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

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
365
investment decisions under democratic control, workers may rationally
choose to avoid politics altogether (as they do, to a great extent, in the
US) or limit their engagement to the satisfaction of narrow demands,
avoiding larger issues. The process is further advanced by the controls of
the ideological system—the hobgoblins regularly brought forth, the
jingoist propaganda, the unremitting propaganda about “free enterprise”
which must receive massive public subsidy, etc.—and by the fact that
the mere effort to gain information and understanding represents a
significant investment, worthwhile for business interests and others that
command the resources to use them for their own purposes, a mere
luxury for people who lack secondary organizations in which they can
pool their resources to put what they discover to some use. The policy of
“rational ignorance” thus makes sense, in a society where true power is
narrowly concentrated and popular organizations barely exist. What is
called “public debate,” Cohen and Rogers comment, thus reduces to a
game in which “different producer groups take turns bombarding the
public with misleading information.” And there are few resources
available to the public to allow them to inquire further, and little for
them to gain by expending the quite considerable effort to do so. The
public rationally turns to pursuit of personal gain and “private forms of
satisfaction,” serious engagement in the formation of public policy not
being a realistic option.
Further questions also arise, though they are secondary to these
essential features of the system of capitalist democracy. Suppose we ask
what some government official will do upon leaving office: will he or she
join a corporate law firm, a millionaires club, an investment bank, a
board of directors—or rather become a unskilled laborer, machinist,
clerk, or service worker? The answer provides a certain insight as to
which group the person really represents. The class background and
associations of elected and appointed officials, and their private