Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.94 (923 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0691178488 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 376 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-10-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
. His books include Politics and Vision and Tocqueville between Two Worlds (both Princeton). Sheldon S. Wolin (1922-2015) was professor emeritus of politics at Princeton University
Democracy Incorporated is a devastating critique of the contemporary government of the United States--including what has happened to it in recent years and what must be done if it is not to disappear into history along with its classic totalitarian predecessors."--Chalmers Johnson, Truthdig"Democracy Incorporated provides a rare, chilling analysis of intellectual critics of democracy. Winner of a 2008 Lannan Notable Book Award, Lannan Foundation"A comprehensive diagnosis of our
"What does A frightened democracy do?" according to Herbert L Calhoun. Sheldon S. Wolin, a renown professor of Political Science at both Princeton and Berkeley universities, a scholar who can count among his students, the renown public philosopher, Professor Cornel West, has, for most of his academic career, studied and written extensively and well about the philosophy and mechanisms of political systems, especially democracies and totalitarian forms of governments.Having tracked the anti-democratic tendencies that have been in the American political DNA since its inception, Wolin marks three fundamental inflection points that have led to . Inverted Totalitarianism - Spread the word! I had not read anything by Sheldon Wolin prior to this book, and I picked it up because I was intrigued by what was apparently his own invented phraseology - "inverted totalitarianism." With these two words, Professor Wolin gave a name to something that those of us who pay close attention to global political and economic trends have glimpsed on many occasions but could never quite see in full. Indeed, this subject is so new and so little explored that it would be best to view Professor Wolin's book as our first landing point on an as-yet-unexplored continent. The contin. "Putting It All Together" according to John Baesler. At the end of a long, distinguished career as one of America's foremost political philosophers, Sheldon Wolin takes a hard look at the current political system in America and arrives at the profoundly uncomfortable conclusion that America has become a "managed democracy," where the will of the American people is effectively removed from political, social and economic decision-making. He sees the country firmly set on its way toward becoming a system of "inverted totalitarianism" where democratic institutions are only empty shells and "democracy' has become a myth which
But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level.Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. At best the natio