[lbo-talk] Noam on Intellectuals

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 2/11/07, Arash <arash at riseup.net> wrote:
> Compare the United States, say, with Japan. How come we had to turn to the
> Pentagon system as a way to force the public to subsidize high-technology
> industry, whereas Japan didn't? They just get the public to subsidize
> high-technology industry directly, through reduction of con­sumption,
> fiscal measures, and soon. That makes them a lot more efficient than we
> are. If you want to build the next generation of, say, computers, the
> Japanese just say, "Okay, we're going to lower consumption levels, put
> this much into investment, and build computers." If you want to do it in
> the United States, you say, "Well, we're going to build some lunatic
> system to stop Soviet missiles, and for that you're going to have to lower
> your consumption level and maybe, somehow, we'll get computers out of
> that." Obviously, the Japanese system is more much efficient. So why don't
> we adopt the more efficient system? The reason is that we're a freer
> society; we can't do it here. In a society that's more fascist than state
> capitalist, and I mean that culturally as well as in terms of economic
> institutions, you can just tell people what they're going to do and they
> do it. Here you can't do that. No politician in the United States can get
> up and say, "You guys are going to lower your standard of living next year
> so that IBM can make more profit, and that's the way it's going to work."
> That's not going to sell.

The US ruling class are saying today to common people of the United
States: we are going to cut social programs like Medicare and
Medicaid, keep tax cuts for the rich, and fund the wars on
Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe also Iran (to say nothing of minor
interventions elsewhere, which are below the radar of common
Americans).  Americans may or may not be sold on that, but they sure
look like they are standing down, in deference to the White House and
Congress, as most of them have been since the long sixties.
-- 
Yoshie
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