Hidden Power: What You Need to Know to Save Our Democracy

by Charles Derber

American democracy, argues Charles Derber, is being subverted in the name of democracy itself. Derber shows how the current regime has maintained power by intensifying the red/blue culture... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 157675345X
• ISBN13: 9781576753453
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A Book For Concerned Citizens

In his book"Hidden Power",Prof.Derber pull the covers off of corporate power and illustrates how it controls,manipulate and corrupt the economy,the mass media,the government and even peoples' lives to solidify its existence.Prof.Derber also proposes in his book,ways to dismante this Global Corpocracy,and initiate real democratic change through a new Progressive Populist movement.I recommend this book to concerned citizens who desire real regime change in our country,as well as the entire world.

Good Tactics and Strategy but Morally Confusing

If you can buy Professor Derber's paradigm and its associated morallogic about the innocence of the American political process, then this is a very useful compendium of tried-and-true activist tactics and strategies to have in ones tool kit before embarking on the road to "people re-empowerment." If, as the author tells us, that political legitimacy is ultimately about moral authority, and the vision needed to erect a "just" society, then it follows from his logic that the ruling power structure of a nation, no matter how it is organized or what it is called, should be reflected not just in the nation's precepts, but also in its underlying realities. That is to say, the underlying moral precepts of justice, and vision should be discernable in the nation's behavior, in what it actually does -- in the nation's economy for instance, as well as in the hierarchies that orchestrate its way of life and its worldview and indeed in everything that gives cultural identity, direction and meaning to people's everyday lives. However, this certainly is not the case for contemporary American society, and arguably it has never been the case in American culture, social or political life. In short, America has never been a, moral, and certainly not a morally innocent nation. Thus, as a first level analysis, or as a political science primer for those seeking to answer the question "who really runs America" we can readily admit that Derber's book has much to offer. However, a key flaw of the book that can hardly be overlooked is that the deeper question he raises about the political legitimacy of the America political process becomes a foundational premise. And thus the question of America's moral legitimacy as a nation cannot be "begged" as is done throughout the analysis. Despite this logical snag, this book certainly begins the process of exposing the complex array of social and institutional forces that are powerful, sophisticated, deeply entrenched, seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the American way of life and are, of course, deeply implicated in the now mostly symbolic U.S. electoral process. The problem however is that this analysis does not go nearly far enough. For instance, the role that racism, pseudo-religiosity, and organized crime have played and continue to play in the American way of life and historically in the structuring of the various regimes that Derber delineates, is nowhere to be found. I believe these are serious omissions. [For those who share this criticism, I suggest a much deeper analysis to be found in Peter Dale Scott's "Deep Politics and the JFK Assassination."] The premise of this book is a solid one. It is that the hidden power of "the people" has effectively been repressed, undermined and hijacked by a system of, and a succession of, corporate run regimes. These regimes have hollowed out and stripped-down the institutions that once enabled ordinary Americans to have a say-so in how their country is go