I start this thread to bring attention to the philosophy of Sheldon Wolin. I really want to get his book: Democracy Incorporated Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism- it is about an elephant in the living room of the US- corporatism Mr. Wolin is considered a liberal, but I see him thinking independent which is very unusual. He coined- Inverted Totalitarianism a method of merging Corporatism with Statism: I believe it is the America we live in today. This is the elephant. We are a corporatist run government. Corporations and the most wealthy elite aim for control and power. Money is their means but power is always the end game. Politics has become a game, like sports we draft our players and hope we win- politics today polarizes and divides us by design. I wonder how many Republicans would be defending the Health Care reform as it is if Obama was a Republican (and aligned in every other platform area)? How many on the left would support an invasion of Iran if Pres. Obama gives a whale of a speech that was convincing? - alot more than would support a Neo Con inspired invasion of Iran. In other words we fight among ourselves and the elephant gets to plod along- We lose basic freedom, liberty, individual thought, problem solving, responsibility, compassion and love. It's amazing in D&D how the more professed liberal posters have swung from offense to defense, from attack and criticize to defend and support as the administration changed. The opposite happened to the conservative posters. Hey, it's suppose to be that way, to the winner goes the spoils. We like sheep go astray the good book says. We are facing a rapid transition to a global corporatist coalition of government and economics. Trans-global corporations control central bank policy, media resources and politicians around the world. WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH well said, anyways all of that to point to this book- Amazon.com Mr. Wolin states this "The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged. This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don’t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment the US has developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president the US has had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American Imperium.” link The elephant keeps plodding along.
It's more than an elephant. It's a woolly mammoth. The president of the united states can be a war crimminal and still be regarded as a great president by some... as long as he doesn't raise taxes. In a nation under god, one would think that a well meaning president would be received with open arms. Instead, they call him a commie, hitler, the anti christ. It's really sad.
Well, I think the power structures of his day were aligned differently than they are now. He didn't think the federal government should meddle in the affairs of states, true, but I don't think he would have been an advocate of "corporatism" if he was alive today either. He was against any concentration of political power that put constraints on individual liberty, particularly that of the working class. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonian_political_philosophy Jeffersonians agrarians held that the economy of the United States should rely more on agriculture for strategic commodities, than on industry. Jefferson specifically believed "Those who labor in the earth... are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people." However, Jeffersonian ideals are not opposed to all manufacturing. The belief was that unlimited expansion of commerce and industry would lead to the growth of a class of wage laborers that relied on others for income and sustenance, as happened during the Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age. Such a situation, they feared, would leave the American people vulnerable to political subjugation and economic manipulation.
We may already be on the same page on this, but I do think "statist" is referring simply to "government-controlled". It's not about local state power. So, for instance, Stalinist Russia was an example of "statism". So I would say that Jefferson was very much not a statist.
The US is not a $#$@ democracy. We're a Republic. There is a huge difference that most don't understand.
I guess when Jefferson founded the Democratic-Republican party, he was very, very confused. Edit: I just learned that the name "Democratic-Republican" was only officially adopted in 1824 by Andrew Jackson. Did not know that.
started as a constitutional republic- now we are a social democracy and yes there is a huge difference
When it was decided that the Constitution wasn't enough to safeguard basic rights for workers, women, minorities, children, etc.?
Good OP. "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power." -Benito Mussolini "I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, ... The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply." -Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836) London financier, one of the founders of the international Rothschild banking dynasty America is already under the guise of fascism. If you think that Obama/Bush is really much different, then you're not paying enough attention. Remember you can't spell 'President' without 'PR', he is there for a show and a distraction and not much more. The corporations and bankers run the governments, not the other way around.
