Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliche. 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.

With his fundamental grasp of political theory and restless spirit to get at the essence of what threatens modern democracy, Wolin demonstrates that the threats to our democratic traditions and institutions are not always from outside, but may come from within. It is a book that policymakers and scholars of contemporary society should read and reflect upon.

As we've come to expect from Sheldon Wolin, a tightly argued and deeply revealing book about the dangers of unconstrained capitalism for our democracy.

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.

"Wolin's writing has a resonance that binds the canon of political philosophy to unfolding events and present circumstances. In "Democracy Incorporated," he contends that the institutions and practices that Americans regarded as their defense against totalitarianism--and other forms of authoritarian domination--have failed them. There is nothing like this book. It is a major, potentially revolutionary contribution to political thought."--Anne Norton, author of "Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire"

"Powerful and persuasive. "Democracy Incorporated" does exactly what great political theory should do: it provides a theoretical framework that allows the reader to see the political world anew. It left this reader with an almost nightmarish vision of American politics today, a nightmare all the more terrifying for being so compelling, so vivid, and so real."--Marc Stears, author of "Progressives, Pluralists, and the Problems of the State"

Sheldon S. Wolin is professor emeritus of politics at Princeton University. His books include "Politics and Vision" and "Tocqueville between Two Worlds" (both Princeton).

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xvii

preview 1

Chapter One: Myth in the Making 4

Chapter Two: Totalitarianism's Inversion: Beginnings of the Imaginary of a Permanent Global War 15

Chapter Three: Totalitarianism's Inversion, Democracy's Perversion 41

Chapter Four: The New World of Terror 69

Chapter Five: The Utopian Theory of Superpower: The Official Version 82

Chapter Six: The Dynamics of Transformation 95

Chapter Seven: The Dynamics of the Archaic 114

Chapter Eight: The Politics of Superpower: Managed Democracy 131

Chapter Nine: Intellectual Elites against Democracy 159

Chapter Ten: Domestic Politics in the Era of Superpower and Empire 184

Chapter Eleven: Inverted Totalitarianism: Antecedents and Precedents 211

Chapter Twelve: Demotic Moments 238

Chapter Thirteen: Democracy's Prospects: Looking Backwards 259

Notes 293

Index 339