The New Nomenklatura

By Scott Horton

Students of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four know the mechanisms of control for the totalitarian state. Parallel to the formal structures of the government are the structures of the party, and the dividing line between them is blurred. There is the outer party, membership in which insured a certain degree of privilege and authority but also subjects the member to discipline. The party is not a mass organization in the old bourgeois sense—for Orwell, the party makes up 19% of the population, whereas under the Soviet regime party membership fluctuated between 4 and 10%. It represents an elite of sorts, true-believers who provide the party’s eyes and ears out among the populace. On the other hand, with the perks of party membership comes the bridle of party discipline. A party member must mind his thoughts and must be careful not to stray from the path that the party leadership establishes. Infidelity may well be severely punished.

But a system must be developed to cull the party membership to select the true party elite, those who can be counted upon to demonstrate absolute fidelity to the party and to maintain its secrets. This is the “inner party.” It would never exceed roughly 1% of the population and its members will know that much of the party’s rhetoric is dishonest, generated to insure a supine populace and enhance its authority. But it will continue to articulate this rhetoric never the less.

A process has to be constructed for the inculcation of the inner party, for the selection and preparation of cadres who will serve in a leadership function. They must keep the secrets and demonstrate supreme loyalty to the party. Party must trump truth. Fidelity to party leadership must trump fidelity to law. For this purpose, the willingness to denounce even friends and family members is valued and taken as a demonstration of ultimate fidelity to the party. On the other hand, the idea of rule of law is ridiculed. Law must be viewed merely as a mechanism through which the party exercises its control of the state and the population—not the expression of some abstract notion of ultimate truth. Truth is, in the end, what the party leadership says it is.

The process of building party cadres and selecting the elite of the inner party was a fundamental challenge for the totalitarian or wannabe totalitarian state. It was developed to its greatest extent first in the fascist states of Europe in the late thirties, and then, in a far more sophisticated form, in the Stalinist era in Russia, and then in a somewhat softer but even more deeply entrenched form during and following the Khrushchev thaw. As a Soviet area student, and, more recently, teacher at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, I spent much time trying to understand these mechanisms and the role that they played—the role of the youth organization, Komsomol in the USSR or Freie Deutsche Jugend in the Stasi-Republic, for instance. This was an essential program for training and selection, and those who studied the Komsomol would find elite teams of Komsomolnets rising together, networking, and emerging as the future party elite. Indeed, this process continued just below the surface even after the Soviet Union fell. But this is only one example. The process overall was known as the formation of the nomenklatura, namely, the list of party functionaries selected for service in positions of confidence.

It has been a point of cocktail party humor in liberal circles for some years to speak of the one-party state the Bush-Cheney Administration has been fashioning in Washington and to build in an allusion to foreign models. As with much humor, it is successful because there is a grain of truth to it. But one of the surprises of the U.S. attorney scandal is to see just how extensive this truth is. The Rovian structures of the last six years cannot really be compared with the powerful examples of totalitarianism that existed in the closing days of World War II. On the other hand, they probably represent the closest approximation to those structures to appear in two hundred and thirty years of American political culture.

If we trace the rise of Bush’s Monica—Monica Goodling—or of a number of other figures at the center of the purge, including Kyle Sampson, his helpers, and the short list of new candidates he advanced (take Rachel Paulose, the newly enthroned U.S. attorney in Minneapolis, whose arrival quickly produced the professional implosion of the U.S. attorney’s office there) we see a number of common traits. Here are the signs I have flagged that warrant further examination:

1. Party membership criteria. All are party members in good order. Fidelity to the party is demonstrated by further objective criteria, including a pattern of making regular campaign contributions attuned to their means, raising funds from others, and providing volunteer services in election campaigns. Particular value is placed on service in the forward trenches of campaign warfare, for instance, in opposition research, with the funding and implementation of “dirty tricks” programs (such as the Swiftboat campaign), or in voter disenfranchisement programs.
2. Religious affiliation. Being a bona fide member of the Religious Right is seen as a strong plus, but there is a spectrum of groups which recur regularly. Theocons of various stripes are highly valued and Theocons of particular religious flavors seem to be sought out—Baptists, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and Mormons, for instance. There is no need that members of the emerging inner party actually believe the values espoused by the Theocons, however. It suffices that one espouse those views in public political settings. Attitudes towards homosexuals provide an excellent demonstration. For instance, Ann Coulter, who spouts the word “faggot” at the drop of a hat, probably has perfectly normal and accepting relations with homosexuals as a matter of course, as we have seen with Dick and Lynne Cheney. But again, this is a point of distinction between the Inner Party and the Outer Party—i.e., whether the loudly articulated Theocon values are actually believed.
3. Education. A premium is given for being educated at private, religious institutions, particularly those associated with the Religious Right—such as Regent University or Liberty University. The recent disclosure of the placement of 150 Regent University law graduates in the ranks of the Bush Administration is but a small indicator of this phenomenon. Having a degree from an elite academic institution is not necessarily a show-stopper, but in such cases there will be far tighter scrutiny to show ideological fidelity.
4. Cadre-Building Organizations. Certain auxillary structures serve to instill ideological discipline and control and to further vet party members. The most striking of these to emerge from the U.S. attorneys’ scandal is the Federalist Society. For instance, in Kyle Sampson’s check list for reviewing prospective candidated, one column is headed “Federalist Society.” Membership is taken as an indicium of ideological fidelity. This is particularly useful for those who graduated from elite institutions (such as top-20 law schools). It provides a leg-up in the run for membership in the Inner Party.
5. Ministerial Appointments. In Orwell’s system, party members are packed into a group of four ministries which are viewed as critical to supporting the power structure, and then only at higher echelons into other ministries and agencies. In the Bush-Cheney system, it appears that the Justice Department was identified fairly early on as key, and control of prosecutorial decision-making was seized almost from the beginning, but tightened through the placement of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.

Some critics may say that these are the sorts of things that any political party would do. No, they’re not. The modern American tradition has focused on having a relatively thin stratum of political appointees in bureaucratic agencies and focusing on traditional professional criteria—the same sort of résumé and career qualifiers that a corporate employer would look to—for the balance of its staffing needs. American political parties have been fairly haphazard institutions, swelling and becoming active in the months just before major elections, and with a major and defining focus on individual candidates the parties select. The Rovian model for the GOP is a very striking departure from this tradition. It merits much closer study.