Political Thought

I realize, my blog has less to do with England and more to do with the things I am thinking about while in England, so forgive me if you are uninterested in these details, but…tough: I am. J

Inadvertently, perhaps, I have discovered that I am very interested in politics. I have been into immediate politics for a while, but I am now studying political history and thought. I discovered a few things from the 70’s recently that are fascinating. Though I have not finished them, I wanted to share what I have read.

I ran across a pamphlet by Noam Chomsky on the role of Intellectuals in the State (from 1970’s). He is a man after my own heart. And he is greatly offended by democracy’s use propaganda. It is clearly not only democracy that uses it, but since fear and physical coercion cannot function within a democracy (not as it can in a dictatorship etc) that propaganda is the key. He discusses several political papers written on the subject of how to ‘maintain social order.’ Robert McNamara said according to Chomsky ‘To under-manage reality is not to keep it free.’

He also quotes Harold Lasswell who remarks that ‘the spread of schooling “did not release the masses from ignorance and superstition but altered the nature of both and compelled the development of a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda…propaganda attains eminence as the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques.”

And these ideas of democracy in general were applied quite nicely to US government. In the Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science in 1947 Edward Barnay’s essay on how to engineer consent which “quite simply means the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs…The engineering of consent is the very essence of democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.” Lovely. Chomsky gives examples of WWI and Vietnam as times when engineered consent worked miracles on calming a discontented populace. (Though in Vietnam it is more an after-the-fact altering of perception making the victims into a people not even worthy of pity and US violence as simply misguided benevolence) Similarly Fortune magazine in 1949 had this quote “Indoctrination is to democracy what coercion is to dictatorship.”

And much of this concept is put forth by high intellectuals. Though there is a study produced by the Trilateral Commission called the “Crisis of Democracy” where issues are discussed on how to maintain control over a chaotic over-educated populace (among other things) with 3 essays one from a Japanese, a French and an American. One of the introductory claims is that one of the grave dangers to democracy is “value-oriented intellectuals who often devote themselves to the derogation of leadership, the challenging of authority and the unmasking and deligitimation of established institutions…” god forbid someone questions authority.

I picked up a copy of this study and am delighting in being offended. I would be more amused if I hadn’t read the bios of the authors (like the American was a consultant to “the Policy Planning Council of the Department of State, the Agency for International Development, the Office of the Secretary of Defense etc…), and if I did not think these precepts were used to govern the roiling masses, but it is fascinating to think of the serious threat that was seen and is seen by dissent. Think Bush, you are with us or against us and if you’re against your unpatriotic. I am currently on the first essay. Not even half way through it by the European thinker Michel Crozier and he is somewhat realistic sometimes but for the most part he is convinced that education and information and communication are destroying the democratic world. I shall give some interesting quotes. “…change produces rising expectations which cannot be met by its necessary limited outcomes. Once people know that things can change, they cannot accept easily anymore the basic features of their condition that were once taken for granted.” (Crozier 22)

He says social control is harder in Europe because it is a “society where social control had traditionally relied on fragmentation, stratification, and social barriers to communication, the disruptive effect of change which tends to destroy these barriers, while forcing people to communicate, makes it more and more difficult to govern.” (Crozier 24)

And the education quote that is shocking but again, if education, change and ‘forced communication’ keep the masses from being controlled god forbid we allow our institutions to be risked so dangerously…like for example in Italy and France where “The influx of [university] students in these two countries has been much higher…than in Britain and Germany, with a concomitant breakdown of social control.” (Crozier 57) because as all well learned individuals know when you educate youth it is naturally accompanied by anarchy and social break down so if you want to control your masses stop educating them well, just stuff their heads with propaganda.

So, I shall finish the Crisis of Democracy and keep you posted. I have more recent Chomsky to digest soon and shall share as I read. Cheers.