Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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for them at home. No doubt AIM will soon be sending spies to monitor
sermons to ensure that they are “politically correct.”
1.5 Investing to Control the State: the Political System of
Capitalist Democracy
Saloma observes that so-called “conservatives” have “largely succeeded
in building institutions that incorporate a new long-term strategic
dimension into American politics.” In the introduction to his book, Henry
Steele Commager terms the system Saloma describes not so much a
“new political order” as a “new political disorder,” which is, “quite
simply, the product of money in politics.” 27 There is much truth to these
assessments. All of this is to be understood as the response by a highly
class conscious business community to the Crisis of Democracy
perceived by the liberal wing of the groups that rule the capitalist
democracies. It is the domestic counterpart to the violent destruction of
the “popular organizations” in El Salvador, a prerequisite for what is
called “democracy” in the US ideological system.
Again, the continuity with earlier American history should be
stressed. Ferguson observes that throughout this history—and notably
again in the contemporary period—”As whole sections of the population
begin investing massively in political action, elites become terrified and
counterorganize on a stupendous scale . . . And invariably, elites openly
begin discussing antidemocratic policy measures and more than usually
exalt order and discipline as social goals.” The current era exemplifies
the pattern, as do the earlier cases mentioned above.
Ferguson concludes from his review of American political history that
“the fundamental market for political parties usually is not voters.”
Rather, “The real market for political parties is defined by major