Democracy and Power

by Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky visited India in 1996 and 2001 and spoke on a wide range of subjects, from democracy and corporate propaganda to the nature of the world order and the role of intellectuals in society. He captivated audiences with his lucid challenge of dominant political analyses, the engaging style of his talks, and his commitment to social equality as well as individual freedom.
Chomsky’s early insights into the workings of power in the modern world remain timely and compelling. Published for the first time, this series of lectures also provides the reader with an invaluable introduction to the essential ideas of one of the leading thinkers of our time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, India

200 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2014

About the author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Om Raizada]

Notes:
-US was friendly to Saddam Hussein until he decided to disobey them (this was the time when he had committed mass genocides and other crimes) and invade Kuwait.
-US and Britain were friendly to Stalin inspite of what he did, but only turned against him when he didn't follow their rules.
-US although shows to be against fundamentalism supports Saudi Arabia and supported Suharto in killing almost a million Indonesian to stop democratic ascension of PKF.
-US has organised many terrorist activities throughout Central America especially the Church which decided to support the poor in 1960s instead of supporting the rich as it had done throughout the history.
-NAFTA has made people from all three countries worst off, it only benefits the minority of rich people. It is more of a 'free investment agreement' rather than 'free trade agreement'.
-All developed countries in the world are the ones which did not embrace open market, US does this today in the name of National Security, using public funds to subsidize businesses. Britain had numerous trade restrictions until 1862 when their per capita capitalisation was twice that of any other country. They only embraced free market when the playing field was so tilted towards them that they couldn't lose.
-Democracy today don't work on popular mandate, they are controlled by corporates, that's why people find themselves disillusioned by them. The things which corporates want happen anyway, only the trivial stuff which does not affect corporates is discussed in elections.

*I personally may or may not agree to these ideas. This is simply a summary of all the ideas discussed in the book. Nothing special in context to India. Just the usual Chomsky stuff.

[Prabhat Gusain · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 20th century, three forms of totalitarianism emerged - Bolshevism, Fascism, and Corporations. While the first two were mostly dismantled globally, the third flourished. Over the course of the cold war, the two world wars, and the subsequent struggle for world domination, corporations worked towards preserving their hegemony over national "democratic affairs" through "narrative building" or propaganda. Eventually, unbeknownst to the common man, corporations turned into "private tyrannies", especially in the west.
Over the course of the 20th century, the fallacy that rule by private tyrannies is freedom was drilled into the heads of westerners. The power of this propaganda has been extraordinary. In the 1920s, one of the founders of the PR industry wrote that the goal of the industry is to regiment the public mind every bit as much as the army regiments the bodies of its solders. You can't have democracy otherwise.
What came next was fascinating. Because the population will do what they want and that won't be securing the permanent interests of the country, namely the rights of the rich who have to be protected from the majority. Through such narrative control, the super-rich continue to preserve their power and control (evident in worsening poor-rich divide and the Gini coefficient) in the name of "democracy". Chomsky, in these lectures, expounds the idea of "libertarian socialism" or "anarchism", that fundamentally questions the concentration of power, wherever it is unnecessary. The strong historical and modern premise makes the reading fascinating and highly educational.

[Shuvopriyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like a transcript from the 1990s. You read it, and you can't help but feel nostalgic, imagining quaint classrooms in B&W.

The book basically documents the lectures that Chomsky delivered in various Indian universities during his visit to India circa 1996.

While very old, the book is still extremely relevant as it talks about how the world has evolved with private corporations gaining unbridled powers, and how western hegemony and imperialism played out in different parts of the world.

The book is a great read for anybody who wants to understand Chomsky's thoughts and ideologies in an absolute basic sense. There are also a series of q&a documented that touch upon the cold war, socialism, relevance of Marxism etc.

[Pulkit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful

[Clay Wescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the USA the growth of unaccountable corporate power is supported by a filtering process where those who say the right things are able to climb the ladder, and the rest are left behind. A corporate-sponsored mass-media and university system looks pluralistic and adversarial, but restricts debate to a narrow framework that suits the privileged. It trumpets "free markets", when the corporates are in fact highly protected and subsidized by the state. It opposes state sponsored social programs large enough to make a difference, but supports small social responsibility pilots by "private" corporates. This system is hard for many to see: “…the architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt, but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark. Exposed to the sunlight, it begins to evaporate” (Huntington, american politics). There is democracy in the sense that leaders are elected by free and fair elections, but to a large degree elected leaders are a façade for the exercise of power by a non-democratically chosen group of corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Chomsky takes these ideas in many provocative directions, including a call for mass mobilization to change towards broad based participation in policy and decision making.

His work is important in opening up new ways of thinking. But his reading of recent history is highly selective. For example, he focuses on US government defense expenditures, which increased starting in the 1950s in response to a concern by the leadership about the soviet threat. This spending has continued even after the end of the cold war, and Chomsky is correct that there are powerful corporate constituencies that benefit from it, and help to keep it at high levels. However, he doesn't discuss much another recent US spending surge: the vast increase in welfare programs, which responded to popular expectations and group demands that started increasing in the 1960s, and these trends continue today. Federal entitlements have increased in the last 20 years from less than half of spending to nearly 62% in 2012, dominated by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Anti-poverty programs have surged by 49 percent in just the past decade, even after adjusting for inflation. Spending for food stamps alone has more than tripled since 2002. Health programs, including Medicaid, have increased by 38 percent, and housing assistance by 48 percent (source: 2012 edition of Federal Spending by the Numbers.