[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/12/09, Athina Karatzogianni <athina.k at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Michel

> you wrote to andy "but totalitarianism, neo or not, I disagree,
>
> I also think it's counterproductive because when the real thing comes, we'll
> have lost all our conceptual ammunition"

>  I think the real thing is already here in embryo.

> There are elements of every day life in these democracies that are
> neototalitarian. A small example that pops into my mind now is when the
> knowledge worker is constantly scored, timed and monitored in his work from
> going to the toilet to all sorts. Permeating everyday life with fear of
> losing your job (a teacher here in Britain lost her job for saying to a
> child when asked in a multicultural class that there is really not a santa
> clause per se --last xmas). In Britain it is a mainstream observation what
> there is a nanny state in operation, it is not a paranoid idea. Look at the
> state's reaction at last demos in London. Perhaps things are not as hard
> core as Thailand or other  countries, but they are still quite worrying,
> especially when these governments make very 'democratic' claims, providing
> the standards by which other countries would have to abide by to be deemed
> democratic enough to be included in alliances and economic unions.

> Lastly, neo-totalitarianism is not only the extreme forms one imagines,
> there are various freedoms that have been recalled both sides of the
> antlantic the past 7 years.

I think part of the hesitancy to label it "totalitarian," on the part
of many, is an equation of totalitarianism to mass movements like
fascism in the mid-20th century:  uniformed political parties marching
in the street, giant posters, torchlight rallies, shouted slogans,
bullyboys disrupting meetings, etc.

But totalitarianism can take a bureaucratic form, characterized by
Weberian rationality.  Amaury de Riencourt contrasted the caesarism of
the post-Augustan period with the tyranny of the Greek city-states and
the personalized populism of the Gracchi of the late Roman Republic.
He applied the contrast, by way of analogy, to the caesarism of the
American welfare-warfare state vs. the classical tyrannies of the Axis
powers.

It's perfectly compatible with certain forms of "democracy," like what
Noam Chomsky calls "spectator democracy" and the neocons call "rule of
law."  I believe Bertram Gross coined the term "friendly fascism."

In this sense, America has been evolving toward this sort of
totalitarianism since the 1930s (when FDR adopted much of the
corporatism of Hitler and Mussolini, without the slogans and marching
mobs), or the 1940s (the beginning of the perpetual warfare/garrison
state and the perpetual militarized economy).  Since then it's
ratcheted upwards:  the McCarran INternal Security Act, a whole slough
of executive orders proviidng the legal and administrative framework
for martial law, GARDEN PLOT and CABLE SPLICER, the militarization of
local police forces via SWAT teams, the creeping authoritarianism of
the Drug War and the GWOT, Clinton's 1996 "counter-terror"
legislation, USA PATRIOT, etc.  The only respite was the
post-Watergate Church Committee, and Obama's making it clear he has no
such fundamental rollback on his personal agenda.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html