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5.0 out of 5 starsTake the Professor’s course.
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2017
Sheldon Wolin is gone now and that is a shame for it would be such a delight to read his rendering of our very current time (2017) that so many others are trying to explain. I imagine a séance as one catches in old movies where the collective sit in a dark smoked filled room while the master/mistress seeks a trance… ‘Ah’ he is here. What great Master have you to say? “I told you so.”
Publishing this work in 2008 he lays out the character of the American society and where its prided Democracy has gone; most recently under the reign of George I-II as he calls it but the roots travel far back to earlier administrations and their untruths and proclivities. What he finds is Democracy Incorporate, Inverted Totalitarianism, and Superpower – a contrived Imperial thrust housing perpetual wars. One thesis is: Concentrated corporate power and democracy are incompatible. These are heavy charges, is this not yet the world’s leading democracy?
This work could have been edited to a tighter presentation but his language is so memorable that would have been a loss. Here he explains what we do sense has happened but can not quite grasp: “The crisis, it seems, is that there was no crisis. In its literal meaning a crisis is “a turning point.” Adapting the formulation “a turning point but no crisis” to the condition I have designated “inverted totalitarianism,” we might ask, why does the existence of that turning point go unrecognized? how are the facts of radical political change concealed when there is no evidence, say, of a coup or revolutionary overthrow? how can we recognize that the country is at the political turning point of inverted totalitarianism?” (pp. 211-212) "“The development that is emblematic of the economic polity is the extent to which finance has come to define politics. Millions of dollars from corporations are systematically poured into the legislative process and electoral campaigns.
State actors have become dependent more on corporate power than on their own citizens. Even a citizen-army is becoming a thing of the past, replaced by professionals skilled in the latest weaponry developed by corporate technology.
The military has been absorbed into the corporate economy (defense contracts, weapons procurement, retired generals become executives) and its culture.”
(p. 589)
The topic Superpower, incorporating Globalization and Militarization have become more recognized by the citizenry but here too you will delight in his analysis; other would prefer the title “Pax Americana” as a gentler cover, but that behavior he explains well.
The original was published in 2008, indeed a crisis period as it has proven; re-released with a new preface by the author, 2010 and a new edition, with an introduction by Chris Hedges in 2017. The footnotes are as informative and entertaining as the text.
The current administration is pushing the envelope right along and one can only hope its Superpower is somehow controlled. The bright side as Wolin would see it is that the citizenry does seem to be getting the message that we need to pay attention to where we are going. Take the Professor’s course!
