During the Great Depression which I'm
old enough to remember there was a must
my family were unemployed working-class
there wasn't it was bad you know much
worse objectively than today but there
was an expectation that things were
going to get better that there was a
real sense of hopefulness there isn't
today
inequality is really unprecedented if
you get total inequality it's like the
worst periods of American history but if
you refine it more closely the
inequality comes from the extreme wealth
in a tiny sector of the population
fraction of 1% there were periods like
the Gilded Age in the 20s there were 90s
and so on when a situation developed
rather similar to this
now this period is extreme because if
you look at the wealth distribution the
inequality mostly comes from super
wealth
literally the top one-tenth of percent
are just super wealthy I don't is it
extremely unjust in itself inequality
has highly negative consequences on the
societies of old
because the very fact
of inequality has a corrosive harmful
effect on democracy
you open by talking about the American
Dream
part of the American Dream is
class mobility you're born poor you work
hard you get rich
it was possible for a
worker to get a decent job buy a home
get a car because children go to school
it will collapse
imagine yourself in an outside position
looking for Mars what do you see
in the United States there are professed
values like democracy
in a democracy public opinion is going
to have some influence on policy and
then the government carries out actions
determined by the population that's what
democracy means it's important to
understand that privileged and powerful
sectors have never liked democracy and
for very good reasons
democracy puts power into the hands of
the general population and takes it away
from them and that's kind of a principle
of concentration of wealth and power
concentration of wealth yields
concentration of power particularly so
as the cost of Elections skyrockets
which kind of forces the political
parties into the pockets of major
corporations and this political power
quickly translates into legislation that
increases the concentration of wealth so
fiscal policy like tax policy
deregulation rules of corporate
governance and whole variety of measures
political measures designed to increase
the concentration of wealth and power
which in turn yields more political
power do the same thing and that's what
we've been seeing so we have this kind
of vicious cycle in progress
you know actually it is so traditional
that it was described by Adam Smith in
1776 you read famous wealth of nations
he says in England the principal
architects of policy are the people who
on the society in his day merchants and
manufacturers and they make sure that
their own interests are very well cared
for however Grievous the impact on the
people of England or others now it's not
merchants manufacturers it's financial
institutions and multinational
corporations the people who Adam Smith
called the masters of mankind and
they're following the vile Maxim all for
ourselves and I think for anyone else
they're just going to pursue policies
that benefit them and harm everyone else
in any absence of a general popular
reaction that's pretty much what you'd
expect
right through American history there's
been an ongoing clash between pressure
for more freedom and democracy coming
from below and efforts at eight lead
control and domination coming from above
because back to the founding of the
country James Madison the main framer
was as much of a believer in democracy
is anybody in the world that day
nevertheless felt that the United States
system should be designed and indeed
with his initiative was designed so that
power should be in the hands of the
wealthy because the wealthy are the more
responsible set of men and therefore the
structure of the formal constitutional
system placed most power in the hands of
the Senate
remember the Senate was not elected in
those days it was selected from the
wealthy men as Madison put it had
sympathy for property owners and their
rights she read the debates at the
Constitutional Convention Madison said
the major concern of the society has to
be to protect the minority of the
opulent against the majority and he had
arguments I suppose everyone had to vote
freely he said well the majority of the
poor would get together and they would
organize to take away the property the
rich and he said that would obviously be
unjust so you can't have that so
therefore the constitutional system has
to be set up to prevent democracy
which is of some interest that this
debate has a hoary tradition goes back
to the first major book on political
systems Aristotle's politics he says of
all of them the best is democracy
Pepa ten points out exactly the flaw
that Madison pointed out if Athens were
a democracy for free men the poor would
get together and take away the property
of the rich well same dilemma they had
opposite solutions Aristotle proposed
what we would nowadays call a welfare
state he said try to reduce inequality
so same problem opposite solutions one
is reducing equality you won't have this
problem and the other is reduced
democracy if you look at the history of
the United States it's a constant
struggle between these two tendencies a
democratizing tendency that's mostly
coming from the population pressure from
below and you get this constant battle
going on periods of regression periods
of progress at 1960s for example we're a
period of significant democratization
sectors of the population that were
usually passive and apathetic that
became organized active started pressing
their demand and they became more and
more involved in decision-making
activism and so on
it just changed consciousness in a lot
of ways minority rights matters in these
freedom we are a people for life the
magazine's justice why don't we have
just if democracy means equality why
don't we have a fire women's rights will
change but only if we force it to change
and turn for the environment a unique
day in American history is ending a day
set aside for a nationwide outpouring of
mankind seeking its own survival
opposition to aggression I'd say to
those who criticize us for the militancy
of our dissent but if they are serious
about law and order they should first
provide it for the Vietnamese people for
our own black people and for our own
poor people and turn for other people
one day we must ask a question why are
there forty million poor people in
America when you begin to ask that
question you're raising a question about
the economic system about a broader
distribution of wealth the question of
restructuring the whole of American
society is are all civilizing effect
that caused great fear
I hadn't anticipated the power of I
should have but I didn't anticipate the
power of the reaction to these
civilizing effects of the 60s I did not
anticipate the strength of the reaction
to it the backlash there has been an
enormous concentrated coordinated
business offensive beginning in the 70s
to try to beat back the egalitarian
efforts that went right through the
Nixon years you see it in many respects
I mean over on the right you see it in
things like the famous Powell memorandum
sent to the Chamber of Commerce the
major business lobby by later Supreme
Court justice Powell warning them that
business is losing control over the
society
and something has to be done to counter
these forces of course it puts it in
terms of defense defending ourselves
against outside power if you look at it
it's a call for business to use its
control over resources to carry out a
major offensive to beat back this
democratizing wave
over on the liberal side there's
something exactly similar the first
major report of the trilateral
commission is concerned with this it's
called the crisis of democracy
trilateral commission is liberal
internationalists their flavors
indicated by the fact that they pretty
much staffed the Carter Administration
they were also appalled by the
democratizing tendencies of the 60s and
thought we have to react to it they were
concerned that there was an excess of
democracy developing previously passive
and obedient parts of the population
what are sometimes called the special
interest that we're beginning to
organize and try to enter the political
arena and they said that imposes too
much pressure on the state it can't deal
with all these pressures so therefore
they have to return to passivity and
become deep politicized but they were
particularly concerned with what was
happening to young people the young
people are getting too free and
independent the way they put it there's
a failure on the part of the schools the
universities and churches the
institution's responsible for the
indoctrination of the young their phrase
not mine
if you look at their study there's one
interest they never mentioned private
business and that makes sense they're
not special interest they're the
national interest kind of by definition
so they're okay they're allowed to you
know have lobbyists buy campaign staff
the executive make decisions that's fine
but it's the rest the special interest
the general population who has to be
subdued
well that's the spectrum it's the kind
of ideological level of the backlash but
the major backlash which was in parallel
to this was just redesigning the economy
since the 1970s there's been a concerted
effort on the part of the masters of
mankind the owners of the society to
shift the economy in two crucial
respects one to increase the role of
financial institutions that banks
investment firms and so on insurance
companies by 2007 right before the
latest crash they had literally 40
percent of corporate profits
far beyond anything in the past
back in the 1950s as for many years
before the United States economy was
based largely on production the United
States was the great manufacturing
center of the world
financial institutions used to be a
relatively small part of the economy and
their task was to distribute unused
assets like say bank savings to
productive activity the bank always had
on hand the reserve of money received
from the stockholders and depositors on
the basis of these cash reserves a bank
can create credit so besides providing a
safe place for depositing money a bank
serves a community by making additional
credit available for many purposes for a
manufacturer to meet his payroll during
black selling period for a merchant to
enlarge and remodel his store and for
many other good reasons why people are
always needing more credit and they have
immediately available that's a
contribution to the economy regulatory
system was established banks were
regulated the commercial and investment
banks were separated cut back risky
investment practices that could harm
private people there had been remember
no financial crashes during the period
of regulation by the 1970s that changed
he started getting that huge increase in
the flows of speculative capital just
astronomically increased enormous
changes in the financial sector from
traditional banks to risky investments
complex financial instruments money
manipulations and so on
increasingly the business of the country
isn't production at least not here the
primary business here is business you
can even see it in the choice of
directors so a director of the major
American corporation back in the 50s and
60s was very likely to be an engineer as
somebody who graduated from a place like
MIT maybe Industrial Management
more recently the directorship and the
top managerial positions are people who
came out of business schools learn
financial trickery of various kinds and
so on by the 1970s say General Electric
can make more profit playing games with
money than you could by producing in the
United States
we have to remember that General
Electric is substantially a financial
institution today
it makes half its profits just by moving
money around in complicated ways and
it's very unclear that they're doing
anything that's valued of the economy so
that's one phenomenon what's called
financialization of the economy going
along with that is the offshoring of
production
the trade system was reconstructed with
a very explicit design of putting
working people in competition with one
another all over the world
and what it's led to is reduction in the
share of income on the part of working
people it's been particularly striking
in the United States but it's happening
worldwide it means that men American
workers in competition with super
exploited worker in China meanwhile
highly paid professionals are protected
they are not placed in competition with
the rest of the world far from it and of
course capital is free to move the
workers aren't free to move labour can't
move but capital can well again going
back to the classics like Adam Smith as
he pointed out free circulation of labor
is the foundation of any free trade
system but workers are pretty much stuck
the wealthy and the privileged are
protected so you get obvious
consequences and it they're recognized
and in fact praised policy is designed
to increase in security Alan Greenspan
when he testified to Congress he
explained his success in running the
economy as based on what he called
greater worker insecurity a typical
restraint on compensation increases has
been evident for a few years now but as
I outlined in some detail in testimony
last month I believe that job insecurity
has played the dominant role keep
workers insecure they're going to be
under control they are not going to ask
for say decent wages were decent working
conditions
the opportunity of Free Association
meaning unionize now for the Masters of
mankind that's fine they make their
profits but for the population it's
devastating well these two processes
financialization and offshoring
are part of what led to the vicious
cycle of concentration of wealth
concentration of power
I'm norm Chomsky I'm a on faculty at MIT
and I've been getting more heavily
involved in heavy war activities for the
last few years
Noam Chomsky has made two international
reputations the widest is as one of the
national leaders of American resistance
to the Vietnam War the deepest is as a
professor of linguistics who before he
was 40 years old that transformed the
nature of his subject you are identified
with the new left whenever that is you
certainly have been an activist as well
as a writer
professor playing norm Trump ski-in is
listed in anybody's catalogs among the
half-dozen top heroes of the new life
the standing he achieved by adopting
over the past two or three years a
series of adamant positions projecting
at least American foreign policy at most
America itself
well actually this notion anti-american
is quite an interesting one it's
actually totalitarian notion it is used
in free societies so if someone in say
Italy is criticizing Berlusconi or the
corruption of the Italian state and so
on they're not called a d'Italia
effectively they were called anti
Italian people would collapse and
laughter in the streets of Rome or Milan
in totalitarian States the notions used
so in the old Soviet Union dissidents
were called anti-soviet that was the
worst condemnation in the Brazilian
military dictatorship they were gold
ante Brazilian now it's true that in
just about every society the critics are
maligned are mistreated different ways
depending on the nature of the society
like in Soviet Union saying Bach saw how
they would be imprisoned in a u.s.
dependency like El Salvador at the same
time his counterparts would have their
brains blown out by the us-run state
terrorist forces and other societies
that just condemned their vilified and
so on and in the United States you know
one of the terms of abuse is
anti-american there's a couple of others
like you know Marxist there's an array
of terms of abuse but in the United
States you have a very high degree of
freedom and so if you're vilified by
some commas ours who cares you go on to
your work anyway these concepts only
arise
a culture where if you criticize state
power and buy I state I mean or
generally not just government but state
corporate power if you criticize
concentrated power you're against the
society here against the people that's
quite striking that it's used in the
United States if I guess it's fine out
of the only democratic society where the
concept isn't just ridiculed and it's a
sign of elements of the elite culture
which are quite ugly
the American Dream Mike many ideals was
partly symbolic but partly real so in
the 1950s and 60s say there was a the
biggest growth period in American
economic history the gold page
it was pretty egalitarian growth so the
lowest fifth of the population was
improving about as much as the upper
fifth and there were some welfare state
measures which improved life for much of
the population it was for example
possible for a black worker to get a
decent job in an auto plant by home get
a car of his children go to school and
so on and the same across the board
when the US was primarily a
manufacturing center it had to be
concerned with its own consumers here
famously Henry Ford raised the salary of
his workers who be able buy cars
when you're moving into a international
plutonomy is the max like to call it
with a small percentage of the world's
population that's gathering increasing
wealth what happens to American
consumers that have much less concern
because most of them aren't going to be
consuming your products anyway at least
on a major basis your goals are profit
in the next quarter even if it's based
on financial manipulations high salary
high bonuses produce overseas if you
have to and produce for the wealthy
classes here and their counterparts
abroad what about the rest well there's
a term coming into use for them too
they're called the precariat precarious
proletariat the working people of the
world who live increasingly precarious
lives and it's related to the attitude
toward the country all together
during the period of great growth of the
economy 50s and 60s but in fact earlier
taxes on the wealthy were far higher
corporate taxes were much higher that
Exxon dividends were much higher simply
taxes on wealth were much higher the tax
system has been redesigned so that the
taxes that are paid by the very wealthy
are reduced and correspondingly the tax
burden on the rest of the population is
increased now the shift is towards
trying to keep taxes at just on wages
and on consumption which everyone has to
do not say on dividends which I go to
the rich
the numbers are pretty striking now
there's a pretext of course there's
always a pretext the pretext in this
case is well that increases investment
and increases jobs but there isn't any
evidence for that if you want to
increase investment give money to the
poor and the working people they have to
keep alive so they spend their incomes
that stimulates production stimulates
investment it leads to job growth and so
on if you're an ideologist for the
masters you have a different line and in
fact right now it's almost absurd that
corporations have money coming out of
their pocket
so in fact General Electric are paying
zero taxes and have enormous profits
lets them take the profit somewhere else
or defer it but not pay taxes and this
is common the major American
corporations shift the burden of
sustaining the society on to the rest of
the population
you
solidarity is quite dangerous from the
point of view of the Masters you're only
supposed to care about yourself not
about other people this is quite
different from the people they claim are
their heroes like Adam Smith who based
his whole approach to the economy on the
principle that sympathy is a fundamental
human trait but that has to be driven
out of people's head I got to be for
yourself follow the while max and don't
care about others which is OK for the
rich and powerful but it's devastating
for everyone else well you know it's
taken a lot of effort to try to drive
these basic human emotions out of
people's heads
and we see it today in policy formation
for example in the attack on Social
Security Social Security is based on a
principle it's based on a principle of
solidarity solidarity caring for others
the Social Security means I pay payroll
taxes so that the widow across town can
get something to live on for much of the
population that's what they survive on
it's of no use to the very rich so
therefore there's a concerted attempt to
destroy it one of the ways is defunding
it you want to destroy some system first
defund it then it will work people be
angry they want something else that's a
standard technique for privatizing some
system
we see it in the attack on public
schools the public schools are based on
the principle of solidarity I no longer
have children in school they're grown up
but the principle of solidarity says I
happily pay taxes so that the kid across
the street can go to school that's
normal human emotion
if it drives that out of people's heads
I don't have kids in school why should I
pay taxes privatize it so on the public
education system all the way from
kindergarten to higher education is
under severe attack I mean that's one of
the jewels of American society
go back to the Golden Age again great
birth period the 50s and 60s a lot of
that is based on free public education
one of the results in the Second World
War was the GI Bill of Rights which
enabled veterans and remember that's a
large part of the population and to go
to college they would have been able to
otherwise they essentially got free
education we're a community state or
nation who Aegis Lee invests a
substantial share of its resources in
education the investment invariably has
returned in better business and a higher
standard of living u.s. is way in the
lead and developing extensive mass
public education at every level by now
more than half the states most of the
funding for the college's comes from
tuition not from the state that's a
radical change and that's a terrible
burden on students it means that
students if they don't come from very
wealthy families that they're going to
leave college with big debt and if you
have a big debt you're trapped I mean
maybe you wanted to become a public
interest lawyer but you're gonna have to
go into a corporate law firm not to pay
off those debts by the time you're a
part of the culture you know you're not
going to get out of it again and that's
true across the board
in the 1950s it was a much poorer
society than it is today
but nevertheless could easily handle
essentially free mass higher education
today much richer society claims doesn't
have the resources for it that's just
what's going on right before our eyes
that's the general attack on principles
that I mean not only are they humane
they're the basis of the prosperity and
health of this society
if you look over the history of
regulation say a railroad regulation
financial regulation and so on you find
that quite commonly it's it's either
initiated by the economic concentrations
that are being regulated Earths
supported by them and the reason is
because they know that sooner or later
they can take over the regulator's and
it ends up with what's called regulatory
capture the business being regulated is
in fact running the regulator's
thank lobbyists are actually writing the
laws of financial regulation gets to
that extreme and that's been happening
through history and again it's it's a
pretty natural tendency when you just
look at the distribution of power
one of the things that expanded
enormously in the 1970s is lobbying as
the business world moved sharply to try
to control legislation business world
was pre upset by the advances in public
welfare in the 60s and particularly by
Richard Nixon it's not too well
understood but he was the last New Deal
president and they regarded that as
class treachery in Nixon's
administration you get the consumer
safety legislation safety and health
regulations in the workplace the EPA the
Environmental Protection Agency business
didn't like it of course they didn't
like the high taxes they didn't like the
regulation and they began a coordinated
effort to try to overcome it lobbying
sharply increased deregulation began
with a real ferocity there were no
financial crashes in the 50s and the 60s
because the regulatory apparatus of the
New Deal was still in place
as a p-n to be dismantled under business
pressure and political pressure you get
more and more crashes
and it goes on right through the years
70s starts begin 80s really takes off
Congress was asked to approve federal
loan guarantees to the auto company of
up to one and one-half billion dollars
although this is quite safe as long as
you know the government's gonna come to
your rescue so takes a Reagan instead of
letting them pay the cost
Reagan bailed out the banks like
continental Illinois the biggest bailout
of American history at the time actually
ended his term with the huge financial
crisis the savings and loan crisis and
the government moved in and build it out
they find the 300 billion dollar Savings
and Loan bailout 1999 regulation was
dismantled to separate commercial banks
from investment banks then comes the
bush then obama bail out Bear Stearns is
running to the feds to stay afloat
President Bush today defended the
decision to bail out Citigroup Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac have asked for a
total of three billion dollars more the
bailout could get much bigger fiddling
deepening troubles for the US economy
and they're building up the next one
each time the taxpayer is called on to
bail out those who created the crisis
increasingly the major financial
institutions in a capitalist economy you
wouldn't do that in a capitalist system
that would wipe out the investors who
made risky investments but the rich and
powerful they don't want a capitalist
system they want to be able to run to
the nanny state as soon as they're in
trouble and get bailed out by the
taxpayer that's called the too big to
fail I mean there are no bail or it's
economics who significantly disagree
with the course that we're following
people like just Stiglitz Paul Krugman
others and none of them were even
approached the people pick to fix the
crisis where those who created it the
Robert Rubin crowd the Goldman Sachs
crowd they created the crisis or no more
powerful than before is that accident
well not when you pick those people to
create an economic plan I mean what do
you expect to happen
meanwhile for the poor let market
principles prevail don't expect any help
from the government the government's the
problem not the solution and so on
that's essentially neoliberalism and
it's as this dual character which goes
right back in economic history one set
of rules for the rich opposites that are
rules for the poor and nothing
surprising about this exactly the
dynamics you'd expect if the population
allows it to proceed it's just going to
go on and on like this until the next
crash which is so much expected that
credit agencies which kind of evaluate
the status of firms are now counting
into their calculations the taxpayer
bailout that they expect to come after
the next crash which means that the
beneficiaries of these credit ratings
like the big banks they can borrow money
more cheaply they can push out smaller
competitors and you get more and more
concentration everywhere you look
policies are done this way which should
come as absolutely no surprise to anyone
that's what happens when you put power
into the hands of a narrow sector of
wealth which will is dedicated to
increasing power for itself just as
you'd expect
concentration of wealth yields
concentration of political power
particularly so as the cost of Elections
skyrockets which kind of forces the
political parties into the pockets of
major corporations the Citizens United
this was January 2009 I guess that's a
very important decision Supreme Court
decision but it has a history now you
got to think about the history the 14th
amendment has a provision that says no
person's rights can be infringed without
due process of law and the intent
clearly was to protect freed slaves said
ok they have got the protection of the
law I don't think it's ever been used
for freed slaves if ever marginally
almost immediately it was used for
businesses corporations their rights
can't be infringed without due process
of law
so they gradually became persons under
the law
corporations are state-created legal
fictions maybe they're good maybe
they're bad but to call them persons is
kind of outrageous so they get got
personal rights back about a century ago
and that extended through the 20th
century they give corporations rights
way beyond what persons have so if say
General Motors invests in Mexico they
get national rights the rights of a
Mexican business while the notion of
person was expanded to include
corporations
it was also restricted if you take the
14th amendment literally that no
undocumented alien can be deprived of
Rights if they're persons undocumented
and we're living here and building your
building's clean your lawns and so on
they're not persons but General Electric
is a person an immortal super-powerful
person this perversion of the elementary
morality and the obvious meaning of the
law is quite incredible in the 1970s the
courts decided that money is a form of
speech
Buckley versus Valeo miji one for the
years to Citizens United which says that
the right of free speech of corporations
namely spend as much money they want
can't be curtailed take a look what that
means
it means that corporations which anyway
have been pretty much buying elections
are now free to do it with virtually no
constraint that's tremendous attack on
the residue of democracy it's very
interesting to read the rulings like
Justice Kennedy's swing vote his ruling
said we'll look after all the CBS's
given freedom of speech they're a
corporation why shouldn't General
Electric be free to spend as much money
as they want it's true that CBS has
given freedom of speech but they're
supposed to be performing a public
service that's why that's what the press
is supposed to be a General Electric is
just trying to make money for the chief
executive some of the shareholders it's
incredible decisions and it puts the
country in a position where business
power is greatly extended beyond what it
always was this is part of that vicious
cycle the Supreme Court justice are put
in by reactionary presidents who get in
there because they're funded by business
it's the way the cycle works
there is one organized force which
traditionally plenty of flaws but with
all its flaws it's been in the forefront
of efforts to improve the lives of the
general population that's organized
labor it's also a barrier to corporate
tyranny so it's the one barrier to this
vicious cycle going on which does lead
to corporate tyranny
a major reason for the concentrated
almost fanatic attack on unions on
organized labor is they are a
democratizing force to provide a barrier
that defends workers rights but also
popular rights generally then it had
interferes with the prerogatives and
power of those who own and manage a
society I should say that anti-union
sentiment in the United States among
elites is so strong that the fundamental
core of labor rights the basic principle
in the International Labor Organization
is the right of free association which
would mean the right to form unions the
US has never ratified them so I think
the u.s. may be alone among major
societies in that respect it's
considered so far out of the spectrum of
American politics it literally has never
been considered remember that the US has
a long and very violent labor history is
compared with comparable societies
but the labor movement had been very
strong but by the 1920s in the period
not unlike today it was virtually
crushed diverts bike with phimax
by severe riot with many casualties open
warfare rages through the streets of the
city 3,000 Union picket of battle 700
police
bring injuries tomorrow 80%
by the mid 30s have began to reconstruct
or Franklin Delano Roosevelt he himself
was rather sympathetic to progressive
legislation that would be in the benefit
of the general population nobody had to
somehow get it passed so he informed the
labor leaders and others forced me to do
it what he meant is that go out and
demonstrate organize protest develop the
labor movement when the popular pressure
is sufficient I'll be able to put
through the legislation you want I am
NOT for a return to that definition of
liberty under which for many years a
free people were being gradually
regimented into the service of a
privileged few
I prefer that broader definition of
liberty so there was a kind of a
combination of a sympathetic government
and by the mid 30s very substantial
popular activism there were industrial
actions they were sit-down strikes which
were very frightening to ownership have
to recognize a sit-down strike is just
one step before saying we don't need
bosses we can run this by ourselves
and business was pulled you read the
business press say in the late 30s they
were talking about the hazard facing
industrialists and the rising political
power of the masses which has to be
repressed things were on hold during the
Second World War but immediately after
the Second World War the business
offensive began in force tests Hartley
Act for only one purpose to restore
justice and equality in labor-management
relations McCarthyism was used for a
massive corporate propaganda offensives
to attack Union increased sharply during
the Reagan years and Reagan pretty much
told the business world if you want to
illegally break organizing efforts and
strikes
go ahead they are in violation of the
law and if they do not report for work
within 48 hours they have forfeited
their jobs and will be terminated
continued in the 90s of course with
George W Bush went through the roof by
now less than 7% of private sector
workers have unions
the effect is that the usual counter
force to an offensive by our highly
class conscious business class as
dissolved now if you're in position of
power you want to maintain class
consciousness for yourself but
eliminated everywhere else go back to
the 19th century in the early days of
the Industrial Revolution in the United
States working people were very
conscious of this they in fact
overwhelmingly regarded wage labor as
not very different from slavery the
different only and that it was temporary
in fact it was such a popular idea that
was a slogan of the Republican Party
well that was a very sharp class
consciousness in the interests of power
and privilege it's good to drive those
ideas out of people's heads you don't
want them to know that they're an
oppressed class so this is one of the
few societies which you just don't talk
about class in fact the notion of class
is very simple who gives the orders who
follows them that basically defines
class it's more nuanced and complex but
that's basically it
the public relations industry the
advertising industry which is dedicated
to creating consumers it's a phenomenon
developed in the freest countries in
Britain in the United States and the
reason is pretty clear it became clear
by say a century ago that it was not
going to be so easy to control the
population by force too much freedom has
been one labor organizing parliamentary
Labour parties in many countries women
started to get the franchise and so on
so you had to have other means of
controlling people and it was understood
and expressed that you have to control
them by control of beliefs and attitudes
well one of the best ways to control
people in terms of attitudes is what the
great political economist Thorstein
Veblen called fabricating consumers
they can fabricate want make obtaining
things that are just about within your
reach the essence of life they're going
to be trapped into becoming consumers
you read the business press say 1920s it
talks about the need to direct people to
the superficial things of life like
fashionable consumption and that'll keep
them out of our hair you find this
doctrine all through progressive
intellectual thought like walter
Lippmann the major progressive
intellectual of the 20th century he
broke famous progressive essays on
democracy at which his view was exactly
that the public must be put in their
place so that the responsible men can
make decisions without interference from
the bewildered heard there to be
spectators not participants then you get
a properly functioning democracy
straight back to Madison on to Powell's
memorandum and so on and the advertising
industry just exploded with this as its
gold fabricating consumers
and it's done with great sophistication
you don't see many wild stallions
anymore he's one of the last of a wild
and very singular breed come to Marlboro
country
and the ideal is what you actually see
today where let's say teenage girls if
they have a free Saturday afternoon go
walking in the shopping mall not the
library or somewhere else the idea is to
try to control everyone to turn the
whole society into the perfect system
perfect system would be a society based
on a dyad a pair the pair is you and
your television set or maybe now you and
the Internet in which that presents you
with what the proper life would be what
kind of gadgets you should have and you
spend your time and effort gaining those
things which you don't need you don't
want maybe I'll throw them away but
that's the measure of a decent life what
we see is in say advertising on
television if you've ever taken an
economics course you know that markets
are supposed to be based on informed
consumers making rational choices well
if we had a system like that a market
system then a television ad would
consist of say General Motors putting up
information saying here's what we have
for sale si would have an ad for a car
is an ad for a car is a football hero
you know an actress the car doing some
crazy thing like going up a mountain or
something the point is to create
uninformed consumers who will make
irrational choices that's what
advertising is all about and when the
same institutions PR a system runs
elections they do it the same way
they want to create an uninformed
electorate which will make irrational
choices often against their own
interests and we see it every time one
of these extravaganzas take place right
after the election President Obama won
an award from the advertising industry
for the best marketing campaign and
wasn't reported here if you go to the
international business press executives
were euphoric now they said we've been
selling candidates and marketing
candidates like you know toothpaste
ever since Reagan and this is the
greatest achievement we have I don't
usually agree with Sarah Palin but when
she mocks the when she calls the hope he
changes stuff she's right first of all
Obama didn't really promise anything
that's mostly illusion you go back to
the campaign rhetoric and take a look at
it there's very little discussion of
policy issues and for very good reason
because public opinion on policy is
sharply disconnected from what the
two-party leadership and their financial
backers want policy more and more it is
focused on the private interests that
fund the campaign's with the public
being marginalized
one of the leading political scientists
mark Gillan's
came out for the study of the relation
between public attitudes and public
policy and what he shows is that about
70 percent of the population has no way
of influencing policy they might as well
be in some other country and the
population knows what it's led to is the
population that's angry and frustrated
hates institutions it's not acting
constructively to try to respond to this
there is popular mobilization and
activism but in very self-destructive
directions it's taking the form of
unfocused anger attacks on one another
and on vulnerable targets that's what
happens in cases like this it is
corrosive of social relations but that's
the point the point is to make people
hate and fear each other and look out
only for themselves and don't do
anything for anyone else
one place you see it strikingly is on
April 15th April 15th is kind of a
measure the data payer taxes of how
democratic a society is if society is
really democratic April 15th would be a
day of celebration it's a day when the
population gets together decides to fund
the programs and activities that they
have formulated an agreed upon what
could be better than that so you should
celebrate it the way it is in the United
States it's a day of mourning it's a day
in which some
and in power you know has nothing to do
with you is coming down to steal your
hard-earned bunny and you do everything
you can to keep from doing it well that
is a kind of a measure of the extent to
which at least in popular consciousness
democracy is actually functioning not a
very attractive picture
the tendencies that we've been
describing within American society
unless they're reversed it's going to be
an extremely ugly Society I'm a society
that's based on Adam Smith's file Maxim
you know all for myself nothing for
everyone else
a society in which normal human
instincts and emotion of sympathy
solidarity mutual support in which
there's kind of like driven out
that's a society so ugly I don't even
know who'd want to live in it I wouldn't
want my children to
if the society is based on control by
private wealth it will reflect the
values that in fact does reflect the
value that is green and the desire to
maximize personal gain at the expense of
others now any society made that small
society based on that principle is ugly
but it can survive a global society
based on that principle is headed for
massive destruction
I don't think we're smart enough to
design in any detail what a perfectly
just and free society would be like I
think we can give some guidelines and
more significant we can ask how we can
progress in that direction John Dewey
the leading social philosopher in late
twentieth century
he argued that until all institutions
production Commerce media unless they're
all under participatory Democratic
control we will not have the functioning
democratic society as he put it policy
will be the shadow cast by business over
Society
well it's essentially true
where there are structures of authority
domination and hierarchy somebody gives
the order somebody takes them they are
not self-justifying they have to justify
themselves I have a burden of proof to
me well if you take a closer look
usually you find they can't justify
themselves if they can't we ought to be
dismantling them trying to expand the
domain of freedom and justice by
dismantling that form of illegitimate
Authority and in fact progress over the
years we all thankfully recognize this
progress has been just that the way
things change is because lots of people
are working all the time and you know
they're working in their communities in
their workplace or wherever they happen
to be and they're building up the basis
for popular movements which are going to
make changes that's the way everything
has ever happened in history takes a
freedom of speech one of the real
achievements of American society first
in the world and that it's not in the
Bill of Rights it's not in the
Constitution the freedom of speech
issues began to come to the Supreme
Court in the early 20th century the
major contributions came in the 1960s
what the leading ones was a case
involving civil rights movement well by
then you had a
as popular movement which was demanding
rights refusing to back down and in that
context the Supreme Court did establish
a pretty high standard freedom speech or
if they say woman's right women also
began identifying oppressive structures
refusing to accept them bringing other
people to join with them well that's how
rights are won so a non-trivial extent
I've also spent a lot of my life and
activism that doesn't show up publicly
but yeah I shall not terribly good at it
but not the greatest organizer
I think that we can see quite clearly
some very very serious defects and flaws
in our society our culture our
institutions which are going to have to
be corrected by operating outside of the
framework that is commonly accepted I
think we're going to have to find new
ways of political action but the
activists are people who have created
the rights that we enjoy that aren't
carrying out policies based on
information that they're receiving but
also contributing to the understanding
remember is a reciprocal process that
you have a great deal if you try to do
things you learn you learn about what
the world is like that feeds back to the
understanding of how to go on
there's huge opportunities it is a very
free society still the freest in the
world government has very limited
capacity to coerce corporate business
may try to coerce to their own mechanism
so there's a lot that can be done if
people organize struggle for the rights
as they've done in the past and win many
they
well my close friend for many years late
Howard Zinn to put it in his word that
what matters is the countless small
deeds of unknown people who lay the
basis for the significant events that
enter history they're the ones who have
done things in the past
they're the ones left to do it the
future
you
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