Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
personal so maybe more people could be ready to experience that life that is
possible.
I think that's quite true. and in fact the people who understand this the best
are those who are carrying out the control and domination in the more free
societies. like the U.S. and England. where popular struggles have have won a
lot of freedoms over the years and the state has limited capacity to coerce. It is
very striking that it's precisely in those societies that elite groups-the business
world, state managers and so on-recognized early on that they are going to
have to develop massive methods of control of attitude and opinion, because
you cannOt control people by force anymore and therefore you have to modify
their consciousness so that they don't perceive that they are living under conditions
of alienation, oppression, subordination and so on. In fact, that's what
probably a couple nil lion dollars are spell( on each year in the U.S., very selfconsciously,
from the framing of television advertisements for two-year olds to
what you are taught in graduate school economics programs. It's designed to
create a consciousness of subordination and it's also intended specifically and
pretty consciously to suppress normal human emotions.
Normal human emotions are sympathy and solidarity, not JUSt for people
bur fo r stranded dolphins. It's just a normal reaction for people. If you go back
to the classical political economists, people like Adam Smith, this was just
taken for gramed as the core of human nature and society. One of the main
wnumtratiuns uf advrtising and t:dlu..:atiun is to drivt: that uut uf yuur mind.
And it's very conscious. In fact, it's conscioliS in social policy right in from of
our eyes today. Take the effort to destroy Social Security. Well, what's the point
of that? There's a lot of scam about financial problems, which is all total nonsense.
And, of course, they wam Wall Street to make a killing. Underlying it
all is something much deeper. Social Security is based on a human emotion
and it's a natural human emotion which has to be driven out of people minds,
namely the emotion that you care about other people. You care. It's a social and
community responsibility to care whether a disabled widow across town has
enough food to eat, or whether a kid across the street can go to school. You
have to get that Out of people's heads. YOli have to make them say, "Look, you
are a personal, rational wealth maximizer. If that disabled widow didn't prepare
for her own future, it's her problem not your problem. It's not your fault she
doesn't have enough to eat so why should you care?"
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There is no such a thing as society then, is that what you are saying?
Yes. There is only you maximizing your own wealth and subordinating
yourself to power and not thinking about anyone else. And that has an effect.
Yo u can see it in attitudes. Now, just to get back to your point, the same is true
of those who are trying to change society to more decent fo rms. Yes, you are
going to have to deal with people's consciousness and awareness and, as I say,