Sheldon Wolin (1922 - 2015)

Fri Aug 04, 1922

Sheldon Wolin, born on this day in 1922, was a political theorist notable for coining the term "inverted totalitarianism" in his landmark 2008 text "Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism".

A political theorist for fifty years, Wolin became Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, where he taught from 1973 to 1987. Wolin also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Santa Cruz, Oberlin College, Oxford University, Cornell University, and University of California, Los Angeles.

Wolin's political thought is particularly concerned with the fate of democracy at the hands of bureaucratic imperatives, elitism, and managerial principles and practices. His concepts of "inverted totalitarianism" and "fugitive democracy" are a particularly important legacy of his work.

"Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler did not just invent their personae; they literally built the organizations of their respective dictatorships. Each system was inseparable from its Führer, or Duce. Inverted totalitarianism follows an entirely different course: the leader is not the architect of the system but its product."

- Sheldon Wolin

• Date: 1922-08-04
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