On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures

by Noam Chomsky

Others too fail to understand their function in the global system, and must be properly disciplined. In the terminology of U.S. political theology, they are “Communists,” a broad-ranging concept that has little relation to social, political or economic doctrines but a great deal to do with a proper understanding of one’s duties and function in the global system. A prestigious study group of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the National Planning Association in 1955 explained the meaning of the term “Communist” candidly and accurately: the primary threat of “Communism,” the study observed, is the economic transformation of the Communist powers “in ways which reduce their willingness and ability to complement the industrial economies of the West”—where “West” includes Japanese capitalism, and it is understood that these industrial capitalist economies are to remain firmly within the U.S.-managed “overall framework of order,” in Kissinger’s phrase. This is a good definition of the term “Communism” as it is actually used in U.S. political discourse. In brief, the “Communists” are those who attempt to use their resources for their own purposes, thus interfering with the right to rob and to exploit, the central doctrine of foreign policy. Naturally, the U.S. is consistently “anti-Communist,” while only selectively anti-fascist.