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The Common Good

Chomsky, Noam; interviewed by David Barsamian
Publisher:  Odonian, USA
Year Published:  1998  
Pages:  192pp   Price:  $18.00   ISBN:  1-878825-08-9
Resource Type:  Book

Interviews with Noam Chomsky on the U.S. and the world.

Abstract:  The Common Good has been compiled from seven long interviews David Barsamian did with Noam Chomsky and is "a penetrating look at the US and the world." It covers a wide range of topics including "freedom", "globalization", "postmodernism", "crime" and "libraries", amongst many others. The book is divided into five sections: "The Common Good" begins with the subsection titled "That dangerous radical Aristotle" and ends with the section "Freedom." "On the Home front" contains subsections such as "Corporate Welfare," "More money, fewer voters," and "Is corporate power invincible?" The third section, "Around the World" looks at "The myth of Third World debt" and considers in detail the situation in Mexico, Cuba and Guatemala, in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, in East Timor, in the Mideast and in India. This section is followed by "The US left (and imitations thereof)" which includes subsections titled "Are left and right meaningful terms?" and "Excommunicated by the illuminati." The last section of the book talks about "What you can do" and contains a list of "some organizations worth supporting" as well as sources for current information, including magazines, newsletters and websites.

Noam Chomsky has written numerous books on social issues and has received many honours and awards. Since 1955, he has been teaching linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[Abstract by Nabeeha Chaudhary]



Table of Contents

Editor's Note

The common good
That dangerous radical Aristotle
Equality
Libraries
Freedom

On the home front
The myth of hard times
Corporate welfare
Crime: suites vs. streets
The Media
More Money, fewer voters
Is corporate power invincible?

Around the world
Is globalization inevitable?
The myth of Third World debt
Mexico, Cuba and Guatemala
Brazil, Argentina and Chile
The Mideast
East Timor
India
International organizations

What you can do
Signs of progress (and not)
Resistance
The magic answer
Manufacturing dissent
Some organization worth supporting
Sources of current information
Notes
Index
Alternative Radio Tapes & Transcripts
Other Real Story books


Excerpts:

The idea that great wealth and democracy can't exist side by side runs right up through the Enlightenment and classical liberalism.

Two technical economists in Holland found that every single one of the hundred largest transnational corporations on Fortune magazine's list has benefited from the industrial policy of its home country, and that at least twenty of them wouldn't have even survived if their government hadn't taken them over or given them large subsidies when the were in trouble.

The big transnationals want to reduce freedom by undermining the democratic functioning of the states in which they're based, while at the same time ensuring the government will be powerful enough to protect and support them. That's the essence of what I sometimes call "really existing market theory."

There simply hasn't been much investment in infrastructure. It's part of the drive for short-term profit: you let everything else go.

Outsourcing is another aspect of it-it saves corporations' money today, but it destroys the potential work force.

I'm not saying public financing shouldn't exist, by the way. I think it's a very good idea to fund research in the science and technology of the future. But there are two small problems: public funding shouldn't be funneled through private tyrannies (let alone the military system), and the public should decide what to invest in. I don't think we should live in a society where the rich and powerful determine how public money is spent, and nobody even knows about their decisions.

The US is one of very few societies-maybe the only one-where crime is considering a political issues; in most parts of the world, it's looked at as a social problem. Politicians don't have to fight during elections about who's tougher on crime-they simply try to figure out how to deal with it.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum-even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

McChesney also notes that most broadcast innovations has taken place in public radio and television, not commercial. FM radio was public until it started making money, then it became private. The Internet is a dramatic example today-it's designed, funded and run in the public sector as long as you can't make money on it, but as soon as it shows a potential for profitability, it's handed over to megacorporations.

In the 1950s, the government began a huge highway construction program called the National Defense Highway System. They had to put in the word Defense to justify the huge sums they were pouring into it, but in effect, it was a way of shifting from public transportation like railroads to a system that would use more automobiles, trucks, gasoline and tires (or airplanes).

It was part of one of the biggest social engineering projects in history, and it was initiated by a true conspiracy. General Motors, Firestone Tire and Standard Oil of California (Chevron) simply bought up and destroyed the public transportation system in Los Angeles, in order to force people to use their products.

When India began opening up its economy and American corporations were able to really start moving in, the first domain they took over was advertising. Very quickly, Indian advertising agencies became subsidiaries of big foreign ones, mostly based in the US.
The public relations industry has always aimed "to regiment the public mind every but as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers"-in the case of India, to create a system of expectations and preferences that will lead them to prefer foreign commodities to domestic ones.

Some of the rural workers in Brazil have an interesting slogan. They say their immediate task is "expanding the floor of the cage." They understand that they're trapped inside, but realize that protecting it when it's under attack from even worse predators on the outside, and extending the limits of what the cage will allow, are both essential preliminaries to dismantling it. If they attack the cage directly when they're so vulnerable they'll get murdered.

They said terror has a deeper effect than simply killing a lot of people and frightening a lot of others. They called this deeper effect the "domestication of aspiration"-which basically means that people lose hope. They know that it they try to change things, they're going to get slaughtered, so they just don't try.

Speaking truth to power makes no sense. There's no point in speaking the truth to Henry Kissinger-he knows it already. Instead, speak truth to the powerless-or, better, with the powerless. Then they'll act to dismantle illegitimate power.

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