Are we all being mis-lead to think that putting new candidates in office will actually change anything?? Read below and find out.
Quote below of "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky
Quote below of "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky
MAN: Then what kind of mechanism for social planning do you think would work? Obviously you're not too sanguine about our current form of government.
Answer: Well, there's nothing wrong with the form-I mean, there are some things wrong with the form-but what's really wrong is that the substance is missing. Look, as long as you have private control over the economy, it doesn't make any difference what forms you have, because they can't do anything. You could have political parties where everybody gets together and participates, and you make the programs, make things as participatory as you like-and it would still have only the most marginal effect on policy. And the reason is, power lies elsewhere.
So suppose all of us here convinced everybody in the country to vote for us for President, we got 98 percent of the vote and both Houses of Congress, and then we started to institute very badly needed social reforms that most of the population wants. Simply ask yourself, what would happen? Well, if your imagination doesn't tell you, take a look at real cases. There are places in the world that have a broader range of political parties than we do, like Latin American countries, for example, which in this respect are much more democratic than we are. Well, when popular reform candidates in Latin America get elected and begin to introduce reforms, two things typically happen. One is, there's a military coup supported by the United States. But suppose that doesn't happen. What you get is capital strike investment capital flows out of the country, there's a lowering of investment, and the economy grinds to a halt.
That's the problem that Nicaragua has faced in the 1980s-and which it cannot overcome, in my view, it's just a hopeless problem. See, the Sandinistas have tried to run a mixed economy: they've tried to carry out social programs to benefit the population, but they've also had to appeal to the business community to prevent capital flight from destroying the place. So most public funds, to the extent there are any, go as a bribe to the wealthy, to try to keep them investing in the country. The only problem is, the wealthy would prefer not to invest unless they have political power: they'd rather see the society destroyed. So the wealthy take the bribes, and they send them to Swiss banks and to Miami banks-because from their perspective, the Sandinista government just has the wrong priorities. I mean, these guys hate democracy just as much as Congress hates democracy: they want the political system to be in the hands of wealthy elites, and when it is again, then they'll call it "democracy" and they'll resume investing, and the economy will finally start to function again.
Well, the same thing would happen here if we ever had a popular reform candidate who actually achieved some formal level of power: there would be disinvestment, capital strike, a grinding down of the economy. And the reason is quite simple. In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the political system can make some difference-I don't want to say it's zero-but the differences are going to be very slight.
In fact, if you think through the logic of this, you'll see that so long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal: and that's to make sure that the rich folk are happy-because unless they are, nobody else is going to get anything. So if you're a homeless person sleeping in the streets of Manhattan, let's say, your first concern must be that the guys in the mansions are happy because if they're happy, then they'll invest, and the economy will work, and things will function, and then maybe something will trickle down to you somewhere along the line. But if they're not happy, everything's going to grind to a halt, and you're not even going to get anything trickling down. So if you're a homeless person in the streets, your first concern is the happiness of the wealthy guys in the mansions and the fancy restaurants. Basically that's a metaphor for the whole society.
Like, suppose Massachusetts were to increase business taxes. Most of the population is in favor of it, but you can predict what would happen. Business would run a public relations campaign-which is true, in fact, it's not lies-saying, "You raise taxes on business, you soak the rich, and you'll find that capital is going to flow elsewhere, and you're not going to have any jobs, you're not going to have anything." That's not the way they'd put it exactly, but that's what it would amount to: "Unless you make us happy you're not going to have anything, because we own the place; you live here, but we own the place." And in fact, that's basically the message that is presented, not in those words of course, whenever a reform measure does come along somewhere-they have a big propaganda campaign saying, it's going to hurt jobs, it's going to hurt investment, there's going to be a loss of business confidence, and so on. That's just a complicated way of saying, unless you keep business happy, the population isn't going to have anything.