Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CONTRINING THE THRERT OF DEMOCRACY
1. 58
longer needed to read the lines written for him by the rich folk as he had been
doing most of his life, he disappeared into rotal oblivion. After eight years of
pretense about the "revolution" Reagan wrought, no one would dream of asking
its standard bearer for his thoughts about any topic, because it is understood,
as it always was, thar he has none. When Reagan was invired to Japan
as an elder statesman, his hosts were surprised-and given the fat fee, rather
annoyed-to discover thar he could not hold press conferences or talk on any
subject. Their discomfiture aroused some amusement in the American press:
rhe Japanese believed what rhey had read about this remarkable figure, failing
to comprehend the workings of the mysterious occidental mind.
The hoax perpetrated by the media and the intellectual community is of
some interest for Hume's paradox about submission and authority. Srate capitalist
democracy has a certain tension with regard to the locus of power: in
principle, the people rule, but effective power resides largely in private hands,
with large-scale effects throughout the social order. One way to reduce the tension
is to remove the public from the scene, except in form. The Reagan phenomenon
offered a new way to achieve this fundamental goal of capitalist
democracy. The Unired States functioned through the 1980s wirhout a chief
executive. This is a major advance in the marginalization of the public. It is as
if there were an election every few years to choose a Queen to perform certain
ritual tasks: to appear on ceremonial occasions, to read aloud the government's
programs, and so on. As the most advanced and sophisticated of the stare capitalist
democracies, the United States has often led the way in devising means
to control the domestic enemy, and the latest inspiration will doubtless be
mimicked elsewhere, with the usual lag.
Even when issues arise in the political system, the concentration of effective
power limits the threat. The question rarely arises in the United States because
of the subordination of the polirical and ideological system to business interests,
but in more democratic societies to the south, where conflicting ideas and
approaches reach the political arena, the situarion is different. As is again fa miliar,
government policies that private power finds unwelcome will lead to capital
Righr, disinvestment, and social decline until "business confidence" is
restored with the abandonment of a threat to privilege; these facts of life exert
a decisive influence on the political system (with military force, supported by
the ruler of the hemisphere, in reserve if matters get out of hand). To put the
basic point crassly, unless the rich and powerful are satisfied, everyone will suffer,
because they control the basic social levers, derermining what will be produced
and consumed, and what crumbs will filter down to their subjects. For
the homeless in the streets, rhen, rhe primary objective is to ensure (hat the
rich live happily in their mansions. This crucial factor, along with simple control
over resources, severely limits the force available to rhe governed and
diminishes Hume's paradox in a well-functioning capitalist democracy in
which the general public is scattered and marginalized.