Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

If you look back to the history of the reconstruction of post-World War II Europe, American planners were very intent on preventing the rise of popular-democratic movements there which would have been based in the former anti-fascist resistance, which had a lot of prestige right then. And the reason was, the world in general was very social-democratic after the war, especially as a result of the anti-fascist struggles that had taken place. And with the traditional order discredited and a whole lot of radical-democratic ideas around, powerful interests in the United States were extremely concerned that a unified labor movement could develop in a place like Germany or Japan. Actually, the same kind of problem also existed at home right then as well: the U.S. population was very social-democratic after the war—it was extremely pro-union, it wanted more government involvement in regulating industry, probably a majority thought there should even be public industry—and business was terrified by it, they were very scared. They in fact said in their publications things like, “We have about five or six years to save the private enterprise system.”74 Well, one thing they did was to launch a huge propaganda program in the United States, aimed at reversing these attitudes.75 It was actually called at the time part of “the everlasting battle for the minds of men,” who have to be “indoctrinated in the capitalist story”; that’s a standard straight quote from the P.R. literature.76 So in ...