Quotes from Sheldon S. Wolin

During the 1950s the ideological battles were centered on "loyalty," "subversion," "communism," and civil rights. While politics of the decade seemed intense, it was also narrower: socioeconomic problems were subordinated to ideological battles in which anticommunist ideologues did their best to link liberalism, the main force behind socioeconomic reform, with communism.46

The ideal of a democratic political culture was about cooperating in the care of common arrangements, of practices in which, potentially, all could share in deciding the uses of power while bearing responsibility for their consequences.

Once the battle lines between communism and the "free society" were drawn, the economy became untouchable for purposes other than "strengthening" capitalism.

A medieval aphorism summed up the traditional idea of the political, "that which touches all should be approved by all.

If democracy is about participating in self-government, its first requirement is a supportive culture, a complex of beliefs, values, and practices that nurture equality, cooperation, and freedom. A rarely discussed but crucial need of a self-governing society is that the members and those they elect to office tell the truth.

Self-government is, literally, deformed by lying; it cannot function when those in office assume as a matter of course that, when necessary or advantageous, they can mislead the citizenry.

The effect of persistent, pervasive corporate misconduct is to promote public distrust of power-holders in general. From Superpower's vantage point public cynicism, far from being deplorable, is one more element contributing to political demoralization and languor.

The current censorship of popular protest against Superpower and empire serves to isolate democratic resistance, to insulate society from hearing dissonant voices, and to hurry the process of depoliticization.

The techniques developed for the marketplace have been adapted by political consultants and their media experts. The result has been the pollution of the ecology of politics by the inauthentic politics of misrepresentative government, claiming to be what it is not, compassionate and conservative, god-fearing and moral.

McCarthy was remarkable for a simple but matchless talent: he lied endlessly and spectacularly. No matter how often the lies were brought to light, he plunged on, exposing one after another alleged spy, traitor, red, or pinko, and in the process recklessly damaging or ending careers.

Campaign contributions are a vital tool of political management. They create a pecking order that calibrates, in strictly quantitative and objective terms, whose interests have priority.19 The amount of corruption that regularly takes place before elections means that corruption is not an anomaly but an essential element in the functioning of managed democracy.

The public vocation of truth telling cannot be consistently practiced without public and private respect for, and defense of, intellectual integrity.

Extend the sphere," Madison wrote, "and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other."31 We might call this a vision of the saving weakness of a "disaggregated majority.

Lying is more than deception; the liar wants the unreal to be accepted as actuality, so he sets about to establish as true what is not actually the case, not really real. A lie by a public authority is meant to be accepted by the public as an "official" truth concerning the "real world." At bottom, lying is the expression of a will to power. My power is increased if you accept "a picture of the world which is a product of my will.

What was the value of "values"? To obscure more fundamental issues and to divide society along ideological lines rather than class conflicts: the religiously obedient Catholic worker, the evangelical African American, the church- and family-oriented Hispanic, the struggling white family with a son in the military because he aspired to go to college: all vote for the party trumpeting values that impose virtually no cost on its affluent and corporate beneficiaries and their heirs.33

Equally important, downsizing is mimicked by a politics that consistently sacrifices the needs of the poorer and often the more vulnerable classes—the counterparts to civilian casualties. Reduction of social benefits, lax enforcement of workplace standards, preserving a scandalously low minimum wage, all these are part of strategies devised to achieve an electoral victory and demonstrate the political superfluousness of the working classes.

Rather, in coining the term "inverted totalitarianism" I tried to find a name for a new type of political system, seemingly one driven by abstract totalizing powers, not by personal rule, one that succeeds by encouraging political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, that relies more on "private" media than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda reinforcing the official version of events.

the effective exercise of managerial skills dictates certain institutional requirements, among them strong and centralized authority, a hierarchical power structure, top-down control, and an aversion to whistle-blowers.

Superpower warfare is the real, if sardonic, version of class warfare: the less well-off fight wars instigated by the well-off, well-educated, and well-represented.

Plato's justification of elite rule is set out in his famous Allegory of the Cave.11 It contrasts the unreality of the images by which the Many live and the true reality that only the Few can approximate.

He is the pliant favored child of privilege, of corporate connections, a construct of public relations wizards and of party propagandists.

The vast majority of mankind remain imprisoned in the cave and incapable of grasping the true nature of things. Their best hope is to accept the power of those versed in the true philosophy. Plato darkly concludes: by nature the masses prefer an illusory reality, and so they may turn on the philosopher, making him a martyr to the truth. Thus the masses fear the truth, and their instinct is to cling to the unreal.12

Democracy was, of course, anathema to Plato, not least because it stands for the regime where those who rule tend to be guided by experience of the tangibles of everyday existence, by "common" sense.

Elitism thus had a dark side, a fascination with noble death, with death not for low material ends—that was for the multitude and the merchants—but for fame, even immortality.