All language subtitles for Requiem.for.the.American.Dream.2015.720p.BluRay.x264.[YTS.MX]-English

REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM

REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM

During the great depression,
which I'm old enough to remember,

there was...

And most of my family were
unemployed working class...

There wasn't... it was bad,

much worse subjectively than today.

But there was an expectation
that things were going to get better.

There was a real sense of hopefulness.

There isn't today.

Inequality is really unprecedented.

If you look at total inequality,

it's like the worst periods
of American history.

But if you refine it more closely,

the inequality comes
from the extreme wealth

in a tiny sector of the population,

a fraction of one percent.

There were periods like
the gilded age in the '20s

and the roaring '90s and so on,

when a situation developed
rather similar to this.

Now, this period is extreme...

Because if you look
at the wealth distribution,

the inequality mostly comes
from super wealth.

Literally, the top 1/10th of a percent
are just super wealthy.

Not only is it extremely unjust in itself...

Inequality has highly negative consequences
on the society as a whole...

Because the very fact of inequality has
a corrosive, harmful effect on democracy.

You open by talking about
the American dream.

Part of the American dream
is class mobility.

you're born poor, you work hard,
you get rich.

It was possible for a worker
to get a decent job, buy a home...

Get a car,
have his children go to school.

It's all collapsed.

Imagine yourself in an outside position,
looking from Mars.

What do you see?

In the United States,

there are professed values
like democracy.

In a democracy, public opinion is going
to have some influence on policy.

And then, the government
carries out actions

determined by the population.

That's what democracy means.

It's important to understand that
privileged and powerful sectors

have never liked democracy...

and for very good reasons.

Democracy puts power into
the hands of the general population

and takes it away from them.

It's kind of a principle
of concentration of wealth and power.

Concentration of wealth
yields concentration of power...

Particularly so as the
cost of elections skyrockets,

which kind of forces the political parties
into the pockets of major corporations.

And this political power
quickly translates into legislation

that increases the concentration of wealth.

So fiscal policy, like tax policy...

Deregulation...

Rules of corporate governance
and a whole variety of measures...

Political measures, designed to increase
the concentration of wealth and power,

which, in turn,
yields more political power

to do the same thing.

And that's what we've been seeing.

So we have this kind of
vicious cycle in progress.

You know, actually, it is so traditional
that it was described by Adam Smith in 1776.

You read the famous
"Wealth of Nations."

He says in England,
the principal architects of policy

are the people who own the society.

In his day, merchants
and manufacturers.

And they make sure
that their own interests

are very well cared for,

however grievous the impact
on the people of England or others.

Now, it's not merchants
and manufacturers,

it's financial institutions
and multinational corporations.

The people who Adam Smith
called the "masters of mankind,"

and they're following the vile maxim,

"all for ourselves and
nothing for anyone else."

They're just going to pursue policies
that benefit them and harm everyone else.

And in the absence of a
general popular reaction,

that's pretty much what you'd expect.

Right through American history,
there's been an ongoing clash...

Between pressure for more freedom
and democracy coming from below,

and efforts at elite control and
domination coming from above.

It goes back to the founding of the country.

James Madison, the main framer,

who was as much of a believer
in democracy

as anybody in the world in that day,

nevertheless felt that

the United States system
should be designed,

and indeed with his initiative
was designed,

so that power should be
in the hands of the wealthy...

Because the wealthy were
the more responsible set of men.

And, therefore, the structure
of the formal constitutional system

placed most power
in the hands of the senate.

Remember, the senate
was not elected in those days.

It was selected from the wealthy.

Men, as Madison put it,

"had sympathy for property owners
and their rights."

If you read the debates
at the constitutional convention...

Madison said, "the major concern
of the society has to be

to protect the minority of the opulent
against the majority."

And he had arguments.

Suppose everyone had a vote freely.

He said, "well, the majority of the poor
would get together

and they would organize
to take away the property of the rich."

And, he said, "that would obviously
be unjust, so you can't have that."

So, therefore the constitutional system
has to be set up to prevent democracy.

That's of some interest that
this debate has a hoary tradition.

Goes back to the first major book
on political systems, Aristotle's "politics."

He says, "of all of them,
the best is democracy,"

but then he points out exactly
the flaw that Madison pointed out.

If Athens were a democracy
for free men,

the poor would get together
and take away the property of the rich.

Well, same dilemma,
they had opposite solutions.

Aristotle proposed what we would
nowadays call a welfare state.

He said,
"try to reduce inequality."

So, same problem, opposite solutions.

One is reduce inequality,
you won't have this problem.

The other is reduce democracy.

If you look at the history
of the United States...

It's a constant struggle
between these two tendencies.

A democratizing tendency that's mostly coming
from the population, pressure from below

and you get this constant battle going on,
periods of regression, periods of progress.

The 1960s for example, were
a period of significant democratization.

Sectors of the population
that were usually passive

and apathetic became organized, active,
started pressing their demands.

And they became more and more involved
in decision-making, activism and so on.

It just changed consciousness
in a lot of ways.

Minority rights

If democracy means freedom,
why aren't our people free?

If democracy means justice,
why don't we have justice?

If democracy means equality,
why don't we have equality?

Women's rights

This inhuman system
of exploitation will change,

but only if we force it to change,
and force it together.

Concern for the environment.

A unique day in American history is ending,

a day set aside for a nationwide
outpouring of mankind

seeking its own survival.

Opposition to aggression

I say to those who criticize us
for the militancy of our dissent

that if they are serious
about law and order,

they should first provide it
for the Vietnamese people,

for our own black people
and for our own poor people.

Concern for other people.

One day we must ask the question,

"why are there 40 million
poor people in America?"

When you begin to ask that question,

you're raising a question
about the economic system,

about a broader distribution of wealth,

the question of restructuring
the whole of American society.

These are all civilizing effects...

And that caused great fear.

I hadn't anticipated the power...

I should've, but I didn't anticipate
the power of the reaction

to these civilizing effects of the '60s.

I did not anticipate the strength
of the reaction to it.

The backlash.

There has been an enormous
concentrated, coordinated...

Business offensive beginning in the '70s

to try to beat back the egalitarian efforts

that went right through the Nixon years.

You see it in many respects

Over on the right, you see it in things
like the famous Powell memorandum...

Sent to the chamber of commerce,
the major business lobby,

by later supreme court justice Powell...

Warning them that business
is losing control over the society...

And something has to be done
to counter these forces.

Of course, he puts it
in terms of defense,

"defending ourselves
against an outside power."

But if you look at it,
it's a call for business to use

its control over resources

to carry out a major offensive
to beat back this democratizing wave.

Over on the liberal side,
there's something exactly similar.

The first major report of
the trilateral commission

is concerned with this.
It's called "the crisis of democracy."

Trilateral commission
is liberal internationalists...

Their flavor is indicated
by the fact that

they pretty much staffed
the Carter administration.

They were also appalled by
the democratizing tendencies of the '60s,

and thought we have to react to it.

They were concerned that there was
an "excess of democracy" developing.

Previously passive and obedient
parts of the population,

what are sometimes called,
"the special interests,"

were beginning to organize and
try to enter the political arena,

and they said, "that imposes
too much pressure on the state.

It can't deal with all these pressures."

So, therefore, they have to return
to passivity and become depoliticized.

They were particularly concerned with
what was happening to young people.

"The young people are getting
too free and independent."

None of us will begin any violence.

If there's any violence,
it will be because of the police.

The way they put it, there's failure
on the part of the schools,

the universities, the churches...

The institutions responsible
for the "indoctrination of the young."

Their phrase, not mine.

If you look at their study,
there's one interest they never mention...

Private business

And that makes sense,

they're not special interest,
they're the national interest,

kind of by definition.

So they're okay.

They're allowed to, you know,
have lobbyists, buy campaigns,

staff the executive,
make decisions, that's fine.

But it's the rest, the special interests,
the general population,

who have to be subdued.

Well, that's the spectrum.

It's the kind of ideological
level of the backlash.

But the major backlash,
which was in parallel to this...

Was just redesigning the economy.

Since the 1970s, there's been a

concerted effort on the part
of the masters of mankind,

the owners of the society,

to shift the economy
in two crucial respects.

One, to increase the role
of financial institutions,

banks, investment firms, so on...

Insurance companies.

By 2007, right before the latest crash,

they had literally 40% of corporate profits...

Far beyond anything in the past.

Back in the 1950s,
as for many years before,

the United States economy
was based largely on production.

The United States was the great
manufacturing center of the world.

Financial institutions used to be
a relatively small part of the economy

and their task was to distribute
unused assets like,

say, bank savings to productive activity.

The bank always has on hand
a reserve of money

received from the stockholders
and depositors.

On the basis of these cash reserves,

a bank can create credit.

So besides providing a safe place
for depositing money,

a bank serves a community

by making additional credit
available for many purposes.

For a manufacturer to meet his payroll
during slack selling periods,

or a merchant to enlarge
and remodel his store,

and for many other good reasons
why people are always needing more credit

than they have immediately available.

That's a contribution to the economy.

Regulatory system was established.

Banks were regulated.

Commercial and investment banks
were separated,

cut back their risky investment practices
that could harm private people.

There had been, remember,
no financial crashes

during the period of regulation.

By the 1970s, that changed.

You started getting that huge increase
in the flows of speculative capital,

just astronomically increase,

enormous changes in the financial sector

from traditional banks
to risky investments,

complex financial instruments,
money manipulations and so on.

Increasingly, the business of the country
isn't production, at least not here.

The primary business here is business.

You can even see it
in the choice of directors.

So, a director of a major
American corporation

back in the '50s and '60s

was very likely to be an engineer,

somebody who graduated
from a place like MIT,

maybe industrial management.

More recently, the directorship
and the top managerial positions

are people who came out
of business schools,

learned the financial trickery
of various kinds, and so on.

By the 1970s, say General Electric
could make more profit

playing games with money

than you could by producing
in the United States.

You have to remember
that General Electric

is substantially
a financial institution today.

It makes half its profits

just by moving money around
in complicated ways.

And it's very unclear
that they're doing anything

that's of value to the economy.

So that's one phenomenon,

that's called financialization
of the economy.

Going along with that
is the off-shoring of production.

The trade system was reconstructed

with a very explicit design of putting

working people in competition
with one another

all over the world.

And what it's led to

is a reduction in the share of income

on the part of working people.

It's been particularly striking
in the United States,

but it's happening worldwide.

It means that an American worker
is in competition

with the super-exploited worker in China.

Meanwhile, highly paid
professionals are protected.

They're not placed in competition
with the rest of the world.

Far from it.

And, of course,
the capital is free to move.

Workers aren't free to move,
labor can't move,

but capital can.

Well, again, going back
to the classics like Adam Smith,

as he pointed out,
free circulation of labor

is the foundation of any
free trade system,

but workers are pretty much stuck.

The wealthy and the privileged
are protected,

so you get obvious consequences.

And they're recognized
and, in fact, praised.

Policy is designed to increase insecurity.

Alan Greenspan.
When he testified to congress,

he explained his success
in running the economy

as based on what he called,
"greater worker insecurity."

"Atypical restraint on
compensation increases

has been evident for a few years now,

but as I outlined in some detail
in testimony last month,

I believe that job insecurity
has played the dominant role."

Keep workers insecure,
they're going to be under control.

They are not going to ask for,
say, decent wages...

Or decent working conditions...

Or the opportunity of free
association, meaning unionize.

Now, for the masters of mankind, that's fine.

They make their profits.

But for the population, it's devastating.

Well, these two processes,
financialization and off-shoring

are part of what lead
to the vicious cycle

of concentration of wealth
and concentration of power.

I'm Noam Chomsky
and I'm on the faculty at MIT,

and I've been getting more
and more heavily involved in

anti-war activities for the last few years.

"Noam Chomsky has made
two international reputations.

The widest is as one of the national leaders
of American resistance to the Vietnam war.

The deepest is as a professor of linguistics,

who, before he was 40 years old,
had transformed the nature of his subject."

"You are identified with the new left,
whatever that is.

You certainly have been an activist
as well as a writer."

"Professor Noam Chomsky...

is listed in anybody's catalog as among
the half-dozen top heroes of the new left.

The standing he achieved
by adopting over the past two or three years

a series of adamant positions

rejecting at least American foreign policy,
at most America itself."

Actually this notion "anti-American"
is quite an interesting one.

It's actually a totalitarian notion.

It isn't used in free societies.

So, if someone in, say, Italy
is criticizing Berlusconi

or the corruption of the Italian state
and so on,

they're not called anti-Italian.

In fact, if they were called anti-Italian,
people would collapse in laughter

in the streets of Rome or Milan.

In totalitarian states the notion's used,

so in the old Soviet Union
dissidents were called anti-Soviet.

That was the worst condemnation.

In the Brazilian military dictatorship,
they were called anti-Brazilian.

Now, it's true that in just
about every society,

the critics are maligned or mistreated...

Different ways depending on
the nature of the society.

Like in the Soviet union,
say Vaclav Havel would be imprisoned.

In a U.S. dependency like El Salvador,
at the same time,

his counterparts would have
their brains blown out

by U.S.-run state terrorist forces.

In other societies, they're just
condemned or vilified and so on.

In the United States,

one of the terms of abuse
is "anti-American."

There's a couple of others,
like, you know, "Marxist."

There's an array of terms of abuse.

But in the United States,
you have a very high degree of freedom.

So, if you're vilified by some commissars,
then who cares?

You go on,
you do your work anyway.

These concepts only arise
in a culture where,

if you criticize state power,
and by state, I mean...

more generally not just government
but state corporate power,

if you criticize concentrated power,

you're against the society,
you are against the people.

That's quite striking,
that it's used in the United States.

In fact, as far as I know,
it's the only democratic society

where the concept isn't just ridiculed.

That's a sign of
elements of the elite culture,

which are quite ugly.

The American dream,
like many ideals,

was partly symbolic, but partly real.

So in the 1950s and 60s, say,
there was the biggest growth period

in American economic history.

The golden age.

It was pretty egalitarian growth,

so the lowest fifth of the population

was improving about as much
as the upper fifth.

And there were some
welfare state measures,

which improved life
for much of the population.

It was, for example, possible
for a black worker

to get a decent job in an auto plant,

buy a home, get a car,
have his children go to school and so on.

And the same across the board.

When the U.S. was primarily
a manufacturing center,

it had to be concerned
with its own consumers... here.

Famously, Henry Ford raised
the salary of his workers

so they'd be able to buy cars.

When you're moving it to
an international "plutonomy,"

as the banks like to call it...

The small percentage
of the world's population

that's gathering increasing wealth...

What happens to American consumers
is much less a concern,

because most of them aren't going
to be consuming your products anyway,

at least not on a major basis.

Your goals are,
profit in the next quarter,

even if it's based on financial manipulations...

High salary, high bonuses,

produce overseas if you have to,

and produce for the wealthy classes here
and their counterparts abroad.

What about the rest?

Well, there's a term coming
into use for them, too.

They're called the "precariat"...

Precarious proletariat...

The working people of the world
who live increasingly precarious lives.

And it's related to the attitude
toward the country altogether.

During the period of great
growth of the economy...

The '50s and the '60s,
but in fact, earlier...

Taxes on the wealthy were far higher.

Corporate taxes were much higher,

taxes on dividends were much higher...

Simply taxes on wealth were much higher.

The tax system has been redesigned,

so that the taxes that are paid
by the very wealthy are reduced

and, correspondingly, the tax burden
on the rest of the population's increased.

Now the shift is towards trying to keep taxes

just on wages and on consumption...

Which everyone has to do, not, say,
on dividends, which only go to the rich.

The numbers are pretty striking.

Now, there's a pretext...
Of course, there's always a pretext.

The pretext in this case is,

well, that increases investment
and increases jobs,

but there isn't any evidence for that.

If you want to increase investment,

give money to the poor
and the working people.

They have to keep alive,
so they spend their incomes.

That stimulates productions,
stimulates investment,

leads to job growth and so on.

If you're an ideologist for the masters,
you have a different line.

And in fact, right now,
it's almost absurd.

Corporations have money
coming out of their pockets.

So, in fact, General Electric,
are paying zero taxes,

and they have enormous profits.

Let's them take the profit somewhere else,
or defer it, but not pay taxes,

and this is common.

The major American corporations
shifted the burden of sustaining the society

onto the rest of the population.

Solidarity is quite dangerous.

From the point of view of the masters,
you're only supposed to care about yourself,

not about other people.

This is quite different from the people
they claim are their heroes like Adam Smith,

who based his whole approach to the economy
on the principle that sympathy

is a fundamental human trait.

But that has to be driven out
of people's heads.

You've got to be for yourself,

follow the vile maxim,
"don't care about others,"

which is okay for the rich and powerful,

but is devastating for everyone else.

It's taken a lot of effort to try to drive

these basic human emotions
out of people's heads.

And we see it today in policy formation.

For example,
in the attack on social security.

Social security is based on a principle.

It's based on a principle of solidarity.

Solidarity, caring for others.

Social security means,
"I pay payroll taxes...

So that the widow across town
can get something to live on."

For much of the population,
that's what they survive on.

It's of no use to the very rich,

so therefore, there's
a concerted attempt to destroy it.

One of the ways is defunding it.

You want to destroy some system?
First defund it.

Then, it won't work.

People will be angry.
They'll want something else.

It's a standard technique
for privatizing some system.

We see it in the attack
on public schools.

Public schools are based
on the principle of solidarity.

I no longer have children in school.
They're grown up...

But the principle of solidarity says,

"I happily pay taxes so that
the kid across the street can go to school."

Now, that's normal human emotion.

You have to drive that
out of people's heads.

"I don't have kids in school.

Why should I pay taxes?
Privatize it," so on.

The public education system,

all the way from kindergarten
to higher education,

is under severe attack.

That's one of the jewels
of American society.

You go back to the golden age again...

The great growth period
in the '50s and '60s.

A lot of that is based
on free public education.

One of the results of the second world war
was the GI bill of rights,

which enabled veterans,

and remember, that's a large part
of the population then,

to go to college.

They wouldn't have been able to, otherwise.

They essentially got free education.

"Where a community, state or nation...

courageously invests a substantial share
of its resources in education,

the investment invariably returned

in better business and
a higher standard of living."

U.S. was way in the lead in developing
extensive mass public education at every level.

By now, in more than half the states,
most of the funding

for the colleges comes from tuition,
not from the state.

That's a radical change,

and that's a terrible burden on students.

It means that students,

if they don't come from
very wealthy families,

they're going to leave college
with big debts.

And if you have a big debt,
you're trapped.

I mean, maybe you wanted to become
a public interest lawyer,

but you're going to have
to go into a corporate law firm

to pay off those debts,

and by the time
you're part of the culture,

you know you're not going
to get out of it again.

And that's true across the board.

In the 1950s, it was a much
poorer society than it is today,

but, nevertheless, could easily handle,
essentially free, mass higher education.

Today, a much richer society claims
it doesn't have the resources for it.

That's just what's going on
right before our eyes.

That's the general attack
on principles that,

I mean, not only are they humane,
they are the basis

of the prosperity
and health of this society.

If you look over the history of regulation,

say, railroad regulation,
financial regulation and so on,

you find that quite commonly

it's either initiated by
the economic concentrations...

that are being regulated,
or it's supported by them.

And the reason is because
they know that,

sooner or later, they can
take over the regulators.

And it ends up with what's called
"regulatory capture."

The business being regulated
is in fact running the regulators.

Bank lobbyists are actually writing
the laws of financial regulation,

it gets to that extreme.

That's been happening
through history and, again,

it's a pretty natural tendency

when you just look
at the distribution of power.

One of the things that expanded
enormously in the 1970s is lobbying,

as the business world moved sharply
to try to control legislation.

The business world was pretty upset
by the advances in public welfare in the '60s,

in particular by Richard Nixon.

It's not too well understood,
but he was the last New Deal president,

and they regarded that
as class treachery.

In Nixon's administration,
you get the consumer safety legislation,

safety and health regulations
in the workplace,

the EPA, the environmental
protection agency.

Business didn't like it, of course.

They didn't like the high taxes.
They didn't like the regulation.

And they began a coordinated effort
to try to overcome it.

Lobbying sharply increased.

Deregulation began with a real ferocity.

There were no financial crashes
in the '50s and the '60s,

because the regulatory apparatus
of the New Deal was still in place.

As it began to be dismantled

under business pressure
and political pressure,

you get more and more crashes.

And it goes on right through the years.

'70s it starts to begin.

'80s really takes off.

Congress was asked to approve

federal loan guarantees
to the auto company

of up to one and one half billion dollars.

Now, all of this is quite safe

as long as you know the government's
going to come to your rescue.

So, take say, Reagan.
Instead of letting them pay the cost,

Reagan bailed out the banks
like Continental Illinois,

the biggest bailout
of American history at the time.

Actually, he ended his term
with a huge financial crisis,

the savings-and-loan crisis,

and the government moved in
and bailed it out.

"President Bush today signed

the 300 billion-dollar
savings-and-loan bailout bill."

In 1999, regulation was dismantled

to separate commercial banks
from investment banks.

Then comes the Bush and Obama bailout.

"Bear Stearns is running
to the feds to stay afloat..."

"President Bush today defended
the decision to bail out Citigroup..."

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have asked
for a total of three billion dollars more...

This bailout could get much bigger,

signaling deepening troubles
for the U.S. economy."

And they're building up the next one.

Each time, the taxpayer is called on
to bail out those who created the crisis,

increasingly the major financial institutions.

In a capitalist economy,
you wouldn't do that.

In a capitalist system,

that would wipe out the investors
who made risky investments.

But the rich and powerful,
they don't want a capitalist system.

They want to be able to run
to the nanny state

as soon as they're in trouble,
and get bailed out by the taxpayer.

That's called "too big to fail."

I mean, there are
Nobel laureates in economics

who significantly disagree
with the course that we're following.

People like Joe Stiglitz,
Paul Krugman and others,

and none of them
were even approached.

The people picked to fix the crisis
were those who created it,

the Robert Rubin crowd,
the Goldman Sachs crowd.

They created the crisis...
Are now more powerful than before.

Is that accident?

Well, not when you pick those people
to create an economic plan.

I mean, what do you expect to happen?

Meanwhile, for the poor,
let market principles prevail.

Don't expect any help
from the government.

The government's the problem,
not the solution, and so on.

That's, essentially, neo-liberalism.

It has this dual character
which goes right back in economic history.

One set of rules for the rich.

Opposite set of rules for the poor.

Nothing surprising about this.

It's exactly the dynamics you expect.

If the population allows it to proceed,

it's just going to go on and on like this

until the next crash,

which is so much expected
that credit agencies,

which kind of evaluate the status of firms,

are now counting into their calculations

the taxpayer bailout that they expect
to come after the next crash.

Which means that the beneficiaries
of these credit ratings,

like the big banks,

they can borrow money more cheaply,

they can push out smaller competitors,

and you get more and more concentration.

Everywhere you look,
policies are designed this way,

which should come as absolutely
no surprise to anyone.

That's what happens
when you put power into the hands

of a narrow sector of wealth,

which will is dedicated to
increasing power for itself

just as you'd expect.

Concentration of wealth
yields concentration of political power,

particularly so as the
cost of elections skyrockets,

which kind of forces the political parties
into the pockets of major corporations.

The Citizens United,
this was January 2009, I guess,

that's a very important decision,
Supreme Court decision,

but it has a history
and you got to think about the history.

The 14th amendment
has a provision that says,

"no person's rights can be infringed
without due process of law."

And the intent, clearly,
was to protect freed slaves.

Says, "okay, they've got
the protection of the law."

I don't think it's ever been used
for freed slaves, if ever, marginally.

Almost immediately, it was used
for businesses, corporations.

Their rights can't be infringed
without due process of law.

So they gradually became
persons under the law.

Corporations are
state-created legal fictions.

Maybe they're good,
maybe they're bad,

but to call them persons
is kind of outrageous.

So they got personal rights
back about a century ago,

and that extended
through the 20th century.

They give corporations rights
way beyond what persons have.

So if, say, General Motors
invests in Mexico,

they get national rights,
the rights of a Mexican business.

While the notion of person
was expanded

to include corporations,

it was also restricted.

If you take the
14th amendment literally,

then no undocumented alien
can be deprived of rights,

if they're persons.

Yet, undocumented aliens
who are living here,

and building your buildings,

cleaning your lawns, and so on,
they're not persons...

But General Electric is a person,
an immortal super-powerful person.

This perversion of the elementary morality,

and the obvious meaning of the law,

it's quite incredible.

In the 1970s, the courts decided
that money is a form of speech.

Buckley vs. Valeo.

Then you go on through the years
to Citizens United,

which says that,
the right of free speech of corporations,

namely to spend as much
money as they want,

that can't be curtailed.

Take a look what that means...

It means that corporations,

which anyway have been
pretty much buying elections,

are now free to do it
with virtually no constraint.

That's a tremendous attack
on the residue of democracy.

It's very interesting to read the rulings,
like justice Kennedy's swing vote.

His ruling said,
"Well, look, after all,

CBS is given freedom of speech,
they're a corporation,

why shouldn't General Electric

be free to spend as much
money as they want?"

I mean, it's true that CBS
is given freedom of speech,

but they're supposed to be
performing a public service.

That's why.

That's what the press is supposed to be,

and General Electric
is trying to make money

for the chief executive
and some of the shareholders.

It's an incredible decision,
and it puts the country in a position where

business power is greatly extended
beyond what it always was.

This is part of that vicious cycle.

The supreme court justices
are put in by reactionary presidents,

who get in there because
they're funded by business.

It's the way the cycle works.

There is one organized force
which traditionally, plenty of flaws,

but with all its flaws,
it's been in the forefront of...

efforts to improve the lives
of the general population.

That's organized labor.

It's also a barrier to corporate tyranny.

So, it's the one barrier
to this vicious cycle

going on, which does lead
to corporate tyranny.

A major reason
for the concentrated,

almost fanatic attack on unions,
on organized labor,

is they are a democratizing force.

They brought a barrier
that defends workers' rights,

but also popular rights generally.

And that interferes with
the prerogatives and power

of those who own
and manage the society.

I should say that anti-union

sentiment in the United States
among elites is so strong

that the fundamental
core of labor rights,

the basic principle in the
international labor organization,

is the right of free association,

which would mean
the right to form unions.

The U.S. has never ratified that.

So I think the U.S. may be alone
among major societies in that respect.

It's considered so far out
of the spectrum of American politics,

it literally has never been considered.

Remember, the U.S. has a long
and very violent labor history

as compared with
comparable societies...

But the labor movement
had been very strong.

By the 1920s,

in a period not unlike today,

it was virtually crushed.

"A truck drivers strike was climaxed
by severe riots with many casualties.

Open warfare rages through
the streets of the city

as 3,000 union pickets
battle 700 police.

Guns, tear gas, clubs and fists
bring injuries

to more than 80 persons
and caused the death of two."

By the mid '30s,
it began to reconstruct.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he himself

was rather sympathetic
to progressive legislation

that would be in the benefit
of the general population,

but he had to somehow
get it passed.

So he informed labor leaders
and others, "force me to do it."

What he meant is,
go out and demonstrate,

organize, protest,

develop the labor movement.

When the popular pressure is sufficient,

I'll be able to put through
the legislation you want.

"I am not for a return
to that definition of Liberty,

under which for many years
a free people

were being gradually regimented
into the service of a privileged few.

I prefer that broader definition of Liberty."

So, there was kind of a combination
of a sympathetic government,

and by the mid-'30s,
very substantial popular activism.

There were industrial actions.
There were sit-down strikes,

which were very frightening
to ownership.

You have to recognize,

a sit-down strike is just
one step before saying,

"we don't need bosses.
We can run this by ourselves."

And business was appalled.

You read the business press,
say, in the late '30s,

they were talking about
the "hazard facing industrialists"

and the "rising political power
of the masses,"

which has to be repressed.

Things were on hold
during the second world war,

but immediately after
the second world war,

the business offensive
began in force.

The Taft-Hartley act.

"The Taft-Hartley act
was written for only one purpose,

to restore justice and equality
in labor-management relations."

Then McCarthyism was used

for massive corporate propaganda
offensives to attack union.

It increased sharply
during the Reagan years.

I mean, Reagan pretty much told
the business world,

"If you want to illegally break
organizing efforts and strikes,

go ahead."

"They are in violation of the law,

and if they do not report
for work within 48 hours,

they have forfeited their jobs
and will be terminated."

It continued in the '90s and, of course,
with George W. Bush,

it went through the roof.

By now, less than 7% of
private sector workers have unions.

The effect is that the usual
counter-force to an offensive

by our highly class-conscious
business class has dissolved.

Now, if you're in a position of power,

you want to maintain
class-consciousness for yourself,

but eliminate it everywhere else.

You go back to the 19th century,

in the early days of
the industrial revolution

in the United States,

working people were
very conscious of this.

They, in fact,
overwhelmingly regarded

wage labor as not
very different from slavery,

different only in that
it was temporary.

In fact, it was such a popular idea

that it was the slogan
of the Republican party.

That was a very sharp
class-consciousness.

In the interest of power and privilege,

it's good to drive those ideas
out of people's heads.

You don't want them to know
that they're an oppressed class.

So, this is one of the few societies
in which you just don't talk about class.

In fact, the notion of class
is very simple.

Who gives the orders?
Who follows them?

That basically defines class.

It's more nuanced and complex,
but that's basically it.

The public relations industry,
the advertising industry,

which is dedicated
to creating consumers,

it's a phenomena that developed
in the freest countries,

in Britain and the United States,
and the reason is pretty clear.

It became clear by, say, a century ago

that it was not going to be so easy
to control the population by force.

Too much freedom had been won.

Labor organizing, parliamentary
labor parties in many countries,

women starting to get
the franchise, and so on.

So, you had to have other
means of controlling people.

And it was understood and expressed

that you have to control them
by control of beliefs and attitudes.

Well, one of the best ways
to control people in terms of attitudes

is what the great political economist
Thorstein Veblen called

"fabricating consumers."

If you can fabricate wants...

Make obtaining things that are just about
within your reach the essence of life,

they're going to be trapped
into becoming consumers.

You read the business press
in say, 1920s,

it talks about the need to direct people
to the superficial things of life,

like "fashionable consumption"

and that'll keep them out of our hair.

You find this doctrine all through
progressive intellectual thought,

like Walter Lippmann,

the major progressive intellectual
of the 20th century.

He wrote famous progressive
essays on democracy

in which his view was exactly that.

"The public must be put in their place,"

so that the responsible men
can make decisions

without interference
from the "bewildered herd."

They're to be spectators,
not participants.

Then you get a properly
functioning democracy,

straight back to Madison,

and on to Powell's memorandum,
and so on.

And the advertising industry
just exploded with this as its goal...

Fabricating consumers.

And it's done with great sophistication.

"You don't see many
wild stallions anymore.

He's one of the last of a wild
and very singular breed.

Come to Marlboro country."

The ideal is what you actually see today...

Where, let's say, teenage girls,
if they have a free Saturday afternoon,

will go walking in the shopping mall,

not to the library or somewhere else.

The idea is to try to control everyone,

to turn the whole society
into the perfect system.

Perfect system would be
a society based on a dyad, a pair.

The pair is you
and your television set,

or maybe now you and the Internet,

in which that presents you with
what the proper life would be,

what kind of gadgets
you should have.

And you spend your time and effort
gaining those things,

which you don't need,
and you don't want,

and maybe you'll throw them away...

But that's the measure of a decent life.

What we see is in, say,
advertising on television,

if you've ever taken an economics course,
you know that

markets are supposed to be based on
"informed consumers making rational choices."

Well, if we had a system
like that, a market system,

then a television ad would
consist of, say, General Motors

putting up information, saying,
"here's what we have for sale."

That's not what an ad for a car is.

And ad for a car is a football hero...
an actress...

the car doing some crazy thing like,

going up a mountain or something.

The point is to create uninformed consumers
who will make irrational choices.

That's what advertising is all about,

and when the same institution,
the PR system,

runs elections,
they do it the same way.

They want to create
an uninformed electorate,

which will make irrational choices,

often against their own interests,

and we see it every time
one of these extravaganzas take place.

Right after the election,

president Obama won an award
from the advertising industry

for the best marketing campaign.

And, it wasn't reported here,

but if you go to the
international business press,

executives were euphoric.

They said, "we've been selling candidates,
marketing candidates,

like, you know, toothpaste

ever since Reagan,

and this is the greatest
achievement we have."

I don't usually agree with Sarah Palin,

but when she mocks the, what she calls
the "hopey-changey" stuff, she's right.

First of all, Obama didn't
really promise anything.

That's mostly illusion.

You go back to the campaign rhetoric
and take a look at it.

There's very little discussion
of policy issues,

and for very good reason,

because public opinion on policy
is sharply disconnected

from what the two-party leadership
and their financial backers want.

Policy, more and more, is focused on the
private interests that fund the campaigns...

with the public being marginalized.

One of the leading political scientists,
Martin Gilens, came out with a study

of the relation between
public attitudes and public policy.

What he shows is that
about 70% of the population

has no way of influencing policy.

They might as well be
in some other country...

And the population knows it.

What it's led to is a population that's
angry, frustrated, hates institutions.

It's not acting constructively
to try to respond to this.

There is popular mobilization and activism,

but in very self-destructive directions.

It's taking the form of unfocused anger,

attacks on one another,
and on vulnerable targets.

That's what happens in cases like this.

It is corrosive of social relations,
but that's the point.

The point is to make people
hate and fear each other,

and look out only for themselves,

and don't do anything for anyone else.

One place you see it strikingly
is on April 15th.

April 15th is kind of a measure,
the day you pay your taxes,

of how democratic the society is.

If a society is really democratic,

April 15th would be a day of celebration.

It's a day when
the population gets together,

decides to fund the programs and activities
that they have formulated and agreed upon.

What could be better than that?

So, you should celebrate it.

It's not the way it is
in the United States.

It's a day of mourning.

It's a day in which some alien power
that has nothing to do with you,

is coming down to steal
your hard-earned money,

and you do everything you can
to keep them from doing it.

Well, that is a kind of a measure
of the extent to which,

at least in popular consciousness,
democracy is actually functioning.

Not a very attractive picture.

The tendencies that we've been describing
within American society,

unless they're reversed,
it's going to be an extremely ugly society.

I mean, a society that's based on

Adam Smith's vile maxim,
"all for myself, nothing for anyone else."

A society in which normal
human instincts and emotion

of sympathy, solidarity, mutual support,
in which they're, kind like, driven out...

That's a society so ugly,

I don't even know
who'd want to live in it.

I wouldn't want my children to.

If the society is based on
control by private wealth,

it will reflect the values
that it, in fact, does reflect.

The value that is greed,
and the desire...

to maximize personal gain,
at the expense of others.

Now, any society, maybe a small society
based on that principle is ugly,

but it can survive.

A global society based on that principle
is headed for massive destruction.

I don't think we're smart enough...

to design in any detail...

what a perfectly just and free
society would be like.

I think we can give some guidelines...

and, more significant, we can ask
how we can progress in that direction.

John Dewey, the leading social philosopher
in the late 20th century,

he argued that until all institutions,

production, commerce, media,

unless they're all under
participatory democratic control,

we will not have
a functioning democratic society.

As he put it, "policy will be the shadow
cast by business over society."

Well, it's essentially true.

Where there are structures of
authority, domination and hierarchy,

somebody gives the orders,
somebody takes them,

they are not self-justifying.

They have to justify themselves.

They have a burden of proof to meet.

Well, if you take a close look, usually
you find they can't justify themselves.

If they can't, we ought
to be dismantling them.

Trying to expand the domain
of freedom and justice

by dismantling that form
of illegitimate authority.

And, in fact,
progress over the years,

what we all thankfully recognize as progress,

has been just that.

The way things change is because
lots of people are working all the time.

They're working in their communities,
in their workplace,

or wherever they happen to be,

and they're building up the basis

for popular movements,
which are going to make changes.

That's the way everything
has ever happened in history.

Take, say, freedom of speech...

One of the real achievements
of American society,

it's first in the world in that.

It's not in the bill of rights.

It's not in the constitution.

Freedom of speech issues
began to come to the supreme court

in the early 20th century.

The major contributions came in the 1960s.

One of the leading ones was a case
involving the civil rights movement.

Well, by then, you had
a mass popular movement,

which was demanding rights,

refusing to back down.
And in that context,

the supreme court did establish

a pretty high standard
of freedom of speech.

Or take, say, women's rights.

Women also began
identifying oppressive structures,

refusing to accept them,
bringing other people to join with them.

Well, that's how rights are won.

To a non-trivial extent,
I've also spent a lot of my life in activism.

That doesn't show up publicly, but, yeah...

Actually, I'm not terribly good at it...
I'm not the greatest organizer...

I think that we can see quite clearly
some very, very serious defects

and flaws in our society,
our level of culture, our institutions,

which are going to have to be corrected
by operating outside of the framework

that is commonly accepted.

I think we're going to have to find
new ways of political action.

But the activists are the people
who have created the rights that we enjoy.

They're not only carrying out...

policies based on
information that they're receiving,

but also contributing to the understanding.

Remember, it's a reciprocal process.

- ...then you have a great deal of...
- You try to do things. You learn.

You learn about what the world is like,

that feeds back to the understanding
of how to go on.

There's huge opportunities.

It is a very free society,
still the freest in the world.

Government has very
limited capacity to coerce.

Corporate business may try to coerce,
but they don't have the mechanisms.

So, there's a lot that can be done
if people organize, struggle for their rights

as they've done in the past,
and can win many victories.

Well, my close friend for many years,
the late Howard Zinn...

To put it in his words that,

"what matters is the countless
small deeds of unknown people,

who lay the basis for the significant events
that enter history."

They're the ones
who've done things in the past.

They're the ones
who'll have to do it in the future.

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REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM