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Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed
Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam Chomsky
THE SIMULTANEOUS unfolding of the US presidential campaign and unraveling of the financial markets presents one of those occasions where the political and economic systems starkly reveal their nature.
Passion about the campaign may not be universally shared but almost everybody can feel the anxiety from the foreclosure of a million homes, and concerns about jobs, savings and healthcare at risk.
The initial Bush proposals to deal with the crisis so reeked of totalitarianism that they were quickly modified. Under intense lobbyist pressure, they were reshaped as "a clear win for the largest institutions in the system . . . a way of dumping assets without having to fail or close", as described by James Rickards, who negotiated the federal bailout for the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998, reminding us that we are treading familiar turf. The immediate origins of the current meltdown lie in the collapse of the housing bubble supervised by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which sustained the struggling economy through the Bush years by debt-based consumer spending along with borrowing from abroad. But the roots are deeper. In part they lie in the triumph of financial liberalisation in the past 30 years - that is, freeing the markets as much as possible from government regulation.
These steps predictably increased the frequency and depth of severe reversals, which now threaten to bring about the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
Also predictably, the narrow sectors that reaped enormous profits from liberalisation are calling for massive state intervention to rescue collapsing financial institutions.
Such interventionism is a regular feature of state capitalism, though the scale today is unusual. A study by international economists Winfried Ruigrok and Rob van Tulder 15 years ago found that at least 20 companies in the Fortune 100 would not have survived if they had not been saved by their respective governments, and that many of the rest gained substantially by demanding that governments "socialise their losses," as in today's taxpayer-financed bailout. Such government intervention "has been the rule rather than the exception over the past two centuries", they conclude.
In a functioning democratic society, a political campaign would address such fundamental issues, looking into root causes and cures, and proposing the means by which people suffering the consequences can take effective control.
The financial market "underprices risk" and is "systematically inefficient", as economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures.
The task of financial institutions is to take risks and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on "to themselves". Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the "externalities" of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do.
Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the economy. It has long been understood that it is a powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital movement creates what some have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely monitor government programmes and "vote" against them if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of people, rather than concentrated private power.
Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies and other devices offered by financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the Bretton Woods system established by the United States and Britain after the second World War instituted capital controls and regulated currencies.*
The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy.
John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.
In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".
In earlier years, the public had not been much of a problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen in his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century, governments had not yet been "politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour parties". Therefore, the severe costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be transferred to the general population.
But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures".
The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalise the public in some fashion, processes particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. The management of electoral extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one illustration.
"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".
The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans".
Differences can be detected in the current election as well. Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistently over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.
Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace.
* The Bretton Woods system of global financial management was created by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied second World War nations who attended a UN-hosted Monetary and Financial Conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in 1944.
Bretton Woods, which collapsed in 1971, was the system of rules, institutions, and procedures that regulated the international monetary system, under which were set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (now one of five institutions in the World Bank Group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which came into effect in 1945.
The chief feature of Bretton Woods was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value.
The system collapsed when the US suspended convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the US dollar became the "reserve currency" for the other countries within Bretton Woods.
203 Comments so far
Show AllNice to see CD run an article by Noam Chomsky, who I was lucky enough to have as a professor.
Too bad the article wasn't from the American press.
Its funny, because when I saw this, the first thing I did was look at the top to see where it was printed. I'd have been shocked if it was in the American press.
For that matter, I'm surprised CD has this on here, given that they are so tilted to the Democrats in this election season. I guess Chomsky made some vague comments that Obama is a little better than McCain at some point, and that might allow him past the CD censors.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
The American press quote Noam Chomsky? Those media whores would much rather quote Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin or Porky Pig.
"too big to fail" = socialism for the rich/oligarchs.
The American government is a union of the rich/oligarchs. "The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats."
Laws for corporations need to be rewritten to make businesses accountable to its stake-holders.
Free market economic systems should be severely regulated until the problems of "externalities" are worked out.
As always, you can't beat Chomsky's analyses. But don't expect this to appear in the US press anytime soon.
of course, even if it did appear, this article would be unreadable to most of the US public these days, who through no fault of their own, have reached such a low level of functional literacy that it could not have been an accident. As always, such trends in society always, uncannily, work in the interests of the same economic forces that Chomsky, in his dry sarcastic style, decries.
God is punishing the world for the sins of George Bush, Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman.
However, we can be saved! Read on:
First, we go with the Treasury Secretary we got. Henry lead us to the promised land: The New New Deal. Dethrone Milton Friedman/Arnold Greenspan (Markets work; governments don't), install John Maynard Keynes/FDR (they helped save capitalism the last time).
Memo to Obama: Drop Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and the rest of the free market deregulators on your team.
Just like Nixon who found peace with China, Paulson can lead to us to a caring socialism/capitalism. It's possible: we could become a loving Scandinavian country.
Dr Wu, the last of the big-time thinkers
Will you stop your multiple postings of this gibberish! There is no god punishing us, there is just the capitalist system collapsing under the weight of it's own contradictions - again.
And once again, the only lesson from history seems to be that we learn nothing from history!
.So, you believe in a guy who lives in the sky, gives us ten laws which we must obey or he will cast us in a fiery pit for all eternity, but he loves us...Oh yeah and he NEEDS MONEY constantly!
The late great George Carlin....
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Indeed Regigilous is worth a couple of hours of your time and Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion is even better.
Good grief!
Anyone who isn't tilted towards the Democrats in this election is either third party delusional or asleep. We have to be practical here, while a third party may espouse the hopes of many of us, the fact is that they are just not in the running this time around and there are bigger fish to fry at the moment.
sbrownn
Perhaps you can kindly explain why one should vote Democrat in light of the fact that Obama not only voted to bail out the financial institutions but also lobbied quite hard to make sure that his fellow Democrats would do the same thing. The [alleged] antiwar candidate Obama has pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan while keeping the military option open vis a vis Pakistan, Iran and Russia and by doing so puts him on a par with the more overt warmonger McCain. Voting for the lesser of the two evils is never a legitimate reason to vote for someone, even a Democrat, for president.
As Chomsky has written in the past, and suggests in this article, is that the candidates are not entirely the same, there are are minor differences and these minor differences can ultimately result in subtantial benefits for the working class, under pressure of organized activism.
I think this will be particularly true in times of crisis, as we are heading into now.
I'm not telling anyone how to vote - I will likely vote for Nader myself, bit I must admit that I feel a lot more comfortable about it because Obama is likely to have a very large lead in my home state by November 4. But you must address Chomsky's argument on its merits, rather than emotion. I too find Obama's imperialist positions to be repugnant, but it may soon be a moot point as the US will soon be in such economic disarray that it will be forced to curtail it's military ambitions.
"The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them."
"...the candidates are not entirely the same."
What he did was to draw upon historical statistics to support a hypothesis that there are current differences. All you can do by citing history is to conclude with some certainty that there is evidence that differences once existed.
Those statistics do NOT prove a significant difference exists today. That's what change is all about. WE do have but one party as Chomsky describes, but the differences within the management factions are so minimal at this point, as to almost defy description.
To accept Chomsky's method requires hindsight and methodologies of measurement that can not be applied to any moment at hand.
I contend that there were once differences between the two factions of "The Party"... but those differences have almost entirely disappeared. I only have the most recent actions of Obama and the so-called "Democratic Party" to back up my contention, but there is no other way to accurately measure.
As such, I suggest that we no longer gamble on historical indicators, that we look directly at actions to make our choices. Reject Republicans and Republican wannabes. If you want choice, vote for choice... or abstain from enabling a system that no longer supports you.
It's easy to lie with statistics.
"I too find Obama's imperialist positions to be repugnant, but it may soon be a moot point as the US will soon be in such economic disarray that it will be forced to curtail it's military ambitions."
I'm not to sure about that. Starting a war is an acknowledged and accepted way of regenerating the economy of a country. As for Obama, as black man he will be under increasing pressure (psychological and otherwise) to prove that he's a 'man', a big boy, one of the gang, a true blue american. The best and only way he can do that is to wage war against some poor, unfortunate country, preferably non-white; likely candidtaes being China and Pakistan or Iran. China would be suicide. And he has already stated that he would go after Pakistan, an ally of China... So it's either Pakistan or Iran. Damn I hope I'm wrong...!!!!
"may you live in interesting times"
I second everything Erroll said.
I think people need to wake up and realize the party that is still called the "Democratic Party" was hijacked the moment they took the corporate bribes like the Repukicans do. Therefore, we essentially have ONE PARTY under 2 different party names.
The "third party candidates" so scorned in this delusional country are the REAL Democratic candidates. WAKE UP, AMERICA. The switch occurred long ago, WAKE UP.
No, as Chomsky points out, there is and has always been a substantial difference in conditions for working and middle class Americans under Democratic and Republican rule. Progressive change will come from citizens, not from political parties or elected heads of state.
katfish,
"Progressive change will come from citizens, not from political parties or elected heads of state." 100% right. The sooner people realize that one simple, yet important, fact, the better.
until we free the media from the corporations, good luck!
I doubt if there will be a single CD article between now and next month's quadrennial duopolistic debacle that doesn't include comments from a two-party delusional castigating the rest of us delusionals for rejecting Obama.
And afterwards, for that matter, regardless of the outcome. If Obama rolls into office as expected, the two-party delusionals will be emboldened by what they consider a vindication of the duopoly; if Obama is upset, the two-party delusionals will be REALLY upset, and give the rest of us hell.
And unless further restrictive and censorious Reforms are implemented, I and my fellow delusionals will stick around to challenge the two-party delusionals.
La la how the life goes on.
Excellent analysis, in a nutshell, as usual, Little Brother
What Obama stands for, I generally oppose, and what I stand for, Obama generally opposes.
A vote for Obama is a vote for four more years of war.
A vote for Obama is a vote for more rule of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.
If you like the way things have been going the last eight years, vote Obama. After all, the Democrats in Congress have supported pretty much all of it.
I constantly see these sorts of 'the democrats are better' messages out here. But they never go into any detail about WHY the Democrats are better. And if someone tries to answer that, please refer to ACTIONS by the Democrats and not just the words they toss around on the campaign trail. By now, anyone who pays any attention at all knows there is a huge difference between what the Democrats SAY and what the Democrats DO.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
Exactly Sampson. Obama is also for ending the United States use of Venezuelan oil over a ten to fifteen year time period. This shows his "wet behind the ears," world view. He claims to somewhere in his background have some Cherokee heritage, yet he does not see this South American struggle as an end to five hundred years of colonialism and imperialism. He seems oblivious to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recently adopted in 2007. I do not expect perfection but I do expect him to be in the right universe and on Venezuela he is not. Nor is the Democratic Party. I will not vote for them. I am better off looking to locavores for survival and building a better future from the ground up. Obama is just another corporate schill. When he speaks of the middle class he is all words and no action. Look at his record. Let others here delude themselves, I will not. The old America is history and the new America lives locally.
OYou are wrong! Obama is not a neocon.
Obama wants to rifle in on a few Al Qaida figures, not get us involved in endless war.
He talks tough so that he will get elected.
Obama action: before the Iraq War Obama did a press release stating that Iraq was no real threat and that there were no WMD and that it was a big mistake to invade, then he voted against the resolution granting Bush the power to attack Iraq. All that was at a time when Americans were crazy patriotic after 911.
And democrats have a proven record of funding programs for workers and college scholarships and more. They are stuck in a corporate system and muist work within it, what is your alternative, short of a communist revolution?
I'll give you an alternative "short of a communist revolution".
I'll give you three:
1) Formation of a new "big tent style" party, uniting social progressives and fiscal conservatives under a Constitutional banner. This Party would derive its clout from popular appeal not corporate cronyism.
2) Encouragement of a "compromise independent ticket" for the NEXT Prez. Election in 2012. One GOP defector and one Dem defector running together. I would suggest Kucinich/Paul -if they could be convinced to give up on the "big two"- would be ideal. The purpose of this campaign would be to end polarized bickering and force a populist, constitutionalist, and good government appeal into the limelight and change the media discourse to better fit the People's.
3) Movement, nationally and in the individual States, to hold a new Constitutional Convention with the purpose of updating and clarifying the current Constitution. Amendent IX and X both suggest this is permissable, and it is badly needed. This step has been taken successfully in recent years by several nations in S. America, and likely represents the next phase in the Evolution of the Democratic Revolution.
There ya go. No "revolution" -or at least not one that we aren't already supposed to be in- needed.
BTW your blanket assurances with no evidence to back them except fuzzy logic and pure propaganda are what annoy so many of us about Dems and Obamites. So why not stop it?
Don't Panic,
-matti.
"They are stuck in a corporate system and muist work within it,"
Must they? Was this corporate system handed down from the Almighty or designed by Mother Nature such that TINA? Or was it something they helped design and could just as well dismantle if they chose? Apparently they have CHOSEN to work within it, to our detriment. So away with them and their right handed twins!
Wake up, man, the democrats will keep the troops overseas, send more of your money into war, and continue with the same doomed economic policies. It's Democrats who are delusional.
sbrownn:
Good grief is right.
Being oh so "practical", sticking to the two parties all these years, is precisely what got us into this mess.
As for "bigger fish to fry", I suggest that it would be better to fry the sharks instead, the political ones that is. Would that the Dem/Rep sharks were as endangered as the real ones.
And if third parties "are just not in the running", pray, whose fault is that? And how do you suggest they get in the running if folks like yourself don't support them?
As usual, Chomsky illuminates the situation in which we find ourselves with a knowledge of history and understanding of institutional dynamics.
I'm glad that Craig Brown and the other editors at Common Dreams decided to put this article up. It is from the New York Times international syndicate and as such, goes all over the world except where corporate censorship normally prevents good progressive analysis from appearing, such as in the United States.
I do see some tricky uses of statistics in here that should be pointed out. This is in the bit where Prof. Chomsky is citing the studies talking about the growth of incomes over 'the last six decades'.
Its doing such a study over the last six decades that is the tricky bit. That would mean the data goes back to somewhere in the 1940's. The problem is that this includes a Democratic party that was strongly supportive of the New Deal. And it also includes the Democrats of the 60's with the Great Society.
A simillar study that only looks at Clinton's 'jobless recovery' in comparision to Reagan\Bush\Bush might be more interesting. And certainly more indicative of the DLC type of policies that are all the Democrats offer these days.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
Chomsky's point is pragmatic. There are differences, which he urges the reader to consider. To document his assertion of "differences," he cites numbers indicating the relative conditions for working and middle class Americans under the two factions of the business party. I would not make projections about what the so-called Lesser-Evilists grasp or don't grasp from Chomsky's analysis. I will vote for Obama, although I consider myself a leftist and a progressive. This despite major differences on numerous issues and with the understanding that the Democratic establishment is as corporatist as the Republican establishment. I personally believe that our first responsibility as citizens of a world, then a nation, is to put an immediate end to the extremely destructive neocon dominance of foreign and domestic policy. What I take away from Chomsky's essay, among other things, is that claims that there is no essential difference between the candidates/factions are manifestly false. What we do with that information is a matter of personal choice. I'll be voting for the far better man, Barack Obama, and then going to work.
I think we tend to forget during elections that the candidates aren't going to run the show alone. Maybe we should consider who they'll be choosing to fill all the other positions of government when elected.
I think you just made Rich M.'s point ....
As for me, I'd rather fight FOR my candidate to get him elected rather than have to fight WITH him if he does, as apparently you will.
I think we should address ~Samson~'s point, as it is a good one.
The one piece of practical "evidence" that Chomsky seems able to dig up in support of the Dems has more to do with FDR and Lyndon Johnson than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
I don't have a specific study narrowing Chomsky's "last six decades" down to the relevant period. But since what the study he cites is looking at is "real wages" and it is known that these have been nearly to totally stagnant for the Workers in the last three decades. Then we can conclude that -in the relevant period- the Dems have done about nada for "increasing real wages for the working class".
If we throw in the "middle class" however, I'm sure the Dems do better. No evidence for this, just a hunch based on Obama's bizarre focus on them. It is as if he can't see the Workers past those precious "middle class families" that "earn" up to "a quarter-million dollars a year".
These quotes from a recent ad assuring these people that they wouldn't face tax increases! Runs all the time on the Seattle based TV stations, but I haven't seen it once on the Yakima stations. I hope you can figure out why.
Lucky for the Dems that so many Workers think of themselves as "middle class", or at least have their eyes so greedily set on that "quarter million dollars per year" "earned" income that they are blinded to the real World.
Frankly, this looks like Chomsky has given a nod here to the "clutching at straws club". Those people desperate to find a justification for their support of Obama and the Dems that is not based on :
Him Blue Party. Red Party mess up. Blue Party in charge now. Him Blue Party.
It tweeks my B.S. meter though. Why would a stickler like Chomsky cite a study to compliment the Dems, that looked at more closely actually castigates them?
Is he just getting old? Is he tired of arguing with people about a collective delusion that they are so passionate about? (I know I am!) Is this some sneaky, sarcastic trick?
Or does he really wish to find a justification for Dem and Obama support, and this is the best he can do?
Is he one of those people that -deep in his subconscious- has been shown the product (Obama) on TV (debates, "campaign coverage"), decided to purchase it (vote) and will now employ any possible rationalization to assure themselves that THEY have made this CHOICE -not the advertisers who shot the product into their brain- and that it is a GOOD one?
Et tu Chomsky? Surely not!
Don't Panic,
-matti.
Matti
I think your point is very well taken. This writer also concurs with what you have said when he notes in this well written book that:
"The Democrats' reputation as the "party of the people" follows largely from the party's "Golden Age," the New Deal period [1933-1945], in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted a number of important social reforms. The 1960's "Great Society," under which Democratic administrations inaugurated Medicare and the "War on Poverty," solidified the identification of the Democratic Party with the downtrodden."
"Yet, viewed with a wider lens, this history of Democratic reform on behalf of "the people" spans only about thirty of the nearly 150 years since the Civil War era. Even in the last generation, when working-class living standards have been cut, unions have been destroyed, and the majority of American workers have lost their belief that their children will have a better life than they did, the Democrats have done little to stem that tide. Since 1973, when the median wage in real terms peaked, the Democrats have held the White House for half as long as the Republicans have, but they have held the majority in Congress and the state legislatures for most of that time. Yet they did little to reverse the conservative-inspired offensive against working people's living standards." [p. 13 of the book].
http://www.amazon.com/Democrats-Critical-History-Lance-Selfa/dp/1931859558
I defy anyone to read that quote and NOT wake-the-frick-UP already about the Democratic Party.
I'm going to close my eyes now and count to ten, and when I open them again it will be November 5th and this site and the whole rest of the country can finally stop yapping about this ridiculous "election" and get back to discussing the real World.
*eyes close*
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Damn!
From Chomsky:
"Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the "externalities" of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do."
matti:
Imagine what will happen when They "Wake Up" to the real world and figure out the environmental costs of this rabid predatory Capitalism which has caused the present financial crisis. Compared to the coming Ecocide, this is only a tremor!
After that - The good news is: the elections won't be so important.
thank you CD editors for posting this article,
{"In a functioning democratic society, a political campaign would address such fundamental issues, looking into root causes and cures, and proposing the means by which people suffering the consequences can take effective control."}
Aye, there's the rub..., a functioning democracy... w/ just politicians and literate citizens.
{"The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy."}
{"...But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures"..."}
this is where our struggle continues... as the crisis unfolds the opportunity for raising consciousness becomes real like during the 1930's - linking the governemnt's actions/inaction, w/ the actual living conditions of the poor - how/why were those millions of people activated during the depression ?
suffering necessitated FDR's policies (monetary policies, public works, social programs). we're not experiencing 25% unemployment, but we're moving closer. will the next president make concessions like FDR or will he clamp down on the poor as america currently does, by providing them no health care, substandard schools, and incarcerating them (future labor camps).
where is the light? i don't see the masses being capable of rising up and making demands?
we are the fascist force in the world today. the article raised a lot of questions for me...
what happens when the US currency is no longer viable as a global reserve currency ?
does this open the door to a single currency, w/ global interest rates determined by the central (earth bank) bank ? (isn't that going on this weekend anyway...)
will our military become more erratic once china and europe exert more direct control over our economy ? (as developed economies have used bretton woods institutions, imf/wld bnk, to impose suffering upon the developing world).
how do the rules of the game change when the resource wars in central asia - middle east heat up, raising the stakes that 2 or more of the world's nuclear powers could engage in conflict over resources ?
we live in interesting times.
...peace...
"The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans".(Noam Chomsky)
Well I guess there is a difference. With Republican administrations the poor remain poor, the middle class gets nowhere, and the rich get very rich. The people seem to do much better under Democratic administrations. This would suggest to me that McCain and Obama are not as interchangeable as many claim. But what does Dr.Chomsky know about anything.(LOL)
Thanks, Dante, for the correction, though I fear your sarcasm might have blown past some readers. Not everyone is aware of Chomsky's extraordinary stature. In any case, anyone who takes Chomsky's analysis to mean (or tries to use it to justify) that voting for Nader or McKinney in itself will advance the cause of a more democratic government, I think, is mistaken. Supporting and voting for a symbolic progressive candidacy can't substitute for committing to and doing the daily work of organizing at grassroots level to press for democratic change. Due respect, obviously, to those who are engaged.
I hate to pound on this sore thumb, but if we all agree that we are living in a corporatocracy with one political party - the business party - composed of two factions, Republican and Democratic, then it follows that our real, as opposed to symbolic, choice is between Republicans and Democrats. Voting for Nader or McKinney may make people feel better - they have "expressed themselves" without compromise, but in what respect have they taken anything a step further than the personal satisfaction of casting a symbolic vote for their symbolic-candidate-of-choice? What's needed is not alternative candidates, but alternative political forces.
I'm thinking that until we are able to generate a more democratic economy (which will require enormous energy and pressure on our elected officials by an engaged and determined electorate), any effort to build alternative political parties will come to naught.
This is a trisky statistic and no letters in front of Chomsky's name can change that.
Look more closely. The period invloved here is "the last six decades". Meaning, if the study was conducted this year, all the way back to 1948.
So, that starts us with truman and the New Deal Democrats, takes us through Johnson and The Great Society and THEN brings us to the relevant period of periodic recession, deregulation, globalization, income stratification, and upward flow of wealth.
Real Wages for almost ALL workers have barely budged upward in 35 years and for some groups -like "working class men"- they are DOWN quite a bit.
So this statistic is merely reminding us of how good the Dems USED TO BE sixty to forty years ago, not how good they are now. It is a story of a Fall, not one of consistency.
I am not suggesting that McCain and Obama are interchangable. And I agree with the Prof.'s thesis that an Obama Admin. and a Dem Congress will be better able and more inclined to be steered the right way by the People than McCain would.
But it does no good for us to employ trisky statistics to delude ourselves about the situation we are in.
Don't Panic,
-matti.
"Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace."
Indeed.
Vote Nader.
During the last debates both candidates failed to address the real issues albeit people had asked them very pointed questions. Obama ended up on top but that is not important. What is important now is the ability to grasp the gravity of our situation which even WSJ finally grasped. Given his age and sharpness of his mind Obama is many orders of magnitude better prepared to deal with crysis than folksy MkKkain who had shown total disconnect with reality.
Granted, American nation as well as the nations of the world over are not prepared to deal with the crysis for lack of any mass movements and, more important, lack of any cohesive world outlook provided until recently by such system as Marxism. Yet nothing had signaled coming Revolutions on the eve of 14 July 1789 or 25 October 1917.
We are at the singularity point now and everything is possible. As a nation we might be doomed. Or we might be blessed. Be prepared!
v.purto
Obama hasnt done a good job separating himself from Mccain.
Or rather
this is how it works--the republicans keep going right-so the democrats follow suit.
Because the democrats dont offer much of a real difference(except on a few things like abortion) the republicans keep going right and he public doesnt have much of a choice(since its a winner take all system and third parties are shut out of the debate).
The Democrats dont listen to their base at all(the Republicans actually try appealing to theirs--i.e. Palin) but they expect them to vote for every bad policy they go along with(as in being more supportive of Wall Street than the republicans).
The only thing Obama may be better on is some environmental policy.
He actually read a Vegan Outreach t shirt during a campaign stop and talked inteliigently. Either he is sincere or very good at playing the crowd. But promoting any sort of vegan policy will actually benefit everyone, since ecological destruction affects everybody as much as war does(and one could say livestock agriculture--both factory and small farm) and hunting are a form of war).
Webber,
He's good at playing the crowd. The only Dem. vegan I know of is Kucinich, and Obama did nothing to keep him from being shut out of the Dem. Primary debates.
Alan MacDonald
Chomsky's analysis is spot on, as always.
As Pogo might have said, "he has identified the problem, and it is 'negative externalities'", and the manipulation of 'externalities' by this ruling elite 'corporatist Empire' hiding behind the facade of their two-party 'Vichy' charade of a government.
Certainly a global monetary system unleashed from regulation and reality can, with fiat currency, spawn more trillions for the Empire's faux-profits through 'externalizing debt bombs' than the real economy can ever produce for bomb disposal.
But the point remains that it is the singular mechanism of 'gaming' the well known 'market failure' of 'negative externality cost displacement' that is the common thread to solve in any world economic system --- gold based or not.
For example, in a gold based economic system it is still possible for an industrial corporation to manufactured cigarettes and show a faux-profit by hiding negative externality costs (as cancer) in customers lungs. Admittedly, it takes somewhat more guile in a gold based economic system for financial corporations to make a faux-profit by hiding negative externality 'debt bombs' when the supply of money is constrained by hard currency relations. However, the credit default swap Ponzi scam represents an innovative crooked technique to hedge, bet, and pillage on insurance contracts or hedges tied to a real (and limited) commodity like gold, which they actually don't own ---- just as the oil futures market allows pure speculators to cause havoc on the commodity of oil, which they actually don't own or plan to take delivery on.
This central 'negative externality cost' scamming is the seminal danger to any economic system attacked by ruling-elite 'corporatist Empire' (as I have written), and should be the seminal focus of building a new socially responsible AND honest investment system for capital allocation based on human needs, and hang these crony capitalists 'with their own rope'.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alan_mac_070319__22economics_of_empire.htm
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alan_mac_070324__22with_their_own_rope.htm
The only phrase I ever liked from H. Ross Perot was "the first one to see the rattlesnake kills it" --- and as Chomsky confirms, we have seen the rattlesnake of "externalities".
CHOMSKY SHOWS THAT WHERE THERE IS MUCK, THERE ARE RICHES TO BE HAD.
Every article Chomsky writes is copyRIGHT. Go to his official site. You are not allowed to use any of his articles without paying for them - so much for Chomsky wanting to get the word out to save lives. He promotes only his books. He does not educate people about dissidents who, unlike him, have risked their lives to try to change things in their countries, and who need support.
Chomsky is a CAPITALIST, exploiting the unfairness of the system to market himself, and make money. He charges over $12,000 to speak (possibly per hour). He charged $35 to individuals wanting to speak to him personally after one talk. He is worth NORTH of $2 million - no one knows his real net worth as most of his earnings are kept private.
Idiotic fans of Chomsky scream that he has to charge money or he'll starve. Hilarious, given Chomsky is a tenured professor with a good salary and a secure pension.
Chomsky has set up a trust fund for his children so they do not have to pay tax. Royalties to a number of his books go into that trust fund. He invests in all the corporations he condemns, including oil corporations.
He praised a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, for speaking out about terrorism - Murray's job as ambassador, however, was to "open up" economies for the benefit of UK corporations. Murray praised BAT effusively, a tobacco firm - Chomsky has condemned tobacco firms. They market their drugs to children, and to the poorest in the world, people who cannot afford to get sick. They also use their economic clout to get poor nations to give them "preferential" tax treatment.
Chomsky praised Murray for PR purposes - to get his name to British audiences, and sell more books. Craig Murray is a former government servant, a man willing to sell his soul to please corporations. He is NO Mr nice guy.
I could go on, but fans of Chomsky are blind to this man's utter hypocrisy. When was the last time Chomsky went on a march and got himself arrested? Chomsky risks nothing - just rakes in huge sums - but wants everyone else to risk everything.
Interestingly, Craig Murray "generously" allows other people to use his articles freely, without paying for them. This guy is ex-government, ex-corporate lackey! ALL Chomsky's writings are copyRIGHT. Seems some capitalists are far nicer than Chomsky.
Perhaps the best way to be a positive influence is to be able to have the financial clout and intellectual prestige to influence the world of ideas.
The creative commons is another way to share ideas but perhaps you have less ability to protect your content.
Numerous scholars like Noam Chomsky, David C. Korten and Thom Hartman had reached a defining point in their successful professional careers where they realized that they could be far more effective to bring about much needed social change with a shift to professional writing. I think it is twisted logic to consider them selfish when it is still their way to make a living.
Likewise, for talented musicians, I think it a blessing to make a living doing what you love. Are they then to be considered selfish?
But everything should not be about money. I have spent my years of retirement in writing letters to the editor, co-facilitating courses in my parish, participating in peace and justice actions, participating in a national political campaign and other initiatives, but hardly do I expect to be paid for my services. There is a distinct difference. Stop twisting the logic.
Nevertheless doesn't MIT put him up?