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Verlagstext:

Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. 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. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. 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. 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. 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. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. Now with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize¿winning journalist Chris Hedges, Democracy Incorporated remains an essential work for understanding the state of democracy in America.

 

Wikipedia über: Invertierter Totalitarismus (Inverted Totalitarianism):

Sheldon S. Wolin gilt als Urheber des Begriffs Invertierter Totalitarismus (inverted totalitarianism). Im Jahr 2003 bezeichnete er mit diesem Begriff die nach seiner Auffassung entstehende neue Regierungsform der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, eine "gemanagte" Demokratie. Er sah in dieser Form politischer Herrschaft totalitäre Züge, unterschied diese aber vom klassischen Totalitarismus.

Das politische System der USA besässe nach Wolin dasselbe Streben nach unbegrenzter Macht und aggressiver Expansion wie etwa der Nationalsozialismus. Invertiert bedeutete für Wolin, dass dieses strukturelle Moment nicht als Massenphänomen in Erscheinung tritt, sondern in der Schrankenlosigkeit des Regierungshandelns. Während jedoch im Nationalsozialismus die Großunternehmen dem Regime untergeordnet waren, ist heute die Politik diesen unterworfen. Die Großunternehmen erzeugten dabei aber dieselbe reale Dynamik wie etwa das ideologische Lebensraumkonzept der Nazis.

Die Nationalsozialisten wollten die Massen in Bewegung setzen, ihnen ein Bewusstsein von Kraft und Freude geben; der invertierte Totalitarismus dagegen wolle den Massen das Bewusstsein von Schwäche und Nutzlosigkeit vermitteln, um eine "demobilisierte" Gesellschaft von politisch Desinteressierten hervorbringen.[2] In diesem Punkt berührt sich Wolins Theorie mit der Theorie des Neo-Feudalismus.

 

Stimmen zum Buch:

"For half a century, Sheldon Wolin has been one of the most distinguished and influential political theorists in the United States and a perceptive observer of the American political scene. In his magisterial latest book, Wolin shows himself at the height of his powers as he presents a highly original, sober, and persuasive account of a number of tendencies in contemporary American society that constitute a significant danger for the future of constitutional democracy. If totalitarianism establishes itself in the United States, it will be in the 'inverted' form Wolin analyzes in this important book."-Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge

 

"Of the many books I've read or skimmed in the past seven years that attempted to get inside the social and political debacles of the present, none has had the chilling clarity and historical discernment of Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy Incorporated. Building on his fifty years as a political theorist and proponent of radical democracy, Wolin here extends his concern with the extinguishing of the political and its replacement by fraudulent simulations of democratic process."---Jonathan Crary, Artforum