Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 4: Democracy and the Market Segment 5/7
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3. The Good News

In the post-affluence period, the ideological institutions have dedicated themselves with renewed vigor to convincing the intended victims of the great benefits of the Higher Truths designed for subject peoples. The wonderful news about the marvels of free market economies is broadcast to the people of the South who have been devastated by these doctrines for years, and East Europeans are invited to share in the good fortune as well. Elites in the targeted countries are quite supportive, anticipating that they will benefit, whatever happens to the lesser orders.

One aspect of the internationalization of the economy is the extension of the two-tiered Third World model to the core countries. Market doctrine thus becomes an essential ideological weapon at home as well, its highly selective application safely obscured by the doctrinal system. Wealth and power are increasingly concentrated among investors and professionals who benefit from internationalization of capital flow and communication. Services for the general public -- education, health, transportation, libraries, etc. -- become as superfluous as those they serve, and can therefore be limited or dispensed with entirely. Some, it is true, are still needed, notably prisons, a service that must in fact be extended, to deal with useless people. As care for the mentally ill declines, prisons become "surrogate mental hospitals," a study of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen observes. The psychiatrist who led the research observes that "there were far fewer psychotic people in jail 100 years ago than we have today," as we revert to practices reformed in the 19th century. Almost 30 percent of jails detain mentally ill people without criminal charges. The drug war has also made a major contribution to this technique of social control. The dramatic increase in the prison population in the late 1980s is largely attributable not to criminal acts, but to cocaine dealing and possession, as well as the harsher sentencing favored by "conservatives." The US has by far the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, "largely because of drug-related crimes" (Mathea Falco). How fortunate we are not to be in China, where the "lingering police-state mentality leaves little room for the kinds of creative solutions the West favors in addressing social maladies such as drug addiction," the Wall Street Journal explains.

Prisons also offer a Keynesian stimulus to the economy, both the construction business and white collar employment; the fastest growing profession is reported to be security personnel. They also offer a method of economic conversion that does not infringe on corporate prerogatives and hence is acceptable. "Fort Devens top pick for US prison," a front-page Boston Globe headline happily proclaims; the new federal prison may overcome the harm to the local economy when the army base closes.13

High on the list of targets for the New Evangelists is public education, dispensable, since the rich can buy what they want in the "education market" and the thought that one might be concerned about the larger society has been relegated to the ashcan of history along with other ancient prejudices. An upbeat story in the liberal Boston Globe describes an experiment in the "desperate city" of Baltimore, where schools are collapsing. Several schools are being handed over to a for-profit company that will introduce the "entrepreneurial spirit": "private-sector efficiency and a new educational model...means, for example, hiring nonunion custodians and placing special education students into mainstream classrooms." The former special education teachers, and the union custodians with their higher benefits, will be picked up by the schools that remain public. Another achievement of the "entrepreneurial spirit" is to replace high-cost teachers with low-wage interns and volunteers (parents). These miracles of capitalism should "provide valuable lessons as America seeks ways to improve its education system."14

A central feature of the recent ideological offensive has been the attack on "big government" and pleas for relief for the poor taxpayer -- undertaxed (with the least progressive taxes, by a good margin) in comparison with other developed countries,15 a major reason for the steady deterioration of education, health, highways, indeed anything that might benefit the irrelevant public. At the same time, protectionist devices, subsidy, bail-outs, and other familiar elements of the welfare state for the rich are quietly extended, while praise for the free market resounds to the skies. The combination is a major achievement of the state-corporate-media alliance.


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13 "Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill"; Anita Diamant, BG, Sept. 10, 1992. Falco, and other articles, Daedalus, "Political Pharmacology," Summer 1992. James McGregor, WSJ, Sept. 29, 1992; this front-page story on Burmese opium in China manages to avoid entirely the major CIA role in creating the curse; see McCoy, Politics. Victoria Benning, BG, June 27, 1992.

14 Paul Hemp, BG, Aug. 30, 1992.

15 Louis Ferleger and Jay Mandle, Challenge, July/Aug. 1991. US tax rate is 95 percent of Japan's and 71 percent of Western Europe's, according to figures cited by economist Herbert Stein, criticizing the "myth" that US taxes are high by international or historical standards; WP Weekly, Sept. 7, 1992.