Inverse Totalitarianism and Trotsky’s Continual Revolution

“The Corporative State* considers private initiative…. as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation. State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient or when are at stake the political interests of the State.” — Benito Mussolini, Grand Council of Fascism, Labour Charter of 1927 stated in article 7 * “corporativismo” (Italian translation)

The New World Disorder

Sheldon Wolin’s theory on the evolution of the Inverted Totalitarian State was published in 2008,  “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism” and I’ve seen no update since then, subsequent to the financial collapse of 2008-2009. (NB: author Sheldon Wolin passed on in 2015.) As the Captured State becomes ever more captured, further utterance about this theory is in order.

Since 2008, the specter of Inverse Totalitarianism is no longer a specter but a reality,  Consequent to the western financial collapse of 2008-2009, there have been specific developments relating to the Surveillance State and its control of the media and government – well beyond Wolin’s theory –  beyond scope of this commentary.  (See US presidential Directive PDD-68)

So, the idea here is to propose one new component with regard to Inverse Totalitarian theory, new to the theory, but in existence for more than one hundred years: namely the concept of Continual or Permanent Revolution. Continual or Permanent Revolution is simple in concept, yet complex by manifestation, and treated here via the Plutocracy of State Capture and not in the context of Marxist-Leninist theory wrt the ideology of the Socialist State.

To embellish Trotsky’s concept, “The Theory of Permanent Revolution” was written by Nikolai Bukharin in 1924. According to Bukharin, permanent revolution is achieved when, “in the last analysis (we) will reach a stage when the workers will have captured political power.” In the Inverse Totalitarian State, we extend that to mean by Corporate consolidation and conglomeration, the capture and control of all markets, while ending/curtailing competition… as J Pierpont Morgan advocated in 1907 for predatory capital.  And of course the Corporate-Wall Street capture of the US political system.

Bukharin writes, “the revolution shall become unceasing until all the more or less wealthy classes have been removed from power and the proletariat has fully captured political power.” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Volume 3, Gosizdat, 1921, p 501) In the case of Inverse Totalitarianism, the same is achieved when Mega-corporates and Oligarchs have complete political and monetary control of the media and electoral system, as they do today.

Because Corporatism is by definition rule by tyranny, Corporations are  limited by their structure as top-down, and unaccountable. The Incorporated world is a hierarchy of change in itself, never static, managed and operated according to its own rules, and no others;  thus the Corporation is the perfect quintessential manifestation of tyranny.

In its static form, the Corporation as tyranny must ultimately destroy itself with regard to never-ending increased profitability, because the Corporation must grow ever larger by monopolization, consolidation, conglomeration, and capitalization, to become ever larger and thus more profitable… or else die.

By extension, all tyrannical regimes rely upon the concept of Permanent (or continual) Revolution to become greater entities, because only by expansion can tyranny of the corporate entity continue to exist and grow. Again, when the Corporate entity ceases to grow, it must die … by its own  definition of greater profitability and conglomeration only “justifying” the Corporation’s existence.

To develop the theory of Continual Revolution, think about the manner in which Corporations have hijacked Trotsky’s ideology. Bukharin states, “By uninterrupted revolution [Trotsky] conceived the prospect of the revolution taking a course in which the relation between forces continuously alters”; and, “constant changes in the social context of the revolution are taken into account. It reflects that, in the progress of  revolution, the relation between the conflicting classes constantly changes and the revolution in its development constantly marches forward from one stage to the next, without end.”

How neatly Bukharin explains the rapid state of change we see via our current Continual Revolution doctrine and dogma, as expressed by Elliott Capital Wall Street billionaire Paul Singer who famously wrote, “Stability is not the way of the world.” Today this continual revolution concept is embodied by Disruption Theory which is leveraged at all levels by the combined powers of the US Federal government and its controlling major Corporations — and Wall Street and its banks — who collude with the central government and politically own it. [1]

While the hierarchical class  – or ‘Coup Class’ – consolidates and leverages wealth and power exponentially,  we see that not much works in a world descending into Trotskyite chaos, as manifested by predatory-vulture capitalism and its predatory Wall Street Commissars. From public or private lack of legal dispute resolution;  to monetary easing; to seemingly global unrelated events such as the “Arab Spring” or Impressive Statecraft — or chaos within the US electoral process itself….  the list is endless where no plutocrat desires political / cultural stability. Yes, the Coup Class has deemed that “stability is not the way of the world’, just as Paul Singer has said.

This rapid rate of change is seen via the lens of Permanent Revolution, as adopted by the predatory capital Coup Class. Trotsky’s ideas on Permanent Revolution have thus been adopted  by predatory capital and their Corporate entities; and as such partly describe the western Inverse Totalitarian State.  As Bukharin described it, the State as we know it cannot exist without that disruptive change; the Empire of Chaos and instability demand by ever-expanding power, control and profit… and war.

Bukharin again: “the relation between the conflicting classes constantly changes, and that  revolution in its development constantly marches forward from one stage to the next”.  The foregoing is a perfect description regarding how the far less than 1% wield power – not in the form of some vague global conspiracy; but in the form of an intelligent tyranny in the manifestation of  greater global consolidation. The New World Disorder. So the Continual Revolution of Corporate Coup Class Wall Street billionaires embroiling the Great Unwashed in an empire of chaos, becomes perfectly analogous to Trotsky’s vision of a worker’s tyranny.

The goal of constant Corporate evolution via rapid change and transformation into larger consolidated and conglomerate entities – always looking to redefine to some new and Larger State of Existence – has been emboldened since the western financial collapse of 2008=-2009. The path of  Inverse Totalitarianism  has not only been broadened, but reinforced by the ascendance of  Surveillance and Police States; by the “fake news” media, by constructed events, and the stampede to AI. The ultimate irony is that Wall Street’s predatory Vulture Capital has its own chosen entity – the modern western mega-corporation – in part modeled on Trotsky’s concept of Continual Revolution.

So finally we are left with the question: is Continual Revolution necessarily a bad thing? If Trotsky’s concept were used to promote the greater good – or common good – then probably not.  But when Permanent Revolution is hijacked by incorporated powers and State Capture in the form of the Inverse Totalitarian state – ie working to advance tyranny and oppression (the result of which is the decline of humanism in favor of the inhumanity of Corporate rule)  — the end result is not just the specter of Inverse Totalitarianism, but its reality. And not continual revolution – but forever wars and oppression by the Plutocracy that rules our political system in the west.

[1] A current example of Disruption Theory might be the actions of Donald Trump, with his on-again off-again tariff tactics; or the United States provocation of war via its Ukraine proxy, since 2014.

Steve Brown