Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel

Overview

The perfect introduction to the wide-ranging thought of “the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities.” —The Guardian

Noam Chomsky remains one of our preeminent public intellectuals, a thinker whose works on international politics and the media are read worldwide. In Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky’s talks on the politics of power.

In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions, all published here for the first time, Chomsky radically interprets the events of the late twentieth century, covering topics from foreign policy during Vietnam to the attacks on welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America’s imperialistic foreign policy and the decline of domestic standards of living, Chomsky also establishes a theory of social change. Featuring his classic criticisms of media in capitalist society, as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Understanding Power offers a sweeping critique of the world around us and is the definitive Chomsky.

Characterized by Chomsky’s accessible and informative style, this is the ideal book for those new to his work as well as for those who have been reading for years.

Click here to download a PDF of the explanatory footnotes compiled by the editors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565847033
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	02/01/2002
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	196,986
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

	Editors' Preface	xi
	A Note on the Events of September 11, 2001	xiii
Chapter 1	Weekend Teach-In: Opening Session	1
	The Achievements of Domestic Dissidence	1
	The U.S. Network of Terrorist Mercenary States	4
	Overthrowing Third World Governments	6
	Government Secrecy	10
	The Media: An Institutional Analysis	12
	Testing the "Propaganda Model"	15
	The Media and Elite Opinion	18
	Filters on Reporting	24
	Honest Subordination	30
	"Fight it Better": the Media and the Vietnam War	31
Chapter 2	Teach-In: Over Coffee	37
	"Containing" the Soviet Union in the Cold War	37
	Orwell's World and Ours	41
	Contemporary Poverty	45
	Religious Fanaticism	50
	"The Real Anti-Semitism"	51
	Ronald Reagan and the Future of Democracy	53
	Two New Factors in World Affairs	58
	Democracy Under Capitalism	60
	The Empire	64
	Change and the Future	67
Chapter 3	Teach-In: Evening	70
	The Military-Industrial Complex	70
	The Permanent War Economy	73
	Libyan and American Terrorism	77
	The U.S. and the U.N.	84
	Business, Apartheid, and Racism	88
	Winning the Vietnam War	90
	"Genocide": the United States and Pol Pot	92
	Heroes and Anti-Heroes	93
	"Anti-Intellectualism"	95
	Spectator Sports	98
	Western European Activism and Canada	101
	Dispelling Illusions	103
Chapter 4	Colloquy	106
	The Totalitarian Strain	106
	A Lithuania Hypothetical	109
	Perpetuating Brainwashing Under Freedom	111
	Journalism LeMoyne-Style: A Sample of the Cynical Aspect	115
	Rethinking Watergate	117
	Escaping Indoctrination	120
	Understanding the Middle East Conflict	123
	The Threat of Peace	126
	Water and the Occupied Territories	129
	Imperial Ambitions and the Arab Threat	131
	Prospects for the Palestinians	134
	Legitimacy in History	135
	Qualifications to Speak on World Affairs; A Presidential Campaign	137
Chapter 5	Ruling the World	140
	Soviet Versus Western Economic Development	140
	Supporting Terror	144
	"People's Democratic Socialist Republics"	145
	The Organ Trade	146
	The Real Crime of Cuba	148
	Panama and Popular Invasions	151
	Muslims and U.S. Foreign Policy	154
	Haiti: Disturbance at an Export Platform	155
	Texaco and the Spanish Revolution	159
	Averting Democracy in Italy	160
	P.R. in Somalia	163
	The Gulf War	165
	Bosnia: Intervention Questions	171
	Toying With India	172
	The Oslo Agreement and Imperialist Revival	174
Chapter 6	Community Activists	177
	Discussion Circle	177
	The Early Peace Movement and a Change in the 1970s	180
	The Nuclear Freeze Movement	184
	Awareness and Actions	186
	Leaders and Movements	188
	Levels of Change	189
	Non-Violence	193
	Transcending Capitalism	195
	The Kibbutz Experiment	196
	"Anarchism" and "Libertarianism"	199
	Articulating Visions	201
	"Want" Creation	203
	Dissidents: Ignored or Vilified	204
	Teaching About Resistance	211
	Isolation	212
	Science and Human Nature	214
	Charlatans in the Sciences	217
	Adam Smith: Real and Fake	221
	The Computer and the Crowbar	223
Chapter 7	Intellectuals and Social Change	224
	The Leninist/Capitalist Intelligentsia	224
	Marxist "Theory" and Intellectual Fakery	227
	Ideological Control in the Sciences and Humanities	231
	The Function of the Schools	233
	Subtler Methods of Control	238
	Cruder Methods of Control	242
	The Fate of an Honest Intellectual	244
	Forging Working-Class Culture	248
	The Fraud of Modern Economics	251
	The Real Market	255
	Automation	258
	A Revolutionary Change in Moral Values	260
Chapter 8	Popular Struggle	267
	Discovering New Forms of Oppression	267
	Freedom of Speech	268
	Negative and Positive Freedoms	272
	Cyberspace and Activism	276
	"Free Trade" Agreements	280
	Defense Department Funding and "Clean Money"	284
	The Favored State and Enemy States	286
	Canada's Media	288
	Should Quebec Separate from Canada?	291
	Deciphering "China"	282
	Indonesia's Killing Fields: U.S.-Backed Genocide in East Timor	294
	Mass Murderers at Harvard	298
	Changes in Indonesia	299
	Nuclear Proliferation and North Korea	301
	The Samson Option	303
	The Lot of the Palestinians	305
	P.L.O. Ambitions	310
	The Nation-State System	313
Chapter 9	Movement Organizing	318
	The Movie Manufacturing Consent	318
	Media Activism	323
	Self-Destruction of the U.S. Left	326
	Popular Education	331
	Third-Party Politics	333
	Boycotts	337
	"A Praxis"	339
	The War on Unions	339
	Inner-City Schools	342
	Defending the Welfare State	344
	Pension Funds and the Law	346
	Conspiracy Theories	348
	The Decision to Get Involved	351
	"Human Nature Is Corrupt"	355
	Discovering Morality	356
	Abortion	358
	Moral Values	359
Chapter 10	Turning Point	363
	Bringing the Third World Home	363
	Welfare: the Pea and the Mountain	367
	Crime Control and "Superfluous" People	370
	Violence and Repression	373
	International Capital: the New Imperial Age	377
	The Fairy Tale Economy	382
	Building International Unions	383
	Initial Moves and the Coming Crisis	387
	Elite Planning--Slipping Out of Hand	390
	Disturbed Populations Stirring	395
	The Verge of Fascism	398
	The Future of History	400
	Index	403

Editorial Reviews

"Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities—and is the only writer among them still alive."
—The Guardian

"Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism."
—Edward Said

From the Publisher

For the past several decades, Noam Chomsky has become more famous for his trenchant critiques of U.S. foreign policy than for his groundbreaking linguistic theories. In this collection of material from his lectures and teach-ins, public defenders Mitchell and Schoeffel put his challenging, controversial opinions on display. The discussions a format that allows Chomsky to present his views in a conversational, accessible style confirm his wide-ranging engagement with world affairs. Whether the topic is Cambodia (he all but holds the United States responsible for the mass deaths under the Khmer Rouge) or the Middle East (where he sees the peace process as analogous to South Africa's creation of apartheid), he consistently blasts the United States for what he sees as its guiding principle of maintaining its own power while claiming to fight for freedom and democracy. Chomsky, who has published more than 30 books but is best known for his contribution to Manufacturing Consent, a critique of the way public opinion is formed, often excoriates the press for what he sees as a willingness to reflect the views of the "elites" rather than challenge them. But while he maintains a gloomy view of U.S. policies, he preserves a surprising optimism about Americans, arguing that the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements have made citizens more critical of the mass media. Some readers will appreciate the views articulated here and others will be infuriated; but for anyone with an opinion of Chomsky would be wise not to ignore this collection, which provides a useful and wide-ranging introduction to his analysis of power and media in the West. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

MIT-based Chomsky revolutionized linguistics in the late Fifties, but for nearly as long he has been better known as an energetic and constructive debunker of American establishment politics and behavior. However, the current Chomsky contributes nothing to the legacy he established decades ago. These two most recent productions do not reveal systematic efforts to sustain or develop any aspect of his prolifically expressed critique; indeed, they are not so much authored as collaged, with Chomsky's sanction, from talks, after-talk Q&As, and interviews with generally converted interlocutors. Understanding Power draws mainly on vintage utterances from the Nineties, and its most penetrating passage takes on, of all pressing matters, literary theory. Chomsky, who is relentless in condemning the media as incapable of any function other than converting the masses to elite desires, just as relentlessly samples mainstream reporting sources for instances of corporate and government ill doings. In trying to illustrate that he is not a crude conspiracy theorist, he conveys the opposite impression. The shorter 9-11 could not have been planned, of course, though it mostly consists of interviews conducted while the calendar still read September, suggesting both the urgency Chomsky felt to get his perspective on the record and his utter disinclination to reexamine any of his cemented opinions about world affairs. Chomsky condemns the attacks specifically and then suggests that the deaths are entirely the responsibility of capitalist globalization, which nonetheless he asserts is irrelevant to the September 11 actors. However, consistency is even less a priority for Chomsky than humility. Apparently, Chomsky believes that he has discovered the concept of blowback, not to mention imbalance in coverage of the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian murder-and-misery fetish. For him, a direct line runs from Reagan's mining of Nicaragua's harbors to the flying of commercial airliners into buildings. 9-11 is a worthwhile purchase for public libraries intent on demonstrating (or risking) balance; Understanding Power is not half as useful as Chomsky's earlier, authentic innovations in political literature, especially Manufacturing Consent (coauthored with Edward Herman). Libraries truly wishing to ensure representation of the most lucid nonconventional opinion should first check that their subscriptions to the Nation a proud carrier of Chomsky for 40 years are current. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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