Manufacturing Consent (Chomsky) on TV tonight and tomorrowow

[David Dorkin]

Where do you get this in Chomsky? I imagine the point was that much of
the transfers from American taxpayers came back through to the US
companies and groups(though by no means all and this was not the point).
William Borden observes in an important study that "few dollars changed
hands internationally under the aid programs; the dollars went to
American producers, and the goods were sold to the European public" in
local currencies

In Deterring Democracy, Chomsky says: 
"the goal was "to avert `economic, social and political'chaos in Europe,
contain Communism (meaning not Soviet intervention but the success of
the indigenous Communist parties), prevent the collapse of America's
export trade, and achieve the goal of multilateralism," and provide a
crucial economic stimulus for "individual initiative and private
enterprise both on the Continent and in the United States," undercutting
the fear of "experiments with socialist enterprise and government
controls," which would "jeopardize private enterprise" in the
United States as well (Michael Hogan, in the major scholarly study). The
Marshall Plan also "set the stage for large amounts of private U.S.
direct investment in Europe," Reagan's Commerce
Department observed in 1984, establishing the basis for the modern TNCs,
which "prospered and expanded on overseas orders, fueled initially by
the dollars of the Marshall Plan" and protected from "negative
developments" by "the umbrella of American power," 

Brad De Long wrote:
> Chomsky seemed to think that the Marshall Plan entailed no net
> transfer of resources from America to Europe. The counterfactual
> appeared to be a scenario in which European governments seized
> American property of their nationals and used that to finance dollar
> imports instead...
> Brad DeLong