One consequence of the huge propaganda campaigns of the past several decades is the mood of "antipolitics" reported in feature stories. Concealed from public view is the fact that "politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," as John Dewey stated the truism familiar at least since Adam Smith, adding that as long as this is so, "the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." Reforms are of limited utility. Democracy requires that the source of the shadow be removed, not only because of its domination of the political arena, but because the very institutions of private power undermine democracy and freedom; again, an observation familar back to the Founding Fathers. But the source of the shadow has to be driven from the mind. Naturally, this is a leading theme of the literature of the ultraright foundations that are seeking to drive the educational system and media towards an even narrower fringe of the permissible spectrum. At the other extreme, Clinton campaign literature spoke movingly about workers and their firms and how government must help them; missing from the picture were bosses, profits, investors, and the like. There are "entrepreneurs," nice folk who appear now and then to help the workers and their firms. They then sink into the background along with the unmentionables, who are laboring for the common good, selflessly seeking to provide jobs and decent lives for ordinary people in the "civil society" in which all participate. - Chomsky
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 22:35:45 +0000