Here is one of the most popular comments to the article by Chomsky:-
http://www.alternet.org/story/147144/a_warning_from_noam_chomsky_on_the_threat_posed_by_elites/ RobBurns4Congress [Moderator] 1 day ago DavidByron and 24 more liked this “The real choice, Chomsky makes clear, is not free enterprise versus statism, but state capitalism for (A) the few or (B) the many. The latter would include breaking up the banks, a focus on job creation and safety net expansion where needed, single-payer health insurance, higher taxes on the wealthy, far lower military spending, public members on corporate boards, greater employee workplace control and, above all, a new public-private partnership to see America become a leader in a clean energy economic revolution.” While I greatly appreciate Chomsky’s analysis of foreign affairs, I think his economic analysis is inadequate. For one of, if not the best analysis of capitalism, we really have to turn to Marx who was one of the first to identify capitalism as a major social problem. Marx defines capitalism as the subordination of all things to the process of capital: the process of turning value into more value. Within a capitalist society, inevitably the state too becomes subordinated to the process of turning value into more value. So too do markets, and families and communities and religion: all get subordinated to turning value into more value. So it is not that the United States is a state capitalism for the few as the article suggests. The United States is still largely a private capitalism, but the state is subordinated to capital like everything else. Contrast the US-style capitalism with China-style capitalism which is indeed largely a state capitalism for the few (though the ‘for the few’ is really redundant since capitalism is subordinating everything to greed it could be for no one and everyone would be expected to serve that instatiable process). So in particular, to make government and markets and industry serve people rather than the other way around we need to socialize our natural monopoly industries so that they can serve human needs and desires rather than the insatiable process of turning value into more value. This would include our railroad tracks and railroad roadbeds, our energy distribution networks, our communication airwaves and communication networks, insurance, and so forth. It would also mean that we would stop operating our roadways merely to serve the profiteering of the automobile and oil industries and instead focus our attention on providing transportation networks that minimize the costs and burdens on society instead of operating them in a way that dumps greater and greater burdens upon all of us for the benefit of capital. In addition, we need to take back our monetary system from the Federal Reserve cartel and operate it as a socialized enterprise as the Constitution requires. Finally, we need to replace the US military-industrial complex with a real military focussed on defending the United States instead of imperial adventures and imperial slaughters all around the globe. Socializing these services at the center of our economy allows commerce and the rest of the economy to focus on meeting genuine human needs and desires and frees the other sites in our economy from serving as subordinates to an alien capital process which trumps all other human concerns. (Edited by author 1 day ago) On Jun 10, 5:00 pm, Venugopalan K M <[email protected]> wrote: > This story has been forwarded to you fromhttp://www.alternet.orgby > [email protected] > > Chomsky Laments the Elites' Mindset > > ------------------------------------- > A Warning From Noam Chomsky on the Threat Posed By > Eliteshttp://www.alternet.org/economy/147144 > > As America’s economy and politics continue to unravel, it is clear that the > elite mentality and the system it has created will produce more and more > victims in the years to come. > ------------------------------------- > > -- > > You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a > nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the > foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. > -AMBEDKAR > > http://venukm.blogspot.com > > http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur > > http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
