[What is paradoxical is that U.S. imperial ideology happens to be
not fascism but an all-encompassing and intolerant liberalism refitted
for rationalizing military and political expansion.]
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LIBERALISM AND THE SPECTRE OF INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM  
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Henry Heller
May 28, 2023
Canadian Dimension
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_ What is paradoxical is that U.S. imperial ideology happens to be
not fascism but an all-encompassing and intolerant liberalism refitted
for rationalizing military and political expansion. _

Pablo Picasso, “Massacre in Korea,” 1951. The painting was
considered to be a condemnation of US intervention in the Korean War,
(image courtesy Musée Picasso/Wikimedia Commons)

 

The conflict now raging between the West and Russia and China is a
struggle for global power. At the end of the Second World War the
economic weight and influence of the United States allowed it to
dominate world trade and manufacturing but also to control financial
markets as well as build a system of global political and military
alliances and bases which reinforced its control. Today its imperial
dominance is under threat. The US is trying to prevent the emergence
of rivals for world hegemony and block the development of
a multipolar world
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But it still maintains a residual power based on the role of the
dollar as well as its military forces and political pacts.
Nonetheless, the growing unease of the American state in the face of
its declining international power lies behind its increasing
militarism and aggressive imperialism, particularly notable against
its two main rivals. It is using what remains of its strength to try
to restore its global position. This aggressive drive is fueled by its
long history of wars which helped not only to create its empire but
also to recast American society into one managed by corporations and
the state. What is paradoxical is that its imperial ideology happens
to be not fascism but an all-encompassing and intolerant liberalism
refitted for rationalizing military and political expansion.

There is a direct continuity between previous great power struggles
and this current conflict. The past can also illuminate the present
state of affairs. In particular, one can learn from the global
rivalries of the period 1939-1941. The diplomatic manoeuvres and
alliances of those years can throw light on the present. I would
especially point to the close parallel between the foreign policy of
the US now and Nazi Germany then. Then as now the idea was to seize
control of the oil resources of the Middle East. More significantly
the goal was, then as now, to dismember Russia and pillage its
resources. Finally, the Nazi ambition to undermine Russia was a means
of uniting the rest of Europe behind Germany. But these imperialist
policies are more or less the same as those of the US today.
Moreover—and this is the main point—these policies are in both
cases products of authoritarian political systems whose foreign
policies were or are predatory imperialisms.

At the beginning of the Second World War the world was divided into
three camps: the fascist Axis led by Nazi Germany, the Anglo-American
allies (champions of liberalism) and the communist Soviet Union. Both
of the former were imperialist but the first two were not only bitter
international rivals but ideological enemies—the Anglo-Americans
still committed to bourgeois liberalism and representative democracy
whereas Germany was autocratic, authoritarian, racist and militarist.

Today the cards are differently distributed. The socialist Soviet
Union is no more-replaced by Russia, an illiberal capitalist state or
so-called managed democracy. Its place ideologically has been assumed
by a gigantic socialist country, the Peoples Republic of China. The
fascist states of the past are gone, too. But I would argue their role
has been filled by what Sheldon Wolin has called inverted
totalitarianism
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example of such a state is the US.

Everyone is by now familiar with the economic doctrines of
neoliberalism which literally are a throwback to classical liberalism,
the hallmark of which was reduction to a minimum of the state’s
right to interfere with the economy and the personal life of the
citizen. Today the liberal state has been supplanted by a neoliberal
order based on an inverted totalitarianism in which the state, instead
of effacing itself, massively intrudes into the economy and personal
lives of citizens. Its goal is to use its powers to support private
enterprise and to protect corporate power with which it acts in close
partnership. Unlike the _laissez-faire_ liberalism of the past this
new version of the state unashamedly intervenes to foster the
interests of capital.

Liberalism in its nineteenth century form had a number of fundamental
teachings. Supreme among them are the rights of individuals conceived
of as rational beings. The full development of the capacities of
individuals are only possible if the constraints on them by society
and the state are reduced to a minimum.

Liberals pride themselves on their rationality, sense of nuance and
abhorrence of dogmas and political extremes. Among the rights conceded
to the individual are the right to assembly, freedom from arbitrary
arrest, and the right to personal privacy. Sacrosanct is the right to
private property exalted to the level of a fundamental human right.
Lip service continues to be paid to these rights. However, the number
of people who actually control property and particularly productive
property is today very few. Moreover only a minority have the
financial means to protect their right to privacy or their freedom
from arbitrary arrest. Indeed, the development of the surveillance
state has rendered these latter rights worthless. Extreme social and
economic polarization has made the idea of legal and political
equality into a shibboleth at best. Likewise the freedom of the press
and the media has been thoroughly compromised by censorship by the
state and the dominance of private media owned by the rich.

Liberalism originally rejected political democracy, insisting that
only men of substance and education should have rights to participate
in politics. But class struggle from below and the discovery that
representative democracy could actually help to stabilize capitalism
led to democratic enfranchisement in the second half of the nineteenth
century. But as a result of the growth of corporate power, state
authoritarianism and extreme inequality have been reduced democratic
political processes to a sham. Whereas in the past the US stood for
the principle of national self-determination, today that ideal depends
on a state’s conformity to a rules-based order as determined by the
US.

The debased liberalism of today—purveyed like other commodities
through a totalizing media—is a hollowed out and reified ideology.
It is defined by super-patriotism, religious piety, human rights,
so-called free choices including elections (and the choice of
shampoos), and the rule of law, of which the population has become a
virtual audience of passive consumers rather than real and active
protagonists. Liberal principles have been emptied of real meaning but
are invoked as a set of dogmas to which citizens are more or less
forced to salute.

Militarism, print and electronic media and increasingly pervasive
surveillance have played a totalizing ideological role, not as in Nazi
Germany to mobilize the population, but to render it psychologically
passive. The impact of this thick but not particularly nourishing mess
of liberal symbols and codes is to render the mass of the population
helpless in the face of overwhelming oligarchic power and the growth
of an authoritarian state. Unlike fascism which purported
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provide assistance to the economically vulnerable the neoliberal order
enforces increasing precarity on the population, rendering it
powerless to organize itself politically to resolve its economic
difficulties. Ordinary citizens are tied to this power through
consumerism and sensationalism which includes the realm of politics.
Politics avoids substantive issues in favour of personalities,
rhetoric, and advertising. The questions of class and empire are
ignored while identity politics, which keeps the population divided,
are highlighted. This system of inverted totalitarian control came
into place between the Second War and today. It has proved remarkably
successful in undermining personal freedom while enhancing the
authority of the police and military in the name of protecting the
liberties of the individual.

How does the situation between 1939-41 bear upon the situation today?
Back then the imperialist struggle for control of Asia reduced itself
to a conflict between the US and Japan. Having been defeated, Japan
became a vassal state of the US and is now part of the system of
alliances offshore to China, a superpower which is the new rival of
the US for dominance in Asia. But the analogy between the past and
present situation is particularly evident in the US’s posture toward
Russia and the Middle East.

The US today, with its debased liberalism and ultra-imperialism, plays
a role similar to that of Nazi Germany. It must be remembered that
back in 1941 the Germans did not act alone. By that year Hitler was in
control of the whole of Europe except the Soviet Union. Crusading
against communism was a common motif of fascist governments ranging
from Vichy France to the dictatorship of the Iron Guard in Romania.
The Nazis in fact had the support of authoritarian and fascist
governments across Europe. Germany by then had reached the decision to
attack the Soviet Union. Partly its aim was to dismember Russia and
pillage it of its oil, food and minerals. But these designs developed
into a campaign to dominate Turkey and the Middle East to undermine
Britain while securing the oil of that region for Germany. If we look
at the situation today we see it as strikingly analogous. The US seeks
to dismember Russia and, incidentally, in doing so find a backdoor by
means of which it can cripple China. Moreover, using NATO, the US aims
to integrate the rest of Europe into its crusade against Russia. This
crusade is a means of strengthening its grip on Europe. The attack on
Russia is seen as a campaign which will help to unite Europe under
American leadership.

From a political point of view, neoliberalism is different from
classical liberalism in its disregard for individual liberties for the
sake of state and corporate power. But, in closing, we might remind
ourselves that even in its original form liberalism was not committed
to democratic rights but was forced to concede them. Confronted by
class struggle, fascism became its default position as in the case of
France, Italy and Germany. Indeed, as Domenico Losurdo
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pointed out, liberalism from the beginning not only excluded those
without property but also the peoples of the Global South by
justifying colonialism, racism, slavery and genocide. Today’s
inverted liberalism in which imperialism plays a key role is thus not
unique but rather an ongoing characteristic of this ideology.

_Henry Heller is a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba.
He is the author of The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century
Perspective (Pluto Press, 2011), The Cold War and the New Imperialism:
A Global History, 1945-2005 (Monthly Review Press, 2006) and The
Bourgeois Revolution in France (Berghahn Books, 2006)._

_Canadian Dimension is the longest-standing voice of the left in
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* Liberalism
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* Neoliberalism
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* Fascism
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* democracy
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* class struggle
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