国家-企业复合体 对自由与生存的威胁

国家-企业复合体：对自由与生存的威胁

诺姆·乔姆斯基

https://chomsky.info/20110407-2/

2011年4月7日，多伦多大学讲座文本

（文字记录由伊冯娜·邦德提供）
我将主要谈论美国，部分原因是我更了解美国，但部分原因是美国在全球体系中具有独特的重要性。自二战以来，这一点尤为突出。这种独特性的特征和程度常常不为人知，本身就值得专门讲一讲，但我就不赘述了。

然而，即使在相对细微的方面，我们也经常看到这种情况。例如，几年前美国房地产泡沫破裂，引发了一场全球经济危机，至今全球大部分地区仍深陷其中。最糟糕的结果只是通过一些非常紧急的措施才得以避免。

在另一个领域，几周前，当法国和英国想要轰炸利比亚时，他们不得不求助于一个更不情愿的华盛顿来承担重任，并提供绝大部分暴力手段。美国在这一领域拥有巨大的比较优势。此外，尽管美国——美国社会及其政治经济——在某些方面有所不同，但它与其他国家并无太大区别。事实上，多年来美国国内的发展往往预示着国家资本主义世界中其他工业社会即将发生的事情。

这个世界，实际上是整个世界，当然总是在变化，但也存在着重要的延续性，值得牢记。其中一个延续性是，那些控制着一个国家经济生活的人往往也对国家政策拥有压倒性的影响力。这应该是小学就该教的真理。它由亚当·斯密简洁地阐述，我之前曾引用过，但这些话非常重要，值得重复一遍。他当然指的是英国，他写道，政策的主要制定者是社会的所有者，在他那个时代是商人和制造商，他称他们为“人类的主人”。他们确保国家政策服务于他们的利益，无论其对其他人（包括国内民众，但主要是他所说的在国外遭受野蛮不公正待遇的受害者）的影响有多么严重，而印度就是他所举的典型例子。这发生在印度被摧毁的早期。

今天，人类的主人是跨国公司和金融机构，但这一教训仍然适用，它有助于解释为什么国家-企业联合体确实对自由，甚至生存构成威胁。如今，已有重要的阐述将亚当·斯密的真理应用于现代世界。我所知的最重要、最精妙的版本来自政治经济学家托马斯·弗格森，他称之为“政治投资理论”。简而言之，该理论将美国选举简单地视为私人投资者联盟联合起来投资以控制国家的场合。正如他所表明的，这一论点在一个多世纪以来都颇具预见性地取得了成功。

这实际上意味着选举几乎是花钱买来的，而买主期望获得回报，这种情况时有发生。2008年的上一届美国总统大选就清楚地体现了这一点。奥巴马总统的胜利很大程度上归功于金融机构的巨额资金涌入，尤其是在竞选接近尾声时。他们更看好奥巴马，而不是他的对手麦凯恩，他们期望获得回报。当然，他们也确实得到了回报。当时，美国正深陷经济衰退，因此奥巴马的首要任务就是挑选一个经济团队。这个团队几乎完全由那些在他接手时造成了严重经济危机的人组成。他刻意回避批评他们做法的人，包括一些颇具声望的诺贝尔奖获得者。

事实上，商业媒体对此的报道颇具讽刺意味。彭博新闻社对奥巴马的经济团队进行了调查，逐一审查了他们的记录，并得出结论：这些人不应该加入经济团队来修复经济。他们应该收到传票，这很正确。当然，他们并没有收到。

毫不奇怪，该团队选择的措施奖励了那些罪魁祸首，他们现在比以前更富有、更有权势，并准备引领下一场可能更为严重的金融危机。最近，救助计划特别检查员尼尔·巴洛夫斯基发表了一篇有趣的文章。他严厉谴责了救助计划的执行方式。他指出，授权救助的立法法案是一笔划算的交易。纳税人和他们不当行为的受害者（实际上是真正的犯罪）将拯救那些对危机负有责任的金融机构——受害者将通过保护房屋价值和维护房屋所有权的措施获得一定程度的补偿。

主要是一场住房危机。

交易只完成了第一部分。金融机构因引发危机而获得了丰厚的回报，而他们彻头彻尾的罪行也得到了宽恕，但该计划的其余部分却举步维艰。正如巴洛夫斯基指出的那样，我引用他的话：“止赎案件持续增加，预计在该计划实施期间将有800万至1300万起申请，而最大的几家银行的规模比危机前扩大了20%，控制着比以往任何时候都更大的经济份额。” 他们合理地认为，如果有必要，政府会再次出手相救。事实上，信贷机构将未来政府的市场救助计划纳入了对大型银行的评估中。这意味着夸大市场扭曲，使它们相对于仍在苦苦挣扎的小型机构拥有不公平的优势。

简而言之，正如他所说，奥巴马的计划是对华尔街高管的馈赠，也是对其毫无防备的受害者的致命一击。换句话说，政府听取了政治体系中那些有发言权的人的意见，并采取了相应的行动，这完全符合史密斯的真理。

虽然这应该不足为奇，但对参议院长期投票的仔细研究表明，参议院确实对人口中收入最高的三分之一群体做出了回应。实际上，更仔细的分析会表明，这部分群体只占收入最高的三分之一的很小一部分。相比之下，参议院的投票与中间三分之一群体的意见之间完全没有关联。而对于收入最低的三分之一群体，则存在关联，而且是负相关。参议院的投票与收入最低的三分之一群体的偏好背道而驰。在国内外政策等重大问题上，长期以来，公众舆论与公共政策之间存在着相当明显的脱节。

有人可能会说，这些结果实际上与社会创始人的初衷并没有太大偏差。因此，作为宪法秩序主要制定者的詹姆斯·麦迪逊向制宪会议解释说，权力应该掌握在参议院手中。直到大约一个世纪以前，参议院才由选民直接选举产生。在那个年代，行政部门更像是一个行政官，而不是皇帝。而众议院，作为体制的第三部分，更贴近公众，权力则要有限得多。事实上，参议院的设立方式就是这样的。正如麦迪逊在制宪会议上所解释的那样：“参议院代表着国家的财富，代表着一群更有能力的人，他们尊重财产所有者及其权利，并且理解政府必须保护少数富人免受多数人的侵害。”

这非常准确。这也是小学就应该教的东西。

然而，我们应该记住，在某种程度上，为了给麦迪逊辩护，他的心态是前资本主义的。因此，他认为参议员应该是，用他的话说，是“一位开明的政治家和仁慈的哲学家”。参议院将是“由公民组成的精英机构，他们的智慧最能洞悉国家真正的利益，他们的爱国主义和对正义的热爱最不可能为了一时或片面的考虑而牺牲国家利益”。因此，他们将通过保护公众免受民主多数派的危害，来提炼和拓展公众的观点。这一切颇有当年幻想中的高贵罗马绅士风度。在他之前的亚当·斯密眼光更为敏锐。

然而，麦迪逊很快就改变了他的想法。当他看到民主实验的早期成果时，他改变了主意。事实上，到了1792年，也就是几年之后，他就开始痛惜所谓的“时代肆无忌惮的堕落，股票经纪人沦为政府的禁卫军，既是政府的工具，又是政府的暴君，他们被政府的慷慨贿赂所收买，又被喧嚣和联合所震慑”，这番话对当今的政治体系及其社会经济相关因素的描述并不失为一个准确的描述。

如今，在这个人类历史上最富裕的国家，只有20%的人口有资格领取食品券。如今，对大多数人来说，例如制造业工人，他们的实际失业率与大萧条时期相当。事实上，他们的实际境况比大萧条时期要糟糕得多，而我年纪大了，应该还记得那段时期。我的家人大多是失业的工人阶级，当时的国家当然比现在贫穷得多。但在很多方面，那是一个充满希望的时期。人们觉得人们正在采取行动，相信情况会好转。他们确实做到了，这要归功于非常积极的组织工作、CIO 以及其他一些因素。然后是政府的大规模刺激计划，首先是在战争期间，然后持续到战后几十年。

今天情况并非如此。那些正在流失的工作不太可能再回来，至少在人类主宰者目前的计划下是如此。虽然这并非板上钉钉，但这就是他们的计划。在民众受苦的同时，高盛

作为当前危机的主要制造者之一，高盛集团如今比以往任何时候都更加富有，他们刚刚悄悄宣布了去年175亿美元的额外薪酬，其中首席执行官劳埃德·布兰克费恩获得了1260万美元，而他的基本工资则增长了两倍多。正如巴洛夫斯基所说，他们准备再次玩同样的游戏。

为什么不呢？他们可以依靠政府的保险政策，安全地进行高风险交易，赚取巨额利润，而他们却不考虑经济学术语中所谓的外部性——一项交易对其他交易的影响；对他们来说，至关重要的就是所谓的系统性风险，即整个系统因其高风险且因此有利可图的交易而崩溃的可能性。

而当系统真的崩溃时，正如预期的那样，那也不是什么大问题。他们可以奔向自己培育的强大保姆国家，手里紧握着哈耶克、米尔顿·弗里德曼和安·兰德等人的著作，要求获得他们应得的救助，因为他们“大到不能倒”。正如一位评论员莱利所说，“大到不能因犯下重罪而被监禁”。这是一个相当令人印象深刻的骗局。当然，这彻底违背了资本主义原则，但人类的主人相信这些原则只适用于他人，而不适用于自己。

这种立场由来已久。如果我们想要理解我们所生活的世界的本质，理解这一点至关重要：实际上，在幕后，隐藏着一场极具启发性的互动，这场互动发生在两个在独立性和经济发展水平上截然不同的国家之间：美国和埃及。阿拉伯世界，尤其是埃及的民主起义，是真正具有历史意义的事件。这些言论令西方势力十分恐惧，原因很简单。西方肯定会竭尽所能阻止阿拉伯世界实现真正的民主。

要理解其中的原因，只需看看阿拉伯民意调查就明白了。虽然西方公众（至少是那些关注媒体的人）并不了解，但规划者们肯定知道这些民意。调查显示，例如在埃及，大约90%的人口认为美国是他们面临的主要威胁。大约10%的人认为伊朗是一个威胁。实际上，大约80%的人认为，如果伊朗拥有核武器，该地区会更加安全。这些数字在埃及最高，但在整个阿拉伯世界也基本如此。因此，西方显然会竭尽所能阻止这些观点进入政策，也就是阻止任何形式的真正民主。

这些都是极其重要的事件，了解它们的发展过程至关重要。顺便说一句，所有这些都有着悠久的历史。比如，你可能已经看到，埃及的运动是由一群精通科技的年轻人领导的，他们自称是“4月6日运动”。为什么是“4月6日”？这指的是2008年4月6日计划的一场重大行动。在埃及的主要工业设施之一——马哈拉纺织厂，原本计划举行一场大规模罢工。有很多支持活动。但罢工被我们支持的军事独裁政权镇压了。这里被遗忘了；谁在乎呢？但那里并没??有被遗忘。其他国家也是如此。

突然爆发的事件并非凭空而来。第一个事件也是如此，它甚至没有被报道。当前的起义浪潮实际上始于非洲最后一个殖民地，阿拉伯世界两个被外部势力入侵、占领和定居的国家之一。那就是西撒哈拉，严格来说是联合国的属地，应该走向独立。 1975年，摩洛哥入侵了巴勒斯坦，这是一次残酷的入侵，和大多数入侵一样。[他们]在那里安置了大量摩洛哥人，当然是非法的。抗议活动也不断发生。去年11月又发生了一次，有人试图搭建帐篷城。摩洛哥军队迅速镇压了抗议活动。由于事关联合国的责任，这个问题确实提交给了安理会，但法国确保不会对此事进行调查。它必须保护它的摩洛哥代理人。这是迄今为止其他被占领国家中第一个被严密封闭的国家。那就是巴勒斯坦。关于巴勒斯坦，有很多话要说，但我想你们大多数人都很熟悉，尤其是已故的吉姆·格拉夫在这里所做的非常勇敢和重要的工作。

未来会发生什么，目前尚不清楚。所有这一切仍在进行中。尽管存在内部障碍和限制，这些民众运动取得了实质性的成功，并且前景相当光明。最近最戏剧性的时刻之一是去年 2 月 20 日，卡迈勒·阿巴斯从解放广场发出了一条信息

在开罗对威斯康星州的工人说：“我们与你们站在一起，正如你们与我们站在一起一样。” 阿巴斯是埃及工人多年来争取基本权利斗争的领袖，而这些权利正是当今“阿拉伯之春”的幕后黑手，正如我所说，这场运动遭到了西方支持的独裁者的残酷镇压。他也是当前这场起义的领军人物。阿巴斯向威斯康星州工人发出的团结信息，唤起了劳工运动的传统愿望——全世界劳动人民以及全体人民的团结一致。

目前，开罗和麦迪逊的轨迹正在交叉，但它们却朝着相反的方向发展：在开罗，他们致力于争取被独裁政权剥夺的基本权利；在麦迪逊，他们致力于捍卫经过长期艰苦斗争赢得、如今正遭受严重攻击的权利。这些都像是全球社会正在发生的各种趋势的缩影，这些趋势沿着不同的路径发展。人类历史上最富有、最强大的国家衰落的工业中心地带，以及艾森豪威尔总统所说的世界上战略意义最重大的地区——中东——正在发生的事情，必将产生深远的影响。中东是“巨大的战略力量源泉，或许是世界上吸引外资最丰厚的经济奖励”。这是美国国务院在20世纪40年代的言论。在当时他们正在组织和实施的新世界秩序中，美国打算为自己及其盟友保留这份奖励，事实上，他们现在仍然在这样做。

胜利者将历史扔进垃圾桶是正常的，受害者认真对待历史也是正常的。如果我们想要了解世界，就应该以他们为榜样。事实上，今天并非埃及和美国第一次面临类似的问题并朝着相反的方向发展。 19世纪初也是如此，其原因对两个社会都至关重要，也具有普适性，对理解富裕的第一世界与贫穷的第三世界之间鸿沟的形成至关重要，而当时的鸿沟远没有那么明显。

当时，也就是19世纪初，埃及和美国都具备快速经济发展的条件。两国都拥有丰富的农业，其中包括棉花，它是早期工业革命的燃料。尽管与埃及不同，美国必须通过征服、灭绝和奴役来发展棉花生产和劳动力，其后果至今仍影响深远。埃及和美国之间有一个根本区别，那就是美国获得了独立，因此可以自由地忽略经济理论的处方——这些处方与今天的几乎相同。当时，这些处方是由当时最伟大的经济学家亚当·斯密提出的，其措辞与今天向所谓的发展中社会宣扬的措辞类似。

因此，史密斯敦促美国殖民地坚持后来所谓的比较优势，即生产初级产品用于出口，进口优质的英国制成品，切勿试图垄断关键商品。这在当时尤其指棉花，就像今天的石油一样。他警告说，任何其他道路，我引用他的话，“都会阻碍而不是加速其年产量价值的进一步增长，会阻碍而不是促进其国家走向真正的富裕和伟大。”这大致就是你们今天在经济学课程中学习的内容，以及国际货币基金组织和世界银行向世界提供的建议。获得独立后，美国殖民地可以自由地无视健全的经济学规律。它们可以自由地遵循英国自己独立的国家指导发展路线，征收高额关税以保护工业免受英国优质出口产品的冲击，首先是纺织品，后来是钢铁和其他产品，以及各种其他形式的国家干预，以加速经济发展。

这个独立的共和国也试图并几乎接近垄断棉花——这是有充分理由的。其目的是让所有其他国家臣服于我们，正如杰克逊主义总统在吞并德克萨斯州和墨西哥一半领土时所说的那样。他们尤其关注英国。当时，英国是他们的大敌。这是一种威慑力量，他们认为，如果垄断棉花，就能让英国臣服。这非常重要。例如，这也是加拿大未被征服的原因之一。英国曾多次威慑加拿大。也许加拿大正在以其他方式被征服，但那是另一回事。但加拿大并非被军事征服。

他们也未能征服古巴，尽管他们很想这么做，因为英国舰队挡住了路。他们最终在1898年以解放古巴为借口征服了古巴，但实际上却征服了古巴。

当时的想法是，如果他们能垄断棉花的控制权，就能克服扩张道路上的障碍。实际上，颇有意思的是，这基本上就是1990年萨达姆·侯赛因推行的政策，在当时看来荒谬至极。但如果你回顾入侵时的宣传，你会发现借口是，他试图垄断石油，让我们都臣服于他。这简直荒唐至极。但被指控的、归咎于萨达姆·侯赛因的罪行，实际上是导致美国经济发展的主要因素之一。它确实发生了，并且产生了巨大的影响，这也是它被历史遗忘的原因之一，尽管它确实载入史册。

那是美国。那么埃及呢？埃及无法走类似的道路，因为它被英国势力禁止。它并非独立国家。因此，英国帕默斯顿勋爵宣称，“任何对埃及公平的想法都不应妨碍英国维护其经济和政治霸权等重大而至高无上的利益。”他还表达了他对无知野蛮人穆罕默德·阿里的仇恨，这位发展主义领袖试图引导埃及走上独立的道路。英国的舰队和财政资源被用来阻止埃及寻求独立和经济发展。

二战后，美国取代英国成为全球霸主，并采取了同样的立场。美国明确表示，华盛顿不会向当时全世界都急需援助的埃及提供任何援助。除非埃及遵守我所提到的弱国标准规则，否则美国不会向埃及提供任何援助。当然，美国一直在违反这些规则，对埃及棉花征收高额关税，并造成严重的美元短缺。实际上，[这]是对市场原则的通常解读。对你来说，管教弱者、控制弱者没问题，但我不行，拜托。我要保姆国家确保我没事。这在我们国内也适用，高盛及其同事和政府代表对此深有体会。这些确实是现代史的主导主题。它们本质上是第一世界和第三世界区别的基础——这种区分普遍适用——也是富裕社会内部正在发生的事情的基础。

正如这些相当简单的原则所预测的那样，选举越来越沦为公关行业操纵的一场骗局，他们试图动员民众投票，同时确保问题被边缘化，原因正如我之前提到的。公众对问题的看法与人类的主人不同，所以你想把他们放在一边。

我应该说，虽然我说的是美国，但并非所有地方都是如此。比如说，如果你去南美洲最贫穷的国家玻利维亚，他们实际上举行了民主选举，而且相当了不起，尤其是在过去的十年里。所以，在过去十年里，最受压迫的群体——原住民——实际上已经进入了政治舞台，表达了他们的诉求，参加了选举，赢得了选举，选出了他们自己的人——一个贫苦的农民，而不是耶鲁大学骷髅会的成员——并且在真正的问题上赢得了选举，这些问题包括资源控制、文化权利，以及如何在一个复杂的多民族社会中处理正义问题等严肃的问题。几年后，在另一场选举中，他们甚至表现得更好。

这就是民主。在工业化社会，你得费很大劲才能找到类似的东西。我们社会正在发生的事情完全不同。本质上操纵选举的公关行业正在运用某些原则来破坏民主，这些原则与破坏市场的原则如出一辙。企业最不想要的就是经济理论意义上的市场。去上一门经济学课，他们会告诉你，市场是建立在知情的消费者做出理性选择的基础上的。任何看过电视广告的人都知道这并非事实。事实上，如果我们有一个市场体系，通用汽车的广告就只是对明年产品特性的简要介绍。但你看到的可不是这样。你看到的是电影女演员、足球英雄，或者有人开车上山之类的。所有广告都是如此。其目标是通过制造不知情的消费者做出非理性的选择来破坏市场，而商业界为此投入了巨大的精力。

当同一个行业，公关行业，转向破坏民主时，情况也是如此。它想要构建一种选举，让不知情的选民做出非理性的选择。这很合理，而且显而易见，你很难忽视。这也是小学就应该教的东西之一。谈论如此显而易见的事情，确实有点尴尬。

向大学听众发表演讲。

所有这些对人类的主人来说都是第二天性。例如，奥巴马在2008年获胜后，正如你所知，立即获得了广告业颁发的2008年度最佳营销奖。他击败了苹果电脑。如果你看看商业媒体，那里的人们谈论得更公开，高管们欣喜若狂。他们说，自从里根总统以来，他们就一直像推销牙膏一样推销候选人，但2008年是他们最伟大的成就。他们说，这场选举太伟大了，它将改变公司董事会的风格。

预计2012年大选将耗资20亿美元。这笔资金将主要来自企业。因此，奥巴马选择商界领袖担任高级职位也就不足为奇了。公众非常愤怒和沮丧，但除非西方民众能够达到埃及人的水平，否则他们将继续成为受害者。

在美国，共和党早已不再以传统政党自居。他们深深地扎根于美国企业和超级富豪的腰包，你需要借助望远镜才能找到他们。民主党人，顺便说一句，他们现在已经被称为温和派共和党人了，他们也并不落后。我之前提到的奥巴马的经济团队选择就是一个例子。实际上，我并没有准确描述。他的经济团队中有一个例外，那就是保罗·沃尔克。他曾在罗纳德·里根政府时期担任财政部长。但如今，政治光谱已经大幅右倾，以至于沃尔克成了最后一个呼吁某种监管的自由主义者——顺便说一句，是“曾经是”（was），而不是“现在”（is）。他被赶下台，由杰弗里·伊梅尔特接任。伊梅尔特曾是通用电气的首席执行官。通用电气是美国最大的公司。

如果你回顾一下当时的言论，就会发现他的特殊职责是创造就业机会。实际上，更准确的评论（同样出自汤姆·弗格森）是，我们现在看到的是，最知名、最引人注目的金融业过度行为批评者从公众视野中消失，取而代之的是一家严重依赖各种政府援助（包括外交援助）来增加对华投资和转移就业岗位的公司的现任首席执行官。这并非关乎就业，而是关乎政治资金。白宫知道，它需要为连任竞选筹集大约10亿美元。

这正是评判此次任命以及奥巴马近期其他任命的背景，商界不出所料地对此表示满意。《伦敦金融时报》报道称，伊梅尔特先生的任命受到了美国商会（主要商业游说团体）的赞扬，他们表示，美国商会一直是总统最严厉的批评者之一，并在去年11月的选举中资助了许多与民主党竞争的共和党人。但或许这一切即将结束，商业规则的最后一道障碍或许将被清除。

看看通用电气（GE），它超过一半的员工在海外，超过一半的收入来自海外业务。而且，尽管它被视为一家制造企业，但它的大部分收入并非来自生产，而是来自金融业务。顺便说一句，华尔街崩盘时，它为此获得了巨额救助。虽然这项任命宣称是为了增加就业，但实际上与此关系不大，更准确地说，它应该遵循所谓的“跟着钱走”。一个多世纪前，伟大的政治金融家马克·汉纳曾说过，政治中有两件事很重要：金钱，以及第二件事我忘了。这是小学常识。

这句话在今天尤为正确，尤其是在过去三十年发生巨变的情况下。理解这一点至关重要。这些大约发生在过去30多年的发展，是在现代世界秩序发生重大变化之一之后发生的，即二战后经济体系，即所谓的布雷顿森林体系的瓦解。该体系是由二战战胜国美国和英国共同设计的。其主要设计者是英国的约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯和美国的“新政”经济学家哈里·德克斯特·怀特。

该体系的核心要素之一是货币监管。事实上，这构成了未来几十年经济高速增长（历史最高水平）的基础之一。该体系在大约40年前被瓦解。这也是导致金融投机激增和金融机构大规模扩张的一个因素。当时，它们只是经济的一小部分，主要从事国家资本主义制度下银行应该做的事情，即将闲置资金（例如银行）引导至某种生产性投资。

那只是当时的情况。到 2007 年，也就是大萧条之前，他们获得了美国企业利润的 40% 左右。他们的利润主要来自复杂的金融操作，这些操作几乎没有任何社会或经济效益。

效用，并且在许多方面对经济和人民有害。如果资本主义原则盛行，这些做法将会受到严厉限制。它们会因经济崩溃和资金损失而受到限制。但值得庆幸的是，至少对富人来说，人们不必担心这一点。

经济金融化的另一个因素是生产利润率下降，因此通过金融操纵赚钱变得更加容易，当然，这总是在保姆国家的保护下进行的。与之密切相关的发展是生产离岸外包。这是在一个精心设计的全球贸易体系下进行的，该体系旨在让世界各地的劳动人民相互竞争，同时对财富提供极高的保护，并赋予投资者前所未有的权利。这又是对市场纪律的通常解读：对你没问题，但我不行，拜托。

这些发展引发了财富集中的恶性循环，随之而来的是政治权力的集中，这再次符合斯密的格言。过去30年来，州政府制定的公司政策就是为了加速这一循环，所以正如你可能知道的，不平等现象已经飙升至美国历史上的最高水平。但鲜为人知的是，这实际上具有误导性。极端的不平等主要源于人口最顶层1%的巨额财富，更准确地说，是人口最顶层的0.1%。这个群体规模非常小，以至于美国人口普查没有将其纳入，因此大大低估了不平等现象。经济学家对此进行了研究。

与此同时，大多数人的实际收入基本停滞不前。人们的工作负担比欧洲和日本等国家要重得多；债务负担沉重，资产价格上涨，就像上次房地产泡沫一样。极少数的赢家主要是首席执行官、对冲基金经理之类的人。他们利用自己的政治权力来加速这一进程。例如，削减开支就是精心设计的，目的是让超级富豪受益。回顾一下，直到1980年，直到里根执政，美国的税收在某种程度上具有再分配性——这是根据美国国税局的分析——就像大多数国家一样。他们理应如此。自那以后，除了几次短暂的波动外，税收实际上有所下降。如果引入其他因素，比如避税天堂和其他逃税手段，税收就会向上再分配。这是经过精心设计的。

以十年前的布什减税政策为例，它给经济带来了巨大的负担。这些政策的设计非常谨慎。第一年开始时，他们只给民众提供少量的退税。所以，你会收到几百美元的邮件，觉得这笔退税很棒。但这些政策的设计目的是，随着时间的推移，利益会转移到富人身上。到第十年，也就是政策到期的时候，超过一半的税收优惠流向了最富有的1%，也就是那些重要的人。但如果这样，它就变得几乎看不见了。这有一个专门的术语。这叫做“日落策略”。他们确保到日落时，事情进展顺利。一开始你有点误导大众。只有那些身在其中的人才能预见未来的发展。

对于那些被称为保守派的人来说，这些政策再正常不过了，他们现在想让这些政策永久化。看看报纸头版就知道了。他们想让这些削减永久化，但对于就业，情况也一样。我们之所以要给最富有的1%或其中的一小部分人提供巨额资金，让他们随心所欲地花钱，就是为了创造就业。实际上，英语在这方面发生了一些有趣的变化。有一个词已经变得很粗俗了，因为台下可能有孩子，我不能说，但我可以拼出来：P-R-O-F-I-T-S。你不能这么说。事实上，它有自己的发音。这叫做就业，现在这几乎成了家常便饭。

这就是问题所在。这里也一样。那是布什的减税政策，但同样的事情正在发生。就像国会的跛脚鸭会期，也就是11月大选后到下一届国会就职前的会期。奥巴马因其在跛脚鸭会期期间的成就、政治家风范的两党合作等等而备受赞誉。事实上，他的支持者也对他赞誉有加。他确实取得了一些成就。主要的成就是对超级富豪的减税，我的意思是超级富豪。我的生活还算不错，但我的财富低于这项减税的门槛。这是针对超级富豪的减税。当然，它增加了赤字，这应该是我们担心的大问题。要做到这一点需要相当令人印象深刻的准备工作，但它确实做到了。

与此同时，联邦雇员的税收也增加了，但当时没有这么叫，因为你不是

不应该谈论增税。它被称为冻结，我想只有五分钟。冻结可能只有五秒钟。对公共部门来说，冻结就等于增税，所以这是伪装成冻结的对公共部门工作人员的增税。此外，还削减了社会保障的工资税。社会保障是由劳动人民支付的。它不会对赤字造成任何影响——恰恰相反。劳动者支付了它，而这笔钱却减少了，这听起来还挺好的。人民需要钱。但这又是一个特洛伊木马。看看它的设计方式。这又是日落策略。冻结是经过精心设计的，以便在总统大选前结束。

政界人士非常清楚，随着大选的临近，没有人会说让我们提高工资税。所以这实际上是把它永久化了，这是一种取消社会保障资金的方式。尽管大家都在大声疾呼，但社会保障实际上状况良好。但如果你可以取消它的资金，它的状况就不会那么好了。私有化有一个标准的手法，那就是取消对你想私有化的东西的资金支持。比如撒切尔夫人想要取消对铁路的资金支持，首先要做的就是取消资金支持，然后铁路就无法运转，民众就会愤怒，要求改变。你说好吧，私有化吧，结果情况却变得更糟。在这种情况下，政府不得不介入并拯救它。

这就是私有化的标准手法：取消资金支持，确保一切运转不正常，民众就会愤怒，然后你把它交给私人资本。这就是社会保障骗局。如果他们能成功取消资金支持——他们已经尝试了几十年，它太受欢迎了，以至于无能为力，而且效率很高，行政成本微乎其微。这与私有化的医疗保健系统完全不同。所以它很难被废除。但如果你能取消资金支持，它或许会奏效。这就是跛脚鸭会议做出这个决定的意义所在。这很重要。首先，如果能私有化，对投资者来说将是一笔巨大的财富。社会保障体系里有大量的资金。这些资金要么被存放在信托基金中，要么被投资于政府债券，最终流向劳动人民。但如果这些资金落入金融机构手中，他们就能利用这些资金中饱私囊，赚取巨额利润。而当体系崩溃时，通常又会回到纳税人的手中，由他们来救助。

此外，社会保障确实存在缺陷。它对富人来说几乎毫无用处。他们或许能拿到，但不会察觉。它就像山上的一根牙签。所以谁在乎呢？但对很大一部分人来说，它是他们的生存手段。尤其是在当下。人们拥有巨额的虚假财富，他们相信这些财富都投资于房地产。这完全是一个虚假的泡沫，但他们却深信不疑。所以，这些财富被用来借贷、教育，以及任何其他用途。这些都消失了。八万亿美元都消失了。当然，这些人将依靠对富人毫无意义的社会保障生存。

还有一个更深层次的观点，那就是社会保障基于卡迈勒·阿巴斯所说的原则，即社会团结。社会保障基于这样一种理念：你应该关心那些需要帮助的人的遭遇。比如，如果镇上有个残疾寡妇没饭吃，你就应该关心她。这就是社会保障的意义所在。但这可不是个好主意。你应该照顾好自己，而不是关心别人。社会保障很危险。它在某种程度上破坏了人们所推崇的信条，甚至可能引发行动，从而改变世界的运作方式。所以我们不希望发生这种情况。事实上，基于同样的原则，对公共教育进行了大规模的攻击……而且同样的伎俩正在被使用。削减资金，让它无法运转，抱怨它如何运转不起来，甚至将其私有化，情况只会越来越糟。但这样一来，社会团结就被破坏了，富人反正也乐在其中。他们想要什么就得到什么。

所有这些都是一场令人印象深刻的阶级斗争的一部分，这场斗争包含许多方面。其中很多方面并非显而易见，但确实存在。例如，政府制定公司运营规则，即所谓的公司治理。在这场激烈的阶级斗争时期制定的规则是，首席执行官可以挑选董事会来决定他们的薪酬，并制定一些隐瞒短期收益的策略，比如股票期权。你可以想象，当你自己挑选董事会时，情况会是怎样。

人们曾努力让这一切变得更加透明，但都被国会击退了。放松管制也是如此。在新政放松管制的时期，没有发生金融危机。整个体系运行平稳。自里根以来，金融危机一直不断发生，每次

比前一个更糟。但富人和权贵们却因为我提到的原因而过得很好。公众买单，富人受益。

所有这些都是国家资本主义的新阶段。当管理层的目标是短期利润时，对公司的忠诚就越来越没有必要了，而短期利润当然主要来自金融操纵。所以谁会在乎公司呢？如果它倒闭了，那好。我有钱。国内失业不是问题。当墨西哥、中国、越南和其他廉价且被残酷剥削的劳动力来源地可以用作装配厂时，就不需要国内劳动力了，而且它们就是装配厂。主要行业越来越多地将劳动力转移到海外，比如通用电气，而——恐怕我不得不说这个词；抱歉——而利润却回到了少数人的口袋里。

以IBM为例。这是一个相当有趣的例子。商业媒体最近刊登了一篇关于IBM的长文，文中一针见血地指出，IBM或许在很多人眼中是一家典型的美国公司，但截至2008年底，其超过70%的员工都在美国境外。次年，IBM在继续裁减美国员工的同时，宣布了一项计划，为员工提供将工作地点转移到新兴市场的机会。换句话说，你有机会搬到印度，在那里你可以享受到更低的生活水平。这是一个很好的机会，但它不仅能提高公司的效率，还能为老板们带来财富。如果员工不接受这个如此慷慨的机会，他们还有其他选择。他们可以加入排队领取食品券的人群。但文章指出，IBM是一家仁慈的公司。他们主动承担部分搬迁费用，所以他们真的是好人。

商业媒体的报道并没有解释为什么IBM应该被视为典型的美国公司，但事实上，这其中有充分的理由。一是IBM的财富依赖于纳税人。正因如此，它才学会了忘掉早期援助纳粹德国之类的事情。但就在最近，它学会了从穿孔卡片转向现代计算机。例如，它就是在我工作的五角大楼资助的实验室里学到的。最终，在20世纪60年代初，IBM终于能够生产自己的高速计算机，但这些计算机对企业来说过于昂贵，因此美国介入购买。一般来说，国家采购是纳税人补贴的主要手段。

许多年，实际上是几十年后，IBM终于能够在市场上盈利，并且能够剥离出像微软这样的非常成功的企业，这些企业也从公共补贴中获得了丰厚的收益。所以，这确实是事实：IBM是一家典型的美国公司，管理层在将员工转移到海外时遵循着合理的经济原则。国家会发生什么与他们无关。值得注意的是，这其实并不新鲜。不久前，公司的长远未来还是管理层的一个重要考虑因素。在现代国家资本主义形式下，这种情况越来越少。

颇具趣味的是，这些问题已被现代经济学的伟大奠基人，例如亚当·斯密，预见到了。他认识到并探讨了如果主人遵守健全的经济学规则——也就是如今所谓的新自由主义——英国将会发生什么。他警告说，如果英国制造商、商人和投资者转向海外，他们或许会获利，但英国将遭受损失。然而，他认为这种情况不会发生，因为主人会受到本土偏好的引导。因此，仿佛有一只看不见的手，英国将免受经济理性的摧残。

这段话很难被忽视。这是《国富论》中唯一一次出现著名的“看不见的手”一词，尤其是在批判我们所谓的新自由主义时。另一位现代经济学的主要奠基人大卫·李嘉图也得出了类似的结论。他希望本土偏好会导致，我现在引用他的话，“导致有产者满足于本国的低利润率，而不是去国外寻找更有利的就业机会，以增加他们的财富。” 他说：“我不愿看到这种感觉减弱。” 抛开他们的预测不谈，古典经济学家的直觉相当准确。

我之前提到过一种众所周知的市场无效性，即忽略外部性导致的市场无效性；外部性指的是一项交易对其他交易的影响。就金融机构而言，系统性风险中忽略的外部性是指整个系统因某笔交易失败而崩溃的风险。你在进行交易时不会考虑到这一点。在这种情况下，纳税人可以出手相救。这样你就可以确保那些从风险交易中获利的人得到拯救。

但这并非总是可行，其后果可能很严重——事实上是极其严重的。

所以，如果环境被破坏，没人会来拯救它，而“环境必须被破坏”几乎成了当代国家资本主义制度下的制度性要求。仔细想想吧。现在的商业领袖们正在大规模地宣传，试图让人们相信，人为造成的全球变暖——因为人类活动而导致的全球变暖——是一个自由主义的骗局，而且他们正在取得成功。比如在美国，现在大概有三分之二的人口都相信这一点。

那些发起这些宣传活动的CEO们，他们理解我们所有人都理解的道理。他们明白，威胁是真实存在的，非常严重；它会摧毁他们拥有的一切，会毁掉他们子孙后代的生活。他们都知道这些。但作为一家公司的CEO，在这种制度性角色中，他们别无选择。他们当然可以退出，但如果他们继续留在那里，就必须最大化短期收益和市场份额。实际上，这是英美法律的一项法律要求。如果他们不这样做，他们就会被淘汰，然后其他人会接手。所以，这是一种制度属性，而非个体属性。它确实会引发恶性循环，甚至可能致命。

要想知道这种危险有多么迫在眉睫，只需看看美国新一届国会就知道了。它是由大规模商业资助和宣传推上台的。几乎每个人都是气候变化否定者，而且他们已经根据这些假设采取行动。他们一直在削减用于应对环境问题的有限开支。如果美国不采取任何重大行动，世界其他国家也不会采取任何行动。

更糟糕的是，他们中的一些人是真正的信徒。例如，其中一个环境委员会的新负责人解释说，全球变暖不可能是个问题，因为上帝承诺诺亚不会再有洪水。这就解决了这个问题。如果这种情况发生在安道尔或某个偏远的小国，也许我们会觉得好笑。但当它发生在世界上最富有、最强大的国家时，就不值得嘲笑了。在我们大笑之前，不妨想想，当前的经济危机在很大程度上可以追溯到人们对有效市场假说等教条的狂热信仰，以及诺贝尔奖得主约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨15年前所说的“市场最了解的宗教”。这种宗教使得经济学家和美联储无需注意到，当时存在着一个8万亿美元的房地产泡沫，它完全没有经济基本面依据，与历史趋势相去甚远，并在破裂时摧毁了经济。我们无需关注它，因为我们有这种宗教。市场最了解，所以忘掉它吧。无论发生了什么，这种宗教都会复活。

只要普通民众消极、冷漠、沉迷于消费主义，甚至仇恨弱势群体，所有这些以及更多的事情都可能发生。只要这种情况持续下去，当权者就可以为所欲为，而那些幸存下来的人只能独自面对废墟。

The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival

Noam Chomsky

https://chomsky.info/20110407-2/

Text of lecture given at the The University of Toronto, April 7, 2011

(Transcript courtesy of Yvonne Bond)

I’m going to talk mostly about the United States, in part because I know it better, but also in part because it its unique significance in the global system. That’s been true dramatically since the Second World War. The character and extent of this uniqueness often isn’t understood and would be easily worth a talk in itself, but I won’t go into that.

However, we constantly see that even in relatively small ways. So for example when the housing bubble in the United States burst a couple of years ago, that initiated a global economic crisis which most of the world is still mired in. The worst outcomes were just averted by quite desperate measures.

In another domain, when France and Britain wanted to bomb Libya a couple of weeks ago, they had to turn to a more reluctant Washington to do the heavy lifting and provide the vast bulk of the means of violence. The U.S. has a huge comparative advantage in that domain. Furthermore, although the United States — U.S. society and its political economy — are unusual in some respects, it’s not that different from elsewhere. And in fact developments within the United States over the years have often foreshadowed what is going to happen pretty soon in other industrial societies in the state capitalist world.

That world, in fact the whole world, is of course always changing, but there are significant continuities and they’re worth bearing in mind. One continuity is that those who control the economic life of a country also tend to have overwhelming influence over state policy. That should be a truism taught in elementary school. It was formed succinctly by Adam Smith in words that I’ve quoted before but are important enough to repeat. He, speaking of Britain of course, wrote that the principle architects of policy are the owners of the society, in his day the merchants and manufacturers, “the masters of mankind” as he called them. And they insure that state policy serves their interest, however grievous the effect on others, including the domestic population, but primarily the victims of what he called their savage injustice abroad, and India was his prime example. That was early in the days of the destruction of India.

Today the masters of mankind are multinational corporations and financial institutions, but the lesson still applies and it helps explain why the state-corporate complex is indeed a threat to freedom and in fact even survival. By now there are important elaborations of Smith’s truism applied to the modern world. The most significant and sophisticated version that I know is by political economist Thomas Ferguson, what he calls his investment theory of politics which in brief, simplified, simply views U.S. elections as occasions in which the coalitions of private investors coalesce to invest to control the state. It turns out to be a thesis of quite predictive success over more than a century as he shows.

What it means in effect is that elections are pretty much bought and that the buyers expect to be rewarded, and that happens all the time. It’s illustrated very clearly in the last U.S. Presidential election in 2008. President Obama’s victory traces largely to a huge influx of capital from the financial institutions, especially toward the end of the campaign. They preferred him to his opponent, McCain, and they expected to be rewarded. And of course they were. The country at that time was mired in a deep recession, so Obama’s first act was to select an economic team. It was drawn almost entirely from those who had caused the severe economic crisis that he inherited. He systematically avoided critics of their practices, including quite prestigious ones, Nobel laureates.

Actually the business press wrote rather ironically about this. The Bloomberg News did a review of Obama’s economic team, went through each one of them and looked at their records and concluded that these people shouldn’t be on the economic team to fix up the economy. They should be getting subpoenas, which was pretty correct. They didn’t, of course.

Well, not surprisingly the team chose measures which rewarded the major culprits who are now richer and more powerful than before, and poised to lead the way to the next and probably more severe financial crisis. There was recently an interesting article about this by the Special Inspector of the bailout programs, Neil Barofsky. He wrote a bitter condemnation of the way it was executed. He points out that the legislative act that authorized the bailout was a bargain. The financial institutions that were responsible for the crisis would be saved by the taxpayer and the victims of their misdeeds, in fact real crimes — the victims would be somewhat compensated by the measures to protect home values and preserve home ownership. It was mostly a housing crisis.

Only the first part of the bargain was kept. The financial institutions were rewarded lavishly for causing the crisis and they were forgiven for outright crimes, but the rest of the program floundered. As Barofsky points out, I’m quoting him, “Foreclosures continue to mount with eight to 13 million filings forecast over the program’s lifetime while the biggest banks are 20% larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of the economy than ever.” They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again if necessary. Indeed, credit agencies incorporate future government market bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks. That means exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions which continue to struggle.

So in short, as he puts it, Obama’s programs were a giveaway to Wall Street executives and a blow in the solar plexus to their defenseless victims. In other words, the government listened to those who have a voice in the political system and acted accordingly, all completely in accord with Smith’s truism.

While there should be no surprises here, there are careful studies of Senate votes over a long period and they show that the Senate is indeed responsive to the sector of the population [that is] the top third in income. Actually a closer analysis would show that it’s a very small fraction of that top third. In contrast there’s no correlation at all between Senate votes and opinions of the middle third. And for the bottom third there is a correlation. It’s negative. Senate votes are counter to preferences for the bottom third. And on major issues of foreign and domestic policy, there’s quite a sharp disconnect between public opinion and public policy over a long period.

One might argue that these results don’t really depart very far from the intentions of the founders of the society. So James Madison, who was the main framer of the Constitutional order, explained to the Constitutional Convention that power should remain in the hands of the Senate. The Senate was not chosen directly by voters until about a century ago. In those days the executive was pretty much an administrator, not an emperor. And the House, the third part of the system, which is closer to the public, had much more limited authority. That’s the way in fact it was set up. As Madison explained to the Constitutional Convention, “the Senate represents the wealth of the nation, the more capable set of men, men who have respect for property owners and their rights and understand that government must protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

That’s quite accurate. Something else that ought to be taught in elementary school.

We should bear in mind, however, kind of in Madison’s defense, that his mentality was pre-capitalist. So he assumed that a Senator would be, as he put it, “an enlightened statesman and benevolent philosopher.” The Senate would be a “chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interests of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” They would therefore refine and enlarge the public views by guarding the public against the mischiefs of democratic majorities. This is all rather like the noble Roman gentleman of the fantasies of the day. Adam Smith before him had a sharper eye.

Well, it didn’t take long for Madison to shift his thinking about this. As he viewed the early results of the democratic experiment, he had second thoughts. In fact by 1792, a couple of years later, by then he deplored what he called “the daring depravity of the times as the stock-jobbers become the Praetorian band of the government, at once its tool and its tyrant, bribed by its largesses and over-aweing it by clamors and combinations,” which isn’t a bad description of today’s political system and its social and economic correlates.

Today in the richest country in human history, 20% of the population qualify for food stamps. Real unemployment today is at the level of the Great Depression for much of the population, manufacturing workers for example. And in fact their actual circumstances are much worse than in the Great Depression, which I’m old enough to remember. Most of my family were unemployed working class and the country was of course far poorer than it is today. But it was a hopeful period in many ways. There was a sense that people were doing something about it and that times would get better. And indeed they did, thanks to very active organizing, CIO, other things. And then an immense government stimulus, first during the War and then continuing through the post-war decades.

That’s not true today. The jobs that are being lost are unlikely to return, at least under the current programs of the masters of mankind. Not graven in stone, but that’s their programs. While the population suffers, Goldman Sachs, which is one of the main architects of the current crisis, is now richer than ever and they have just quietly announced 17.5 billion dollars in extra compensation for last year with the CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, getting 12.6 million while his base salary more than triples. And exactly as Barofsky said, they’re poised to play the same game again.

And why not? They can rely on the government insurance policy that enables them to safely engage in risky transactions, make huge profits, and they don’t take into account what in the jargon of economics are called externalities — the effect of a transaction on others; crucially in their case what’s called systemic risk, that is, the likelihood that the whole system will collapse as a result of their risky and hence profitable transactions.

And when it does collapse, as is anticipated, that’s not a big problem. They can run to the powerful nanny state that they nurtured, clutching in their hands their copies of Hayek and Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand and so on and they can demand the bailout to which they’re entitled because they’re too big to fail as it’s put. As one commentator added, Riley, also too big to jail for quite serious crimes. It’s a pretty impressive scam. Of course it’s in radical violation of capitalist principles, but the masters of mankind believe in those principles only for others, not for themselves.

That stance has a long pedigree. That’s another matter that’s important to understand if we want to grasp the nature of the world in which we live: actually lies in the background a very revealing interaction that’s taking place between two countries that are quite different in terms of independence and economic development: the United States and Egypt. The democracy uprisings in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt, these are events of truly historic importance. And they’re very frightening to western power, for very simple reasons. The west is certainly going to do whatever it can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

To see why it’s enough to take a look at the studies of Arab public opinion, which is certainly known to planners, even though not to the western public, at least to those who keep to the media. What they show is for example in Egypt about 90% of the population think that the United States think that the United States is the main threat that they face. Maybe 10% think Iran is a threat. Actually about 80% think the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. Those figures happen to the high in Egypt but they’re pretty much true across the Arab world, so it’s obvious that the west is going to do whatever it can to prevent those opinions from entering into policy which means to prevent any form of authentic democracy.

Well, these are extremely important events and it’s important to take a look at how they’re developing. All of these have long histories incidentally. So for example the Egyptian movement as you probably saw was led by a group of young tech-savvy people who called themselves the April 6th Movement. Why April 6th? That’s a reference to a major action that was planned on April 6, 2008. At one of the major industrial installations in Egypt, the Mahalla textile installation, there was supposed to be a big strike. There were a lot of support activities. It was crushed by the military dictatorship that we were supporting. Forgotten here; who cares? But not forgotten there. And the same is true of the other countries.

The things that have suddenly burst forth are not coming from nowhere. That’s true of the first one too, which doesn’t even get reported. The current wave of uprisings actually began in the last African colony, one of the two countries of the Arab world that was invaded, occupied, and settled by an outside power. That’s Western Sahara, technically a U.N. dependency, supposed to move on to independence. It was invaded in 1975 by Morocco, a brutal invasion like most. [They] settled a lot of the Moroccan population there, illegally of course. And there have been repeated protests. There was another one in last November, an effort to set up a tent city. Moroccan forces quickly crushed it. Since it’s a U.N. responsibility the issue did come to the Security Council, but France made sure that there would be no inquiry into what happened. It has to protect its Moroccan client. That was the first of the other occupied countries so far the lid has been on tightly. That’s Palestine. Plenty to say about that, but I think most of you are familiar with it, not least from the very courageous and important work done right here by the late Jim Graff.

Whatever is going to happen it’s not clear. All of this is still a work in progress. But despite the internal barriers and internal constraints, these popular movements have achieved substantial success and they have pretty exciting prospects. One of the most dramatic recent moments was last February 20 when Kamal Abbas sent a message from Tahrir Square in Cairo to the Wisconsin workers saying “We stand with you as you stood with us.” Abbas is a leader of the years of struggle of Egyptian workers for elementary rights that lie in the background of today’s Arab spring, as I said brutally crushed by the western-backed dictator. He’s also a leading figure in the current uprising. And Abbas’ message of solidarity to Wisconsin workers evoked the traditional aspirations of the labor movement — solidarity among working people of the world and populations generally.

Right now the trajectories in Cairo and Madison are intersecting but they’re heading in opposite directions: in Cairo towards gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorships; in Madison towards defending rights that have been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack. Each of these is kind of a microcosm of tendencies that are underway in global society following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what’s taking place in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history and in what President Eisenhower called the most strategically important area in the world, the Middle East — “a stupendous source of strategic power and probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment.” Those are the words of the State Department in the 1940s. That was a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding new world order of the day that they were organizing and implementing, and in fact still do.

It’s normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can and it’s normal for the victims to take it seriously. If we want to understand the world we should follow their example. Today is in fact not the first occasion when Egypt and the United States are facing similar problems and moving in opposite directions. That was also true in the early part of the 19th century in ways which are quite crucial for both societies and generalize across the world, and are crucial for understanding of the creation of the divide between the rich First World and the poor Third World, much less sharp back in those days.

At that time, early 19th century, Egypt and the United States were both well placed to undertake rapid economic development. Both of them had rich agriculture. That included cotton, which is sort of the fuel of the early industrial revolution. Although unlike Egypt, the United States had to develop cotton production and a work force by conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that reverberate to the present. There was one fundamental difference between Egypt and the United States, namely the United States gained independence and it was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic theory — pretty much the same ones as today. At the time they were delivered by the greatest economist of the day, Adam Smith, in terms similar to those preached to what are called developing societies today.

So Smith urged the American colonies to keep to what was later called their comparative advantage, that is, to produce primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures and certainly not to try to monopolize crucial goods. That meant particularly cotton in those days, kind of like oil today. Any other path, he warned, I’ll quote him, “would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country toward real wealth and greatness.” Approximately what you study in economic courses today and the advice given to the world by the IMF and the World Bank. Having gained their independence, the U.S. colonies were free to ignore the laws of sound economics. They were free to follow England’s own course of independent state-guided development with high tariffs to protect industry from superior British exports, the first textiles and later steel and others, and a wide variety of other modes of state intervention in order to accelerate economic development.

The independent republic also tried and came pretty close, to get a monopoly of cotton — for a good reason. The purpose was to place all other nations at our feet, as the Jacksonian presidents put it at the time when they were annexing Texas and half of Mexico. They were particularly concerned with England. England was the big enemy in those days. It was a deterrent and they figured if they monopolized cotton they could bring England to its feet. It’s pretty important. For example, it’s one of the reasons why Canada wasn’t conquered. The British deterred it several times. Maybe it’s being conquered in other ways, but that’s another matter. But it wasn’t militarily conquered.

They also couldn’t conquer Cuba, much as they wanted to, because the British fleet was in the way. They did finally conquer in later in the century in 1898 under the pretext of liberating it but actually conquering it. The idea was if they could monopolize control of cotton they could overcome this deterrent that was in the way of expansion. Actually it’s kind of interesting that that’s essentially the policy that was attributed to Saddam Hussein in 1990, ridiculous at that time. But if you look back at the propaganda at the time of the invasion, the pretext was, well, he’s trying to monopolize oil to bring us all to his feet. That’s totally outlandish. But what was charged, the crime attributed to Saddam Hussein, was in fact one of the main ones that led to U.S. economic development. It happened and it’s had a big effect, one of the reasons it’s out of history except that it’s in history.

That was the United States. What about Egypt? Egypt couldn’t follow a comparable course because it was barred by British power. It wasn’t independent. So the British Lord Palmerston declared, in his words, that “no ideas of fairness toward Egypt ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests of Britain as preserving its economic and political hegemony.” And he expressed what he called his hate for the ignorant barbarian Muhammad Ali, the developmentalist leader who was trying to direct Egypt on an independent course. Britain’s fleet and financial resources were deployed to terminate Egypt’s quest for independence and economic development.

After World War II the United States displaced Britain as global hegemon and it adopted the same position. The U.S. made it clear that Washington would provide no aid to Egypt and the whole world badly needed aid at the time. The U.S. would provide no aid to Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for weak, the ones I cited, which of course the U.S. continued to violate itself, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a debilitating dollar shortage. Actually [this is] the usual interpretation of market principles. It’s fine for you, fine for disciplining the weak and controlling them, but not me, please. I want the nanny state to make sure I’m okay. That applies home too, the way Goldman Sachs and its colleagues and its representative in government understand very well. These are really leading themes of modern history. They’re essentially the basis for the First – Third World distinction — this generalizes all over — and for what’s happening internal to the rich societies as well.

As these kind of quite simple principles predict, elections are increasingly just becoming a charade run by the public relations industry which tries to mobilize populations to vote while making sure that issues are marginalized for the reason I mentioned. The public has different opinions about issues than the masters of mankind so you want to keep them aside.

I should say while I’m talking about the United States, it’s not true everywhere. If you go, say, to the poorest country in South America, Bolivia, they actually had democratic elections, pretty remarkable ones and especially in the last ten years. So in the last ten years the most bitterly repressed segment of the population, the indigenous population, have actually entered the political arena, pressed their demands, took part in elections, won the elections, elected someone from their own ranks — a poor peasant, not somebody from the Skull and Bones at Yale — and won the election on real issues, serious issues like control over resources, cultural rights, how to handle problems of justice in a complex multiethnic society. And then in another election a couple of years later they did even better.

That’s democracy. You have to look pretty hard to find anything like that in the industrial world. What’s happening in our societies is something quite different. The public relations industry, which essentially runs the elections, is applying certain principles to undermine democracy which are the same as the principles that applies to undermine markets. The last thing that business wants is markets in the sense of economic theory. Take a course in economics, they tell you a market is based on informed consumers making rational choices. Anyone who’s ever looked at a TV ad knows that’s not true. In fact if we had a market system an ad say for General Motors would be a brief statement of the characteristics of the products for next year. That’s not what you see. You see some movie actress or a football hero or somebody driving a car up a mountain or something like that. And that’s true of all advertising. The goal is to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices and the business world spends huge efforts on that.

The same is true when the same industry, the PR industry, turns to undermining democracy. It wants to construct elections in which uninformed voters will make irrational choices. It’s pretty reasonable and it’s so evident you can hardly miss it. It’s another one of those things that ought to be taught in elementary school. It’s kind of embarrassing to talk about something so obvious to a university audience.,

All of this is second nature to the masters of mankind. So for example after his 2008 victory as perhaps you know, Obama immediately won an award from the advertising industry for the best marketing campaign of 2008. He beat out Apple Computers. And if you look at the business press, where people talk more openly, executives were euphoric. They said they’d been marketing candidates like toothpaste ever since Reagan but 2008 was the greatest achievement. They said it was so great it’s going to change the style in corporate boardrooms.

The 2012 election is now expected to cost two billion dollars. It’s going to have to be mostly corporate funding. So it’s not at all surprising that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is quite angry and frustrated, but unless western populations can rise to the level of Egyptians they’re going to remain victims.

In the United States the Republicans long ago ceased any pretext of being a traditional political party. They are so deep in the pockets of corporate America, the super rich, you need a telescope to find them. Democrats, who incidentally by now are what used to be called moderate Republicans, they’re not too far behind. Obama’s choice of an economic team which I mentioned is an example. Actually I didn’t put in quite accurately. There was one exception in his economic team, namely Paul Volcker. He was the Secretary of Treasury under Ronald Reagan. But the spectrum has shifted so far to the right that Volcker was the last liberal calling for some kind of regulation — was, incidentally, not is. He was kicked out, replaced by Jeffrey Immelt. He was the CEO of General Electric. That’s the nation’s largest corporation.

His special responsibility, if you look back at the rhetoric, was to create jobs. Actually more accurate comment, again by Tom Ferguson, is that what we actually have here is the disappearance from the scene of the best-known and most visible critic of the excesses of the financial sector and his replacement by the sitting CEO of a company that is heavily dependent upon government aid of all sorts including diplomatic assistance to invest more in China and to shift jobs there. This is not about jobs, it’s about political money. The White House knows it will need to raise about a billion dollars for its re-election campaign.

That’s the context in which this and Obama’s other recent appointments need to be judged, and the business world not surprisingly was quite pleased. The London Financial Times reported that Mr. Immelt’s appointment was applauded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the major business lobby, which they said which they said has been among the President’s harshest critics and funded many Republicans that ran against Democrats in last November’s election. But maybe that will be over and the last barrier to business rule could be out of the way.

If you look at GE, General Electric, more than half of its work force is abroad and more than half of its revenue comes from overseas operations. Also most of its revenues come not from production though it’s regarded as a manufacturing enterprise but from financial operations, for which, incidentally, it received a hefty bailout when Wall Street tanked. While the appointment was proclaimed to be for job growth, it actually has little to do with that and more accurately it’s what’s called follow the money. More than a century ago the great political financier Mark Hanna said that two things are important in politics: money and I’ve forgotten the second one. Another thing for elementary school.

That’s far more true today especially with the radical changes of the past thirty years. They’re important to understand. These developments roughly the last 30-odd years followed one of the major changes in world order in the modern period, namely the dismantling of the post-Second World War economic system, so-called Bretton Woods system, which had been designed by the victors of the Second World War, the United States and Britain. The basic designers were John Maynard Keynes from Britain and the New Deal economist Harry Dexter White for the United States.

One central component of this system was regulation of currencies. In fact that was part of the basis for the huge economic growth for the next couple of decades, the highest in history. That was dismantled about 40 years ago. That was one factor that led to the huge explosion in the financial speculation and the vast growth of financial institutions. At that time they were small components of the economy and they were mostly doing what the banks are supposed to do in state capitalist systems, namely to direct unused funds like your bank to some kind of productive investment.

That was then. By 2007, just before the great crash, they gained about 40% of corporate profits in the U.S. Their profits come mostly from complex financial manipulations, actions that have little if any social or economic utility and are harmful to the economy and also to people in many ways. These practices would be sharply curtailed if capitalist principles were to prevail. They would be curtailed by crashes and losing your money. But thankfully there’s no fear of that, at least for the rich.

Another factor in the financialization of the economy was that the rate of profit in production was declining so it was easier to make money by financial manipulations, of course always with the protection of the nanny state. A closely related development was the offshoring of production. That’s within a global trade system that is very carefully designed to set working people in competition with one another worldwide along with a very high level of protection for wealth and unprecedented rights for investors. That’s the usual interpretation of market discipline again: fine for you, but not for me, please.

These developments set in motion a vicious cycle of concentration of wealth and with it concentration of political power, again in accordance with Smith’s maxim. For the past 30 years state corporate policy has been very precisely designed to accelerate this cycle so inequality as you probably know has soared to the highest levels in U.S. history. But less known is that this is actually misleading. The radical inequality results primarily from the extraordinary wealth of the top one percent of the population, actually more accurately the top one tenth of one percent. It’s a group so small that it’s missed by the U.S. census, which vastly underestimates inequality for this reason. It’s been studied by economists.

Meanwhile for the majority of the population real incomes have pretty much stagnated. People are getting by with heavier workloads, much more than, say, in Europe and Japan; debt, and asset inflation like the last housing bubble. The miniscule category of victors, and it is extremely small, that’s primarily CEOs, hedge fund managers and the like. And they use their political power to enhance the process. The cuts, for example, are carefully crafted to benefit the super rich. If you look back, until 1980, until Reagan, taxes in the United States were somewhat redistributive — that’s according to the analysis of the Internal Revenue Service — as in most countries. That’s what they’re supposed to be. Since then with a couple of blips, that in fact has declined, and if other factors are introduced, like tax havens and other evasion options, they redistribute upwards. That’s carefully designed.

Take the Bush tax cuts ten years ago, which are huge burden on the economy. They were designed very carefully. They started the first year with a small tax rebate to people. So you get a couple of hundred dollars in the mail and you think this is great, a tax rebate. But they were designed so over the years the benefits would shift towards the rich, and by the tenth year when they were set to expire, more than half of the tax benefits went to the top one percent, the people that count. But then it’s kind of invisible if it happens that way. There’s a name for it. It’s called the sunset technique. They make sure that by the time the sun sets, things are happening the right way. You kind of delude people at the beginning. Only those who are inside the game can see what’s planning down the road.

These are perfectly normal kind of policies for the people who are called conservatives, who now want to make it permanent. Take a look at the front page of the newspapers. They want to make these cuts permanent, but for jobs, the same as here. The reason we have to give a huge amount of money to the top one percent of the population or a fraction of that, which spends it on whatever they feel like, is for jobs. Actually there’s an interesting changes that’s taken place in the English language in this respect. There is a word which has become obscene, so since there may be children in the audience I can’t say it but I’ll spell it: P-R-O-F-I-T-S. You’re not allowed to say that. In fact it has a pronunciation. It’s called jobs, and that’s kind of by now routine.

And that’s what this is about. The same here. That was the Bush tax cuts, but the same thing is happening right at this moment. Like the lame duck session of Congress, the session after the November election before the next Congress takes office. Obama was greatly praised for his achievements during the lame duck session, a statesmanlike display of bipartisanship and so on. Praised by his own supporters, in fact. There were some achievements. The main achievement was a tax break for the super-rich, and I mean super-rich. Like I’m pretty well off, but I’m below the cutoff for that one. It was super-rich tax cut. Of course it increased the deficit, which is supposed to be the big thing we’re worried about. Carrying that off required some pretty impressive footwork but it was done.

Also at the same time there was a tax increase for federal workers, but it wasn’t called that because you’re not supposed to talk about tax increases. It was called a freeze, I think for five minutes. A freeze for maybe five seconds. A freeze for public sectors is identical to a tax increase for them, so this is a tax increase for public sector workers disguised as a freeze. There was also a payroll tax decrease for Social Security. Social Security is paid by working people. It doesn’t contribute anything to the deficit — to the contrary. The workers pay for it, and there was a decrease in that payment, which kind of sounds good. The people need the money. But again it was a Trojan horse. Take a look at the way it was designed. It was the sunset technique again. The freeze was carefully designed so that it ends right before the Presidential election.

Political figures understand perfectly well that with an election coming up, nobody’s going to say let’s raise the payroll tax. So that essentially makes it permanent, which is a way to defund Social Security. Social Security is actually in pretty good shape despite what everybody screams about. But if you can defund it, it won’t be in good shape. And there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize. Like when Thatcher wanted to defund the railroads, first thing to do is defund them, then they don’t work and people get angry and they want a change. You say okay, privatize them and then they get worse. In that case the government had to step in and rescue it.

That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital. That’s the Social Security scam. If they can succeed in defunding it — they’ve been trying for decades, it’s too popular to do much about, and very efficient incidentally, miniscule administrative costs. Nothing like the privatized health care system. So it’s kind of hard to get rid of. But if you can defund it, it might work out. That’s the point of this decision in the lame duck session. That’s kind of important. First of all, if it can be privatized it’s a huge bonanza for investors. There’s a ton of money in the Social Security system. It’s kept in a trust fund or invested in government bonds and goes back to working people. But if that can get into the hands of financial institutions, they can make a ton of money by using those funds to enrich themselves. And as usual when the system crashes, going back to the taxpayer to bail them out.

Also, Social Security really has defects. It’s almost of no use at all to wealthy people. They may get it but they’re not going to notice it. It’s a toothpick on a mountain. So who cares? But for a large part of the population it’s their means of survival. That’s particularly true right now. People had a tremendous amount of their fake wealth which they believed it in housing. It was all a fake bubble but they believed in it. So it was used borrowing, for education, for anything. That’s gone. Eight trillion dollars of it are gone. Those people are going to be surviving on Social Security that’s of no significance to the wealthy, of course.

There’s a kind of a deeper point, that Social Security is based on the principle that Kamal Abbas was talking about, namely social solidarity. Social Security is based on the idea that you’re supposed to care what happens to people who are in need. So like if there’s a disabled widow across town and she doesn’t have food to eat, you’re supposed to care about it. That’s what Social Security is about. And that’s a bad idea. You’re supposed to look after yourself, not care about other people. Social Security is dangerous. It kind of undermines preferred doctrines and can even lead to action, which could change the way the world works. So we don’t want that. In fact there’s a large scale attack on public education that’s based on the same principle, if you can privatize. . . and the same techniques are being used. Defund it so it doesn’t work, complain about how it doesn’t work, privatize it, it gets worse. But then you’ve undermined social solidarity and it’s fine for the wealthy anyway. They’ll get what they want.

All of this is part of a quite impressive campaign of class war, which has many aspects. A lot of them aren’t immediately visible but they’re there. So for example the government sets rules on how corporations are run, what’s called corporate governance. And the rules that have been set up during this passionate class war period, the rules are that CEOs can pick the boards that set their salaries and work out techniques like, say, stock options which conceal short-term gain. You can imagine how that works when you pick your own board.

There have been efforts to try to get this to be more transparent, but they were beaten back by Congress. The same is true of deregulation. During the period when New Deal deregulations were maintained there were no financial crises. The system went along smoothly. Since Reagan there have been regular financial crises, each one worse than the preceding one. But the rich and powerful make out fine for the reasons I mentioned. The public pays, the rich benefit.

All of this is kind of a new stage of state capitalism. Loyalty to firms is less and less necessary when the goal of management is short-term profits, which of course comes mostly from financial manipulations. So who cares about the firm? If it goes under, fine. I’m rich. Domestic unemployment is not a problem. There’s no need for a domestic work force when Mexico and China and Vietnam and other sources of cheap and brutally exploited labor can be used as assembly plants, and they are assembly plants. Major industries increasingly have their work forces overseas, like General Electric, while — I have to say that word, I’m afraid; sorry — while profits come home back to the pockets of a few.

Take IBM. It’s quite an interesting example. The business press recently ran a big article about them and said correctly that IBM may strike many people as the quintessential American company, but over 70% of its work force was outside of the United States at the end of 2008. And the following year, while continuing to reduce its U.S. employment, the company announced a program to offer employees the opportunity to move their jobs to emerging markets. In other words, you have the opportunity to move to India, say, where you could live at a much lower standard of living. Nice opportunity, but that increases the efficiency of the company and it provides wealth for the masters. If employees don’t take this opportunity that is so benignly offered to them, they have options. They can join the people standing in line for food stamps. But IBM’s a benevolent company, the article points out. They’re offering to foot some of the relocation costs so they’re really nice guys.

The report in the business press didn’t explain why IBM should be regarded as the quintessential American company, but there are in fact good reasons. One is that IBM relied on the taxpayer for its wealth. That’s how it learned to forget about earlier things like helping out Nazi Germany. But just in the recent period it learned to shift from punch cards to modern computers. It learned it at Pentagon-funded labs where I worked, for example. Finally in the early sixties the firm was able to produce its own fast computers but they were too expensive for businesses, so the United States stepped in to purchase them. In general a procurement by the state is a major device of taxpayer subsidy.

Many years, actually decades later, IBM was finally able to make profits in the market and it was also able to spin off wildly successful enterprises like Microsoft and others which also benefited amply from public subsidy. So indeed it’s true: it is the quintessential American company and management is following sound economic principles in shifting employment abroad. What happens to the country is not their business. It’s worth noting that this really isn’t new. Not very long ago the long-term future of the firm was an important consideration for management. Less and less so under modern forms of state capitalism.

Rather interestingly these issues were foreseen by the great founders of modern economics, Adam Smith for example. He recognized and discussed what would happen to Britain if the masters adhered to the rules of sound economics — what’s now called neoliberalism. He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. However, he felt that this wouldn’t happen because the masters would be guided by a home bias. So as if by an invisible hand England would be spared he ravages of economic rationality.

That passage is pretty hard to miss. It’s the only occurrence of the famous phrase “invisible hand” in Wealth of Nations, namely in a critique of what we call neoliberalism. The other leading founder of modern economics, David Ricardo, he drew similar conclusions. He hoped that home bias would lead, I’m quoting him now, “would lead men of property to be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations.” He said “These are feelings that I would be sorry to see weakened.” Their predictions aside, the instincts of the classical economists were quite sound.

I mentioned before one well-known market inefficiency, the market inefficiency of dismissing externalities; that is, the effect of a transaction on others. In the case of financial institutions, the externality that’s dismissed in systemic risk, the risk that the whole system will crash as the result of some failed transaction. You don’t take that into account when you make a transaction. In that case the taxpayer can come to the rescue. That way you can make sure that those who profit from risky transactions will be saved.

But that’s not always an option, and the consequences can be severe — in fact awesomely severe. So nobody’s going to come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed, and that it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative under contemporary state capitalism. Just think it through. Business leaders right now are conducting massive propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming — global warming because of human interference — is a liberal hoax, and they’re succeeding. Like in the United States probably two-thirds of the population believes this by now.

The CEOs who are running these campaigns, they understand what all of us understand. They understand that the threat is very real, very grave; that it’ll destroy everything they own, that it’ll wreck the lives of their grandchildren. They know all of that. But then as CEOs of a corporation, in that institutional role they have no choice. They can pull out of course, but if they stay there they have to maximize short-term gain and market share. Actually that’s a legal requirement under Anglo-American law. If they don’t do it, they’ll be out and somebody else will come in who does do it. So it’s an institutional property, not an individual one. And it does set off a vicious cycle, one that could be lethal.

To see how immanent the danger is, just have a look at the new Congress in the United States, the one that was propelled into power by large scale business funding and propaganda. Almost everyone there is a climate change denier and they’ve already been acting on those assumptions. They’ve been cutting the limited expenditures there are for dealing with environmental problems. If the United States doesn’t do anything significant, the rest of the world isn’t either.

Worse than that, some of them are true believers. For example the new head of one of these committees on the environment explained that global warming can’t be a problem because God promised Noah that there wouldn’t be another flood. That takes care of that. If that was happening in Andorra or some small remote country, maybe we would laugh. But it’s not laughable when it’s happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. Before we laugh, we might bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz 15 years ago called “the religion that markets know best.” The religion made it unnecessary for economists and the Federal Reserve to notice that there was an eight trillion dollar housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, that was way off historical trends, and that devastated the economy when it burst. No need to look at it because we have the religion. Markets know best, so forget it. That religion is resuscitated despite what happened.

All of this and much more can proceed as long as the general population is passive, apathetic, devoted to consumerism or maybe hatred of the vulnerable. As long as that’s true the powerful can do as they please and those who survive will be left to contemplate the ruins.