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Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
by Noam Chomsky
NY: Henry Holt & Company, 2006, 311pp. pb
October 24 2007
Reading Chomsky
Failed States is another offering from Noam Chomsky consistent with his previous work skewering U.$. foreign policy. We would recommend this and other of his works for a college course on moral reasoning.
What Chomsky seeks to is to teach what U.$. nationalism is in the international context. He tries to teach the golden rule on how the united $tates should treat other countries. If one cannot see that while reading, and if one does not pick up a good sarcastic chuckle now and then while reading Chomsky, then one has not understood the work.
Reality is that most students are not capable of processing the facts that Chomsky offers, though they are crisply offered. The more authoritarian frame of mind will be overwhelmed by the facts and the more advanced students will have difficulty connecting them to the golden rule in application to U.$. foreign policy. At one point, Chomsky seems to know that he is writing for intellectuals. 80% of the book is about the golden rule and international relations in a moralistic discussion MIM has no objection to. It is Chomsky's relationship to his audience and domestic politics that are most objectionable. He has been publishing these well-read books forever, but they have little impact, because we live in a system of imperialism, which has corrupted the former working-class into an exploiter-oppressor class, so there is no audience possible to receive a redeeming message of the golden rule.
We evaluate this book as 90% pre-scientific internationalism--a good thing, just not as good as scientifically-informed internationalism. 10% of the book is criminal social-fascism (pp. 211-2 especially).
College enrollment sales tactics: social basis of political correctness
Noam Chomsky is a college professor old enough himself to remember the 1960s. Although political correctness did not really gain traction till the 1980s, the political economy of political correctness was a reaction to colleges as institutions in the 1960s.
It is common to connect political correctness to a movement to diversify faculties, which were of course white men before other PhDs made their way through the ranks. Perhaps more important than faculties was the need to increase tuition sales--a possibility in the prosperity of post-World War II U.$. parasitism.
As the 1960s arrived, college students were relatively elite white men. If females attended college, they found themselves shunted off to classes that prepared them for marriage.
Then came the revolution, and "Afro-American Studies," "Wimmin's Studies" and so on arose. In some cases, would-be faculty members seeking jobs as tokens led the way. Nonetheless, white male professors also supported the movement and MIM would point to the possibilities of expanding college enrollment as the true underlying force. The university did not escape the dynamics of entertainment-sales whatever individual cogs in the machine might have believed. The expansion of university education also expanded the influence of white male professors in a society like all others where college education was not universal and free. Hah, hah--take that Bloom--had there been socialist mandatory college education already, there would have been no political correctness movement with its underlying cause being the expanded parasitism of U.$. imperialism after World War II.
Let this present writer fully admit that she never expected political correctness to spread off college campuses and now be seen in movie theaters, the government and even FOX News. Yet, political correctness always had a self-expanding dynamic and college enrollments are the real but unmentioned social force in the back of the mind of people like Noam Chomsky.
Expanding college enrollments in the 1960s with a four-fold goal was easy. First, accept wimmin on equal terms with men. Then take oppressed nationalities. Combined, these steps could double enrollments. Finally, entered the white myth of class, and people previously from families not likely to attain college education now did. Continuing education took in older working students. The ideological glue for all this was in fact watered down cookie-cutter pseudo-Marxism called political correctness. It is a potent ideology of white nationalist integrationism, Martin Luther King in its acceptable form and Trotskyist for its activist form. As long as we are not fooled that there are exploited workers in the united $tates, we can accept that there is some reality behind the social force of political correctness. When the professoriat says "workers," they do not mean "exploited," because the professors do not know the labor theory of value. Das Kapital is way too deep. All that the professors needed was a sorting mechanism, very shallow, to know how to sell more tuition tickets. What they mean by "workers" is people who before the 1960s come from families that would not have gone to college. We are talking about fine shades of difference within the Amerikan petty- bourgeoisie, real enough to change the culture, not real enough to end imperialist militarism.
Sales by flattery was the tactic of political correctness activists setting out to expand college enrollments. College professors promised to tell stories about "Afro-Americans," "wimmin" and "workers" as oppressed by the white males who previously had sole charge of universities. In actual fact, even white male employment grew in this way, just not relative to employment of other social groups at universities.
Flattery and entertainment sell tuition tickets; duty does not. Noam Chomsky learned somehow that he has a duty that he carries out. Currently it is a duty of political correctness to flatter. Chomsky's work Failed States is sadly no exception. It is a pre-scientific work, sentimental regarding Chomsky's potential audience.
White nationalism: four common schools
Our politically correct orthodoxy is quick to pick up on racism, but usually only in the most minor of lifestyle expressions. The fanaticism of this sort of anti-racism is to cover up the depth of its bankruptcy. To perceive Amerikan nationalism more accurately than the political correctness cover for white nationalism we have to target its underlying demographic sources and strategic expressions.
It is not just a few people wearing white sheets in the KKK and looking for a white republic in Idaho who are white nationalists. White nationalism is in fact the attribution of any progressive thrust or redeeming value to the Amerikan majority. The fact that it often sweeps up tokens of this or that oppressed nationality is coincidental in a situation where Euro-Amerikans are the majority. No nationalism is ever 100% pure and traceable to demographics. For this reason we have concepts such as "Uncle Tom," coconuts, twinkies etc. Whether they know it or not, these people serve the interests of the Euro- Amerikan U.$. majority.
There are four major schools of white nationalism in the united $tates: 1) Civics-oriented Liberalism or libertarianism deriving from the Enlightenment; 2) cultural appreciation; 3) frozen-in-1848- Marxism, where a Euro-Amerikan majority is exploited; 4) pseudo- feminism regarding the forward thrust of females inside U.$. borders.
The core white nationalism is the one most often expressed by Bush regarding "freedom," the foundational myth of the "United States of America." It is not uncommon for bombing missions to be called "Enduring Freedom" or the like, because freedom usually does mean Amerikan domination, nothing else for Amerikkkan nationalists.
Martin Luther King's ideology is itself a product of white nationalism, originating in "freedom rides" in the South. The civil rights movement is the trick by which Blacks are allowed to drink at white water fountains but imprisonment rates increase ten-fold. The Martin Luther King expression of white nationalism is the most progressive in its outward appearance while still serving the Euro-Amerikan majority exploiter interests.
Martin Luther King's ideology derived from two schools of white nationalist thought. One was Amerikan civics-oriented libertarianism harking back to 1776 and the other Christianity.
The notion that there is something especially forward-looking in Amerikan practices of Christianity took expression for example in the work of Max Weber on the Protestant Ethic. Martin Luther King further validated this train of thought.
Culturally-oriented nationalism is found everywhere in the world. It even trips up Europe and the united $tates occasionally as Europeans find it difficult to fathom the merits of McDonalds and Kraft Cheez- Whiz.
The third school of white nationalist thought is so-called Marxism. Marx himself excoriated utopian delusion and demanded an attention to reality, but his followers in the imperialist countries are overwhelmingly utopian sorts. The reason for this is that there are no demographics for real Marxism, so what few followers Marx has left in the rich countries are simply new-fangled white nationalists.
It is not an accident that Trotskyism is most popular in the world in the united $tates, England, Au$tralia and France. It is only in the imperialist countries where Trotskyists outnumber others claiming Marxism.
Trotskyism is in fact the most frightful form of white nationalism in the world, because it contains the essential components of fascism without being recognized as such. Both Trotsky and Hitler shared an optimistic outlook on the German volk or workers as Trotsky called them. Hitler thought the German workers would impose a global Fourth Reich and Trotsky thought they would impose international socialism and free the colonies. Each shared optimism about the greatness of the German working class. World War II was not a lesson to either the Hitlerites or Trotskyites, a grip on reality not being a requirement of either ideology. However, someone carrying the swastika around will not get as far as a Trotskyist who believes the "American working class" is the most advanced in the world. During the Soviet social- imperialists' Afghan invasion, the Trotskyists bit their tongue on criticism of the Soviet Union and called to "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan!" Of course the veil was the reason given the same as given by the U.S. Army today.
Trotskyists are found in respectable positions in the professoriat, the Pentagon, the British cabinet and even political parties in France. The insidious influence of Trotskyism even shows itself in the anti-war movement, and not only with the banners saying "neither Islamo-fascism nor imperialism." Nazism has been exposed, but the delusion behind Trotskyism is unknowable to political correctness, because factual knowledge of Amerikan or German so-called workers would damage the trivial anti-racist benefits of the Martin Luther King myth.
The last form of white nationalism and also dangerous like Trotskyism is pseudo-feminism. Pseudo-feminism is the true last line of defense of white nationalism, there when the labor aristocracy line of defense has been punctured. The most brazen exponent of this sort of white nationalism is Phyllis Chesler, who has opined that the stance on abortion is no longer relevant to feminism, because unity against the Islamic nation is the real "feminism."
Noam Chomsky's work derives mainly from the first school of white nationalism, but he also takes in support from the third and fourth schools.
The facts contradicting white myths
The ongoing facts of U.$. politics do not support the progressive covers offered by various white nationalists. The FISA debate in Congress is a case point. At the moment, some Senators are going to have to filibuster to stop increased repression being added to the U.$. law on spying.(1) The libertarian white nationalists are hoping for a heroic struggle of individuals leading to a happy ending, whereby they can cleanse themselves of the guilt and self-image connected to a string of repressive laws passed since 9/11. Such a cleansing is probably coming, some day, not to change anything of substance but to perfume Amerika's image.
Even President Gerald Ford before he died said he would not have spied on Amerikans, never mind without a warrant.(2) So we are getting just one more chance to debate and realize what a lie America is.
Monarchist senators such as Orrin Hatch believe the president can do whatever he wants, despite the very clear word "exclusive" in the FISA law. There is no ambiguity, that there is only one way to authorize a domestic wiretap, and Bush did not follow it.
The ACLU has a poll showing only 35% of Amerikans supporting warrantless surveillance.(3) Such a poll figure is as meaningless as the poll figures about supporting freedom of speech. What it shows in fact is that there is a hard-core 35% that is monarchist in principle. If the ACLU had asked the public, "do you favor warrantless surveillance of X," and filled in "terrorists," "communists," "pedophiles" or "Islamists" in "X," we would have found a monarchist majority. The same is true of freedom of speech. People know enough to say broadly that it should exist. It's only in the application that it falls apart and reveals itself as a very low priority, one easily overwhelmed by white supremacist priorities.
So obviously Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd are correct about the law. Feingold is saying that the existing law explicitly says there is only one way to conduct surveillance of Amerikans.(4) The truth is that Amerikkka has always been a vigilante country. There is support for vigilantism, 35% for any vigilantism and majority support for vigilantism against suspected terrorists, communists, pedophiles, Islamists and maybe even people who want a gay marriage. The de facto vigilantism of Amerikkka means that there are various classes of citizenship.
Even if Senator Dodd does somehow prevail and the Congress takes back a slight bit of the added FISA repression from 2007, the fact will remain that people such as Senator Orrin Hatch are common in Amerikkka. They are the established citizens, the judges and prosecutors supporting vigilante racism throughout Amerikkka.
Libertarians like Chomsky urged Congress to take a stand on FISA to bolster Amerikans' freedom from surveillance. No one was heard to express an opinion against spying on foreigners, so that is clue number one that the whole question was about nationalism. Clue two should have been that the FISA court is a secret rubber-stamping court to begin with and an anathema to the 1776 foundational myth. Clue three is that much of the discussion is about "warrantless" spying, not the notion of spying and probable cause itself. So the whole discussion is a fraud to begin with, being about some remaining shadow from the myth of 1776 in a secret kangaroo court that never would have existed in a country allowing "innocent till proven guilty," "confrontation with the accuser" and other such civics fantasies.
The "Americans" and phony Marxists both believed that through struggle--and how could the class struggle get any better than with a Rockefeller heading the Senate Intelligence Committee--the true character of Amerika would prevail for civil liberties in the FISA issue. Instead what happened was that the libertarians were stupid enough to raise the question, because when it ended up in Congress with the libertarians expecting an improvement in civil liberties, what ended up passed was more repressive than any legislation to date. Had the libertarians shut up, we would still have the 1978 law as amended by the "Patriot Act" etc.--a less repressive legal formality than we have now thanks to libertarian yapping in 2007.
One would have thought that after the "Patriot Act," "Military Commissions Act," the Supreme Court decision on torture in CIA secret prisons etc. etc., that these white nationalists would have learned their lesson, but no, that is not possible, because their white nationalism has nothing to do with effectiveness towards the goals they profess. This white nationalism serves interests, so the delusions must continue no matter how many times disproven in practice, and even if there is no truth to "American freedom" relative to other countries, these white nationalists persist in order to confuse the situation and throw sand in the eyes of the international proletariat.
Among all the white nationalists including the phony Marxists, utopian delusion is the rule. The system allows seemingly drug-related stupor, because the yapping perfumes U.$. imperialism. From reading most newspapers, one could get the impression that there were not spies or terrorists in 1978, when the FISA law first came to existence. Brezhnev is long dead and buried.
If we are to generalize what has happened, it is that the international proletariat has stepped up its struggle and forced the white nationalists to enact further repression inside u.$. borders. The repression that the imperialists needed to handle the Maoist struggle back in the 1970s has increased to include repression required by the Muslim struggle. The fact that the repression has gone beyond the 1970s era FISA law is a tribute to the Islamic insurgents.
Nor is this a question of the glass half-full or half-empty. Relying on a political force that has not been there since the 1800s is resulting in increased repression, not decreased. Freedom is won in direct struggle by harnessing forces for freedom, whether or not those forces conform to white nationalist fantasies about American origins or shreds of paper called a "Bill of Rights." The people who want freedom, who are a force for freedom have something to say against entrenched interests that repress them. That social force is called a "proletariat." The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains, and that is why it is the proletariat that is a libertarian dream come true. No matter what entrenched interests are in power, the proletariat will have an interest in opposing them and hence securing its own freedom. Unfortunately, there isn't a Euro-Amerikan proletariat, contrary to the original picture Marx painted in the mid- 1800s. The so-called workers of Amerika have entrenched interests in exploitation.
Libertarianism, pseudo-Marxism and pseudo-feminism all rely on social forces and in fact stir up forces that bring increased repression and war. No where is this more apparent than in the role that Martin Luther King ideology has played in expanding U.$. imperialist military recruiting. Though Martin Luther King opposed the Vietnam War, his enduring contribution is to the integration of the u.$. military, smoothing over difficulties that could arise from struggle against white nationalism. Secondarily, Martin Luther King has succeeded in convincing people there was a civil rights movement that advanced the status of Black people, so we do not have to worry about the fact that states such as Louisiana have a higher proportion of Black prisoners than Kim Il Sung had Koreans in prison camps according to U.$. propaganda estimates. After all, how could that be true when Martin Luther King day is a national holiday.
What the libertarians need to know is that the people in Congress and the White House know something that they do not--the nature of the Amerikan public. It is not that the House itself was fooled, as if imperialists had "false consciousness" distracting them from American civics. Quite the contrary, the Progressive Caucus in the House constituted 74 members and made a statement on the FISA. The New York Times spoke up. The libertarian view, the civics that we learn in grade school was present. Still, the professional politicians know something that the most deluded libertarian white nationalists and other parasites do not. The 500 or so people in the Congress that will show up to make decisions are professionals and they know what can be sold to the Amerikan public and what cannot, as does President Bush. That is why repressive legislation wins again and again.
It is not misleadership. If it were a question of simple leadership, the Progressive Caucus and New York Times would have prevailed. There was leadership disproportionate to what the public wanted. The problem was that there was not an accurate assessment of the Euro-Amerikan nation behind the libertarians' hopes. It was Bush who got 60 million votes.
Chomsky is especially perverse given his degree of erudition in resisting the
political economy of imperialism and repression. It is not that he is incapable at all.
He is considered the leading intellectual of the united $tates by many, another
proof that lack of exposure to libertarian reasoning is not the problem in the united $tates.
Here is Chomsky on one crucial dynamic, the land:
The Trotskyists do not have a major place for settlers in their theory, because
they tend not to make use of the concept of land. They have the one
world working class theory exclusively focussing on surplus-value,
which they calculate incorrectly of course in order to flatter the
German and other imperialist country workers. To get the land, a
Zionist settler needs a war in the Mideast. Then to keep the land, the
Zionist figures on needing to keep the Palestinians poor and
technologically backward so as not to be a threat. Repression at the
borders is good toward that end. Perhaps Chomsky should extend his
observations on settlers all the way.
Stalin has the settler question as does Sultan-Galiyev, who rumors say
ended up executed for saying there is such a thing as Russian settlers
exerting oppression in the predominantly Muslim lands. The
international communist movement is now composed of the followers of
Stalin and Sultan-Galiyev exclusively. Trotskyism is too much white
nationalism to merit mentioning. Without some theory of uneven
development as both Stalin and Sultan-Galiyev had, we are out of
business as progressive people. Opposition to the "Patriot Act" and
favoring wealth redistribution within the united $tates by themselves
are not progressive: they are in the stock of white nationalism. It is
only in the anti-imperialist struggle undergirded by a theory of
uneven development that a progressive can be found. As most will find
this thesis too difficult to understand we will have to assess that
Chomsky's work is mostly progressive and evaluate others accordingly.
Kucinich opposes most imperialist wars, but supports the political
economy behind war. His progressive credentials are a degree less than
Chomsky's.
Without the land and surplus-value questions nailed down, Chomsky's
discussion of domestic politics is as Ptolemian as the rest of the
left-wing of parasitism's. For example, there is the question of why there is
no "labor" or "socialist" party in the united $tates,(p. 215) despite
all the activists clamoring for one in all the years MIM and Chomsky
have been active. Try this on for scientific accuracy professor
Chomsky: maybe there is no labor party because there is no exploited
class to clamor for one! That would explain why there are 100,000
professional spies in the united $tates and only 10,000 social-
democrats. A little more attention to the question of surplus-value
would take Chomsky a long way.
Chomsky dedicates a chapter to implicitly rebutting MIM on Bush's 60 million votes, essentially
explaining away how it happened that after Abu Ghraib Bush got the largest vote total ever.
In fact, on page one, we see the ghost of MIM, because Chomsky says of U.$.
foreign policy leading to "nuclear war, environmental disaster,"
We suspect that we here at MIM got to Chomsky and he knows it. The
discussion of his audience and domestic politics vacillates
throughout. By the end of the book, Chomsky has contradicted what he
said on page 1.
MIM would remind readers that no matter the "design" of the electoral
system, there is nothing forcing Amerikans to get off the couch and go
pull a lever for George W. Bush. If Chomsky had said Amerikans stayed
home during the election because of crafty psy-war against them, and
therefore the electorate could not figure out who to vote for--that
would be one thing. Out of all the choices on the ballot, the
Amerikans went for Bush. What the left-wing of parasitism means by its noises
on this subject is that it refuses to believe the nature of the Amerikan
nation. It is used to making endless sentimental excuses rather than accept that
Amerikans are decadent oppressors. This sort of supposedly left-wing activist
cannot be trusted with anything, except to be guaranteed to be in the
foremost ranks of counter-intelligence opposing the international proletariat.
Do tell us Noam Chomsky, if MIM were not correct, how did it happen
that juries voted for the following:
Even within the same paragraph, Chomsky's sentimentality for social-
fascism shines through in self-contradiction. "Deceit is employed to
undermine democracy, just as it is a natural device to undermine
markets. Voters appear to be aware of the travesty."(p. 222) Such
political advertising that Chomsky refers to is not deceit if voters
are aware of it. Again Chomsky stumbles to find words to cover up for
the oppressors. He prefers to think of them as deceived than to admit
they want all the chauvinism and war they vote for and more. The more
we hear from Michael Moore, the more money move-on.org spends, has
Chomsky not noticed the more people have clamored for the expulsion of
Mexicans? The reason is that anyone militantly stoking up Amerikan
economic demands creates only one inevitable political result--
wetback-bashing and cursing against imports. The hatred against
Mexicans exceeds what Bush and Limbaugh support and the social-
democrats are largely to blame for that crucial additional fillip
to chauvinism that we see lately. All the major politicians so "skillful"
and deceitful are less anti-Mexican than the white so-called worker.
Of course, such sentimentality regarding Mexicans and imports is made
easy with the professional economists of white nationalism who appear
not to see any connection between U.$. imperialism and the world at
large. The Dean Baker-Mark Weisbrot-Kucinich school (e.g., see
footnotes p. 299) of detach-from-trade-and-globalization white
nationalism is the real brains behind Buchananism and finds frequent
reference in Chomsky:
Acceptance of white nationalist dogma reaches to such a level among
intellectuals, that on the subject of U.$. politics, MIM finds
strategic video game players to have greater merit than our Chomskys,
Trotskys, Gus Halls, Kucinichs etc. In persynal computer video games,
it is now customary programming that the player can be Stalin in World
War II and then turn the tables and be Hitler. One can be both Luke
Skywalker and Darth Vader. In other words, today's video game players
learn how to win while playing with the cards dealt to them.
(Admittedly, books are sold on how players can program "cheat codes"
to play more than the cards dealt to them in their favorite video
games, but that is another subject.) Strategy video game
players have immensely more promise than the combined left-wing of
parasitism. The left-wing of parasitism knows only how to play the
game when the white workers have a progressive thrust. The philistine
patsies are quite content to lose year in and year out if the white worker
game is not available to play.
The bankruptcy of the left-wing of philistinism is such that activists
and intellectuals both choose disempowerment and drug use or its
equivalent. Far better to string together some more high-vocabulary
sentences on the condition of wimmin in Islam than to figure out a way
to loosen U.$. imperialist screws on the social forces in the Islamic
countries holding back progress. At least the high-brow vocabulary
sentences about Islam will increase graduate school enrollments.
When there is only one paradigm possible, it goes without saying there can
be no role for science, and so MIM much prefers the video-game-itariat
over the professoriat. For example, some posing as our friends
lately claim only "tactical" differences. It has yet to sink in what utter
damage it does to allow people in their midst who believe that so big a question
as whether white so-called workers are exploiters or exploited is "academic."
The idea that there are social forces and they have inherent directions in the overall
picture is simply off-limits, because the exploiters have already decided that
Amerikans are mostly exploited people with progressive thrust. Dare to
do first things first--the science--and crypto-Trotskyists and Chomsky alike will say:
One aspect of internationalism that Chomsky does not seem to teach is
that if one's own nation is decadent and going in the wrong direction,
indeed a peril to the species, it does not mean other nations have the
same problem. How often we hear that the Western culture celebrates
universal truths and is not caught up in hopeless tribalisms. The
Enlightenment taught us abstractions of brotherhood and equality, but
humynism today means faith in the 80% of the world that lives in the
Third World. The MIM line is Western, a product of the Enlightenment
that can survive. White nationalism can only bring strife and potential
doom.
By the way, these last remarks referred to above from Chomsky are atypical. It appears that
in Failed States he is somewhat concerned for solutions and
questions of the overall picture that he usually avoids. We concur
with his half-paragraph solution finally offered at the end of the
book:
Unfortunately, Chomsky's domestic politics will only stir up the labor
aristocracy and increase the chances for drastic crises instead of
toning down our labor aristocracy to accept a gradual decline of U.$.
domination--through acceptance of UN institutions as Chomsky advises
for instance. We should preach contentment with U.$. pornography, not
that U.$. pornography is better than Iranian patriarchy--and that can
be the paradigm of what we need to do overall, toning down evil and
where possible surfing evil against evil. Whipping up the German so-
called workers as if they were not evil was the biggest mistake of the
20th century. It was the social-democrats planting the seeds and the
Nazis doing the harvesting. This time around, if the labor aristocracy
gets too excited, the species will be gone. Michael Moore, Ralph Nader
and Patrick Buchanan firebrands are one-and-the-same. Trotskyists,
neo-Trotskyists and crypto-Trotskyists are potentially the most
dangerous of all. Buchanan's cultural conservatism can be a reason to
stay at home and enjoy one's culture as a caveman. Bullshit about
"humyn rights" from the Naders, Moores and Chomskys has echoed again
and again in U.$. invasions and bombings. It is high past time that
the international proletariat skewers its false friends for not
judging the consequences of their work.
The real reasons for optimism are as follows: 1) Chomsky also points
to Michael Scheuer,(p. 23) who indicates that the Muslim world is
going to kick U.$. imperialist ass almost by itself; 2) the increased
exploitation by U.$. imperialism has led to a growth of parasitic
professions which in turn has enabled the Amerikan female to become
more male in outlook, with attendant conceptions of leisure not
focussed on children; therefore, the white population is shrinking;
this in turn undercuts the possibilities for a full-throated brown-
shirt movement which requires a big youth generation with that kind of
fire; 3) the proportion of oppressed nationalities within the U.$.
population's more youthful strata is increasing, and although these
oppressed nationalities are predominantly exploiters (the surplus-
value question), according to Stalin's theory that we have seen
vindicated many times already, the land that oppressed nations stems
from will end up being a moderating factor in Amerikan nationalism. So
in this Iraq and Afghanistan war situation after 9/11, the package was
very popular but as the insurgents took their toll, the oppressed
nationalities broke from the Amerikan nationalist line first. That is
the real basis of optimism, that the oppressed nations insurgents will
cause our own Amerikans to vacillate on a petty-bourgeois basis, and
within that, the people harking back to cultures from different lands
will see through U.$. imperialism sooner than the Euro-Amerikans. 4)
We now have a MIM to offer the most consistent and "reality-based"
explanation of all this despite the dominance of white nationalist
thinking within universities, pseudo-Marxism and pseudo-feminism. Even
if MIM is smashed at this point, the MIM analysis is widely available
and forms a basis for future generations to base their anti-
imperialist and anti-war activism.
Notes:
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"It is important to stress the
"While popular struggle over centuries
has gained many victories for freedom and democracy, progress does not
follow a smooth upward trajectory. There has been a regular cycle of
progress under popular pressure, followed by regression as power
centers mobilize their considerable forces to reverse it, at least
partially. Though over time the cycle tends to be upward, sometimes
regression reaches so far that the population is almost completely
marginalized in pseudo-elections, most recently the 'travesty' of 2000
and the even more extreme travesty of 2004."(p. 209)
So
the difference between Chomsky and MIM is that Chomsky is forced into
a position of saying there were 60 million dupes at the very least in
2004. (Chomsky tepidly endorsed Kerry.) Or, more accurately, Chomsky
says it's not so much that the public is dupes, but that the
leadership elite is so crafty, that elections are increasingly
"carefully designed."(p. 18) Although this approach may sell graduate school
tickets, consumers should beware. Chomsky's snake-oil implies that
with expanding college graduation ranks since the 1960s; nonetheless,
the elites were able to pull off their greatest crafty ("skillful," p. 215)
feats yet in 2000 and 2004.
"The United States
has fallen off the map in other respects as well. One well-known
example is the dramatic increase in incarceration during the past
twenty-five years. The United States began the period with
incarceration rates resembling Europe's and has ended it with rates
five to ten times as high. . . The US prison population is the highest
in the world."(p. 230)
What was it, again those crafty imperialists sitting on juries when we
were not looking? The black helicopters conspiracy theory is true, but
the left-wing of white nationalism conspiracy theories are false. We
will tell you Noam Chomsky: your white so-called workers who favor
national health care (p. 225) and have for decades always put that on
the backburner, something your poll numbers do not tell you but which
MIM has actually studied. Fighting "crime," "terrorism" and people of
color generally is on the front-burner and their politicians are not
crafty but professional mirrors giving people what they want to hear.
Otherwise, other professional politicians would be able to defeat the
"crime"-fighting war-mongers. Many people in Chomsky's audience
actually believe that Bush is "stupid" at some level (and what do we
make of ex-Senator Edwards who admits he was duped into endorsing the
Iraq War by someone widely considered the village idiot?) This means
that professional politicians opposing Bush should be smarter; yet,
somehow they do not win, which means they have less social material to
work with, which means that Bush had a fairly accurate grasp of the
nature of Amerikans politically. After all, Kucinich's progressive
caucus in the House of Representatives is also composed of
professional politicians. Are they somehow less crafty than the
other politicians?
"There was no crisis. If American society was able to take care of
the boomers from ages zero to twenty, there can be no fundamental
reason why a much richer society, with far higher output per worker,
cannot take care of them from ages sixty-five to ninety. At most, some
technical fixes might be needed, but no major crisis looms in the foreseeable future."
(p. 79)
MIM has gone in depth into the demographic and surplus-value details
of "output per worker" elsewhere. Suffice it to say that surplus-value is the
"dirty secret" of capitalism not for no reason as Marx pointed out. Output per worker
appears to increase in the united $tates because of increased exploitation of the
Third World. Chomsky is only correct if increasing levels of Third World exploitation
keep the white nationalist view of social security and other social welfare programs
relevant.
"Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism,
hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress
in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years."(p. 263)
On the first page he says we have an increasing democracy deficit, but on the last page
he says we have "substantial progress." The reason is that there is no underlying
science, only a sentimental wish about his audience. MIM answers these questions
clearly: the united $tates is decadent, moribund and parasitic and has no internal
majority force to change that--dumbocracy be damned when the majority is exploiters.
"(1) accept the jurisdiction of the International
Criminal Court and the World Court; (2) sign and carry forward the
Kyoto protocols; (3) let the UN take the lead in international crises;
(4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones
in confronting terror; (5) keep to the traditional interpretation of
the UN Charter; (6) give up the Security Council veto and have 'a
decent respect for the opinion of mankind,' as the Declaration of
Independence advises, even if power centers disagree; (7) cut back
sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending." (p. 262)
We do not agree on increasing social spending and we
have suspicions that sending some cruise missiles over to the Mideast
might not be as bad as embargoing half a million Iraqi children to
death, but on the whole, we agree with Chomsky's short-run solutions, which know
it or not are predicated on the idea that U.$. imperialism should
moderate itself instead of going down to defeat in drastic cataclysm.
1. "Dodd Makes Play on FISA Legislation,"
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/10/18/post_137.html
2. http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2006/12/as-far-as-presidents-go-he-was-one-of.html ;
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/01/gerald_ford_unh.html#more ;
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/01/
3. http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/32257prs20071019.html
4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/22/AR2007102202268.html