18 August 2013

Noam Chomsky: The U.S. and European countries are no longer democracies

Excerpts from the notable liberal philosopher's essay at Salon:
In the work that’s essentially the gold standard in the field, it’s concluded that for roughly 70% of the population – the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale – they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy...

Europe, incidentally, is much worse – so outlandish that even The Wall Street Journal has been appalled by the disappearance of democracy in Europe. …[I]t had an article [this year] which concluded that “the French, the Spanish, the Irish, the Dutch, Portuguese, Greeks, Slovenians, Slovakians and Cypriots have to varying degrees voted against the currency bloc’s economic model since the crisis began three years ago. Yet economic policies have changed little in response to one electoral defeat after another. The left has replaced the right; the right has ousted the left. Even the center-right trounced Communists (in Cyprus) – but the economic policies have essentially remained the same: governments will continue to cut spending and raise taxes.” It doesn’t matter what people think and “national governments must follow macro-economic directives set by the European Commission”. Elections are close to meaningless, very much as in Third World countries that are ruled by the international financial institutions. That’s what Europe has chosen to become. It doesn’t have to...

One of the most interesting cases has to do with taxes. For 35 years there have been polls on ‘what do you think taxes ought to be?’ Large majorities have held that the corporations and the wealthy should pay higher taxes. They’ve steadily been going down through this period...

In the past, the United States has sometimes, kind of sardonically, been described as a one-party state: the business party with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That’s no longer true. It’s still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction. The faction is moderate Republicans, who are now called Democrats. There are virtually no moderate Republicans in what’s called the Republican Party and virtually no liberal Democrats in what’s called the Democratic [sic] Party. It’s basically a party of what would be moderate Republicans and similarly, Richard Nixon would be way at the left of the political spectrum today. Eisenhower would be in outer space...

But there is another version of democracy. Actually it’s the standard doctrine of progressive, contemporary democratic theory. So I’ll give some illustrative quotes from leading figures – incidentally not figures on the right. These are all good Woodrow Wilson-FDR-Kennedy liberals, mainstream ones in fact. So according to this version of democracy, “the public are ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. They have to be put in their place. Decisions must be in the hands of an intelligent minority of responsible men, who have to be protected from the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd”. The herd has a function, as it’s called. They’re supposed to lend their weight every few years, to a choice among the responsible men. But apart from that, their function is to be “spectators, not participants in action” – and it’s for their own good. Because as the founder of liberal political science pointed out, we should not succumb to “democratic dogmatisms about people being the best judges of their own interest”. They’re not. We’re the best judges, so it would be irresponsible to let them make choices just as it would be irresponsible to let a three-year-old run into the street. Attitudes and opinions therefore have to be controlled for the benefit of those you are controlling. It’s necessary to “regiment their minds”. It’s necessary also to discipline the institutions responsible for the “indoctrination of the young.”..

The founders of the American republic had pretty much the same view about the rabble. So they determined that “power must be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men. Those who have sympathy for property owners and their rights”, and of course for slave owners at the time. In general, men who understand that a fundamental task of government is “to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority”. Those are quotes from James Madison...
There is much more in the full essay at Salon.

Addendum:  A salient comment from an anonymous TYWKIWDBI reader:
"What's wrong with the system? I think it's fine that a bunch of unemployed incompetents don't have any real say in how things get done."

17 comments:

  1. Came avidly to the comment sector to read the batsh*t, found nothing.

    Now, the thing is: since we do not live in a solid world order - since the U.S. does not have total control on institutions worldwide yet, does it mean that we are going to see a revolution coming soon? What do you think, Stan, is it possible? And what about you, Obama?

    --UM

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    1. I don't think it's possible, because Americans (TYWKIWDBI readers excluded) really don't understand what's going on and are too sated with their television pap to care.

      Obama won't change it, nor Hillary. Elizabeth Warren might try, but without the support of a like-minded Congress... no chance.

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    2. IF we can get Elizabeth Warren into the WH, there IS some good that can come out of it, amenable Congress or not.


      "What?" you may ask.

      She is a STRONG voice against the oligarchs. If she continues speaking about the things she says are important, then those thoughts will enter the mainstream in a way that hasn't happened in 50 years, since JFK. HAVING THEM OUT THERE LOUD AND CLEAR can change the momentum, can begin to get liberal Democrats elecetd again. It's not going to happen in 2 years or 5 or even ten. But if she can be in for 8 years, while the Supreme Court old farts die off, she can name some SCOTUS judges and that will help on the legal side.

      With the Powell Memorandum in 1971, the right wing chose to start on a planned re-taking of the US institutions. The New Deal had shredded the oligarch's hold on the country to a higher degree than most people acknowledge, and the oligarchs wer bound and determined to undo all of that. They very nearly have.

      The Liberals need to come up with their own plan, and part of that is simply to get the dialog off the right wing pro-business track and more on the track that FDR followed. Without a plan it is hopeless. Without a spokesperson, the plan is hopeless, even if one is drawn up. Elizabeth Warren is the only person I've seen who can lead us anywhere - out of this system that is non-responsive to the rights and lives of the citizenry.

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  2. The United States is a representative/constitutional republic - a true democracy would mean each vote counted for the candidate chosen instead of a member of the electoral college.

    And Anon? I think we are too fat and lazy to overthrow the criminals in charge who represent the corporations and not the people. THEY are traitors.

    It would have to get far worse for lazy, entitled Americans to do anything to change the status quo. Not to mention the idiots who swallow all the lies, in case they ever get rich (or because they think they ARE).

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    1. Which is a good example how The U.S. is very anti-democratic. It's also a good reason why rich minorities have managed to stay in power. So much for "liberty" and "democracy". It's all about keeping the elite class in power, from colonial times to now.

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  3. All of the good points aside, I find it interesting to hear that Chomsky (a notorious ultra-liberal) thinks that there are no more liberals. I have heard essentially the same thing from ultra-conservatives about there being no more conservatives.

    If nothing else, it's fascinating to see that individual viewpoints can color the world so vividly.

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    1. The major difference is that the entire political discourse (as Stan has already pointed out) has shifted radically to The Right- to the point that even the likes of a Barry Goldwater was seen as "too liberal." Both sides might be saying as you suggest, that doesn't make it an even playing field. And the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their repeatedly spineless and vacuous rebuttals to the Republican juggernaut of the last several decades.

      Meanwhile, the rich get richer- except this time, they want the crumbs too. And they're getting them.

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    2. "Spineless" Democrats. Exactly. None of this could have happened if the Dems had not sold out and caved time after time after time. The old line Dems would have never let any of this happen.

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  4. What's wrong with the system? I think it's fine that a bunch of unemployed incompetents don't have any real say in how things get done.

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    1. Thank you for that interesting comment, which I've appended to the post as an Addendum. It speaks volumes.

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    2. Unfortunately, they took the unemployed incompetents and gave them jobs in the US Congress. Now they're merely malfeasant incompetents, wholly owned by commercial interests with an active stake in denying the rest of us real influence in the direction and policies of our government.

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    3. Anonymous is an unwitting dupe and pawn of the oligarchs, parroting everything Karl Rove has fed his brain. Anonymous has no idea that THEY ARE NOT ON YOUR SIDE, DUDE. Wake up and realize that those unemployed people are on your side, though. It's US vs THEM and the THEM is not those without jobs; THEY are the parasites at the top.

      And you are so brainwashed...

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  5. What grieves me is that 99% of the people living under democratic systems are under the impression that this wealth redistribution, corporatism, and centralization of power has all happened in spite of democracy, not because of democracy. Until we turn that rather large ship around (good luck) we will continue to run further aground.

    Has 240 years of the great experiment been enough for people to conclude failure? Apparently not; we're still actively exporting the cancer to other societies.

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    1. It has happened governments have failed to keep capitalism in check. Which is why those countries that are democracies with strong checks on neoliberalism are the most successful vs. those that are too neoliberal, communist, authoritarian etc. If you have a real world example of something that beats a strong social democracy than please let us know. We'll wait...

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  6. Today a poll reported that 30% of Louisiana Republicans blame Obama for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina that occurred 3 years before he was elected. Please tell me what benefit we get from having these people vote.

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    1. Disenfranching Republican voters. An interesting proposal... Let me think about it.

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  7. It's a progressive meme that conservative voters are i) too stupid and ii) brainwashed by Fox to vote in their own (redistribution of wealth) interest. I've always loathed that particular view point. People vote the way they do for all sorts of reasons, but self-interest (bread and circuses) doesn't appear to be high on the list.

    I think the efficient market theory (wisdom of the crowd) is right and fall back on Churchill's observation that Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised...except for all the others.

    Chomsky's "contributions" to linguistics have all been shown to be wrong, so I've never understood where he gets the standing to have an audience.

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