Part 2 (1/2)

More than a half century ago, and in sobriety, totalitarianism was imagined in a form that seemed plausible despite a political setting where there was virtual unanimity that totalitarianism was the exact ant.i.thesis of the nation's understanding of itself. More than a half century ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a war in which our main enemies were understood to be totalitarian regimes, Edward Corwin, a distinguished const.i.tutional scholar of his day and no sci-fi enthusiast or radical, published a short book t.i.tled Total War and the Const.i.tution (1947). Like many of his contemporaries Corwin was responding to the novel possibility of nuclear war. He tried to imagine the kind of national transformation likely to occur in the event of a nuclear threat. There would be, he speculated, a streamlining of the system of const.i.tutional government into a ”functional totality”: the politically ordered partic.i.p.ation in the war effort of all personal and social forces, the scientific, the mechanical, the commercial, the economic, the moral, the literary and artistic, and the psychological.2 Corwin depicted total mobilization of all ”forces” as an instinctive reaction to a threat of annihilation emanating from ”outside.” In short, not a totalitarianism taking shape gradually but one mobilized as an immediate reaction setting off a radical transformation of the old structure of governance and the imposition of a new and, one would hope, temporary political ident.i.ty. Corwin had depicted a totalitarian system resulting from a series of deliberate, self-conscious actions, a deviation provoked by an emergency of uncertain duration rather than an inversion evolving from a succession of seemingly unrelated, heedless decisions.

III.

Why should a sober and highly respected const.i.tutional authority indulge in this particular flight of fancy? In depicting a state of war in the nuclear age, Corwin ventured beyond the actual mobilization of American society during the Second World War, beyond what Americans had experienced but not beyond what was known. Corwin's formulation could be described as an act of political imagination, a self-conscious projection of a state of affairs that did not in fact exist, involving an unidentified enemy at a time when no other nation possessed nuclear weapons. Yet he also extrapolated some elements (e.g., nuclear bombs) that did exist. Above all, looking backwards, he a.s.sumed that the recent wartime mobilization const.i.tuted the meaning of ”total.”

I want to pause over the idea of ”political imagination” and its product, the ”political imaginary.” My concern is not so much with an individual thinker's formulation as with the consequences when a particular political imaginary gains a hold on ruling groups and becomes a staple of the general culture; and when the political actors and even the citizens become habituated to that imaginary, identified with it.

Bearing in mind that totalitarianism is first and foremost about power, we can see that the ideas of imagination and of the imaginary, while pointing toward the fanciful, are power-laden terms, striking because they seem to join power, fantasy, and unreality. Consider the following standard dictionary definitions: imagination: The power which the mind has of forming concepts beyond those derived from external objects . . . a scheme, plot; a fanciful project.

imaginary: existing only in imagination . . . not really existing.3 The idea of an imaginary has special relevance to a society where continuous technological advances encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are p.r.o.ne to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.

A political imaginary involves going beyond and challenging current capabilities, inhibitions, and constraints regarding power and its proper limits and improper uses. It envisions an organization of resources, ideal as well as material, in which a potential attributed to them becomes a challenge to realize it. What is conceived by the imagination is not a mere improvement but a quantum leap that nonetheless preserves elements of the familiar. For example, in his imaginary, The Secret of Future Victories (1992), a four-star general imagined an attack by the Soviet bloc which would be met by an American force that ”draws adroitly on advanced technology, concentrates forces from unprecedented distances with overwhelming suddenness and violence, and blinds and bewilders the foe.”4 As the quotation suggests, while a strong element of fantasy may figure the imaginary, there is likely to be a significant ”real,” verifiable element as well. Postmodern weaponry has in fact demonstrated its ”Star Wars” potential, and suicide bombers do blow up schoolchildren.

IV.

I want to sketch two contrasting types of imaginary. One I shall call the ”power imaginary,” the other the ”const.i.tutional imaginary.” On the face of it, the two seem mutually exclusive; I shall treat them as cohabiting uneasily. The const.i.tutional imaginary prescribes the means by which power is legitimated, accountable, and constrained (e.g., popular elections, legal authorization). It emphasizes stability and limits. A const.i.tution partakes of the imaginary because it is wholly dependent on what public officials, politicians in power, and, lastly, citizens conceive it to be, such that there is a reasonable continuity between the original formulations and the present interpretations. The power imaginary seeks constantly to expand present capabilities. Hobbes, the theorist par excellence of the power imaginary and a favorite among neocons, had envisioned a dynamic rooted in human nature and driven by a ”restless” quest for ”power after power” that ”ceaseth only in death.” But, according to Hobbes, unlike the individual whose power drives cease with death, a society can avoid collective mortality by rationalizing the quest for power and giving it a political form. Hobbes proposed to combine a const.i.tutional with a power imaginary. It took the form of a permanent contract, a const.i.tutional imaginary, which provided the basis for the power imaginary. The individual members of society, driven by fear and insecurity, agree to be ruled by an absolute sovereign or chief executive in exchange for a.s.surances of protection and domestic peace.5 He becomes the custodian of the power imaginary, ”the great Leviathan,” as well as the final interpreter of the const.i.tutional imaginary.

The main problem is that pursuit of the power imaginary may undermine or override the boundaries mandated in the const.i.tutional imaginary. A power imaginary is usually accompanied by a justifying mission (”to defeat communism” or ”to hunt out terrorists wherever they may hide”) that requires capabilities measured against an enemy whose powers are dynamic but whose exact location is indeterminate. The enemy's aims and powers may have some verifiable basis, but they are typically exaggerated, thereby justifying a greater claim on society's resources, sacrifices by society's members, and challenges to the safeguards prescribed in the const.i.tutional imaginary.6 One consequence of the pursuit of an expansive power imaginary is the blurring of the lines separating reality from fancy and truth telling from self-deception and lying. In its imaginary, power is not so much justified as sanctified, excused by the lofty ends it proclaims, ends that commonly are ant.i.thetical to the power legitimated by the const.i.tutional imaginary. At present, according to one apologist, ”empire has become a precondition for democracy.” The United States, he continues, should ”use imperial power to strengthen respect for self-determination [and] give states back to abused, oppressed people who deserve to rule them for themselves.”7 Thus, instead of imperial domination as the ant.i.thesis of democracy or of imposed government as the opposite of self-government, we have a fantasy of benevolence, of opposites harmonized through the largesse of a superpower.

I want to suggest that an American imaginary, centered on the nation's projection of unprecedented power, began to emerge during World War II (194145). However, that s.h.i.+ft was as significant for the imaginary it displaced as for the one it established. Before the war, during the first two terms of FDR's presidency (193341), a substantial attempt was made to establish a liberal version of social democracy. Looking back upon that experience, one has difficulty recognizing an America in which, unapologetically, public debate and discussion centered on matters such as planning; focusing resources on the poor and unemployed; bringing radical changes to agriculture by limiting production; regulating business and banking practices while not fearing to castigate the rich and powerful; raising the standard of living of whole regions of the country; introducing public works projects that created employment for millions and left valuable public improvements (libraries, schools, conservation practices, subsidies to the arts); and promoting all manner of partic.i.p.atory schemes for including the citizenry in economic decision-making processes.

However, the combination of expanded state power and genuine ma.s.s enthusiasm for the new president gave pause to some observers.8 At FDR's inaugural address in 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt found the enthusiasm of the crowd ”a little terrifying because when Franklin got to that part of the speech when he said it might become necessary for him to a.s.sume powers ordinarily granted to a president in war time, he received his biggest demonstration.”9 At the time the country's economy was in desperate straits. Millions were unemployed and hungry; agricultural prices had fallen so low that products were not marketed and countless farms were being foreclosed, sparking violent protests; manufacturing had come to a virtual halt and the fortunate few who were employed received meager wages. In the background, Hitler had a.s.sumed office, while Mussolini was firmly ensconced in power. A distinctive power vocabulary began to take hold suggesting that the world was witnessing the emergence of a novel, more expansive power imaginary. Usages such as ”dictators.h.i.+p,” ”totalitarianism,” and ”mobilization” were not uncommon. Although the carnage of the First World War remained a fresh memory, there arose a spontaneous belief, shared among politicians, pundits, business leaders, and the public, that the nation's economic crisis qualified as the equivalent of a state of war which justified an unprecedented expansion of state power in peacetime.

Early in the New Deal in what some Americans saw as ”economic nihilism” threatening the nation, there was a clamor for a different imaginary that was clearly at odds with the const.i.tutional imaginary. Congressman Hamilton Fish referred approvingly to FDR's administration as ”an American dictators.h.i.+p.” Al Smith, a former Democratic presidential candidate, seemed to be appealing to experience when he demanded hyperbolically, ”What does a democracy do in a war? It becomes a tyrant, a despot, a real monarch. In the [First] World War we took our Const.i.tution, wrapped it up and laid it on the shelf and left it there until it was over.” The Republican presidential nominee in 1936, Governor Alf Landon, declared: ”Even the hand of a national dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke. . . . If there is any way . . . a Republican governor in a mid-western state can aid [the president] in the fight, I now enlist for the duration of the war.”10 What was unusual or perhaps naive about such reactions was that the United States had not experienced the actuality of war at home since 1865. For the vast majority of Americans modern warfare was, in large measure, imagined rather than actually felt or observed firsthand. Similarly, dictators.h.i.+p had never been established. In 1933 there was not yet a common awareness of the brutality of Mussolini's regime or of the deadly effects of the liquidation of the kulaks and forced collectivization in the Soviet Union.11 Although the Roosevelt administration was granted exceptional powers to deal with the crisis, and although it attempted to raise wages and to control manufacturing, retailing, and agricultural output, many of its programs were voluntary or required the cooperation of trade a.s.sociations and agricultural groups. There was certainly far more chaos, improvisation, and haphazard enforcement than regimentation, yet it was also clear that a new power imaginary had come into existence. The everyday vocabulary of government officials, politicians, publicists, and academics bandied expansive power terms and envisioned new scales of operation: national planning, mobilization of labor, controls over agricultural production, consumer protection.12 In some official circles there was even talk of ”socialism.” The vision of power was, however, strictly domestic and mostly involved economic relations; the influential economists favored economic nationalism rather than globalism.13 There was no attempt to control education, culture, newspapers, or radio broadcasting. There was no foreign enemy. Although capitalist greed was often attacked,14 FDR and most of his closest advisers believed that the aim of the New Deal was to save the capitalist system from unreconstructed capitalists. Government regulation, instead of being the enemy of capitalism, was conceived as the means of saving it by promoting employment, decent wages, education, and a cus.h.i.+on against the cyclical swings endemic to capitalism.

V.

But while the New Deal imaginary stimulated hopes of fundamental social and economic reforms within the framework of capitalism, it also aroused panic among business and financial leaders and provoked a counterimaginary. Once the economy appeared to be recovering, a powerful public relations campaign was mounted. The New Deal was depicted as the creature of leftist forces bent on transforming the country's economy.

The alarums sounded by business and financial leaders were not without foundation. The 1930s were years of extraordinary political ferment, most of it directed against the economic status quo. There were substantial numbers of communists as well as socialist followers of Norman Thomas, but perhaps more important were the popular political movements that openly challenged the political and economic power of capital.

The most important of these was the Share-the-Wealth movement of Huey Long, the Townsend movement for old-age pensions, and the National Union for Social Justice, galvanized by the Catholic priest Father Coughlin, that called for a guaranteed annual wage, the nationalization of public utilities, and the protection of labor unions. The striking feature of the three movements was their success in mobilizing the support of the poor, the unemployed, the workers, small-business owners, and members of the middle cla.s.s, and accomplis.h.i.+ng much of this mobilization through the new medium of national radio.15 The fact that millions of citizens were stirred to support leaders and become emotionally and practically involved in movements outside the main political parties lent a different, potentially more populist meaning to ”mobilization.” An American version of a demos, demagogic warts and all, had emerged. Huey Long's movement centered its protests on the maldistribution of wealth. He called for taxation that would eliminate all income over a million dollars and inheritances over five million. There were to be homestead allowances of five thousand dollars to every family and a guaranteed annual income of at least two thousand, old-age pensions, limitations on the hours of labor, and college education for the qualified. In a few short years he succeeded in actually changing and improving the lives of poor people, but primarily by means of corruption, intimidation, and personal charisma.16 A plausible case could be, and has been, made that he had created, if briefly, a thin form of fascism. But it might also be argued that all three movements were versions of a ”fugitive” democracy which, while destined to be short-lived because of its reliance on the limited resources of ordinary people, succeeded nonetheless in challenging the democratic credentials of a system that legitimates the economic oppression and culturally stunted lives of millions of citizens while, for all practical purposes, excluding them from political power.17 Each movement was received coolly by the New Deal leaders.h.i.+p and kept at arm's length, despite agreement with many of the proposals put forward by the dissidents. The lesson for the political establishments of the major parties was that ”mobilization” should be carefully controlled so as to preclude its becoming a challenge to the far narrower notions of popular partic.i.p.ation represented by the two major party organizations.

By the late 1930s the question beginning to emerge was whether liberalism with a primarily domestic focus would survive and flourish once the New Deal was suspended by World War II; and whether its counterimaginary of a state-regulated capitalism would survive after the shooting war ended or, instead, give way to a radically altered power imaginary for a new kind of war that followed, and for the kind of demos needed for its support.18

VI.

A clue to the modest influence of foreign affairs in the political imaginary before World War II was suggested in some remarks of 1941 by Senator Robert Taft, a major Republican spokesman for isolationism and a constrictive view of American power: Frankly, the American people don't want to rule the world, and we are not equipped to do it. Such imperialism is wholly foreign to our ideals of democracy and freedom. It is not our manifest destiny or our national destiny.19 Before the end of the twentieth century Taft's insular vision would be abandoned by conservative elites. President Reagan a.s.sured the nation that it had the ”power to begin the world over again.”20 The old imaginary, confined to a continent, was defeated by World War II when the global reach of American power was first explored, and the New Deal dream of a planned and more equitable economy was temporarily, if unintentionally, realized by wartime austerity. American military power was engaged on every continent, save for Latin America. Its economic resources were expanded to support not only American forces but those of its allies.

On the ”home front” of World War II the entire society was, for the first time, mobilized for a lengthy period. The government sought to organize all of society's resources under central control and direct them toward the single purpose of defeating the enemy. It represented the break as a change from peacetime ”normalcy” to wartime ”emergency,” although what was pa.s.sed off as ”normal” had been the New Deal regulatory state of the 1930s. Censors.h.i.+p and a military draft were introduced. Resources were allocated and a.s.signed priorities, not by the market but by the government. Cla.s.s distinctions seemed suspended as a wartime egalitarianism was imposed. Wages, profits, and prices were controlled, and all citizens were subjected to food rationing. Nonetheless, domestically the formal const.i.tution of the system remained largely untransformed.

While an impressive systematization of governmental regulatory power had been introduced and executive authority expanded, the enlarged scope of government's legal powers was understood as temporary, confined to the duration of the ”wartime emergency.” With the possible exception of a somewhat deferential judiciary, the const.i.tutional order functioned more or less normally. Congress met uninterruptedly and did not refrain from criticizing the conduct of the war; the two political parties continued their contests for office; and elections remained free. Except for the shameful ”relocation” of Americans of j.a.panese ancestry, very few governmental actions could be described as dictatorial. Although an enlarged power imaginary had clearly taken hold, it lacked mythological status. Perhaps this was due to the fact that at the time the nature of the enemy was not truly comprehended.21 The n.a.z.i concentration camps and the murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies, h.o.m.os.e.xuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses were not major themes of wartime propaganda.

Or perhaps the imaginary was restrained by an inhibition that could be relaxed only after the war was over. The wartime American imaginary had been incomplete, not only because it was a.s.sembled hastily in response to a war that the United States had not instigated, and which, before December 7, 1941, was strongly opposed, but also because wartime expediency dictated the suppression of hostility toward a major ally whom many politicians and pundits considered to be at least as evil as the n.a.z.is.

vii

For the imaginary sp.a.w.ned by World War II contained one embarra.s.sment: the alliance with the communist dictators.h.i.+p of the Soviet Union, without whose contributions and horrific sacrifices the Allied victory would have been highly problematic. Distrust of this ally had its beginnings as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the ”red scare” of the 1920s.22 The motive at that time was not solely geopolitical worries about the Bolshevik regime but that regime's candidacy as an alternative to capitalism.23 The wartime imaginary was not abandoned after 1945 but reconceived as a ”Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union, a showdown between capitalism and anticapitalism. The undeclared stake concerned domestic policy. Would the egalitarian tendencies encouraged by the New Deal and its accompanying faith in governmental regulation of the economy be resumed after World War II? The policy-makers of the Cold War would decide that issue by a.s.signing a huge proportion of the nation's resources to defense rather than welfare.

The Cold War consolidated the power of capital and began the reaction against the welfare state but without abandoning the strong state. What was abandoned was all talk of partic.i.p.atory democracy. ”Mobilization” was partic.i.p.ation's sublimation. The propaganda of business interests depicted the combination of social democracy and political regulation of the economy as simple socialism and therefore the blood relative of communism.24 The new state would continue to promote business but without requiring it to be socially responsible. Rearmament would be financed to an important extent by cuts in social spending, while the costs of national security would be largely borne by the less well-off.25 The lasting effects of the Cold War encounter included not only the elimination of the USSR but also the containment and rollback of the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The unifying ideology for the ma.s.ses was a ”dematerialized” one, a combination of patriotism, anticommunism, and-in the new nuclear era-fear.

The Democrats, the party most closely identified with New Deal social and economic reforms, were the original, most enthusiastic cold warriors. A new species of liberalism came into being: the ”Cold War liberal” who was resolutely anticommunist and convinced that ”national security” const.i.tuted the nation's highest priority.26 The Cold War liberal even discovered the political utility of a civil religion. He was prepared to put aside the secularism and rationalism that, historically, had been among liberalism's defining elements and to seek validation for liberal anticommunism abroad and at home by appealing to theology, most notably that of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism. Niebuhr was notoriously pessimistic, subscribing to a view that stressed the dark side of human nature. Sobered by Niebuhr's pessimism, the Cold War liberals set about to scale down liberalism by relocating it in what an admirer of Niebuhr christened ”the vital center.” ”The old liberal,” according to one of the leading neoliberals, viewed ”man as perfectible, as endowed with sufficient wisdom and selflessness to endure power and to use it infallibly for the general good,” while the new liberal has been ”reminded” by totalitarian regimes ”that man was, indeed, imperfect and that the corruptions of power could unleash great evil in the world. We discovered a new dimension of experience in the dimension of anxiety, guilt, and corruption.” The new liberal was fired less by hopes for socioeconomic reform than by the wish to distance himself from ”the Left” and populist democracy and to celebrate a new, more clear-eyed elite, one committed to the Cold War, lukewarm or indifferent toward social democracy, and increasingly unreceptive to egalitarian ideals. ”I am persuaded, too,” wrote the theorist of the ”vital center,” ”that liberals have values in common with most members of the business community-in particular a belief in a free society.”27 The bonds between liberalism and democracy began to unravel.

The Cold War (194791) provided the framework for a radically new imaginary of a war that was ”cold” in the sense of being calibrated to stop short of actual battle. To champion that oxymoron required hyperbole. Its proponents proclaimed it a ”total war” of global dimensions and of uncertain but prolonged duration.28 Rearmament was inst.i.tutionalized as a huge, albeit controversial, and permanent part of the nation's economy and annual budget. A ”defense establishment,” comprising the economy, the military, and the state, came into being. It would alter the political ident.i.ty of the society for decades to come. For the first time, too, ”war,” for the most part, would be fought without actual battles and against an enemy who operated secretively, ”undercover.” Although few Americans encountered the enemy, they were a.s.sured by politicians, publicists, preachers, and the FBI that he was ”hidden” and had to be confronted abroad and rooted out at home. New categories of ”loyalty,” ”internal security,” and ”subversion” were introduced and given the status of legal standards.

The const.i.tutional imaginary underwent profound changes as it adapted to the new power imaginary and its totalizing categories. For almost a half century the new war was defined in starkly Manichaean terms, as an epical struggle for the fate of the world between totalitarian dictators.h.i.+p promoting atheism and communism, and the freedom-loving, G.o.d-fearing capitalist democracy of the United States and its Western European allies.29 Public officials insisted that the Cold War was ”in fact a real war” against an enemy bent on ”world domination.” One high-ranking official declared that the United States was ”in a war worse than any we have experienced . . . not a cold war but a hot war.” Henceforth the nation must disavow the ”sharp line between democratic principles and immoral actions” and be ready to fight ”with no holds barred.”30

viii

The prime example of a power imaginary and the best indicator of the turning point from a politics of social reform to the pursuit of a global politics is an official report to President Truman by the National Security Council in April 1950. A leading scholar has described NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security as ”the bible of American national security and the fullest statement of the new ideology that guided American leaders” during the Cold War.31 It was also prophetic of how ”mobilization” would provide the form by which totalizing power would become normalized.

The highly charged language of NSC-68 seems out of character for a cla.s.sified ”top secret” policy paper composed by and for policy-making elites. One expects a doc.u.ment for the sober. While there are plenty of economic statistics and military strategies, the report contains myth making of epical proportions and high melodrama as well. ”The issues that face us,” the doc.u.ment announced sweepingly, ”are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.”