Re: Binary scheme of democracy and centralism

[Bill Lear <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday, April 18, 2002 at 11:14:50 (-0400) Charles Brown writes:
>...
>CB: In using your model, I would say that even though there is a
>partially democratic hierarchy in the U.S. governments, the
>totalitarian corporate system rules the U.S. governments
>substantially, such that the U.S. system should be termed totalitarian
>too.  If we use the totalitarian model, we should include the U.S. as
>totalitarian, otherwise there is too much of an implication of
>democracy in the U.S.system. Alternatively it might be termed a
>bourgeois dictatorship.

The only problem I have with this is that we have a great deal of
substantive freedoms, often won at great cost to those who have fought
for them.  At a certain point, once you add enough freedoms, I think
it would be difficult for the system to be called "totalitarian".  I'm
not sure where that point lies, though.

Jim seems to think that the term has too much baggage associated with
it, which is fine.  But if you consider the dictionary definition, it
seems to me that, as Michael Perelman pointed out, and as anyone who
has set foot within corporate America knows, the corporate system
itself approaches the definition much more closely than does the
political system.  As Reich points out, workers lose "most of the
political and civil rights they enjoy as citizens of the state" upon
entry to corporate America.  This seems to me to be evidence of a
clear line between two very different realms.

However, I can see an argument that what we have is indeed (the
dictionary form of) totalitarianism, albeit one that is "imperfect"
because the masters are constrained by those annoying things called
the Constitution, public opinion and direct action, and differences
among investors --- which often open up significant avenues of popular
input.  Every totalitarian system has these "flaws"; even the Soviet
Union had limits to what it could or was willing to do to its
population, so again, I'm not sure where we draw the line.

Perhaps plutocratic dictatorship, or plutocracy is better.  I would
still like a neat term, though, that would allow us to describe a
system of relationships such as slave/master, worker/owner,
husband/wife (when women "know their place").  Though it seems a bit
odd to describe the slave/master relationship as a "dictatorship" or
"totalitarian", I think the plain term fits.

Sabri mentioned object-oriented programming, so here's an OO diagram
describing another possible term:


                   Slavery
                      |
              +-------+------+------+
              |       |      |      |
           Chattel  Wage  Marital   ?


Well, anyway, at least "we know it when we see it".


Bill