Noam Chomsky – What principles and values rule the world? – DAI Heidelberg

well the question that was posed which principles and values rule the world immediately brings to mind a comment by the famous American political campaign manager Mark Hanna he was asked what is needed to run a successful political campaign and he answered that two things are important the first is money and I can't remember what the second one is that was 1895 long before the current period of multibillion-dollar political campaigns in the United States where the primary task of an elected representative from the first moment of taking office is to begin to try to raise money for the next campaign while corporate lobbyists working together with his staff for fair legislation for him to sign with predictable consequences all of this is part of a general assault on democracy matter to which I'll return well mark Hanna's comment provides a large part of the answer to the question of what principles and values rule the world but it's not quite that simple it's a large part but not all there are quite important cases when a wealth and global power have been dissociated in fact that was true when Hannah spoke those words in 1895 at that time of the United States was by far the richest country in the world but it was not a major global power it's reach extended the richness was so great that it was in beyond even the sum of the two the second and the third richest powers from England and Germany the reach of the United States did extend at the time over North America and the Caribbean largely but not much beyond on the eve of the first world war the economy as I mentioned was greater than Germany and Britain combined but it still trailed Britain or for that matter even France as a global power so money and power were significantly dissociated that of course changed dramatically with the two world wars a particularly world war two other industrial powers were devastated or severely harmed while the war greatly benefited the United States manufacturing actually quadrupled military spending and that the depression the basis was laid for rapid post-war growth based substantially on the dynamic state sector of the economy which prepared the ground for today's high-tech economy by the end of the war Second World War the United States might have had as much as half of the total world a wealth of the world astonishing figure data for that period or somewhat imprecise it also had incomparable security and a position of global power with no historical precedent France declined very sharply as world power and the British recognized that they could only hope to be a junior partner in the system of world order managed in Washington as the British Foreign Office ruefully put the matter with Apple historical experience of their own high British officials had few illusions about what was happening they recognized I'll quote them that Washington is guided by the economic imperialism of American business interests and is attempting to elbow us out under the cloak of a benevolent and a funkier internationalism that's actually a fair estimate of the real nature of the principles and the professed values one senior British Minister commented that Americans believe that the United States stands for something in the world something of which the world has need something which the world is going to like something in the final analysis which the world is going to take whether it likes it or not he was articulating the real world vision of what scholarship calls Wilsonian idealism the version that conforms to the historical and internal documentary record well naturally the immediate post-war position of global dominance could not be entirely maintained other industrial countries reconstructed the decolonization took its agonizing course leading to a more diverse international system but with the United States still uniquely powerful so by 1970 when we have good statistics the US share of global wealth had declined to about five percent still enormous though not what it had been in 1945 and it remains today not far below that these are conventional estimates by economists and however they give a misleading picture of the principles and values that rule the world crucially world order has changed under the impact of the policies of neoliberal globalization of the world economy of the past generation and by today a corporate ownership of the world's wealth is becoming a more realistic measure of global power than national wealth as the world departs more than before from the model of nationally discrete political economies is very revealing insight into these matters and provided by important work by Sean Starr's he's the first political economist to have investigated these questions closely and the results of his investigations are quite illuminating turns out that in virtually every economic sector manufacturing finance services retail and others US corporations are well in the lead in ownership of the global economy and overall their ownership is close to 50% of the total of world wealth roughly what US national wealth was in 1945 so in that regard there's been little fundamental change though a shift in the character of ownership of the world one good illustration is iPhone's we I suppose most of you have these are assembled in China by Taiwanese firms major one is Foxconn these Taiwanese for Taiwanese firms are intern subcontractors for Apple in 2014 last year for which we have good figures Fox cons profit was 4.3 billion dollars while apples was 10 times larger than 40 4.5 billion dollars and China's share of profit was tiny though it is formerly considered the exporter of iPhones and there are similar measures across the international economy now multinational corporations are nationally based and they rely on their home nation state for protection and sustenance even for their existence quite generally they expect the public to pay the costs and to take the risks of substantial parts of research and development and then to hand the results over to them in the system of really existing state capitalism which is based substantially on the principle of public subsidy private profit and of course they demand and receive exorbitant patent protections to ensure monopoly rights for a long period it's a huge tax on the population fundamental feature of all the mislabeled free trade agreements this is in addition to the astronomical tax burden transferred to the public by offshore tax havens other devices available to the corporate sector and the super-rich the end result of all of this is that in the current globalized world of state-based multinational corporations the US dominance of the world economy is in important respects not that different from what it was in 1945 and the phrase United States of course does not refer to its population but rather to a tiny sector of extreme privilege and power within the society pretty much a fraction of 1% turning to another dimension of power in the military dimension the u.s. is of course in entirely without parallel spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined technologically far more advanced hundreds of bases all over the world military operations in every contract eclis continent no one else is even close in these respects apart from money and force another factor in global rule is public opinion in theory at least sometimes in fact in the more free societies this has been a battleground for centuries and it still is with quite an intricate interplay of principles and values structures of power and Liberatore commitments it's quite instructive to take a closer look at this at this complex so consider first the question of values it's quite easy to demonstrate that every world power past and present has been committed to the highest values to demonstrate this it's only necessary to listen to the pronouncements of political figures and the intellectual classes so for example a few days ago the New York Times featured a lengthy debate with contributions with many eminent scholars on whether America's unique global mission of championing democracy and human rights is being undermined by ongoing crimes crimes of the Russians the global mission is not defended in this debate it's proposed accepting its validity is a precondition for admission into serious company into serious discussion going back earlier in Britain's day in the Sun similar mystical allusions were promulgated even by such a critical intelligence as John Stuart Mill actually right at a moment a peak moment of Britain's international crimes Japanese imperialists were bringing in what they called an earthly paradise to China and protecting the Chinese people from Chinese bandits while they were massacring and destroying in Nanjing and it would not be easy to find an exception to this pattern I actually have never found one furthermore contrary to their carefully cultivated self-image as courageous and in the independent-minded critics intellectuals have rarely failed to provide their services to the powerful throughout history going back as far as classical Greece in the Bible a good illustration of the general pattern is world war 1 which is now eliciting a good deal of valuable research and commentary on this end tannery one topic is not much discussed but it's interesting at the time during World War one prominent intellectuals on all sides lined up enthusiastically in support of their own states to demonstrate the nobility of the German cause the famous manifesto of ninety-three German intellectuals appealed to the legacy of dirt Beethoven and Kant whose work was banned in the United States under the progressive Wilson administration their counterparts in the West were no less enthusiastic so in the United States John Dewey and his progressive intellectual circle held Woodrow Wilson's decision to join the war as a triumph I'll quote them a triumph accomplished by a class which must comprehensively but loosely be described as the intellectuals that's us who ensured that the United States entered the war under the influence of a moral verdict reached after the utmost liberation by the more thoughtful members of the community who were in fact the victims of concoctions of the British Ministry of Information which secretly defined its tasks as to direct the thought of most of the world but particularly the thought of American progressive intellectuals who might help with a pacifist country into war fever as they did very successfully Woodrow Wilson won the 1960 presidential election on the slogan peace without victory and instantly with the help of the most thoughtful members of the community within months was able to convert the country the one dedicated to victory without peace there were of course some around the world who did not tow the line so obediently including such notable figures as Bertrand Russell Eugene Debs Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht who all ended in prison some were treated more leniently like the prominent American essayist Randolph Bourne he was not imprisoned he was simply dropped by progressive journals after he committed the crime of criticizing what he called the League of benevolently imperialist nations and their exalted endeavors this pattern of praise and punishment is a consistent one throughout recorded history in general when political and intellectual leaders proclaimed the highest values their pronouncements carry no information even in the technical sense of the term information their predictable whatever the facts true there is always a possibility that the claims have some degree of validity but a skeptical mind is always in order with regard to the United States the stance is commonly described as American exceptionalism but the term is incorrect there's nothing at all exceptional about the stance or about the ease with which huge crimes can be dismissed in the US case that includes the two original sin of the society the virtual extermination of the indigenous population and the most vicious form of slavery in history which also happened to be a cornerstone of the modern economy in manufacturing finance Commerce for the United States and England particularly for others as well and the impact is lasting to the present day symbolic of the continuing impact are two critically important human rights cases that are now being pursued actively right here the case of long time prisoners Mumia abu-jamal and leonard peltier well going back to the professed values among them is that prominent among them is that public opinion should determine policy and hence rule the world and it's worth taking a closer look at this doctrine in the modern period the issues came to the fore primarily in the more free societies the first England then the United States they were raised by David Hume in his discussion of the first principles of government and his words as usual or lucid and compelling I'll simply quote them Hume found nothing more surprising than to see the easiness with which the many are governed by the few and to observe the implicit submission with which men resigned their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers when we inquire by what means this wonder is brought about we shall find that as force is always on the side of the governed the governors have nothing to support them but opinion tis therefore an opinion only that government is founded and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governance as well as to the most free and the most popular well Hume was an astute observer and his paradox of government is much to the point although history teaches us all too painfully that we cannot ignore the contrary thesis which had been put forth somewhat earlier during the English Civil War the thesis that the power of the sword is and ever has been the foundation of all titles the government the force of course has more subtle modes including an array of costs well short of overt violence that attached to the refusal to submit Humes concept of supportive opinion can be elaborated as in Graham Chian concepts of hegemony and others but the basic point I think is correct public consent and implicit submission can take many forms among them the form recognized by the British Foreign Office in 1945 like it or not this is what you're going to get a more polite way of putting the matter had been devised by American sociologist Franklin Henry Giddings when US forces landed in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century with the goal of as the president put it to uplift and civilized our little brown brothers fact uplifting several hundred thousand of them directly to heaven and leaving wreckage that in many ways remains and is right now in fact eliciting quite a remarkable reaction over a century later as you can read in the front pages well to explain the civilizing mission in proper tones Giddings devised the concept consent without consent here's the way put it if in later years the colonized will see and admit that the disputed relation was for the higher interest it may reasonably be held that authority has been imposed with the consent of the governed the rather as when a parent prevents a child from running into the busy street and the child later comes to recognize that it was the right thing to do this concept consent without consent has been of considerable utility for structures of dominance not only in Imperial history but with all the possible elaborations the essential core remains pretty straightforward that much as humilated it and the conundrum is real even despotic rule is commonly founded on a measure of consent was true for the Nazis for example the abdication of Rights is familiar in more free societies and yet popular opinion is not a force easily discounted particularly when it's organized and mobilized an elite opinion particularly in the more democratic societies has always recognized it to be a serious threat particularly at moments when it proves effective and has to be repressed and controlled in the service of the higher interests of power and wealth which are supposed to rule the worldé by right these crisis crises issues arise regularly at moments of disruption and crisis one case of very great historical significance was the formation of the independent United States two hundred and fifty years ago with of course a new constitution and Humes conundrum arose at once it was formulated sharply by James Madison leading framer of the Constitution England was of course the model that the framers considered and Madison pointed out then quoting him that if in England elections were open to all classes of people the landless majority would Institute an agrarian law which would distribute property and that of course would be unjust the rights of property owners must be protected and more generally as Madison put it a--just government must protect the minority of the opulent against the majority a basic principle that rules the world Madison recognized that over time that was likely to be an increase quoting him an increase in the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life and secretly saw for a more equal distribution of its blessings and their levelling spirit may lead to efforts at reform which will threaten property rights the popular from ferment of the time Madison felt already gave warning of the future danger and to work ward off such injustice the Madisonian Constitution the one we have and you know States assigns primary power to the Senate which at that time was unelected and which represented as Madison put it the wealth of the nation those who have sympathy for property owners and their rights the rest would then be fragmented in various ways and he hoped that by such means the great majority would be marginalized and controlled so that power would remain in the hands of the privileged few by consent without consent and for the benefit of all it's important to remember that Madison's mentality was pre-capitalist he assumed that those who held the wealth of the nation would be benevolent gentlemen aristocrats of the mythical Roman model dedicated to the public good Adam Smith at exactly the same time had a much sharper eye he wrote 1776 that those he called the Masters of mankind and for him the merchants and manufacturers of England would follow their vile Maxim all for ourselves nothing for anyone else did not take too long for Madison to recognize his error of writing to Jefferson and 1792 he deplored the daring depravity of the times as stock jobbers become the Praetorian brand of government at once its tools and its tyrants bribed by its largesses over eyeing it by clamors and combinations which is not a bad description of today's neoliberal world two hundred and twenty-five years later it's of some interest to compare Madison's concerns with those of our doddle in the first major work of political science is politics Aristotle reviewed a variety of political systems he concluded that democracy was the best or perhaps the least bad but he recognized a flaw the great mass of the poor could use their voting power to take the property of the rich which would be unjust our Madison and Aristotle faced the same problem but they selected opposite solutions Aristotle advised reducing inequality by what we would call welfare state measures Madison felt that the answer was to reduce democracy setting the stage for popular struggles elite repression that continued until the present day such conflicts arise regularly when social life is destructed disrupted maybe by depression or by war so during World War one the United States was only peripherally engaged but nevertheless the war was followed by a severe repression Woodrow Wilson's Red Scare the harsh harshest repression in modern US history thousands of people were deported many were jailed the vigorous labor movement was smashed along with independent thought it paved the way for the Gilded Age that followed through the 1920s until it collapsed with the Great Depression well despite the short term efficacy of force the masters of mankind understood that enough freedom had been won by popular struggle so that state violence was becoming inadequate to control the masses and it would be necessary to impose with whom called implicit submission in other ways by control of attitudes and opinion recognition of this new reality was expressed in both intellectual opinion and in institutional form in intellectual opinion the recognition was articulated in essays of the 1920s on democratic theory most notably by walter Lippmann the most respected and influential u.s. public intellectual of the 20th century in its institutional counterpart the recognition was expressed in the rise of the huge public relations industry initially and most expensively in the war free societies the United States and Britain where it was needed most to ensure that the public will in Humes phrase resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers the enormous public relations industry was devoted to what Lippmann approvingly called a new art and the practice of democracy the manufacture of consent the engineering of consent in the phrase of his associate Edward Bernays was one of the founders of the public relations industry and it's worth remembering that Lippmann and Bearnaise were at the social-democratic edge of the political spectrum kind of left end they were Wilson roseville Kennedy liberals us since the term liberal means social democratic both of them had been members of the first state propaganda agency the Wilsons Committee on Public Information the Orwellian name created to drive pacifist population to jingoist fanaticism and hatred of all things German and it succeeded brilliantly very much impressing the members of the Commission like Lippmann and Bearnaise who hoped that the same techniques would ensure that what they called the intelligent minorities would rule undisturbed by the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd the general public ignorant and meddlesome outsiders whose function is to be spectators not participants it's a central theme of Lippmann so-called progressive essays on democracy from which on taking these quotes and in the same vein one of the founders of modern political science Harold Lasswell another eminent progressive figure urge that we not succumb to democratic dogmatism 'he's about men being the best judges of their own interests they are not we are the responsible man and the thinking captures very well the perceptions of progressive intellectual opinion so President Wilson for example held that an a leech of gentlemen with elevated ideals must be empowered to preserve stability and righteousness it's essentially the perspective of the founders of American democracy in more recent years the elite of gentlemen are transmuted into what's called the technocratic elite the action intellectuals of Kennedy's Camelot Strauss II and neo-cons other configurations but throughout one or another variant of the doctrine prevails with its rather striking Leninist overtones as I mentioned the threat of democracy regularly arises when social life is disrupted by economic crisis or war the Great Depression and World War two led to a powerful wave of radical democracy all over the world with interesting consequences that there's no time to go into but within the United States the reaction was similar to Wilson's Red Scare after World War one the anti-communist crusade which is mislabeled McCarthyism actually McCarthy carried it to an extreme and he was tolerated as long as he kept to the right targets but he was eliminated very quickly when he made the mistake of attacking systems of authentic power the tumult of the 1960s that much of it inspired by the Indochina Wars raised similar elite concerns and we're living now in the aftermath once again the most revealing reactions are at the left end of mainstream spectrum they were clearly articulated in an important study entitled the crisis of democracy was written by liberal internationalists from Europe the United States and Japan within the United States it's the group that staffed the Carter Administration gives an indication of their political stance the crisis that they perceived mirrored the traditional concern that there's too much democracy the American reporter Harvard professor government adviser Samuel Huntington looked back with nostalgia to the days when as he put it Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers so that democracy flourished with no crisis the public was silent passive apathetic obedient willing to be spectators not participants leaving serious matters to the intelligent minority to adopt the Lippmann Bernays terminology but in the 1960s a threat to order begun to arise special interest groups tried to enter the political arena and press for their demands the special interests were women minorities young people old people farmers workers in short the population who began to forsake the function of passive spectators assigned to them in progressive democratic theory there was one group that was omitted in the lament of the liberal internationalists the corporate sector they do not comprise the special interest they represent the national interest and therefore their dominant influence and what we call democracy is right and proper and merits no mention or concern the one leading concern of the trilateral scholars will the failure of the institutions responsible for what they called the indoctrination of the young the schools and the universities they were not indoctrinating the young properly and that's why we see these uprisings in the streets and the efforts of the special interests to press their demands in the political arena and the trilateral scholars therefore urged more moderation and democracy their phrase if the national interest is to be protected along with more effective indoctrination of the youth it's of some interest to look at the right-wing counterpart to the what to the liberal Internet last call for more moderation and democracy intellectually it's much less interesting what's of course much more influential with direct ties to systems of power it's most eloquent expression was in a memorandum by corporate lawyer Louis Powell soon to be appointed to the Supreme Court it was a memorandum that was sent secretly to the business based american chamber of commerce soon leaked its title is the attack on the American free enterprise system it's interesting not only for the content but for the paranoid tone you might want to look it up on the internet it's interesting reading for those who take for granted their right to rule if anything gets out of control it means that the world is coming to an end rather like a spoiled three-year-old child so the rhetoric tends to be inflated and paranoid Powell identifies the criminals who are destroying the American free enterprise system Ralph Nader with his consumer safety campaigns Herbert mark who'sa who was preaching preaching Marxism to the young new leftists who were on the rampage all over while what he calls their naive victims dominated the universities and schools controlled television and other media the educated community virtually the entire government and their takeover of the country he said is a dire threat to freedom Powell through the obvious conclusion a business owns the country and therefore the oppressed businesspeople who have lost all influence to this rampage should organize and defend themselves instead of idly sitting by while fundamental freedoms are destroyed by the Marxist onslaught from the media the universities and the government and despite the absurdity of the picture it shouldn't be simply dismissed with ridicule this is the mentality of the Masters of mankind who can act and do act as after World War one the ideological constructions of the intellectual classes had their institutional counterpart in this case the neoliberal programs that began to take shape by the late 1970s accelerated under Reagan and Thatcher than beyond right to the present among their other effects all of these programs undermine functioning democracy quite severely in Europe and in the United States as well no time to review the details sure they're familiar including the collapse of the center and the extreme contempt for institutions which can take ominous forms as we know I'm old enough to remember the emotional impact of Hitler's speeches which I heard on the radio as a child not understanding the words the mood that they evoked was clear enough and current electoral results particularly in Austria and Germany evoked some unpleasant memories fortunately a lot has been achieved since these terrifying days providing us with a legacy of freedom and justice that affords opportunities to recover what has been lost and to move on and to confront new challenges including some of extraordinary significance no discussion today of how the world is ruled or in fact of any human issue should fail at the very least to mention that this generation is facing dire questions that have never arisen before in human history questions concerning the survival of organized human society both the growing threat of terminal nuclear war and the inescapable prospect of catastrophic environmental damage to grim shadows that hover over every choice and decision that we can that we confront and these choices and decisions are urgent and cannot be deferred they will determine whether there is even a meaningful question about rule of the world well I began by mentioning mark Ana's observation about the rule of the world by money I might end by recalling Albert Einstein's response when he was asked about the weapons that would be used in the next war and what he said is I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones that's among those who remain above water that is as the huge glaciers of the Antarctic continue to melt rising raising sea level substantially and other effects of human folly take their course always with David Humes proviso if we maintain the implicit submission with which men resigned their sentiments and passions to those of their rulers which is not a necessity but a choice a choice as to whether organized human society will survive you

Channel: DAI Heidelberg

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Length: 48min 24sec (2904 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/fuzzydunlots]

I put a lecture on when I go to sleep every night with autoplay on. When I put a Chomsky lecture on, I know for a fact he'll still be giving a lecture in the morning. And a different lecture. So many lectures are just book junkets with a thousand duplicates, not Noams.

[u/I_done_a_plop-plop]

Money, dear boy.

[u/can1exy]

Negative Noam. Must now listen to some positive Pinker to shake off the gloom.