Urdu Poetry Forum

**ahsan akbar** · #1 12-30-2007, 07:07 PM

Media and Thought Control in Modern Democratic Societies

from a Political Classic"Necessary Illusions "

by

Noam Chomsky

The model of media as corporate oligopoly is the natural system for
capitalist democracy. It has, accordingly, reached its highest form in the
most advanced of these societies, particularly the United States, where
media concentration is high, public radio and television are limited in
scope, and elements of the radical democratic model exist only at the
margins, in such phenomena as listener-supported community radio and
the alternative or local press, often with a noteworthy effect on the social
and political culture and the sense of empowerment in the communities
that benefit from these options.1 In this respect, the United States
represents the form towards which capitalist democracy is tending;
related tendencies include the progressive elimination of unions and
other popular organizations that interfere with private power, an
electoral system that is increasingly stage-managed as a public relations
exercise, avoidance of welfare measures such as national health
insurance that also impinge on the prerogatives of the privileged, and so
on. From this perspective, it is reasonable for Cyrus Vance and Henry
Kissinger to describe the United States as “a model democracy,”
democracy being understood as a system of business control of political
as well as other major institutions.

Other Western democracies are generally a few steps behind in these
respects. Most have not yet achieved the U.S. system of one political
party, with two factions controlled by shifting segments of the business
community. They still retain parties based on working people and the
poor which to some extent represent their interests. But these are
declining, along with cultural institutions that sustain different values
and concerns, and organizational forms that provide isolated individuals
with the means to think and to act outside the framework imposed by
private power.

This is the natural course of events under capitalist democracy,
because of what Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers call “the resource
constraint” and “the demand constraint.” The former is straightforward:
control over resources is narrowly concentrated, with predictable effects
for every aspect of social and political life. The demand constraint is a
more subtle means of control, one whose effects are rarely observed
directly in a properly functioning capitalist democracy such as the
United States, though they are evident, for example, in Latin America,
where the political system sometimes permits a broader range of policy
options, including programs of social reform. The consequences are well
known: capital flight, loss of business and investor confidence, and
general social decline as those who “own the country” lose the capacity
to govern it—or simply a military coup, typically backed by the
hemispheric guardian of order and good form. The more benign response
to reform programs illustrates the demand constraint—the requirement
that the interests of those with effective power be satisfied if the society
is to function.

In brief, it is necessary to ensure that those who own the country are
happy, or else all will suffer, for they control investment and determine
what is produced and distributed and what benefits will trickle down to
those who rent themselves to the owners when they can. For the
homeless in the streets, then, the highest priority must be to ensure that
the dwellers in the mansions are reasonably content. Given the options
available within the system and the cultural values it reinforces,
maximization of short-term individual gain appears to be the rational
course, along with submissiveness, obedience, and abandonment of the
public arena. The bounds on political action are correspondingly limited.
Once the forms of capitalist democracy are in place, they remain very
stable, whatever suffering ensues—a fact that has long been understood
by U.S. planners.

Urdu Poetry Forum

Media and Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Media and Thought Control in Democratic Societies