FUGITIVE DEMOCRACY AND INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM BY SHELDON S. WOLIN

Abstract

This article questions the critical dimension of democracy analyzed by Sheldon S. Wolin. Starting in the 1980s, Wolin’s impulse to diagnose the failings of American democracy by connecting liberalism to totalitarianism manifests in a new way. He observes that, in the process of ostensibly fighting totalitarianism through the Cold War, American government has itself come to embody a totalizing form of power. This critique culminates in his diagnosis of a twenty-first century crisis: the neoliberal condition of “inverted totalitarianism.” Here Wolin argues not only that the American political system shares some features with totalitarianism but also that it is starting to constitute a new version of totalitarianism emerging from within, rather than in reaction to liberalism.

Keywords: Democracy. Totalitarianism. Liberalism.