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

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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hands of the opposition, including inherited wealth, control over much of
the economy, support from the influential Church hierarchy strongly
backed by the Vatican in a predominantly Catholic country and from the
nation’s largest newspaper, subsidized by the country organizing the
ongoing military attack against Nicaragua, and the backing of the longterm
master of the region. But whatever merit the charge has, it is clear
enough that the Sandinistas are the rankest amateurs in this regard,
restricted to crude and sometimes ugly devices of control long surpassed
by more sophisticated practitioners of the art.
1.7 The Domestic Successes of “Conservatism”
The business-organized counterattack against the Crisis of Democracy
has had many domestic successes: weakening the labor movement,
increasing the state role in the economy to the benefit of advanced
sectors of industry, undermining health, safety, civil rights and
environmental protection, extending business control over the ideological
system and reversing the weak steps towards a more open society taken
during “the time of troubles,” and so on. Its economic consequences
include the deepest recession since the war followed by “a classical
Keynesian recovery” (see chapter 4, section 5), nicely timed to create
the impression during the 1984 election that things were looking up
under “Reaganomics.” During Reagan’s first term, the average annual
growth rate fell by 25% from the rate during the Carter years while
Reagan’s “conservatism” brought productive investment and the US
position in international trade to record lows and the Federal deficit to
record heights as the ratio of state spending to GNP rose more rapidly
than at any time since World War II. Growth in nonagricultural
employment fell from 3.3% under Carter to 1%. Employment in