Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Principle 3

Principles 4-7

Principles 8-10

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

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Themes

The Rise of Income Inequality and Corporate Power

One of Chomsky’s main objectives in Requiem for the American Dream is to shed light on the correlation between the rise of income inequality and the rise of corporate power. The author begins by stating that the American Dream, if defined as the capacity for upward social mobility, is veritably dead in the current socioeconomic conditions. The simultaneous timing of the death of the American Dream and the rise of corporate power and income inequality isn’t coincidental but rather the result of a deliberate, coordinated, and sustained effort on the part of elites and business tycoons to consolidate wealth and monopolize power. Income inequality is the product of this coordinated corporate initiative, which continues to concentrate wealth to the elite at the expense of the lower classes—that is, the rest of the people.

Chomsky argues that throughout history, the tendency for elites to seek power alternates with periods of great democratization during which the people fight to regain control of society. This back-and-forth is a particularly overt characteristic of US history. Current corporate power stems from initiatives launched during the 1970s in reaction to the civilizing efforts of the 1960s, including the civil rights movement. Appalled at the political power that women, environmentalists, Black people, and other minorities gained over that decade, corporations and elites fought to regain control and were widely successful, particularly through financialization and offshoring—two practices that rob the US working class of social security by limiting the value of their labor.

The first of these practices, financialization, allows corporations to profit not from manufacturing (profits produced by the labor of domestic workers) but through the manipulation of money. The second practice, offshoring, pits domestic workers who ask for better wages and working conditions against their exploited counterparts overseas. Thus, both financialization and offshoring devalue domestic US workers and force them into a vicious cycle of impoverishment, while simultaneously exploiting overseas labor in countries that offer cheaper labor and impose fewer regulations. At the same time, empowered corporations continually seek to maximize their wealth by influencing policy to that end. Income inequality is therefore engineered by elites who act only to protect one another against the tyranny of the people and use the US political system to support this goal.

Democracy in Decline

Throughout the book, Chomsky repeatedly notes that the current US political system is profoundly undemocratic. He defines true democracy as power to the people, while US policy increasingly reflects the interests of the elite, not the will of the masses. For example, citing the work of political scientist Martin Gilens, in Principle 10 Chomsky demonstrates that US public policy strongly correlates with the interests of the top 1% yet barely reflects public attitudes. In the current political system, then, the popular vote has minimal impact on policy. When the system robs the people of their right to affect the government, it compromises their freedom and their rights along with the very concept of democracy.

In such instances, Chomsky believes that the people must challenge or dismantle the hierarchical system and the illegitimate authority. The people, who should rightfully hold power in a democratic system, have no reason to follow the plans of an authority that ignores their interests. Instead, the public should demand that hierarchical structures justify their relevance and continued existence. Here, Chomsky finds a similarity in attitude between his own belief in anarchism and classical liberal thought of the Enlightenment period. Both define democracy as a political system that grants power to the people, and both employ similar strategies to challenge tyranny.

The author cautions, however, that for the sake of species survival, corporate power shouldn’t go unchallenged in the current sociopolitical climate. While the process of democratization experienced great ebbs and flows throughout US history, the elites are now capable of such great destruction that they have the power to annihilate all life: The 21st century saw the creation of nuclear power and the acceleration of climate change. Whereas previous authorities operated under undemocratic systems, consolidated wealth, and exploited workers, this is the first time in history that the power of the elite has inflated to the point that it’s capable of threatening the survival of the human species. In the book’s closing paragraphs, Chomsky urges people, especially the working class, to organize and challenge corporate control: Workers and the broader public must unite and unionize to fight against hierarchical structures unconcerned with preserving their interest or guaranteeing their continued existence. In other words, an era of great democratization must soon arise to challenge corporate control, which has steadily increased since the 1970s. Chomsky hopes that people can see the current circumstances as an incentive to “find new ways of political action” (150).

Solidarity Versus “The Vile Maxim”

Chomsky designates solidarity and the “vile maxim” (which economist Adam Smith defined) as two opposing principles that affect power and democracy. Solidarity—defined as the altruistic desire to care for the welfare of others—is a democratizing force. Founded on the principle of sympathy, a fundamental trait that all humans possess, solidarity is the basis of all social security programs, which operate by pulling funds from the collective to help those most in need. Conversely, the “vile maxim”—what Smith identifies as greed and selfishness—dictates that the actions of the minority elite reflect a profound egoism: Beyond maximizing its own prestige and wealth, it’s unconcerned with the fates and interests of others. Chomsky concludes that governmental systems concerned with protecting the elite against the people are undemocratic, as they don’t reflect the will of the people who are part of the majority.

Chomsky then points out that the current system in the US is better equipped to defend the interests of the elite than the interests of the people. This is a result of the deliberate effort by businesses and elites to maximize their power. Requiem for the American Dream deconstructs and analyzes how corporations, over the most recent decades, have influenced media, education, and policy on both the international and domestic fronts to enrich themselves. They do so by devaluating the domestic worker through financialization and offshoring, by enhancing corporate rights in the US and abroad, by deterring activism and other instances of mass organization, by influencing policy and buying electoral campaigns, and by vilifying the very concept of class consciousness. All these efforts, which are selfish in nature and detrimental to the well-being of the public, could easily be challenged if elites didn’t actively seek to protect themselves. Solidarity “has to be driven out of people’s heads” (65) for the elite to maintain control.

This paradigm clearly demonstrates why, in the current US system, few social programs are designed to protect the people even as the government spends billions to bail out corporations from bankruptcy. For example, attempts to establish a more robust and less costly healthcare system are shut down by lobbies, pharmaceutical giants, private insurance companies, and other elites with little effort at justification despite public outcry. Chomsky cautions that, at a time when governments have the power to destroy humanity through either nuclear power or climate change, the “vile maxim,” if unchallenged, could very well result in the extinction of the human species.