institutions that address social democracy and rolling back on the social and political notions associated with the New Deal with the main tool used being privatization. Selective abandonment of the responsibilities of the government for the welfare of the electorate is among the aims of the managed democracy, which is veiled by the pretence of enhancements of efficiencies and cost-cutting measures. In Wolin’s view, the denationalization of public utilities demonstrates the constant development of the corporate powers to assume political forms that are a significant and governing component of the state. It indicates the changes in American politics and the political culture of the country whereby democratic practices and principles were the main contributory factors, to one where the democratic elements that remain as well as the populist initiatives are being steadily pulled to bits. This campaign has principally thrived and democracy, which was previously represented as a confrontation of the status quo, has gone through adjustments to make it the status quo. Another secondary task that is associated with the managed democracy is making sure the electorate is preoccupied with marginal or private conditions that surround the life of humans so that they do not direct their attention at the rampant exploitation and disloyalty of the trust of the public. Wolin adds that the political function of these debates is the division of the electorate while obfuscating class differences through the diversion of voter attention from soci0-econimic issues of the general population. Noticeable examples of this form of elite usage of such debates aimed at separating and aggravating the public include the Terri Schiavo case of 2005, which involved a woman who was brain dead being kept alive through artificial means and the 2008 event of womenfolk and children existing in polygamous communities in Texas while apparently being maltreated. An additional elite approach that is employed by managed democracy to make the citizenry bored to the point that slowly stops paying attention to political issues. One methodology of making sure of control is through developing a continuous electioneering process that will run throughout the year while being filled with party propaganda that is interposed with the knowledge of kept experts. This creates a situation of boredom instead of an energized one, which is the form of lethargy that assists managed democracy to thrive. The characteristic example is definitely the nominating processes of the two key parties in 2007 and 2008 while the imperial competition that has existed between the Clinton and Bush families from 1988 through to 2008 is similarly significant. It is important to keep in mind that more than fifty percent of the qualified voters did not vote recently, therefore making the supervision of the active citizenry much easier. In Wolin’s view, these uninterested citizens are silent supporters of the cause associated with inverted totalitarianism. Obama’s candidacy was under scrutiny to see whether it would re-awaken the uninterested voters but as usual, a fusillade of media character slandering that severely affected that possibility. Imperialism in the United States The managed democracy is an influential solvent of any remainders of democracy that is left in the political structure of the United States, but its powers are not as strong as the ones associated with Superpower. Superpower is considered as the supporter, protector and administrator of imperialism as well as militarism in America, which are the elements of the US administration that have continued to be controlled by the elites, surrounded by secrecy in the executive branch and apparently beyond the scope of the ordinary people to appreciate or supervise. Superpower is engrossed in issues to do with the weapons of mass destruction, underground influence on foreign policies, military operations and the large amounts of money that the military-industrial complex demands from the public for its activities11. It is imperative to note that the expenditure of the United States military is more than the combined expenditure of all the other militaries in the planet. The defines budget of the US for 2008 was more than six hundred billion dollars; while the national budget for a military was closest to this was sixty-five million dollars by China. External military operations make it mandatory for democracy to develop changes in its characteristics so that it can be able to deal with the imperial likelihoods associated with external war and occupation. Democracy tends to change its attributes through the adoption of new behaviour out of the country and through operating on reviewed, power-expansive suppositions within the country. In most of the cases, it will try to influence the public instead of engaging its members in negotiations. It will create a demand for more powers and a wider freedom of choice in their use, more control over the resources in the society, greater precipitation of justice as well as decreased patience for lawfulness and clamouring for socio-economic changes. Based on Wolin’s ideas, imperialism and democracy are in no way compatible, and with more resources being directed at imperialism, then democracy is bound to inevitably wither and consequently die off. Politics associated with imperialism signifies the subjugation of internal politics and alteration of internal politics into a vital factor of reversed dictatorship. Therefore, it does not make sense to try to understand how a democratic citizen can be able to take part practically in politics of an imperial nature making the topic of empire unmentionable in electoral debates. There have not been any instances of key politicians or parties publicly commenting on the presence of American imperialism. Since the time when the United States was founded, its people have been associated with a longstanding history being complicit in the nation’s imperial undertakings that include its transcontinental expansion with no consideration for the Native American people, the Mexicans as well as the Spanish imperialists. According to Theodore Roosevelt, the Americas had a deep opposition for imperialism as a result of their prosperous escape from the British realm but the expansionism in question was inherent in their character. Through the years, analysis of the American politics has cautiously attempted to create a separation between the military and imperialism, regardless of the fact that the two complement each other. This initially develops the empire and is essential to its definition, supervision and growth. When the loyal citizens unwaveringly support the military along with its bloated budgets, it implies that the conformists are successful in persuasion of the people that the military is separate from the government. In this way, the most significant component of state power is detached from public debates. It has been in the making for a long time, but under the Bush administration, the US has ultimately attained a formal ideology of imperial expansion that can be compared to the totalitarianisms associated with the Nazi and Soviets. According to the National Security Strategy of the US, which was apparently drafted by the Condoleezza Rice in 2002, the US has now has a commitment to pre-emptive wars. Pre-emptive wars involve the projection of power overseas especially against that nations that are relatively weaker which may be compared to the manner in which the Nazis invaded Belgium and Holland in 1940. The strategy justifies the actions of the US in striking another Nation based on perceived threats that its powers will are at risk and severely impaired if it fails to respond in a manner that eliminates the danger prior to its materialization making the pre-emptive wars Lebensraum for the era riddled with terrorism. This was the official explanation for the aggression directed at Iraq by the US from 2003. Numerous analysts may conclude that Wolin has created a strong case that time is running out for the American republic; however, Wolin himself is not in agreement with this. Consequently, he creates a list of the things that need to be addressed to deal with the consequences associated with totalitarianism; reversing the empire, reversing the actions of the managed democracy and going back to the notion of international cooperation instead of principles of globalization and anticipatory strikes. These measures also include the restoration and reinforcement of environmental protections, the reinvigoration of populist politics and undoing of the damages to the American system of individual rights that will restore the honour of the autonomous supervisory agencies and of methodical review practices. Regrettably, the work of Wolin is more of a guide to the issues that have gone wrong than statements on how to address them, especially since Wolin has the belief that the political structure of the United States is saturated with exploitation and influences from the wealthy and corporate donors. Conclusion Based on the views of Sheldon Wolin, there are three key ways that inverted totalitarianism is the reversed form of the conventional totalitarianism. While in Nazi Germany the economic actors were under the control of the administration, in inverted totalitarianism the corporations dominate the US through contributions of a political nature and promotions making the government serve the big corporations. This is considered as an ordinary incident and normal instead of being considered as exploitation. Whereas the Nazi administration sought to achieve a steady political mobilization of the populace through its Nuremberg rallies together with Hitler Youth, the inverted totalitarianism seeks a situation where the masses will be in a continuous state of political laziness. The sole form of political action that is expected or needed from the electorate is voting and the low turnouts at the elections are considered as a marker that a huge part of the population has lost hope with the government ever being helpful to them. Even though the Nazi’s openly ridiculed democracy, the US maintains the self-importance that it is the ideal democracy for the entire globe. Wolin has the belief that they US democracy does not allow political participation of any form and considers it as a managed democracy which is apolitical structure that legitimizes the governments through elections that they are able to control. In the democracies that are managed, the citizenry is not allowed to have any substantial effect on the policies, which the state adopts through continuously using public relations gimmicks. The US can therefore be equated to Nazi Germany in one main way without any form of inversion, through the substantial role that is played by propaganda in the political structure. Even though the creation and construction of propaganda was somewhat centralized in the case of the Nazi Germany, in the US, it is the domain of the extremely concentrated media corporations which creates the misconception of a free press. Even though different forms of rebellion are permissible, the media that is controlled by the corporations acts as a filter enabling the people with restricted time available to them to remain informed of the prevailing occurrences, based on the opinions that the media creates for them. Wolin states that the US has two main key totalizing aspects where the first, which is directed in the outward direction, is expressed in the worldwide war on terror and in the doctrine associated with President Bush that the US has every right to instigate a pre-emptive war. This results in the US considering as proscribed trials by the any country to repel its supremacy. The other element, which is directed in the inward direction, entails subjecting the populace to economic justifications with constant downsizing while outsourcing jobs overseas and pulling to pieces what is left of the welfare state that was developed by the New Deal making neoliberalism a vital part of inverted totalitarianism. The insecurity that the public is placed in acts as a means of making the people develop hopelessness, therefore decreasing the likelihood of them becoming active politically which assists in maintaining the first aspect. Bibliography Al-Shammari, N. N. 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