The article by a well-known American journalist offers a brief overview of the assessments and theoretical concepts proposed for understanding current socio-political situation in the West by Sheldon Volin (1922–2015), who considered a most significant political thinker in the United States. As professor of a number of leading American universities, in particular, he authored the concept of “inverted totalitarianism”. In this concept, which combines the ideas of Marxism with classical liberalism, it is argued that in the modern United States, behind the facade of democracy, a new type of totalitarian regime is actually established, replacing the democracy of participation with “corporate power”. Familiarity with the presentation of this concept, which criticizes modern Western neoliberalism, is of interest to Russian specialists in political sociology, stimulating the search for non-trivial assessments of actors and patterns of modern political life.