Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance, Noam Chomsky (1928- ) and Marv Waterstone (1948- ), 2021, 388 pages, Dewey 330.12Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance, Noam Chomsky (1928- ) and Marv Waterstone (1948- ), 2021, 388 pages, Dewey 330.122 C454c, ISBN 9781642592634
Each chapter comprises a lecture by Waterstone (two stars) and one by Chomsky (five stars), given in January and February, 2019. There's an April 2020 postscript.
Until industrial feudalism--our current system--is replaced by industrial democracy, politics will be but the shadow cast by business over society. The institutions of private power undermine democracy and freedom. Power resides in control of the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation, and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of the country. --John Dewey. pp. 199, 118.
Those who are advantaged by the status quo are constantly at work to make us understand that the way things are is the way things should be. p. viii.
It is easy to come to believe, with utter sincerity, what happens to be convenient to believe. p. 330.
"I was lucky enough to go to a John-Deweyite school from about age two to twelve." --Noam Chomsky. p. 117.
p. 2: Alfred W. McCoy, /Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State/, 2009. The U.S. sowed discord among Filipinos, to pacify and control them after killing hundreds of thousands. Woodrow Wilson then used these techniques in the U.S. with his Red scare.
pp. 2-3: The FBI is using drones to surveil the U.S. We can expect the FBI to use drones to murder Americans: they won't have to send police, as they did to murder Fred Hampton in 1969.
pp. 9-10 Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined. And prosecuted the Humanitarian Law Project for explaining to Kurds their legal rights. The Roberts court sided with Obama and his then-Solicitor-General Elena Kagan. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/0... Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor dissent pp. 43-65 of 65 of the pdf. Any interaction with anyone the government says is a terrorist, is illegal. Including Nelson Mandela. p. 50 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/t... But U.S.-government-sponsored terrorists are OK: p. 62 https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSA...
p. 11, 86. A president could say, "To reduce terrorism, we need to stop engaging in it." The public would support that.
pp. 15-17. The world has always been ruled by wealth and power, not by popular vote. "Those who own the country ought to govern it." --John Jay. We must "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." --James Madison. Every gain in freedom elicits a reaction from "the men of best quality." They don't give up power happily. Roughly the bottom 70% by income have no influence on policy. Political leaders don't pay any attention to them. The .1% are designing the policies. It's plutocracy. Kleptocracy may be a better term. In Iran, you can't enter the political system unless you're vetted by the clerics. That's bad. Here, you can't enter unless you're vetted by concentrations of private capital. Is that better?
MIDDLE EAST
pp. 20-21 War ends in total destruction, or in the survival of the most brutal elements. Chomsky's 1970 article on Cambodia: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1970... (paywalled)
p. 24. In the poorest, most-repressed countries, there's an elite in luxury. As in Ramallah, Palestine.
p. 24. Futile calls for a one-state solution only enable Israel to continue stealing Palestinian land.
p. 26. Palestinians are poor, powerless, and have no lobbyists, so they have no rights.
pp. 28, 76. It's largely indigenous people who are trying to defend the commons.
p. 29. If cynicism leads to passivity, we walk off the cliff.
POWER SYSTEMS DON'T GIVE GIFTS
p. 32. John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney /The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly Finance-Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the U.S.A. to China/, 2012. Oligopolies fix prices to extract more wealth from customers.
p. 33. /Manufacturing Consent/, book 1994, movie, 1993.
p. 35 Why should structures of authority exist? p. 36 If no reason, dismantle them for a more free, cooperative, and participatory system. p. 37 Rudolf Rocker, /Anarcho-Syndicalism/, 1938: Political rights are forced on parliaments from below. A benevolent dictator or an owner who frees slaves is a freak anomaly. Systems of power consolidate, sustain, and expand their power. Popular activism compels change. p. 37 Freeing man from exploitation and political and social enslavement remains the problem of our time. --"Notes on Anarchism," in /The Essential Chomsky/, 2008.
p. 38 Capitalism can't meet human needs. --Chomsky, "Language and Freedom," in /The Essential Chomsky/. Powerful people secure and maximize their power; powerless people are passive, hopeless, or atomized.
p. 38 1970 through now, we're in a backlash by the powerful against the liberating 1960s.
p. 43 Ecuador asked the rich countries for 3.6 billion dollars, $3.91/barrel, half what the oil company offered it for the oil, to keep oil in the ground, in a national park in Amazonia. The rich countries wouldn't give them the money. https://www.ft.com/content/99e438ae-0...
p. 43 Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty reduced poverty. Now, the rich call for austerity during a recession (which even the IMF says is bad, p. 95), giving them an excuse to end the welfare state.
p. 44 Public schools, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, all are under attack. The rich and powerful want to end the subversive idea that society should do anything except enrich and empower them.
pp. 48, 51 Israel is following the path of South Africa: "So what if the world is against us. The U.S. is on our side."
p. 50 Fidel Castro helped end apartheid in South Africa, despite U.S. support of it. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-x... William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, /Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana/, 2015, pp. 145-148.
p. 52 The U.S. gives Israel $3 billion/year, probably twice that.
p. 55 "Small acts times millions of people, can transform the world." --Howard Zinn, /You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train/, 1994.
p. 57 The word, "reform," is used to mean something that those in power approve of. "Educational reform" means undermine public education.
ISIS, THE KURDS, AND TURKEY
pp. 59, 101 The U.S. created the chaos that spawned ISIS.
p. 62 The US wanted to drive Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991--not let him withdraw. Chomsky, /Deterring Democracy/, 1991, ch. 6.
pp. 78-79 JFK started terrorism and murder in Cuba, lasting into the Clinton administration. It was a cause of the 1963 missile crisis. Keith Bolender, /Voices from the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba/, 2010.
pp. 82-83 Cheney & Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis tortured to make them say something that would link Saddam to Al Qaeda. When they didn't get it, they called for more torture. People under torture will say anything, so they claimed they got evidence.
p. 85 To make fun of people you're crushing, to ridicule them, as Charlie Hebdo did in its 2015 cartoons belittling the Prophet Muhammad, is obscene. But it shouldn't be illegal.
p. 88 It seemed like practically all of organized religion was based on the assumption that God was so stupid that he wouldn't notice you violating his commandments.
FEARMONGERING
p. 92 Israel is taking all West Bank land of any value, while excluding the Palestinian population.
ALLIANCES AND CONTROL
p. 104 The U.S. (as did the British we pushed out) supports radical Islam in Saudi Arabia. Secular nationalism might try to use resources for their own populations. Radical Islam may rely on imperial domination.
p. 104 Israel in 1967 smashed the secular nationalist states, Egypt and Syria, leaving radical-Islamist Saudia Arabia the dominant force.
p. 105 Real wages for U.S. male workers are back at 1960s levels.
p. 116 Without solidarity and cooperation, there is nothing.
THE ROOTS OF CONFLICTS
p. 119 When the only method you have is to use your comparative advantage in violence, you will always make the situation worse. To kill a leader is to replace him with a more violent leader. Andrew Cockburn, /Kill Chain/, 2015. ISIS: "Please attack us. It will be a recruiting tool." p. 121 We have a hammer. Everything looks like a nail.
p. 121 The traditional role of a great power is to expand its power. So we do what comes naturally.
p. 125 "Trade" agreements are actually investor-rights agreements. They give multinational corporations and investors substantial control over the resources, policies, and actions of countries.
pp. 127, 155 A lot of China's export economy is owned by outsiders. If Apple produces iPhones at Foxconn, they count as Chinese exports, but China doesn't get much from it.
p. 128 The U.S. is unique in how badly it handles rail. There's an ideological resistance here to effective public transportation. [In Wisconsin, rich Milwaukee-collar-county residents want to keep it difficult for poor Milwaukee residents to seek work in the suburbs. https://inthesetimes.com/article/wis-... ]
p. 129 China is ringed by offensive missiles in hostile states under U.S domination.
TOWARD A BETTER SOCIETY
p. 135 Organize around issues that: *People care about. *The fixes are feasible. *You can /convince/ people the fixes are feasible. Find small things that people recognize could be achieved; achieve those; see, success is possible; proceed to the next thing.
p. 144 Campaign funding is a good predictor of policy decisions. /The Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems/, Thomas Ferguson, 1995. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
p. 148 A better society would be where decisions are in the hands of an informed and engaged public. Workers would own and run factories. Communities would be under community control. Other institutions would be under popular control. Representatives would be under direct control from below and subject to immediate recall. National boundaries would fade--which has begun in Europe. Mutual aid, production for use rather than profit. Concern for species survival.
The Democrats gave up on white workers around 1976. pp. 152-153. Neither party has anything for working people.
The Republican Party and rightwing-media listeners view the poor as leeches, Muslims as terrorists, distrust and demonize immigrants, look at science with contempt, and oppose even modest steps towards gun control. --Anthony DiMaggio https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/... Trump supporters tend to be middle- to upper class.
The United States' power to dominate the world has declined. The IMF, a U.S. tool, can no longer force Latin American an Asian countries to accept its all-strings-attached loans. pp. 154-155.
The presidential election is significant, but activism, organizing, popular movements are more important. p. 162.
Europe is very racist. It erupts when the population becomes less than homogeneous. p. 164. French prisons are filled with the few Muslims.
Europe's centrist and center-left political parties accepted dismantling pensions, decent working conditions, labor rights. The result is a right-wing backlash. pp. 164-165.
CRISES AND ORGANIZING
In El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, terrorist forces supported by the United States /were/ the government. p. 169.
OBAMA, TRUMP
The Obama nuclear weapons modernization program has increased the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three. p. 182. Trump continues it.
Elections are pretty much bought. Campaign funding equals electability. p. 183.
See also: Chomsky's articles at counterpunch.org https://www.counterpunch.org/author/h... Chomsky, /What Kind of Creatures Are We?/, 2016 Chomsky, /Who Rules the World?/, 2016 Chomsky, /The Culture of Terrorism/, 2015. Explains Iran-Contra. Chomsky, /Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians/, 2014. Chomsky, /Power Systems/, 2012 /The Essential Chomsky/, 2008. Chomsky, /At War with Asia/, 2004. Chomsky, /Middle East Illusions/, 2004. Chomsky, /Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies/, 1989. David Montgomery, /The Fall of the House of Labor/, 1987. Fred Branfman, /Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War/ (Laos), 1972, 2nd edition 2013.
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