Noam Chomsky in Dialogues, by Jerry Brown
On Budget & Economy:
1920s and 1950s were both called the "End of History"
The current period is very much like the 1920s. In the 1920s, they were calling it the end of history. History had reached perfection; business rule was total; inequality was extraordinary. It was the great period of mass production and automobilization,
and so on. It looked like pure business rule with nobody interfering with it. Then, along came the 1930s, and that proved not to be true. That kind of cycle's been going on all through modern history.The book "The End of Ideology" in 1959 argued that
ideological issues were over: they finally understood everything, more or less. Economics, incidentally, were saying the same thing. Paul Samuelson, the leading economist at the time, was writing that it would take an idiot not to be able to maintain a
steady 3% growth with very low unemployment. From now on it was just a matter of tinkering. Well, a couple of years later the economy had totally changed, the country was up in arms and there was tremendous ferment. These cycles go on and on.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.217
Feb 12, 1996
On Corporations:
Since 1700s, grasping businessmen overwhelmed US government
James Madison, one of the most influential framers at the Constitutional Convention, explained and stressed and urged that the primary responsibility of government was, in his words, to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
Therefore, democracy is a threat.By 1792, Madison condemned what he called the "daring depravity" of the time. He was pre-capitalist.
He thought that a class of enlightened aristocrats would develop, but it turned out to be a class of grasping businessmen, who, as he put it, were becoming "the tools and tyrants" of government.
They were "overwhelming" the government with their power, and they were being "bribed" by it as well. Tools and tyrants. Madison didn't like that. And in fact, that is a pretty good picture of what is going on in Washington right now.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.214-5
Feb 12, 1996
On Corporations:
Most believe government is run for the special interests
You can find analogs to the current period. The 1920s and the 1950s were partial analogs. The Gay Nineties, the last decade of the last century, were very similar. There were times, like now, where enormous power was shifting towards very narrow sectors
of wealth and privilege whose goal was to undermine functioning democracy, to convert the society into roughly a 2-tiered society.These wealthy sectors also want to move the power to make decisions into hands that are invisible and unaccountable to
the public.
Inequality is getting pretty close to the level of the 1920s, right before the stock market crash. Democratic forms are functioning less and less well, and what's more, the population knows it. Over 80% of the population now says, in polls,
that the government is run for the few and for the special interests, not for the people. That figure used to run a steady 50% for many years. It's just shot up to over 80%, revealing a tremendous alienation and cynicism.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.218
Feb 12, 1996
On Crime:
US uses imprisonment for population control
CHOMSKY: Crime has been rather steady for about 20 years. It is the perception of crime, which is fanned by propaganda, that has increased enormously, and the number of and the number of people in prison is just zooming. It's about triple what it was
during the Reagan years. The US is way ahead of the rest of the industrial world, maybe all the world, in imprisoning its own population. That's for population control. None of that has anything to do with crime.BROWN: You've got states like
Texas building surplus capacity and then using brokers to bring in prisoners from other states. Some people might say that this increase in prison population is a conspiracy, because it seems to be working almost perfectly for those with extra capacity f
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.225
Feb 12, 1996
On Education:
Corporate propaganda in schools instills obedience
Right after WWII, a huge campaign of corporate propaganda began, which went after everything, including the schools. By the early 1950s about 1/3 of the material in schools, meaning textbooks and so on, was straight business propaganda.
That's 1/3 of the total material, and the rest was very heavily influenced by it. Well, even the most dedicated teacher is going to be heavily influenced by that kind of pressure. It makes a difference.
The schools, by and large, now instill obedience and acceptance of the doctrines preferred by those who have the power to fight what they call "the everlasting battle for the minds of men."
This pattern goes right through college and through the professions.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.220
Feb 12, 1996
On Government Reform:
People who serve power are later considered false prophets
BROWN: You describe how throughout history honor has been given to those who speak on behalf of the powerful.CHOMSKY: Take the Bible, for example--and we'll find that those who have served power have always been rewarded with respectability. The
prophets of the Bible came in 2 types. The people who served power, were the ones who were later considered false prophets. There were the people, however, who, in their own time, were respected, honored and protected. There was another group of people
who exposed the corruptions of power. They're the ones who were reviled, imprisoned, driven into the desert, and so on. It was only much later that they were recognized as the true prophets.
That pattern just perpetuates through history, and for
perfectly good reasons. If you serve power, authority and privilege, you'll end up, by & large, with respectability. And if you undermine them, whether it's by political analysis, moral critique, or anything else, they're not going to applaud you for it.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.212-3
Feb 12, 1996
On Homeland Security:
Pentagon subsidizes dynamic economy via public funds
Take a look at the functioning sectors of the economy--computers, electronics, aeronautics, metallurgy--these dynamic sectors of the economy are very heavily subsidized by the public, and much of it flows through the Pentagon system.
During the Cold War period it was always possible to claim that we do this because of the Russians. Well, now you need other excuses, and it's intriguing that instantly, as soon as the Russians were gone, the excuses changed.
Now we need it, not because of the Russian threat, but as the Bush administration put it in March 1990, because of the "technological sophistication" of Third World powers. That's why we need it. So the Pentagon budget has got to remain the same, or
even go up.This Third World argument doesn't even merit ridicule. In fact, a large part of their technological sophistication is the arms that we sell them. And the public pays for that, too, through subsidies.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.222-3
Feb 12, 1996
On Technology:
Federal scam: transfer funds to high-tech defense industries
There's a little scam going on here. The same people who are drilling into your head that the federal government is your enemy are also saying we have to strengthen it--but only that part of the government that pours money into their pockets.
So the Heritage Foundation, the right wing foundation that, more or less, sets the budget and agenda for the right wing, wants to increase the Pentagon budget--against the will of the population.
The population is opposed to that by about 6 to 1, but the Heritage Foundation wants it because they know something that you're not supposed to know.
That secret is that the system is primarily functioning, and has been for 50 years, to transfer funds from the general public to advanced sectors in high-technology industries.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.219
Feb 12, 1996
On Welfare & Poverty:
The vile maxim: all for ourselves and nothing for others
BROWN: In many of your books, you have referred to the "vile maxim" of Adam Smith, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people." What did he have in mind? What's the context for that comment?CHOMSKY: He had in mind the basic principle of the
rising capitalist classes, which is what the working people of New England paraphrased a century later without having read Adam Smith, "Gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
This idea of all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else was, Smith argued, the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind." He pointed out that this impulse, sometimes, incidentally, happens to help people, but he certainly wasn't impressed.
In fact, the historical Adam Smith, who was also rooted in the Enlightenment and anti-capitalist in many respects, is rather different from the image of him that's been constructed.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.216
Feb 12, 1996
On Welfare & Poverty:
They stoke racial hatred to cut public services
BROWN: Do you think there is a racial element involved in the question of who gets the benefits of government welfare programs?CHOMSKY: There certainly is a racial element. It's part of the really vicious propaganda that has been developed in order
to sell the corporate welfare programs that transfer funds to the rich. One way in which this has been done--this goes right back to Reagan's crazy anecdotes about black welfare mothers driving Cadillacs and breeding like rabbits--is by engendering
race hatred.
Public policy for about 20 years now has been directed to establishing a sharp divide between a small sector of the very rich, and the majority of the population while cutting out public services. You've got to get them to accept
the cuts somehow. What you do is get people frightened, get them to hate each other, in order to turn their attention away from the real power and towards fearing and battling each other. The welfare mother, by implication black, has been used for that p
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.224-5
Feb 12, 1996
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