Category Archives: Think Tanks

03.09.13
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Introducing the Global Power Project

Introducing the Global Power Project

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

Originally Posted at: Occupy.com

corporate-article

We live in an interdependent world, where nations are increasingly eclipsed in size and wealth by the major banks and transnational corporations which have come to dominate the global economy.

Royal Dutch Shell has more money than all but the top 22 countries on earth. Supra-national and international institutions like the European Central Bank and IMF punish the populations of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland into poverty and conditions of exploitation. Banks and corporations make record profits while poverty soars, debts increase and hunger spreads. Half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day, over 1 billion people live in slums, and a global land grab coupled with a six-year-long global food crisis is pushing populations off their land and into deeper poverty and extreme hunger.

Western governments impose “austerity” at home while waging wars and supporting dictatorships abroad. Across the Arab world populations have been in revolt, labor unrest in South Africa reveals the persistence of economic apartheid, and popular resistance has exploded across southern Europe, while student uprisings have shaken Britain, Chile, Quebec and Mexico.

Indigenous peoples in the western hemisphere are mobilizing and resisting the destruction of the natural world, from Ecuador, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico to Canada. The Occupy Movement emerged as a reaction to the rapacious system of global power that has impoverished the world, devastated the environment, waged wars and, in the past few decades, emerged as a highly integrated global class of oligarchs.

It is within this context that Occupy.com is beginning a research project to examine the networks of global power and how they operate, providing a resource to activists and others who wish to engage in opposition to the global power structures as they currently exist. This initiative is the Global Power Project.

The aim of the Global Power Project is to map the connections between the world’s dominant institutions of power, by examining the relationships and points of cross-over among the individuals who direct these institutions. The institutions that will be examined include the major banks, central banks, oil companies, mining corporations, media conglomerates, major think tanks, foundations, university boards and other international organizations.

The aim is to expose not only the revolving door between government and private institutions, but to name names and directly call out the global elite based on their affiliations and networks of influence.

The first installment of the Global Power Project will examine six major American banks: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Executives, board members and major advisers to these institutions will be studied, with information drawn from their official CVs, biographies, published interviews or financial publications, and collected into a detailed appendix outlining the individuals’ past and present affiliations with other dominant institutions of power.

This includes examining the links between those who manage the big six banks and government agencies, universities, think tanks, foundations, international organizations, the media, multinational corporations and other organizations. From the data collected, we will be able to draw conclusions about the networks of influence and the shared leadership positions that enable these banks and bankers to wield significant influence over other institutions.

This is not a study of economic dependence or the investments made by banks. It is a study of the social organization, interaction and integration of national and global elites. Instead of viewing institutions as separate entities, and often in opposition to one another as it is commonly suggested, the Global Power Project will seek to document the increasingly globalized connections that bind the financial and political elite, and to expose this highly integrated network of individuals spread across an array of institutions both national and global.

The Global Power Project does not adhere to a particular ideological view, philosophy or dogma. Rather, it focuses on the facts: by examining the connections, affiliations and cross-memberships through which elites govern our dominant social, economic and political institutions. From this research we hope to offer a clearer understanding of the current networks and structures of global power, which can serve as an invaluable resource for those seeking to study, understand, expose or challenge those existing structures.

The initial, forthcoming installment in the Global Power Project will focus on the major Wall Street banks, studying their executive leadership, members of the boards of directors, international advisory boards and other key officials operating within those institutions.

Keep a lookout and spread the word. The mapping of networks of global power is about to begin.

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05.10.12
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Meet Canada’s Ruling Oligarchy: Parasites-a-Plenty!

Meet Canada’s Ruling Oligarchy: Parasites-a-Plenty!

Class War and the College Crisis, Part 7

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

Paul Desmarais Sr. (left), Nicolas Sarkozy (centre), and Quebec Premier Jean Charest (right)

Part 1: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education

Part 2: The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?

Part 3: Of Prophets, Power, and the Purpose of Intellectuals

Part 4: Student Strikes, Debt Domination, and Class War in Canada

Part 5: Canada’s Economic Collapse and Social Crisis

Part 6: The Québec Student Strike: From ‘Maple Spring’ to Summer Rebellion?

As hundreds of thousands of students in the province of Québec continue to strike into their 13th week against tuition increases, as the provincial government continues to employ legal repression and state violence against the youth, as Canadian families are over $100,000 in debt, as a looming housing crisis begins to rear its ugly head, as youth unemployment increases, student debt explodes, jobs vanish, poverty deepens, and oppression increases, it’s time to meet those responsible, those who are doing better than ever, those who are making record profits, sitting comfortably in their estates which are larger than the entire island of Manhattan, who travel by helicopter and private jet, who co-mingle with the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Spanish royalty, presidents and prime ministers at home and abroad: meet Canada’s ruling oligarchy.

As this series, “Class War and the College Crisis,” is more focused on the issue of education, I will focus here on the composition of the oligarchy in terms of how they control our educational system. This part in the series will be part article and part research annex. First, I will introduce the reader to Canada’s most powerful family, our version of the Rockefeller’s south of the border, or the Rothschilds in Europe, and of course, all these families are close in both business and social circles. Such is the nature of being an elite in a globalized world. The Desmarais family, located in the province of Québec, are without question the most influential and powerful family in the country, and it’s no wonder, considering their power is vested in an investment company known as Power Corporation.

Why is Power Corporation important?

The name says it all: it has Power. Founded in 1925, Power Corporation of Canada is an investment company involved in communications, business, and especially finance. Power Corporation was founded by A.J. Nesbitt and P.A. Thomson, two partners in the Montreal investment firm, Nesbitt, Thomson and Company, who wanted to consolidate Canada’s power sector, and established Power Corporation as a ‘holding company,’ meaning, it owns other corporations. In the 1960s, the company began to invest in energy, finance, industry, and real estate. In 1968, financier Paul Desmarais took over the leadership of Power Corporation, and rapidly expanded the assets held by the company, including by the 1970s: Canada Steamship Lines (transportation); Consolidated Bathurst (pulp and paper); Investors Group, Great-West Life, Montreal Trust (financial services); and Gesca (communications). Power Corporation expanded across Canada, Europe, and into China. Paul Desmarais stepped aside as Chairman and CEO in 1996, though remaining as the controlling shareholder, and had his two sons, Paul Jr. and André, become Chairman and President and Co-CEOs. Power Corporation owns Gesca, a communications company which in turn owns La Presse as well as six other daily newspapers in Quebec.

The Desmarais family, wrote Christa d’Souza for the London Telegraph, are “Canada’s equivalent of the Rockefellers or Vanderbilts.”[1] Indeed, it would appear that the Desmarais are very much akin to the Rockefellers, the most powerful family in the United States, and one of the most powerful families in the world (perhaps only challenged by the older European-based Rothschild banking family). The Rockefeller family developed the Standard Oil empire, which branched off into several different oil companies, including Exxon and Chevron; founded the Rockefeller Foundation as an engine of social engineering, founded the University of Chicago, became a dominant force in global banking (through Citibank and JP Morgan Chase), highly influential in politics (Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Jay Rockefeller), and of course, remain a dominant influence in think tanks, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission, which ultimately play a major role in shaping policies of industrial nations.

The Desmarais family, while not as powerful in a global sense as the Rockefellers, have nevertheless made themselves a powerful name in the global oligarchy, and most certainly the most powerful family in Canada. Paul Desmarais Sr. is one of Canada’s richest individuals, which is, of course, no surprise, and as Konrad Yakabuski wrote for the Globe and Mail, “Desmarais has been personally consulted by prime ministers on every major federal economic and constitutional initiative since the 1970s. Most of the time, they’ve taken his advice.” Power Corporation has taken large stakes in major European companies such as Bertelsmann, Total and Suez. Peter Munk, a friend of Paul Desmarais and the CEO of Barrick Gold Corporation (a major mining company profiting off of genocide in the Congo), said that, “Paul built that business with an enormous capability for networking that no one in Canadian history has ever matched. And the boys got introduced to his contacts. They were educated well, they married well. And they’ve behaved.” In the mid-1960s, a protégé of Desmarais was a young Montreal lawyer named Brian Mulroney, who would later become Canada’s Prime Minister. Paul Sr. groomed his sons, and especially André, who is now perhaps the most well-known Canadian businessman in China. André also married the daughter of another Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien. Desmarais Sr. also got involved in French banking through Paribas, and later, Pargesa, which handled investments in a wide range of European corporations, and shot Desmarais into the accepted ranks of French nobility and the old-monied European elite. Paul Desmarais Jr. is close friends with the recent French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and socializes with Spanish royalty, the Rothschilds, and other European oligarchs.[2]

The Desmarais family have strong connections to Canada’s four major political parties: the Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, and the NDP. This has included close ties to Lucien Bouchard, former leader of the Parti Québecois and Premier of Quebec, Jean Chrétien, former Canadian Prime Minister; Brian Mulroney, former Canadian Prime Minister who worked for Power Corporation; Bob Rae, an NDP leader, and Paul Martin, another Liberal Prime Minister who worked for Power Corporation. When André Pratte, the chief editorialist of the Desmerais-owned paper La Presse, wrote in 1994 that, “Power Corp. controls everything, everyone knows that. Chrétien, [then Quebec premier Daniel] Johnson, it’s Power Corp,” Paul Desmarais Sr. intervened directly with the paper to ensure that Pratte was demoted. Claude Masson, the deputy publisher of La Presse at the time, stated that, “When you bite the hand that feeds you, there are consequences.”[3] Indeed, the hand bites back.

The Desmarais’ also have close connections with James Wolfensohn, the former President of the World Bank, who has extensive ties to the Rockefeller family. Paul Jr. married Hélene Blouin, the “founder and CEO of le Centre d’entreprises et d’innovation de Montréal, an incubator for tech businesses; a director of the Montreal Board of Trade; chairman of HEC Montréal; and a co-founder of the Montreal Economic Institute, a think tank that has become Quebec’s leading policy advocate on the non-partisan right.” André married France Chrétien, daughter of Jean Chrétien, and he even served as a press secretary to Jean Chrétien while he was Minister of Justice in the Pierre Trudeau government. In the 1990s, the international advisory board of Power Corporation included former Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau. Brian Mulroney was sure to create friendly ties between the Desmarais family and soon-to-be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who put two Desmarais-connected politicians in his cabinet, Peter Mackay and Maxime Bernier.[4]

Quebec author Robin Philpot wrote a scathing critique of the power of the Desmarais family several years ago, suggesting that, “Over the last several years, [Paul Desmarais Sr.] has spun his web to such an extent that it now enables him to call the shots,” especially in promoting his right-wing economic vision, with “a disproportionate influence on politics and the economy in Quebec and Canada.” Of course, it’s not only Canadian politicians with whom Desmarais is close, but French and American politicians as well, including Sarkozy, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Desmarais owns seven of the ten French-language newspapers in Quebec, and has been close to nearly every Quebec premier, apart from Parti Québécois leaders Jacques Parizeau and Bernard Landry. Philpot alleged that Desmarais “has a lot of influence on Premier Jean Charest,” who is the current premier imposing tuition increases. When Desmarais received the French Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honour) from Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean Charest was in attendance, of which Philpot stated, “He took him along like a poodle.” Philpot added, “It’s a very unhealthy situation for a government to be indebted to a businessman that has his own interest at heart. They get their hands tied.”[5]

Jean-François Lisée, the director of the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal stated that, “They are in a class all by themselves… There’s the Desmaraises, then there’s everyone else.” However, as one man close to the family said, in regards to their influence in politics, “We live in a village in Canada, and there are a lot of circumstances which come together which make it appear as if there’s some great manipulation… These are the coincidences of life. It might be more notorious than substantial.”[6] Indeed, the elite live in “a village,” and that’s the whole point, which is, I might add, “substantial.”

In rural Quebec, the Desmarais family has an estate the size of Manhattan, with a private golf course and pheasant shooting range, as well as a music pavilion where opera is performed. This is the home of Paul Desmarais Sr. Guests, such as former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, come play golf on this vast estate, and are flown in on helicopters belonging either to Power Corporation or Desmarais personally. As one of Canada’s richest billionaires, this is a simple matter. Power Corporation, which owns a controlling share in Power Financial Corporation, an insurance giant, has established ties with one of Belgium’s richest men, Albert Frere, with whom they have been in business for decades, and together hold significant shares of Total SA (the third largest oil company in Europe), Lafarge SA (the world’s largest cement maker), and GDF Suez SA (the world’s second largest utility company).[7]

The Desmarais family has even had the internationally renowned Cirque du Soleil perform on their massive 15,000-acre estate. King Juan Carlos of Spain has even been a guest from time to time. André Desmarais is himself a member of the Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller, and is also on the International Advisory Board of David Rockefeller’s former bank, JP Morgan Chase, alongside other notables such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Both brothers have regularly attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group, of which David Rockefeller is a top official (founded in 1954 as an elite think tank linking Western Europe and North America). The Desmarais also hold a major international meeting of elites in Montreal every year, the Conference de Montreal, drawing in thousands of top policy-makers, industrialists, bankers, strategists, and international elites from the major nations of the world. A son of Paul Desmarais Jr., Paul Desmarais III, is a banker with Goldman Sachs. At times, the influence of the family is shyly acknowledged. As French President Sarkozy stated upon awarding Paul Desmarais Sr. with the French Legion of Honour, “If I am the president of France today, it is thanks in part to the advice, the friendship and the loyalty of Paul Desmarais.”[8]

So while Quebec students are being asked to pay double their current tuition to reduce public spending, the Desmarais family is hob-nobbing around with a top public-sector individual responsible for investing $150 billion in Quebecers’ public-sector pension and insurance plans, Michael Sabia. Though apparently a weekend stay at the Desmarais estate by Sabia did not involve business discussions, it was merely “friendly.” No doubt. Meanwhile, Power Financial profits rose 37% in March of 2012, earning the company $533 million, while Power Corporation itself earned $314 million in the same amount of time, with its profits also increasing by 37%.[9]

The Canadian Oligarchy Assaults Democracy

In the 1970s, just as the United States elite were organizing for their assault on the democratic advances brought about by the activism and popular mobilizations of the 1960s, so too was Canada. With the Powell Memo and the Trilateral Commission’s “Crisis of Democracy” report in the early and mid 1970s, we saw the emergence of a vast array of right-wing pro-business think tanks which sought to – and successfully did – promote neoliberalism and thus, created enormous repercussions for universities and education. Canada was not to be left behind in the elitist assault on democracy.

As William Carroll and Murray Shaw wrote in the journal Canadian Public Policy: “Integral to the rise and consolidation of neoliberal hegemony were the emergence of new centres of class-wide business activism and the retooling of established policy institutes along neoliberal lines.” A few major think tanks and policy institutes were integral to this approach for Canada. The Conference Board of Canada was founded in 1954 when the New York Conference Board opened an office in Montreal, later moved to Ottawa, and now one of the largest think tanks in Canada, linking academia, government and corporate elites. The Private Planning Association of Canada (PPAC) was founded in 1958 by members of the Canadian American Committee (CAC), “a group of business and labour leaders from Canada and the US” who were seeking closer and deeper ties between Canada and the United States, specifically in relation to trade. When the PPAC merged with the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation in 1973, the C.D. Howe Institute was formed. The C.D. Howe Institute became a major force pushing for free trade agreements such as NAFTA, and by the mid-1990s, was portraying social programs as a major source of Canada’s economic problems.[10]

The Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) – now known as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) – was founded to create consensus on policy issues among Canada’s top 150 CEOs, making it less of a think tank, and more of a “shadow government.” Founded in 1976 in order to bring together the corporate elite of Canada into forming a more long-term strategic position with the government, directly lobbying the state. The mandate of the Council is “to ensure that Canadian chief executives play an influential role in the international financial, trade, investment, environmental and foreign affairs domains.” Since the era of the Trudeau Liberals, politicians have come and gone from power, but the Council, “the voice and organizational embodiment of corporate rule, is a permanent presence.” Another major player is the Fraser Institute (FI), dedicated to mythical “free market” policies and neoliberalism, founded in 1973 with money from fifteen different mining executives, and is essentially a replica of the American Enterprise Institute in the United States. The Fraser Institute is perhaps the most quoted institution in the Canadian media, ensuring that its neoliberal ideology is firmly entrenched in popular ‘information’ (i.e., propaganda). One study from 1998 showed that over the course of a year, the left-wing think tank, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives was quoted in business news stories 16 times, while the Fraser Institute was quoted in over 140 stories.[11]

Today, Hélène Desmarais, wife of Paul Desmarais Jr., is on the board of the C.D. Howe Institute, alongside top officials from GE Canada, Manulife Canada, HSBC Canada, Enbridge, Barrick Gold, BMO Financial Group, and a number of other top financial and industrial corporations. Power Corporation is listed among the C.D. Howe Institute’s supporters, alongside other notable entities such as: Astral Media (a major media conglomerate), Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barrick Gold Corporation, BMO Financial Group, Bombardier, Canadian Bankers Association, Canadian Chamber of Commerce, CIBC, Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Cargill Limited, CN, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Desjardins Group, Deutsche Bank, Enbridge, Encana, Ford Motor Company, HSBC, Google, Imperial Tobacco, JP Morgan, National Bank of Canada, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, RBC Financial Group, Rio Tinto Alcan, Scotiabank, Shell Canada, SNC Lavalin, Standard Life Financial, Swiss Bankers Association, TD Bank Group, and many others. The C.D. Howe Institute also gets a good deal of financial support from several Canadian universities, including Carelton, HEC Montréal, Laval, McMaster, Queen’s, Ryerson, Calgary, Lethbridge, Western Ontario, Université de Sherbrooke, U. of Alberta, UBC, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, U of T, and Wilfred Laurier University.[12]

Looking at Power

The board of directors of Power Corporation includes: Pierre Beaudoin, President and CEO of Bombardier; Marcel R. Coutu, President and CEO of Canadian Oil Sands Limited and Chairman of Syncrude Canada, director of Great-West Lifeco (owned by Power Corporation), and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Laurent Dassault, Vice President of Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault (a Paris-based investment and financing company), and a director of a number of European companies, including SITA, Generali France, Kudelski, and the Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild Europe (a major banking house owned by the Rothschild family); Guy Fortin, Vice Chairman of Sanpalo Investments, former senior partner at Ogilvy Renault, Chairman of the Canadian Tax Foundation; Anthony R. Graham, President of Wittington Investments, formerly with National Bank Financial Inc., Chairman of President’s Choice Bank, on the board of Power Financial, Loblaw Companies, George Weston Limited, Brown Thomas Group Ltd, Holt Renfrew & Co., the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Council for Business and the Arts in Canada, and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Robert Gratton, former Chairman and CEO of Montreal Trust, director of Power Financial, member of the Harvard Business School Canadian Advisory Board, the Conference Board of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, and the Trilateral Commission; Isabelle Marcoux, Vice Chair of the board of Transcontinental Inc., on the boards of George Weston Ltd., Rogers Communications, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal; Donald Mazankowski, director of Power Financial, former member of the Canadian House of Commons and member of Parliament for 25 years, former Canadian Minister of Transport, Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Queen’s Privy Council, and Government House Leader, and is a former member of the board of governors of the University of Alberta.

Other board members include: Raymond L. McFeetors, Vice Chairman of Power Financial and Chairman of Great-West Lifeco, a director of London Life, Canada Life Financial, Canada Life, Crown Life, IGM Financial, Investors Group, Mackenzie Financial, Putnam Investments; Jerry E. A. Nickerson, Chairman of Nickerson & Sons Ltd., director of several Power Corporation companies, honorary director of the Bank of Montreal; James R. Nininger, on the Board of Management of the Canada Revenue Agency (responsible for administering the tax laws of Canada and most of the provinces), on the board of Canadian Pacific Railway, former President and CEO of The Conference Board of Canada (a major research institute/think tank); R. Jeffrey Orr, President and CEO of Power Financial, a board member of several Power group subsidiaries, former Chairman and CEO of BMO Nesbitt Burns and Vice Chairman of the Bank of Montreal’s Investment Banking Group, and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Robert Parizeau, Chairman of Aon Parizeau, Inc., director of National Bank Life Insurance Company, former Chairman of Gaz Métro, former director of Van Houtte, and director of the National Bank of Canada for over 20 years, and is a director of the Institute of Corporate Directors; Michel Plessis-Bélair, Vice Chairman of Power Corporation, director of several Power group subsidiaries, and a director of Lallemand Inc., Université de Montréal, Hydro-Québec, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of École des hautes etudes commerciales (HEC) of Montréal (Business School of Montreal); John A. Rae, director of a number of Power subsidiaries, a director of Fednav Ltd, BNP Paribas (Canada), McGill University Health Centre Foundation, former Executive Assistant to Jean Chrétien, National Campaign Chairman for Jean Chrétien’s 1984 and 1990 leadership campaigns, and Coordinator of the National Campaign of the Liberal Party of Canada for the 1993, 1997, and 2000 elections, and is also Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Queen’s University; Henri-Paul Rousseau, a director of several Power group subsidiaries, board member of the Global Financial Markets Association, former President and CEO of the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec (which manages public pensions for the province of Quebec), former President and CEO of the Laurentian Bank of Canada, former CEO of Boréal Assurances Inc., and former Senior VP of the National Bank of Canada; T. Timothy Ryan, Jr., President and CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the leading trade association representing global financial market participants, CEO of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA), a director of a number of Power subsidiaries, as well as a director of Lloyds Banking Group, Lloyds TSB Bank, HBOS, the Bank of Scotland, and the United States-Japan Foundation, formerly a top official with J.P. Morgan, is a private sector member of the Global Markets Advisory Committee for the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), the Council which oversees all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies; and Emoke J.E. Szathmary, President Emeritus of the University of Manitoba, former President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manitoba, Provost and Vice President of McMaster University, and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Science of the University of Western Ontario, is currently a director of a number of Power subsidiaries, and is a director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Board of Governors of McMaster University.

And of course, we have the Desmarais family themselves, including Paul Desmarais Sr., Paul Desmarais Jr., who is not only a director of several Power subsidiaries, but is Vice Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of Pargesa, a director of Group Bruxelles Lambert, GDF Suez, Total, Lafarge, and is a member of the European Institute of Business Administration, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the International Economic Forum of the Americas, a trustee and Co-Chair of the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institute, founder and member of the International Advisory Board of the McGill University Faculty of Management in Montreal, and the founder and member of the International Advisory Committee of HEC (business school) in Montreal. André Desmarais is not only on several Power subsidiaries, former Special Assistant to the Minister of Justice of Canada, a director of Pargesa in Europe, CITIC Pacific Ltd. in China, is a member of the Chairman’s International Advisory Council of the Americas Society (founded by David Rockefeller), and is Honorary Chairman of the Canada China Business Council.

As for Power Financial, while there is a great deal of overlap between the two boards, there are some unique names on the board of Power Financial. Among these are J. Brian Aune, President of Aldervest Inc., former Chairman of St. James Financial Corporation, is Governor Emeritus of Concordia University; V. Peter Harder, President of the Canada China Business Council, former Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Deputy Minister of the Treasury Board, Solicitor General, Citizenship and Immigration, and Industry Canada, and is a director of IGM Financial, TimberWest, Telesat Canada, Energizer Resources, Northland Power, Pinetree Capital Ltd, and is an independent advisor to the Auditor General of Canada.

The Oligarchy of Education

Canada’s universities, like all universities, are governed by bankers and corporate executives, foundation officials, and think tank presidents, media moguls and millionaires. Given the current situation in Quebec, where hundreds of thousands of students have been taking to the streets in a strike against tuition increases, with over 200 protests in Montreal over the past three months alone, I will focus here on the two major English-speaking universities in the province: Concordia and McGill. This is important to focus on, simply because throughout this crisis, the university administrations have been claiming to be “neutral,” though they have actively set themselves against the students, filing legal injunctions against picketing, hiring private security firms to patrol the schools, and even calling in riot police to disperse striking youth. The schools have claimed to be neutral on the issue of tuition increases, though they have not – in any way – applied pressure or lobbying efforts on the government to reverse its position. In fact, it has been the exact opposite. When we look at who actually sits on the boards of the school administrations, it becomes clear that these are the very same elite who, in their various other social positions, lobby the government to increase the tuition, who sit on the boards of the banks that hand out student loans and charge exorbitant interest rates, who profit off the debt and poverty of the masses.

So let’s start with my own school: Concordia University.

The Chancellor of Concordia is L. Jacques Ménard, the President of BMO Financial Group, one of Canada’s largest banks, a director of Claridge Inc., and a director of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (a think tank promoting elite interests). The Chairman of the Board of Governors of Concordia is Peter Kruyt, President and CEO of Victoria Square Ventures, a director of La Presse (the largest French-language newspaper in Quebec), a director of Picchio Pharma Inc., a director of CITIC Pacific Ltd., Chairman of the Canada China Business Council, and a Vice President of Power Corporation, a company he has been working for since 1980 when he was Executive Assistant to the CEO, Paul Desmarais.

Norman Hébert, Jr.: CEO of Group Park Avenue Inc., former board member of Hyrdo-Québec, Chairman of the Board of Société des Alcools du Québec (SAQ, a provincial crown corporation which sells liquor).

Hélène F. Fortin: a director of Larose Fortin CA Inc., member of the Institute of Corporate Directors, former Assistant to the Vice President of Quebecor Inc. (a major media conglomerate), and a former director of CBC and Hydro-Québec.

Brian Edwards: founder of BCE Emergis, one of North America’s largest electronic commerce companies, Chairman of the Board of Miranda Technologies and Biotonix 2010 Inc., and is on the boards of Camoplast Inc. and Impath Networks Canada Corporation, and Transat AT.

Jean Pierre Desrosiers: on the boards of KPGM, Aéroports de Montréal and D-BOX Technologies Inc.

Rita Lc de Santis: a partner at Davies, Ward, Phillips & Vineberg, former member of The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Canada, Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montréal, Business Development Bank of Canada and Hydro-Québec.

James Cherry: President and CEO of Aéroports de Montréal, former executive with Bombardier, Oerlikon Aerospace Inc., CAE Inc. and ALSTOM Canada Inc.

Baljit Singh Chadha: Director of the Canada-India Business Council, Pesident and founder of Balcorp Ltd.

Charles Cavell: former President and CEO of Quebecor World Inc., former Chairman of the Board of Sun Media Corp, a director of Adaltis Inc., Novelis Inc.

Tim Brodhead: former President and CEO of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, former Executive Director of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), past chair of Philanthropic Foundations Canada.

Joelle Berdugo Adler: founder of ONEXEONE, and CEO of Diesel Canada.

Jonathan Wener: President and CEO of Canderal (a major real estate investment company), a trustee of the Fraser Institute, member of the board of the Laurentian bank of Canada, Silanis Technologies, and former president of the Urban Development Institute of Canada.

Annie Tobias: former official at Deloitte & Touche

Michael Novak: Executive Vice President of SNC-Lavalin Group, a global engineering and defense contractor.

Marie-José Nadeau: Executive Vice President of Hydro-Québec, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and General Secretary at Cascades Fine Papers Group Inc, and is a director of Metro.

Andrew T. Molson: Chairman of the Board of Molson Coors Brewing Company, is a partner and chairman of RES PUBLICA Consulting Group, a Montreal-based holding and management company, is Chairman of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and a director of The Montreal Canadiens, DundeeWealth Inc., Groupe Deschênes Inc. and Montréal International, and is president of the Molson Foundation.

Tony Meti: President of G.D.N.P. Consulting Services, Inc., a former Senior Vice President at National Bank Financial Group, a director of ADF Group, Saputo Inc.

Jacques Lyrette: Executive at Innovative Materials Technologies, former CEO of ADGA Inc., an engineering consulting company.

Arvind K. Joshi: CEO at St. Mary’s Hospital Center, member of the advisory board of the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University.

Suzanne Gouin: President and Chief Executive Officer, TV5 Québec Canada, former director of Hydro-Québec.

McGill University:

H. Arnold Steinberg: Chancellor of McGill University, formerly worked for Dominion Securities (now RBC – Royal Bank of Canada – Dominion Securities), has been a member of the boards of Bell Canada, Teleglobe, Provigo, National Bank of Canada.

Heather Munroe-Blum: Principal and Vice Chancellor of McGill, is on the board of the Internationalization Committee, and the Membership Committee of the Association of American Universities, a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) of Canada, the U.S. National Research Council’s Committee on Research Universities, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Trilateral Commission, and is co-chair of the Private Sector Advisory Committee of the Ontario-Quebec Trade and Co-operation Agreement, on the boards of the Trudeau Foundation, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Conférence de Montréal, and the Royal Bank of Canada. She has served on the boards of the Conference Board of Canada, Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Four Seasons Hotel, and Hydro One.

Stuart Cobbett: Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Stikeman Elliott LLP, and is a Director of Citibank Canada.

Lili de Grandpré: founder of an organization strategy consulting firm, CenCEO Consulting, formerly with the Mercer Consulting Group and Bank of Montreal.

Michael Boychuk: President and CEO of Bimcor Inc., and is a member of the advisory board of Centennial Ventures, a U.S. private equity firm, former Senior Vice President and Treasurer of BCE Inc. and Bell Canada.

Gerald Butts: President and CEO of WWF-Canada.

Daniel Gagnier: former Chief of Staff to Quebec Premier Jean Charest, former VP at Alcan, former Chairman of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, current chairman of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and a board member of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.

Banking on Power

In Canada, there are five major banks which dominate the national banking sector (and together wield enormous influence over Canada’s monetary system through the Bank of Canada). These banks are the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), the Bank of Montreal (BMO), Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank), and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). To understand how these banks wield influence over Canada as a whole, it would be useful to examine the boards of directors of the banks, drawing the overlap of leadership between the ‘Big Five’ and Canada’s major corporations, think tanks, foundations, media and educational institutions. For the purpose of this report, I will simply take a look at the board of directors of the biggest bank: Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and show how it overlaps with the other institutions which dominate our society.

W. Geoffrey Beattie: on the board of directors of General Electric (GE), President of the Woodbridge Company, a privately held investment holding company (the majority shareholder of Thomson Reuters, a major media conglomerate of which he is Deputy Chairman), and he is also a board member of Maple Leaf Foods Inc. and Chairman of CTV Globemedia, a major Canadian media conglomerate.

Richard L. George: President and CEO of Suncor Energy, on the board of the Canadian Pacific Railway, former Chairman and current board member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), was a member of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), which was formed in 2006 to advise North American governments on the process of ‘North American integration’.

Paule Gautier: the first woman president of the Canadian Bar Association, on the boards of Metro Inc., TransCanada Corporation, and Transcanada Pipelines, an associate member of the American Bar Association, and is on the board of CARE, a supposed “humanitarian” organization, and she was a former director of the Institut Québecois des Hautes Études Internationales at Laval University.

Timothy J. Hearn: former CEO of Imperial Oil Limited, former chairman of the C.D. Howe Institute (a major pro-business think tank) where he remains as a board member, former member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), is co-chair of a fundraising campaign for the University of Alberta and is chair of the fundraising campaign for Tyndale University, and is on the Advisory Board of the Public Policy School at the University of Calgary, a director of Viterra Inc., and is Chair of the board of directors of the Calgary Homeless Foundation.

Alice D. Laberge: former CEO of Fincentric, a current Commissioner of the Financial Institutions Commission, on the board of the Minerva Foundation, and a member of the Financial Executives Institute, and a former director of BC Hydro and Power Authority, and is on the board of directors of the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Jacques Lamarre: former President and CEO of SNC-Lavalin, a major global engineering, construction, and military contractor; is on the board of Suncor Energy, the founding member and former Chair of the Commonwealth Business Council, former Chairman of the board of directors of the Conference Board of Canada, a leader at the World Economic Forum, a former director of Canadian Pacific Railway, a member of the C.D. Howe Institute’s British North American Committee.

Brandt C. Louie: Chairman and CEO of H.Y. Louie Co. Limited, a food retail distribution company, Chairman of London Drugs Limited, Vice Chairman of IGA Canada Ltd., former Chancellor of Simon Fraser University (SFU), Governor of the Vancouver Board of Trade, Governor of the British Columbia Business Council, a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), and is a member of the Dean’s Council of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and is a current director of the Gairdner Foundation. He is also a board member of the World Economic Forum, Grosvenor (a property company), and the Fraser Institute, a major right-wing pro-business think tank.

Michael H. McCain: President and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., Chairman of the Canada Bread Company, board member at the American Meat Institute, the Richard Ivey School of Business Advisory Board, a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), and a former director of Bombardier Inc.

Heather Munroe-Blum: the Principal and Vice Chancellor of McGill University, board member of the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, a member of the Trilateral Commission, has attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group, is co-chair of the Private Sector Advisory Committee of the Ontario-Quebec Trade and Co-operation Agreement, on the board of the Trudeau Foundation, and is on the board of the Conférence de Montréal (the International Economic Forum of the Americas), which is chaired by Paul Desmarais Jr.; and she has also been on the boards of the Conference Board of Canada, Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Four Seasons Hotel, and Hydro One.

Gordon Nixon: President and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, a director and past Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), on the board of directors of the International Monetary Conference, and has been on the boards of Daimler/Chrysler, Catalyst, EnCana Corporation, and Queen’s University School of Business; is a director of the Institute of International Finance and has attended Bilderberg Group meetings.

David P. O’Brien: Chairman of the Board of the Royal Bank of Canada, Chairman of EnCana Corporation, a director of Enerplus Corporation, Molson Coors Brewing Company, and TransCanada Corporation; he is also the Chancellor of Concordia University, and is on the board of the C.D. Howe Institute. He was the former Chairman and CEO of Canadian Pacific Limited.

J. Pedro Reinhard: a director of the Colgate-Palmolive Company, a director of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, a chemical company; former Executive Vice President and Dow Chemical Company, is a former board member of the Coca-Cola Company, and is President of Reinhard & Associates, a financial advisory practice.

Edward Sonshine: was President, CEO and a director of RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, Chairman and a director of Chesswood Income Fund, and is Vice Chairman and a director of Mount Sinai Hospital.

Kathleen P. Taylor: President of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, is a director of The Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, a cabinet member of the United Way of Greater Toronto and a member of the Industry Real Estate Financing Advisory Council of the American Hotel and Motel Association and the International Advisory Council of the Schulich School of Business of York University.

Bridget A. van Kralingen: Senior Vice President of IBM, and was Managing Partner of Deloitte Consulting, and is a member of the board of advisors at Catalyst Inc.

Victor L. Young: a director of Imperial Oil Ltd., former Chairman and CEO of Fishery Products International Limited, and is a current board member of McCain Foods, former Chairman and CEO of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, and was a director at BCE Inc. (Bell Canada).

Our Parasitic Elite

Canada’s elite, like all elites, are parasitic to the social good and wellbeing of the people. They own the banks and financial institutions, own our central bank which sets the interest rates, gives loans and collect on debt, pushing people deeper into servitude and slavery; poverty as punishment. They control our media, which shapes our views and ‘opinions,’ they sit on the boards of our universities, putting future generations into debt before they have a chance at life, and control the ‘knowledge economy’ for which they have defined the purpose of education. They influence and control our governments and political leaders, sit on the boards of the think tanks that write policy and promote political agendas, they run the foundations and claim themselves to be benevolent philanthropists, when philanthropy is at best, moral masturbation for the wealthy, a way to feel good about their vast disparity of wealth, and at its more organized levels, is simply a means through which to engage in social engineering and social control: to give a little in order to continue taking so much. The profit off of the foreign wars our country wages and supports, blood plunderers of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Libya. The Canadian elite rule the country as a proxy for the American Empire, acting as a resource suction-cup for the behemoth below us, providing the United States with most of its oil, water, electricity, and timber. These rapacious parasites claim they hold the answers to the crises they cause and profit from; a super-class which can only be understood as a sprawling, venomous, and vacuous social succubus.

With a massive student movement in Quebec nearing its fourth month of strikes against tuition increases, the media has set against them in a massive propaganda campaign, the legal system has set against them in declaring injunctions against picketing students, the provincial state has dismissed, derided, and engaged in fallacious negotiations designed only to win public sympathy for the government, while the police have been incredibly oppressive against the youth: employing pepper spray, tear gas, smoke bombs, concussion grenades, beatings with batons, mass arrests, shooting students in the face with rubber bullets, and a disturbing trend of driving police cars and trucks into crowds of students. These are images you expect from a military dictatorship like Egypt, but not from a supposed “democracy” like Canada. In the midst of this social upheaval and state repression, the propaganda campaign against the students has been so successful that the majority of public opinion stands with the government and against the youth. Through every institution, and with every means made available, the elite have set themselves against the student movement. It is time the students and Canada at large recognize our elite for what they are: parasites!

While this rhetoric is perhaps a little inflammatory, it remains apt. A parasite is much smaller than its host, and it benefits at the expense of the host, changing its behaviour and health. The word “parasite” comes from the Latin word parasitus which is itself derived from the Greek word, parasitos, meaning, “one who eats at the table of another.” The elite have been eating at our table for far too long. They have long over-stayed their welcome. It’s time to make it known that we have no patience or place for them at our table any longer. This will not be easy, this will not be simple; this will take a long time and a great deal of effort. But if we don’t start now, if we don’t begin to take and create a society of, by, and for the people (what was once referred to as ‘democracy’), then elite parasitism will continue to sap the strength, health, environment, wealth, and the very hope and lives of future generations. They will continue to spread like a social cancer until the host is dead.

The youth are always told that the future is ours, but that remains up to us to make it so. The past and the present belong to the parasites, so if we do not stand up and struggle now and forever, we have no future to inherit, no world in which to grow and no hope in which to gaze. We have only debt bondage, state violence, table scraps, impoverishment, punishment, and oppression. The youth in Quebec are trying to just begin to stand up, to say ‘No More!’ and demand for themselves and others a chance at a future. The success of the strike is secondary to the newly-discovered strength of the students. They have been dismissed and derided, insulted and oppressed, from the left and the right, from so-called Progressives and self-congratulating Libertarians. Because the students do not articulate the same philosophy as those of other critics, they are presented as naïve and ‘entitled.’ Those who insult and deride without empathy or understanding only expose their own naivety.

The fundamental and historical importance of the present situation in Québec is not the cost of tuition, it’s the mass mobilization of youth: it is an expression of a popular and growing dissatisfaction with the way things are and an articulation and drive to create something different, to chart a course for the way things can be. Those who fail to see and recognize that, fail to see the development of progress through history, not immediate, but evolving, not instant, but incremental and persistent. If nothing else, this generation can look back and say, “At least we tried. At least we started.”

What will you look back and say?

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project. He also hosts a weekly podcast show, “Empire, Power, and People,” on BoilingFrogsPost.com.

Notes

[1]            Christa d’Souza, The art of being Louise MacBain, The Telegraph, 26 June 2004:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3619575/The-art-of-being-Louise-MacBain.html

[2]            Konrad Yakabuski, Like Father, like sons?, The Globe and Mail, 26 March 2006:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/like-father-like-sons/article170466/singlepage/#articlecontent

[3]            Ibid.

[4]            Ibid.

[5]            Marianne White, “Author delivers high-voltage critique of Paul Desmarais Sr. — the man behind Power Corp,” Ottawa Citizen, 21 October 2008:

http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=2e3cff7f-05a2-44fc-afc1-616c5c40f64f

[6]            Ian Austen, “The Name Is ‘Power’ and It Fits,” The New York Times, 26 January 2007:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/business/26fund.html?_r=1

[7]            Lisa Kassenaar, “Desmarais family keeps a low profile,” Edmonton Journal, 1 August 2009:

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/business/story.html?id=b40b4563-fe56-4612-920d-a66e9e7da838

[8]            Lisa Kassenaar, “Buffett Loses to Desmarais as Power Exceeds Return,” Bloomberg, 30 July 2009:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aEl4wizkuSTQ

[9]            Christinne Muschi, “Great-West Lifeco helps boost profit at Power Financial,” Reuters, 14 March 2012:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/great-west-lifeco-helps-boost-profit-at-power-financial/article2368991/print/

Kevin Dougherty, “Sabia-Desmarais meeting was “friendly”, not lobbying, Caisse de dépôt says,” Montreal Gazette, 7 February 2012:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Sabia+Desmarais+meeting+friendly+lobbying+Caisse+d%C3%A9p%C3%B4t+says/6116318/story.html

[10]            William K. Carroll and Murray Shaw, “Consolidating a Neoliberal Policy Bloc in Canada, 1976 to 1996,” Canadian Public Policy (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2001), pages 196-200.

[11]            William K. Carroll and Murray Shaw, “Consolidating a Neoliberal Policy Bloc in Canada, 1976 to 1996,” Canadian Public Policy (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2001), pages 200-202.

[12]            C.D. Howe Institute, Members and Supporters: http://www.cdhowe.org/members-and-supporters

04.13.12
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Of Prophets, Power, and the Purpose of Intellectuals: Class War and the College Crisis, Part 3

Of Prophets, Power, and the Purpose of Intellectuals: Class War and the College Crisis, Part 3

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

Walter Lippmann


Part 1: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education

Part 2: The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?

Part 4: Student Strikes, Debt Domination, and Class War in Canada

Part 5: Canada’s Economic Collapse and Social Crisis

Part 6: The Québec Student Strike: From ‘Maple Spring’ to Summer Rebellion?

Intellectual history is written by intellectuals and educational history is written by educators; thus, it would be inevitable that the flaws and failures of each are buried beneath, while the advances and accomplishments are exaggerated or over-estimated. There is, however, a seemingly consistent dichotomy which has evolved and persisted throughout intellectual and educational history: on the one hand, you have the much larger element – both in terms of the general purpose of education and in the general activities and ideas of intellectuals – who support and strengthen institutionalized power structures; on the other hand – much more a break from the ‘traditional’ impetus and activities of education and intellectuals – you have the smaller element, the off-shoots and oddities, which empowers the masses against institutionalized power, and with the intellectuals who speak out, articulate, mobilize, and justify the empowering of the people against that of the dominant structures of society. Therein lies the dichotomy: one form of education is for social control and domination, the other is for social uplift and rejuvenation; one type of intellectual is a programmatic priest for the proselytization of power, the other is an energetic and empowering enemy of entrenched elites.

A Eulogy for Education: Situating the Social Sciences as Structures of Social Control

Whether public or private, the key issue at hand is that of the utility – or purpose – of higher education. Conventional wisdom inflates the classical liberal concept of higher education as a social good, one which may be funded by the state in order to promote the general well-being of society, as inherently cultural institutions designed to raise the intellectual, spiritual, moral, and philosophical standards of society. A more critical history of education tends to downplay the “social good” theory in place of a “social control” theory of education, and specifically, of the social sciences. In this conception, education was designed to produce professional ‘technicians’ who would – using the techniques of science, rationality, and reason – study social problems with a desire to find and recommend specific policies and programs to ameliorate those problems – to promote reforms to the social system – in order to maintain “order.” Order, in this case, is understood as maintaining the social hierarchy. We understand “social order” as the security of the “social hierarchy” precisely because ‘disorder’ is understood as the opposite of this: a threat to the prevailing social hierarchy and institutional structure of society. Order is maintained through manufacturing ideologies, implementing policies, and undertaking programs of social engineering all with a desire to establish ‘social control.’

For this to be undertaken, it was essential for the social sciences to be separated into distinct spheres: Sociology, Political Science, Economics, and Psychology, for example. This superficial separation established each discipline as one for “expertise” and “professionalism,” whereby those who were trained to understand and partake in politics would study political science, achieving degrees in their “specialty” which would make them socially acknowledged “experts” in their fields. Academic journals reinforce these divisions, focusing primarily on a particular and specific discipline, providing a forum for academics and intellectuals to discuss, debate, and disseminate ideas related to the study and understanding of that discipline and its related topics. The effect, however, is that each discipline remained isolated from other forms of knowledge and, more importantly, that knowledge remained isolated from the general public, whom it was supposed to inform and empower (in theory).

Logic, of course, will tell you that in the real world, politics, economics, sociology and psychology all interact and become intertwined, intersected and interdependent. To add to that, of course, we have other technological, scientific, spiritual, cultural, environmental and historic factors that all merge to create what we broadly call “society.” If our aim is, as it should be, to understand society – to identify its problems and work to resolve them – we therefore would logically need a broader understanding of the social world, which would necessarily require a far more comprehensive, expansive, and multi-disciplinary historical examination of our world and its interacting forms of knowledge. It can be argued, however, that this is too demanding upon the academic and thus, unreasonable and unlikely. Therefore, it is argued, producing “experts” in specific areas would allow for a simultaneous understanding of these various spheres of society, and to effect change in each sector independent of one another. This raises an important question: is an “expert” in Political Science capable of understanding the political world? If they do not take into account economic, social, cultural, scientific, technological and other historical facets of the social world which all interact with the political realm, how can they logically understand the political realm outside of those interactions? In short, the political world does not operate within a vacuum and outside of interactions with other social phenomena, so the claim that they are “professionals” on understanding the social world as a whole, let alone “experts” in the political world, is dubious at best.The fallacy of this concept to produce useful knowledge was eventually acknowledged and educational managers (such as the major foundations) began to support ‘inter-disciplinary’ research to promote at least a more comprehensive understanding than previously existed.

Despite this inherently elitist self-serving conception of social control, the focus – purpose and utility – of education (and specifically the social sciences) on the study and amelioration of social problems inevitably gave rise to ideas, actors, and movements which saw beyond the rigid confines of the educational and knowledge-production system itself, reaching beyond the disciplines and into a more historically-based understanding. These broader understandings typically emerged from historians and philosophers, who must – as stipulated by their very disciplinary focus – acknowledge a multiplicity of factors, spheres, ideas, actors and areas of relevance to any given time and place of human social reality. History, by its very nature, is interdisciplinary: the historian must always acknowledge economic, social, political, and other cultural phenomena in each circumstance being studied.

As an example of these biases and disciplinary obscurities, let’s take a brief look at Political Science. In Political Science, when studying International Relations, you generally study two major theories of international politics: Liberalism, the idea that peace and prosperity between states grows as economic activity increases between them, and that of Realism/Mercantilism, whereby states are viewed as self-interested and the international arena as anarchic, and thus, nation states simply act to serve their own interests (and should). Both theories, of course, serve power. Unless studying the very specific focus of Global Political Economy (and specifically from a critical perspective), Political Science students are not exposed to or confronted with information or ideas which discuss the roles of financial and economic institutions and actors (banks, corporations, etc.) in determining foreign or public policy. Such perspectives are not studied, but simply assumed to be the product of “interested ideology” as opposed to “disinterested knowledge.” Critical theories are rarely acknowledged, let alone studied, and the general use of the word “ideology” is seen as negative, in that, it is not a legitimate focus for discussion or analysis. I personally know of a political science professor who taught a class on ‘Nationalism’ in which a student wrote an essay on ‘class.’ The professor informed the student that she couldn’t discuss “class” because it was “ideology,” and therefore, not disinterested knowledge. Of course, the fact that he was teaching a course on ‘nationalism,’ which itself, is an ideology, did not even come into consideration.

The difference in ideology then, is that the word is used to deride and dismiss theories and ideas which challenge, critique, or oppose power, hierarchy, and the status quo. Those ideas, theories, philosophies and perspectives which support power, hierarchy, and the status quo, are not presented as “ideology,” but as “disinterested knowledge,” as a fact, not in need of proof, but of an assumed nature. They are simply accepted, and are therefore, not ideology. This is also widely reflected in the differences of the academic journals, between those which are establishment and elitist, and those which are critical and allow for more dissent. An example is Foreign Affairs, the premier foreign policy journal, run by the Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential think tank in the United States. In this journal, the articles and essays, written by various “experts” and active, former, or prospective policy-makers and those who hold seats of power, contain largely little or no citations whatsoever. All the ‘facts’ and ideas stated within the articles do not need citations or references because they are ideas which support the status quo, and therefore, they simply reflect the ‘perceived’ realities of society. Now take a journal like Third World Quarterly, which tends to focus on the effects of foreign policy upon the ‘Third World’ nations of the Global South, often highly critical, allowing for major dissenting scholars to have an outlet for their research and ideas. These journal articles are typically and necessarily flooded with citations, sources and references. This is because ideas and facts which challenge the prevailing perception of social reality – the status quo – are treated far more critically and scrutinized to a significant degree.

Critical scholars put their entire reputation and career on the line in taking on controversial topics, and thus, they must provide extensive evidence and citations for all their assertions. Thus, a scholar who contends that – “the United States is an imperial nation which undermines democracy and the self-determination of people around the world” – must provide extensive, detailed, elaborate and concise references and citations. Even then, the scholar is likely to be either ignored or attacked with rhetoric proclaiming them to be “ideologically biased” or worse. On the other hand, a scholar who contends that the United States is a democratic peace-loving nation which benevolently seeks to spread democracy and freedom around the world requires no supporting evidence, citations, or references, simply because it serves power, supports the status quo, and regurgitates the ideas emerging from the institutions of power themselves (such as the State and media), and therefore, no major institutions will challenge the assertions nor subject them to scrutiny. For example, there are entire books written criticizing Noam Chomsky and subjecting his research and writing to extensive scrutiny, pointing out miniscule mistakes in his citations, presenting them as deliberate methods of manipulation. On the other hand, prominent scholars who refer to America as a “benevolent empire” or as the “protector of democracy” around the world are rarely challenged, let alone scrutinized. If scrutiny occurs, it is from the critical scholars, writing in more critically-inclined journals, and thus, their research tends to be disseminated only to each other and stays confined within that small social group. On the other hand, scholars who support power are invited on television, quoted in newspapers, work with think tanks in formulating policy, take part in international conferences, and are invited into the corridors of power in order to implement policy.

Serving power obviously allows for a scholar to rise through the social hierarchy with relative ease. For those scholars who challenge power and the status quo, while entry into positions of power and influence are generally denied, there is still a necessity for toleration among the powerful. The major foundations (Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, etc.) often fund critical scholars and journals, not out of a desire to promote or support their ideas, but in order to keep critical scholars  “professionalized,” to keep them as institutionalized academics. If there were no forums, journals, conferences or venues for the discussion, dissemination and debate of critical scholars and ideas, they would have to turn to other avenues for the dissemination of ideas and knowledge, which generally leads to the public sphere, of community involvement, activism, or populist politics. With foundations providing funding for critical scholars, journals, and conferences, the academics remain dependent upon the institutional structure of academia, and their ideas do not reach the wider public, and thus, their critiques are ineffective and do not promote change or understanding within the general population. Thus, such a program of financing provides a “release valve” for intellectual dissent, to keep critical or radical scholars institutionalized and prevent them from becoming mobilized and activist-oriented.

Still, in spite of all the deleterious factors for the pursuit of genuine knowledge with the purpose of empowerment through (instead of power over); the fact that the focus was on ‘social problems’ led inevitably to the generation of activist-oriented intellectuals, for those who could transcend the confines of narrow structures of knowledge. It is not to say that when these intellectuals surfaced, so too did the social movements, but rather that as social movements emerged, progressed, and developed, activist-oriented intellectuals took note, and began providing a philosophical and intellectual basis for the movement to exist and move forward. In short, it was a confluence of different circumstances both within the academic institutions and in the wider society – national and global – which led to the origins of these intellectual leaders, critics, activists, and philosophers. These are the individuals that the Trilateral Commission referred to in its report on the “Crisis of Democracy” as “value-oriented intellectuals.”

Dissident Value-Oriented Intellectuals versus Technocratic Policy-Oriented Intellectuals

In the early 20th century, as the concepts and ideas of “public opinion” and “mass democracy” emerged, the dominant political and social theorists of the era took to a debate on redefining democracy. It was an era of social unrest, radical political ideologies and activists, labour unrest and rebellion, extreme poverty, war, and middle-class insecurity (sound familiar?). Central to this discussion on redefining democracy were the books and ideas of Walter Lippmann. With the concept of the “scientific management” of society by social scientists standing firm in the background, society’s problems were viewed as “technical problems” (as in, not structural or institutional) intended to be resolved through rational professionals and experts. Just as with Frederick Taylor’s conception of “scientific management” of the factory, the application of this concept to society would require, in Lippmann’s words, “systematic intelligence and information control,” which would become “the normal accompaniment of action.” With such control, Lippmann asserted, “persuasion… become[s] a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government,” and the “manufacture of consent improve[s] enormously in technique, because it is now based on analysis rather than rule of thumb.”[1] Thus, for elites to maintain social control in the tumultuous new age of the 20th century, they must “manufacture consent” of the people to support the existing power structures.

In 1922, Lippmann wrote his profoundly influential book, Public Opinion, in which he expressed his thoughts on the inability of citizens – or the public – to guide democracy or society for themselves. The “intellectuality of mankind,” Lippmann argued, was exaggerated and false. Instead, he defined the public as “an amalgam of stereotypes, prejudices and inferences, a creature of habits and associations, moved by impulses of fear and greed and imitation, exalted by tags and labels.”[2] Lippmann suggested that for the effective “manufacture of consent,” what was needed were “intelligence bureaus” or “observatories,” employing the social scientific techniques of “disinterested” information to be provided to journalists, governments, and businesses regarding the complex issues of modern society.[3] These essentially came to be known and widely employed as think tanks, the most famous of which is the Council on Foreign Relations, founded in 1921 and to which Lippmann later belonged as a member.

In 1925, Lippmann wrote another immensely important work entitled, The Phantom Public, in which he expanded upon his conceptions of the public and democracy. In his concept of democratic society, Lippmann wrote that, “A false ideal of democracy can lead only to disillusionment and to meddlesome tyranny,” and to prevent this from taking place, “the public must be put in its place… so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”[4] Defining the public as a “bewildered herd,” Lippmann went on to conceive of ‘public opinion’ not as “the voice of God, nor the voice of society, but the voice of the interested spectators of action.” Thus, “the opinions of the spectators must be essentially different from those of the actors.” This new conception of society, managed by actors and not the “bewildered herd” of “spectators” would be constructed so as to subject the managers of society, wrote Lippmann, “to the least possible interference from ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.”[5] In case there was any confusion, the “bewildered herd” of “spectators” made up of “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” is the public, is we, the people.

Lippmann was not an idle intellectual whose ideas are anachronisms of history, he was perhaps the most influential political theorist of his day, advising presidents while still in his 20s, Woodrow Wilson invited him to organize his war-time propaganda ministry, the Committee on Public Information (which was actually Lippmann’s idea to create), and his ideas held enormous resonance and received immense support from elite institutions and individuals. The influence of Lippmann’s ideas can be seen in the political machinery of the party system, the media, academia, think tanks, the construction of the consumer society, the activities of philanthropic foundations and a variety of other avenues and activities.

Several decades later, in the midst of another major social crisis in the 1960s, elite intellectuals again engaged in a discussion on the direction of society, social engineering, social control, and the role of “intellectuals” in society.

McGeorge Bundy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (and later the Trilateral Commission), was the U.S. National Security Adviser, responsible for organizing foreign policy under Kennedy and Johnson (largely responsible for the Vietnam War), and in 1966, he went to become President of the Ford Foundation. In 1967, Bundy wrote an article for Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations which McGeorge’s brother William Bundy (a former CIA analyst and State Department staffer in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) would be editor of from 1972-1984, after declining the offer from David Rockefeller to be the Council president. McGeorge wrote in his 1967 article that:

The end of 1966 finds the United States with more hard business before it than at any time since 1962. We are embattled in Viet Nam; we are in the middle of a true social revolution at home; and we have undiminished involvement with continents and countries that still refuse to match our simpler pictures of them.[6]

Bundy lamented the idea that, “American democracy has no enduring taste for imperialism,” because despite all of the “nation’s interests overseas, the boys always want to come home.” Bundy then went on to explain the benefits of questioning particular policies the United States pursues, but not to question the entire premise of America’s foreign policy in general (namely, that of imperialism). Instead, Bundy acknowledged that most of the dissent and argument on the Vietnam War was in terms of “tactics, not fundamentals,” though, he acknowledged, “[t]here are wild men in the wings,” referring to those intellectuals who question the basis and fundamentals of foreign policy itself.[7] Such “wild men in the wings” and “value-oriented intellectuals” present such a monumental threat to established elite interests. As the Trilateral Commission’s report noted in 1975:

At the present time, a significant challenge comes from the intellectuals and related groups who assert their disgust with the corruption, materialism, and inefficiency of democracy and with the subservience of democratic government to “monopoly capitalism.” The development of an “adversary culture” among intellectuals has affected students, scholars, and the media. Intellectuals are, as [Political Economist Joseph] Schumpeter put it, “people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word, and one of the touches that distinguish them from other people who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs.” In some measure, the advanced industrial societies have spawned a stratum of value-oriented intellectuals who often devote themselves to the derogation of leadership, the challenging of authority, and the unmasking and delegitimation of established institutions, their behavior contrasting with that of the also increasing numbers of technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals.[8]

The Trilateral Commission report later expanded upon the concept of the role of the intellectual in society. It stated that in the cultural history of Western Europe, “intellectuals are romantic figures who naturally get a position of prominence through a sort of aristocratic exaltation.” However, in periods of “fast changes,” they often come to lead and join “the fight against the old aristocratic tradition.” This, the Trilateral Commission contended, represented an “internal upsetting of the traditional intellectual roles.” This was identified as a “crisis of identity” in which, “[i]t has become a battle between those persons who play the audience, even if it is a protest type, and those who contribute to the process of decision-making.” Claiming that protest-oriented intellectuals are among “the audience” reinforces Lippmann’s assertion some decades earlier that the public are mere “spectators,” not capable of nor desired to engage meaningfully in politics. For the Trilateral Commission, the rise of “value-oriented intellectuals” was the result of the “intellectualization” of the “post-industrial society” in which their particular fields (namely, the humanities) became less useful in “application” and “practical use,” and thus, society “tends to displace traditional value-oriented intellectual disciplines to the benefit of action-oriented ones, that is, those disciplines that can play a direct role in policy-making.”[9] This would of course include the authors of the Trilateral Commission report itself, namely Samuel Huntington, who went on to work on the National Security Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski (co-founder of the Trilateral Commission) in the Jimmy Carter administration.

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte had long discussed the role of radical intellectuals in society and social movements. Following the major youth and student protests and movements of 1968, Sarte felt that the first duty of the radical intellectual is to “suppress himself as intellectual” and put his skills “directly at the service of the masses.” In a 1971 interview, Sarte was asked the question, “What should the radical intellectual do?” Sarte responded:

Today it is sheer bad faith, hence counterrevolutionary, for the intellectual to dwell in his own problems, instead of realizing that he is an intellectual because of the masses and through them; therefore, that he owes his knowledge to them and must be with them and in them: he must be dedicated to work for their problems, not his own.[10]

Thus, radical intellectuals should be creating revolutionary newspapers directed toward the masses, creating “a language that explains the necessary political realities in a way that everyone can understand.” Sarte was then asked, “Are you saying… that the responsibility of the intellectual is not intellectual?” He replied:

Yes, it is in action. It is to put his status at the service of the oppressed directly… the intellectual who does not put his body as well as his mind on the line against the system is fundamentally supporting the system and should be judged accordingly.[11]

As such, it is the responsibility of the radical intellectual to not lead, but follow and support the movements and struggles of the masses. For Sarte, the intellectual’s “privileged status is over.” Thus, “only activism will justify the intellectual.”[12] This is, in fact, a direct counter – or parallel – to the concept of the policy-oriented or technocratic intellectual, who directly partakes in the decision-making process. Just as the “technocratic intellectual” who partakes in the decisions of the institutions of power is “policy-oriented,” the radical intellectual directly partakes in the process of resistance (though not necessarily the decision-making process), and is also “action-oriented.”

In 1967, famed linguist Noam Chomsky wrote an essay in which he voiced his political opposition to the Vietnam War, entitled, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” In the article, which provoked widespread discussion and debate, Chomsky wrote:

With respect to the responsibility of intellectuals, there are still other, equally disturbing questions. Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom if expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.[13]

As Chomsky explained, “If it is the responsibility of the intellectual to insist upon the truth, it is also his duty to see events in their historical perspective.”[14] This is, of course, in counter to the “technical experts” of social science, seeking to remedy “technical problems” of society in a “responsible” manner. In this sense, “responsibility” has a dual use: it is used by elites to denote those intellectuals who are “responsible” to the elite, and it is also used by dissenters to denote a “responsibility” to the truth and the people. Thus, the use of the word – whether one describes dissenters as “responsible” or “irresponsible” – tends to express more about those who use the term rather than those for whom they are applying the term.

This is, it must be acknowledged, not a new phenomenon. It is found throughout human history, though often called different things in different times and places. It can be found among the ancient philosophers and, indeed, the prophets of the Biblical era. As Noam Chomsky has elsewhere explained, “The history of intellectuals is written by intellectuals, so not surprisingly, they are portrayed as defenders of right and justice, upholding the highest values and confronting power and evil with admirable courage and integrity. The record reveals a rather different picture.” Chomsky further wrote:

A large part of the Bible is devoted to people who condemned the crimes of state and immoral practices. They are called “prophets,” a dubious translation of an obscure word. In contemporary terms, they were “dissident intellectuals.” There is no need to review how they were treated: miserably, the norm for dissidents.

There were also intellectuals who were greatly respected in the era of the prophets: the flatterers at the court. The Gospels warn of “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them.”[15]

In his book, Sage, Priest, and Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel, Joseph Blenkinsopp explained the use of the term ‘prophet’ in both historical and contemporary context. In the contemporary context, it is generally associated with “prediction, emotional preaching, [and] social protest,” though the Hebrew term for it (nabi), has been so widely and differently used to describe various individuals, including its usage to describe many who functioned in “sanctuaries and royal courts,” in which case, they would be individuals who serve power. On the other hand, for those that challenged the power structures, Blenkinsopp argued that they were essentially “dissident intellectuals.”[16]

Again, this drew a distinction in ancient times with the word ‘prophet’ to that we hold today with the word ‘intellectual’: denoting both those who serve and challenge power. Blenkinsopp explained that the prophets who were “dissident intellectuals” in the Biblical era “collaborated at some level of conscious intent in the emergence of a coherent vision of a moral universe over against current assumptions cherished and propagated by the contemporary state apparatus, including its priestly and prophetic representatives.” In other words, they challenged the institutions of power which existed during that era. These dissident intellectuals – much like those of the modern era – “often play a socially destabilizing role in taking an independent, critical, or innovative line over against commonly accepted assumptions of a dominant ideology.” In fact, stipulated Blenkinsopp, “radical change rarely, if ever, comes about without the cooperation or intervention of an intellectual elite.”[17]

Blenkinsopp described an era in which these prophets emerged in protest “at the accumulation of wealth and the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many.” The prophet – or dissident intellectual – Amos had lashed “out at those who store of the (fruits of) violence and robbery,” and who “live at ease in houses, the walls and furniture of which are inlaid with ivory.” Amos and another dissident intellectual, Isaiah, had “nothing but scorn for the idle rich and depict.” Blenkinsopp wrote:

The concentration of power and resources in the hands of the few, in this instance the political and hierocratic establishment and its clientele, is always liable to generate protest, especially if it is accompanied by the impoverishment of the many. A few decades after Amos, Hesiod claimed divine inspiration in denouncing unjust rulers.[18]

Thus, whether Hesiod, Hosea, Micah, or Isaiah, “all four belonged to the very small minority of the population that was literate and educated, and it was from that socially privileged position that their protest was launched.” These dissidents, however, were of a very small minority. For literally hundreds of years, the ‘prophets’ (intellectuals) of the era were “almost exclusively supportive” of power, “and there is no breath of challenge to the political or social status quo.” It was “in Israel and, to a lesser extent, Greece [where] a tradition of dissent and social protest develop[ed].” How were these dissident intellectual ‘prophets’ of the era treated? The established powers attempted to silence Amos and Micah, Hosea was ridiculed as “a fool,” and Isaiah was driven into “retirement” after an attempt to intervene in foreign policy matters.[19] So, while we claim them as prophets today, in their time they were treated as pariahs.

So whether in Biblical Israel, nearly 800 years before the arrival of Christ, or in the 1975 Trilateral Commission report, “dissident intellectuals” are to be feared and reviled by established powers, and it is clear that these powers will always attempt and actively take measures to minimize, ostracize, repress or eliminate such forms of dissent.

Thus, we have come to see the corporatization of our universities and the marginalization of dissident intellectuals in the neoliberal era. As Bronwyn Davies et. al. wrote in the European Journal of Education, few radical intellectuals of the 1960s and 70s “imagined how dangerous their work with students might seem to be to those in government or to the global leaders of big business and industry.” This was, of course, addressed by the Trilateral Commission, which above all represents the interests of the financial, corporate, political, and intellectual elite. This elite felt that “they must establish a new order to make the world more predictable, and they saw those radical intellectuals – both academics and journalists – as contributing to the dangerous disorder.”[20]

The Trilateral Commission was founded by two individuals: one a representative of high finance (David Rockefeller, Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank), and the other a representative of the intellectual elite (Zbigniew Brzezinski, professor of political science, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, foreign policy official). Brzezinski wrote a book in 1970, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, in which he laid out the problems of the technological and electronic era (hence, “tehcnetronic”) and elaborated on strategies to resolve them: politically, economically, and socially, including the formation of a “community of developed nations” to jointly work together in managing the world for their own benefit. Rockefeller, who was also a top official at the Council on Foreign Relations and also attended meetings of the Bilderberg group with Brzezinski (another exclusively elitist international think tank linking Western Europe and North America), took note of the book and its arguments, and recruited Brzezinski to help put together this “community,” and in 1973, the Trilateral Commission was formed. Brzezinski, in terms of intellectual influence, is perhaps as close to a Walter Lippmann for the globalized era as one could get. For decades, he has been a major foreign policy official with significant influence, sitting on the boards of major elite think tanks that produce policy plans which are implemented in the government, acting in an advisory capacity to almost every president since Jimmy Carter, and in terms of his still close relationship with the ruling financial oligarchy (namely, the Rockefellers).

In his book, Brzezinski discussed the need for “programmatic engineering” to manage and change American culture, of which he emphasized the roles played by education and the mass media over the alternative avenues of churches and traditional customs.[21] The manufacturing of culture, posited Brzezinski, was an American ‘obligation’:

Change in educational procedures and philosophy should also be accompanied by parallel changes in the broader national processes by which values are generated and disseminated. Given America’s role as a world disseminator of new values and techniques, this is both a national and a global obligation. Yet no other country has permitted its mass culture, taste, daily amusement, and, most important, the indirect education of its children to be almost exclusively the domain of private business and advertising, or permitted both standards of taste and the intellectual content of culture to be defined largely by a small group of entrepreneurs located in one metropolitan center.[22]

Brzezinski also discussed one of the more relevant and indeed, concerning facets of the Technological Revolution. Of course, writing of this as a ‘concern’ is in terms of Brzezinski writing from the perspective of an elite academic and strategic thinker, and thus, representing the elite class and their overall concerns. Namely, Brzezinski wrote on the prospects of a revolution against this process and the power structures involved, explaining that these groups are likely to emerge in both the developing world and industrialized world in opposition to the process of ‘modernization,’ which Brzezinski refers to as the advancement of the ‘Technetronic Revolution.’ In the Global South (the “Third World”), the revolutionary class is likely to emerge from the educated classes who are deprived of social opportunities fitting with their intellectual expectations. In the industrialized West, however, this “revolutionary intelligentsia” is most likely to emerge from the “middle-class intellectual equivalents” of the revolutionary class in the developing world. Thus, it would emerge among the educated middle-classes of the West, who are deprived of opportunities attuned to their education, thus creating a ‘crisis of expectations.’ Brzezinski wrote that the Technetronic Revolution had created a “social anachronism,” in which these groups may hold onto anti-industrial values and could possibly, even in the more modern countries, effectively block the modernization of their societies, “insisting that it be postponed until after an ideological revolution has taken place.” Brzezinski explained:

In this sense the technetronic revolution could partially become a self-limiting phenomenon: disseminated by mass communications, it creates its own antithesis through the impact of mass communications on some sectors of the intelligentsia.[23]

Brzezinski’s answer to these profound and potentially revolutionary circumstances was to employ more social engineering, more social control, more integration and coordination among global powers; essentially, to strengthen power structures at the expense of all others. Brzezinski wrote that there was a “mounting national recognition that the future can and must be planned; that unless there is a modicum of deliberate choice, change will result in chaos.”[24] He elaborated:

Technological developments make it certain that modern society will require more and more planning. Deliberate management of the American future will become widespread, with the planner eventually displacing the lawyer as the key social legislator and manipulator… How to combine social planning with personal freedom is already emerging as the key dilemma of technetronic America, replacing the industrial age’s preoccupation with balancing social needs against requirements of free enterprise.[25]

In the same line of arguing in favour of more coordination, planning, and “technical” expertise, Brzezinski also posited an image of where this could eventually lead:

Another threat, less overt but no less basic, confronts liberal democracy. More directly linked to the impact of technology, it involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled and directed society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control…  Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the steppingstones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society.[26]

Thus, we come to understand the ideologies, intent, and actions of two divergent social actors: the technocratic and policy-oriented intellectual and the dissident action-oriented intellectual. One supports power, one supports people. Our educational system is still to a significant degree composed of and designed to produce (like industrial factories for intellectual products) those intellectuals who support power, who engage in social engineering with the purpose of social control. Dissident intellectuals, while they exist, remain confined. They engage in research and write in academic journals which reach only other dissident intellectuals. This is the case not only in the West, but across a great deal of the world. There are, of course, exceptions, but they are few and far between. The knowledge and ideas and dissident intellectuals must be designed not for the purpose of internal discussion and debate among other dissidents within the institutions of academia, but to reach the masses, to empower the people, and to join – actively and actually – with the people as they mobilize for change. In order to do this, new forums, conferences, media, and other sources and organizations should attract the “value-oriented intellectuals” away from Ivory towers of intellectual isolation and into the people-oriented pathways of political action. The language must be made less academic and more accessible, the activities must be more directly engaged with people than distant and distracted.

The rigors of academic life make this a great challenge, not only for students but for professors as well. Professors are expected to publish consistently in journals and other publications, and so when they are not teaching or instructing, they are researching and writing, independently and isolated. There is very little time or opportunity for direct engagement, or for writing for other publications and avenues which could allow their research to reach a wider audience. This keeps intellectuals disciplined and distracted, and ultimately, gives little relevance to their research in terms of actually affecting any meaningful changes in society. However, here we come to understanding the inherent dichotomy of a crisis, in this case, the “Crisis of Education.” As the crisis of education leads to increased costs, increased debts, decreased enrollment, decreased opportunities, increased social unrest, increased student resistance, and ultimately, a decrease in the amount of teachers and professors (this is already taking place), there also opens an avenue through which much of the disciplinary mechanisms which held dissident intellectuals back will be eroded. With nothing left to lose (in terms of job security, financial stability, social prestige and opportunity), dissident intellectuals will be far more inclined toward participation in activism and social movements. Avenues for their participation should be opened up and extended as this crisis continues and deepens.

A simply example of such an opportunity to attract dissident intellectuals would be a type of international conference, media, and educational institute. It could begin with a conference, drawing dissidents from around the world – from Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Spain, the U.K., Canada, Australia, United States, Iceland, Ireland, Chile, Taiwan, etc. – to hold a discussion and debate on the origins, evolution, development and potential for the growing social and activist movements, whether in the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, anti-austerity protests, student strikes, and others. The conference could be televised for free online, so people all over the world could view and engage. A major aim and result of the conference could be to establish an educational institution, which brings together such intellectuals from around the world with more consistency, which organizes a network of globally connected but locally-oriented decentralized schools, designed specifically for a broad, multi-disciplinary and globally-relevant education for social change. They could hold classes in which students and teachers engage as equals, bringing in local activists, alternative media, even filming the actual classes and discussions to post online, even provide a live feed. The aim would be to provide education for the purpose of empowering people to activism and social change. They could establish their own media outlets, providing research and discussion of activities by students and professors, and become engaged in actively planning and helping organize social movements, protests, and other activities.

The point would be to provide a forum where education has an empowering social purpose, where it integrates itself with other elements of society and does not remain isolated and insulated. For example, if one such discussion were to take place in a local decentralized school on the topic of food sustainability, agriculture, GMOs, and the politics of food, the result could be a decision to establish a network of organic farmers who would be willing to produce cheap food for poor areas, establish a space where there could be a cheap organic food market, or cheap (or free) meals made with the food, but dispensing it to poor people in poor areas of major cities, who would otherwise not have the means of good food for decent prices. It’s a very simple program, but the effects can be profound. Not only could it begin to integrate farmers and agriculturalists with such an emerging movement, but it could integrate the poor more closely with such a movement. The poor are, after all, the largest constituency in the world, and the one in the most need of help and empowerment. For the poor, the ideological and power struggles between the middle and upper classes are largely irrelevant, because neither benefit nor empower them. If there is to be a true and genuine revolutionary change in global society, acting without the ideas and support of the poor is a sure way to guarantee failure for genuine change. To get the support of the poor, the poor must be supported; they must be given a stake in the future, empowered to act and participate in change, and the starting point for this is to address the immediate necessities of poor people everywhere: food, clothing, shelter.

The difference between how ‘social control’-oriented institutions (such as foundations and NGOs) address poverty and how revolutionary and radical organizations would address poverty, is the intent and methods in dealing with these immediate concerns. NGOs and foundations seek to establish methods of providing food, clothing, shelter and general necessities so much as to address the symptoms of poverty, not the causes, and thus, to ultimately sustain the system that creates poverty by alleviating the worst conditions just enough to prevent rebellion or resistance. Revolutionary or radical organizations would seek to address the immediate concerns of the poor in order so that they may be empowered and able to begin finding ways to support themselves, to learn from them, and to provide access to forms of knowledge which have been denied to them. Thus, any programs of directly helping the poor would have to be accompanied with opportunities for education, knowledge, and outlets for action. The point is not to simply feed a poor individual, but to disseminate knowledge about why they are poor, how society creates and sustains the poor, the sources and solutions to poverty. Thus, it does not simply alleviate the symptoms, but empowers the individuals. Further, any radical movement must in turn be educated by the poor, for through their very existence, they are better able to understand the nature of the system that exists, because they have always been subjected to its most ugly and oppressive apparatus. While it may be easy for middle class intellectuals and students to promote a revolutionary cause based upon an ideology of how the state can and should function, poor people are able to give a better idea of how the state does function, has functioned, and thus, raise critical questions about the ideas, objectives, and actions of middle class and other radicals. The point would not be to be modern missionaries, providing food with “the Bible,” but to help – not out of pity but out of empathy and necessity – to empower, and, ultimately, to learn from and work with the poor. If any radical or revolutionary movement emerges which does not include a significant number of leaders from the poor population, and without significant support from the poor population, it is inherently anti-democratic and unworthy of pursuit.

This is, of course, just one example. The objective then, would be to find a way to bring dissident intellectuals out of the rigid confines of academia, and into the real world: to embolden, empower, and engage with the people, to participate in activism and social mobilization, and to work with a wide variety of other social groups and sectors in order to collectively participate in the construction of a new and far better world. It is time that this must be the acknowledged purpose of intellectuals, not the exception.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project. He also hosts a weekly podcast show, “Empire, Power, and People,” on BoilingFrogsPost.com.

Notes

[1]            Frank Webster and Kevin Robins, “Plan and Control: Towards a Cultural History of the Information Society,” Theory and Society (Vol. 18, 1989), pages 341-342.

[2]            Sidney Kaplan, “Social Engineers as Saviors: Effects of World War I on Some American Liberals,” Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 17, No. 3, June 1956), pages 366-367.

[3]            Sue Curry Jansen, “Phantom Conflict: Lippmann, Dewey, and the Fate of the Public in Modern Society,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (Vol. 6, No. 3, 2009), page 225.

[4]            Walter Lippmann, et. al., The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy (Harvard University Press, 1982), page 91.

[5]            Ibid, page 92.

[6]            McGeorge Bundy, “The End of Either/Or,” Foreign Affairs (Vol. 45, No. 2, January 1967), page 189.

[7]            Ibid, pages 189-191.

[8]            Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy, (Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, New York University Press, 1975), pages 6-7.

[9]            Ibid, page 31-32.

[10]            Ronald Aronson, “Sarte and the Radical Intellectuals Role,” Science & Society (Vol. 39, No. 4, Winter 1975/1976), pages 436, 447.

[11]            Ibid, pages 447-448.

[12]            Ibid, page 448-449.

[13]            Noam Chomsky, “A Special Supplement: The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” The New York Review of Books, 23 February 1967:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1967/feb/23/a-special-supplement-the-responsibility-of-intelle/

[14]            Ibid.

[15]            Noam Chomsky, “Great Soul of Power,” Information Clearing House, 26 July 2006:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14221.htm

[16]            Joseph Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel (Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), page 2.

[17]            Ibid, page 144.

[18]            Ibid, pages 153-154.

[19]            Ibid, page 154.

[20]            Bronwyn Davies, et. al., “The Rise and Fall of the Neo-liberal University,” European Journal of Education (Vol. 41, No. 2, 2006), page 311.

[21]            Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (Greenwood Press, Westport: 1970), page 265.

[22]            Ibid, page 269.

[23]            Ibid, page 278.

[24]            Ibid, page 256.

[25]            Ibid, page 260.

[26]            Ibid, pages 252-253.

04.05.12
by

Article Translation: “La ‘Crisis de la Democracia’ y el ataque a la educación”

Thanks to Verdad Ahora for translating a recent article of mine into Spanish: “Class War and the College Crisis: The Crisis of Democracy and the Attack on Education.”

Note: If you have any access to or have written translations of any of my articles (into any language), please send me the links so that I can re-post them on my website! Thanks.

Por Andrew Gavin Marshall

Hoy en día, somos testigos de una incipiente rebelión global masiva, liderada principalmente por los jóvenes educados y desempleados del mundo, en contra de los poderes institucionalizados y establecidos que tratan de privarlos de un futuro digno. En Chile durante el año pasado, un masivo movimiento estudiantil y huelgas se convirtieron en una fuerza poderosa en el país contra un sistema educativo cada vez más privatizado (que sirvió de modelo para el resto del mundo) con el apoyo de la inmensa mayoría de la población; en Quebec, Canadá, una huelga de estudiantes ha llevado a cientos de miles de jóvenes a las calles para protestar contra la duplicación de sus tasas de arancel; estudiantes y otros se fueron a huelga en España contra las medidas de austeridad; están desarrollándose y creciendo protestas lideradas por o con fuerte participación de los jóvenes en el Reino Unido, Grecia, Portugal, Francia, y en los Estados Unidos (por ejemplo, con el Movimiento Occupy), luchando contra las medidas de austeridad, la corrupción abierta de la clase capitalista, y la colusión del gobierno con los banqueros y las corporaciones. Estudiantes y jóvenes llevaron a los levantamientos en Túnez y Egipto el año pasado que condujeron al derrocamiento de los dictadores que habían gobernado a esas naciones durante décadas.

En todo el mundo, cada vez más, los jóvenes están saliendo a las calles para protestar, agitar y atacar los abusos de poder, los fracasos del gobierno, los excesos de la codicia, el saqueo y la pobreza. La juventud educada, en particular, está desempeñando un papel activo, un papel que crecerá dramáticamente durante este año y los próximos. La juventud educada está graduándose en un mercado de desempleo con una deuda enorme y pocas oportunidades. Ahora, así como hace varias décadas, los jóvenes están volcándose al activismo. ¿Qué pasó en el intervalo para que el activismo se desbaratara cuando había sido tan amplio en la década del 60? ¿Cómo nuestro sistema educativo llegó a su situación actual? ¿Qué implica esto para el presente y el futuro?

La “Crisis de la Democracia”

En el período comprendido entre los años 50 y 70, el mundo occidental, y especialmente Estados Unidos, experimentó una oleada masiva de resistencia, rebelión, protesta, activismo y acción directa de sectores enteros de la población en general que estuvieron durante décadas, si no siglos, en mayor medida oprimidos y olvidados por las estructuras de poder institucional de la sociedad. El movimiento de derechos civiles en Estados Unidos, el surgimiento de la Nueva Izquierda – radical y activista – en Europa y América del Norte, como en otras partes, el activismo contra la guerra, en gran parte impulsado en oposición a la guerra de Vietnam, la Teología de la Liberación en América Latina (y en Filipinas), el movimiento ecologista, el movimiento feminista, los movimientos de derechos de los homosexuales, y todo tipo de otros activistas y movimientos movilizados de la juventud y de vastos sectores de la sociedad se organizaron y agitaron activamente en favor del cambio, la reforma e incluso, la revolución. Cuando el poder se resistió más a sus demandas, los movimientos se radicalizaron más. Mientras más lento actuó poder, más rápido reaccionó el pueblo. El efecto, en esencia, es que estos movimientos buscaron, y en muchos casos consiguieron, empoderar a vastas poblaciones que habían sido de otro modo oprimidas e ignoradas, y por lo general hicieron despertar a las masas de la sociedad ante injusticias tales como el racismo, la guerra y la represión.

Para la población en general, estos movimientos fueron una etapa instructiva, civilizadora, y llena de esperanza en nuestra historia moderna. Para las élites, fueron terribles. Así, en la década del 70 tuvo lugar un debate dentro de la élite intelectual, sobre todo en los Estados Unidos, ante lo que se conoció como la “Crisis de la Democracia.” En 1973 fue creada la Comisión Trilateral, por el banquero y oligarca global David Rockefeller y el intelectual elitista Zbigniew Brzezinski. La Comisión Trilateral reúne a las élites de América del Norte, Europa Occidental y Japón (ahora incluye varios estados de Asia Oriental), en los ámbitos de la política, finanzas, economía, negocios, organizaciones internacionales, organizaciones no gubernamentales, académicos, militares, inteligencia, medios de comunicación, y círculos de política exterior. Actúa como un importante think tank internacional, diseñado para coordinar y establecer un consenso entre las potencias imperiales dominantes del mundo.

En 1975, la Comisión Trilateral publicó un importante informe titulado “La Crisis de la Democracia”, donde los autores se lamentaron por la “oleada democrática” de la década del 60 y la “sobrecarga” que impuso a las instituciones de autoridad. Samuel Huntington, politólogo y uno de los principales autores del informe, escribió que la década del 60 vio un crecimiento de la democracia en Estados Unidos, con un repunte de la participación ciudadana, a menudo “en forma de marchas, manifestaciones, movimientos de protesta, y organizaciones por “causas”.” Además, “la década del 60 vio también una reafirmación de la primacía de la igualdad como un objetivo en la vida social, económica, y política.” Por supuesto, para Huntington y la Comisión Trilateral, fundada por el amigo de Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, y el banquero David Rockefeller, la idea de “la igualdad como un objetivo en la vida social, económica y política” es una perspectiva terrible y aterradora. Huntington analizó la forma de cómo en parte de esta “oleada democrática”, mostraban las estadísticas a lo largo de las décadas del 60 y el 70, hubo un dramático aumento en el porcentaje de personas que sentían que Estados Unidos estaba gastando demasiado en defensa (del 18% en 1960 al 52% en 1969, principalmente debido a la guerra de Vietnam). [1]

Huntington escribió que la “esencia de la oleada democrática de la década del 60 fue un desafío general a los sistemas existentes de autoridad, públicos y privados”, y que “La gente ya no sentía la misma compulsión a obedecer a aquellos a quienes habían considerado previamente superiores a sí mismos en edad, rango, estatus, experiencia, carácter, o talentos”. Huntington explicó que en la década del 60, “jerarquía, experiencia y riqueza” se encontraban “bajo ataque”.” El uso del lenguaje aquí es importante, colocando al poder y la riqueza como si estuviesen “bajo ataque”, lo que implica que aquellos que lo “atacan” son los agresores, lo que se opone al hecho de que estas poblaciones (como los estadounidenses negros) habían sido atacadas por el poder y la riqueza durante siglos, y que solo entonces habían comenzado a luchar. Por lo tanto, la autodefensa del pueblo contra el poder y la riqueza es vista como un “ataque”. Huntington afirmó que las tres cuestiones clave que son fundamentales en el aumento de la participación política en la década del 60 fueron:

cuestiones sociales, como el uso de las drogas, las libertades civiles y el papel de la mujer; cuestiones raciales, como integración, movilidad, ayudas gubernamentales a grupos minoritarios, y disturbios urbanos; cuestiones militares, que implican principalmente, por supuesto, la guerra en Vietnam, pero también proyectos, gasto militar, programas de ayuda militar y el papel del complejo militar-industrial en general. [2]

Huntington presenta estos problemas, en esencia, como la “crisis de la democracia”, en que aumentara la desconfianza en el gobierno y la autoridad, lo que llevó a la polarización social e ideológica, y derivó en una disminución “de la autoridad, el estatus, la influencia y la eficacia de la presidencia.” Huntington concluyó que los problemas de gobernabilidad en Estados Unidos derivaron de un “exceso de democracia”, y que “el funcionamiento eficaz de un sistema político democrático por lo general requiere cierto grado de apatía y de no participación por parte de algunos individuos y grupos”. Huntington explicó que la sociedad siempre ha tenido “grupos marginales” que no participan en la política, y si bien reconoce que la existencia de “marginalidad por parte de algunos grupos es inherentemente antidemocrática”, también “permite que la democracia pueda funcionar con eficacia”. Huntington identifica a “los negros”, como uno de esos grupos que se habían vuelto políticamente activos, lo que representaba un “peligro de sobrecarga del sistema político con demandas.” Por supuesto, esto implica directamente una versión elitista de la “democracia” donde el Estado mantiene la estética democrática (voto, separación de poderes, estado de derecho), pero sigue estando exclusivamente en manos de la rica élite de poder. Huntington, en su conclusión, afirmó que la vulnerabilidad de la democracia, particularmente la “crisis de la democracia”, deriva de “un alto nivel de educación, movilización, y sociedad participativa”, y que lo que se necesita es “una existencia más equilibrada” donde existan “límites deseables a la extensión indefinida de la democracia política”. [3] En otras palabras, lo que se necesita es menos democracia y más autoridad.

La Comisión Trilateral luego explicó su visión respecto de la “amenaza” a la democracia y por lo tanto, la forma en que el sistema “debería” funcionar:

En la mayoría de los países de la Trilateral [Europa Occidental, Norteamérica, Japón] en la última década ha habido un descenso en la confianza que el pueblo tiene en el gobierno… La autoridad ha sido cuestionada no sólo en el gobierno, sino en sindicatos, empresas comerciales, escuelas y universidades, asociaciones profesionales, iglesias y grupos cívicos. En el pasado, las instituciones que habían jugado el papel principal en el adoctrinamiento de los jóvenes en sus derechos y obligaciones como miembros de la sociedad habían sido la familia, la iglesia, la escuela, y el ejército. La eficacia de todas estas instituciones como un medio de socialización ha disminuido severamente. (Énfasis añadido) [4]

El “exceso de democracia” implicaba generar un supuesto “aumento de las demandas” al gobierno, justo en un momento en que la autoridad del gobierno estaba siendo socavada. La Comisión Trilateral asustó crecientemente a la comunidad de la elite intelectual, discutiendo la amenaza de los “intelectuales orientados a los valores” que se atreven a “hacer valer su disconformidad con la corrupción, el materialismo y la ineficacia de la democracia y con la sumisión de los gobiernos democráticos al “capitalismo monopolista”.” Para los miembros y componentes (las élites) de la Comisión Trilateral, no se retractaron de la evaluación de esa amenaza, afirmando que, “este desarrollo constituye un desafío a un gobierno democrático que es, al menos potencialmente, tan grave como los planteados en el pasado por las camarillas aristocráticas, los movimientos fascistas, y los partidos comunistas”. [5] Este es un uso muy típico de retórica elitista donde a la hora de identificar cualquier amenaza a los intereses de la élite, esta es presentada en casi términos apocalípticos. La implicación, por lo tanto, es que los intelectuales que desafían a la autoridad son presentados como una amenaza tan grande a la democracia como lo fueron Hitler y el fascismo.

El informe de la Comisión Trilateral explica – a través de un razonamiento económico – cómo una mayor democracia es sencillamente insostenible. La “oleada democrática” dio a los grupos desfavorecidos nuevos derechos y los hizo políticamente activos (como los negros), y esto se tradujo en aumento de las demandas sobre el mismo sistema cuya legitimidad había sido debilitada. ¡Un escenario terrible para las elites! El informe explicó que mientras la votación disminuyó a lo largo de las décadas del 60 y el 70, la participación política activa en los campus aumentó, los grupos minoritarios estaban exigiendo sus derechos (¡cómo se atreven!), y no sólo exigían derechos humanos básicos, sino también “oportunidades, posiciones, recompensas y privilegios, que no habían considerado como derechos propios anteriormente.” Es decir, no como los ricos, que se han considerado con derecho a todo, por siempre y para siempre. Por lo tanto, el gasto público en bienestar social y una mayor educación se incrementó, explica el informe: “A principios de los 70 los estadounidenses se volvieron progresivamente exigentes y recibieron más beneficios de su gobierno y sin embargo tenían menos confianza en su gobierno de la que tenían hace una década.” La mayoría de las personas se refieren a ello como un logro de la democracia, pero para los “intelectuales” de la Trilateral se trataba de un “exceso de democracia”, y, de hecho, una amenaza. [6]

Samuel Huntington, por supuesto, asume que el declive de la confianza en el gobierno era irracional, y no tenía nada que ver con la guerra de Vietnam, la represión policial y estatal de los movimientos de protesta, el escándalo Watergate y otros delitos evidentes. No, para Huntington, la pérdida de confianza está ligada mágicamente a las “mayores expectativas” de la población, o, como Jay Peterzell explicó en su crítica al informe, “la causa de la desilusión pública se remonta constantemente a expectativas poco realistas alentadas por el gasto del gobierno.” Huntington justificó este mito absurdo en su análisis sesgado del “giro a la defensa” y el “giro al bienestar”. El “giro a la defensa”, que tuvo lugar en la década del 50, describe un período en el que el 36% del aumento del gasto en el gobierno fue a la defensa (es decir, al complejo militar-industrial), mientras que el bienestar se redujo como proporción del presupuesto. Luego vino el “giro al bienestar” de la década del 60, en el que entre 1960 y 1971, sólo un ínfimo 15% del aumento del gasto fue al complejo militar-industrial, mientras que el 84% del aumento se destinó a programas nacionales. Por lo tanto, para Huntington, el “giro al bienestar” básicamente destruyó a Estados Unidos y arruinó la democracia. [7]

En realidad, sin embargo, Jay Peterzell desglosó los números para explicar los “cambios” en un contexto más amplio y más racional. Si bien es cierto que los porcentajes de aumento o disminución que muestra Huntington eran, después de todo, un porcentaje de “aumento” en el gasto, no lo eran en el porcentaje global del gasto Así que, cuando uno mira el conjunto del gasto público en 1950, 1960 y 1972, el porcentaje de “defensa” fue de 44, a 53, a 37. En esos mismos años, el gasto en bienestar ascendió de 4%, a 3% y a 6%. Así, entre 1960 y 1972, la cantidad de gasto en defensa disminuyó del 53 al 37% en el gasto total del gobierno. En los mismos años, el gasto en bienestar aumentó un 3-6% en el gasto total del gobierno. Cuando se ve como porcentaje del total, difícilmente puede ser legítimo afirmar que el escaso aumento del 6% de los gastos del gobierno para el bienestar era ni de lejos tan “amenaza” a la democracia como lo fue el 37% invertido en el complejo militar-industrial [8].

Así que, naturalmente, como resultado de estas terribles estadísticas, la élite intelectual y sus amos financieros tuvieron que imponer más autoridad y menos democracia. No se trataba simplemente de que la Comisión Trilateral abogara por tales “restricciones” a la democracia, ya que fue un debate importante en la élite de los círculos académicos en la década del 70. En Gran Bretaña, de esta discusión surgió la “tesis de la gobernabilidad” – o tesis de la “sobrecarga” – democrática. “Las Contradicciones Económicas de la Democracia” de Samuel Brittan en 1975, explicó que, “La tentación de animar falsas expectativas entre el electorado se vuelve abrumadora para los políticos. Los partidos de oposición están obligados a prometer hacerlo mejor y el partido de gobierno debe participar en la oferta.” En esencia, se trataba de una repetición de la tesis de la Trilateral de que demasiadas promesas generan demasiadas demandas, los cuales crean demasiada tensión para el sistema, e inevitablemente lo derrumbarán. Anthony King se hizo eco de esto en su obra, “Sobrecarga: Problemas de la Administración en la Década del 70″, y King explicó que gobernar se estaba volviendo “más difícil”, porque “a uno y al mismo tiempo, la gama de problemas que el gobierno espera y tiene que enfrentar ha aumentado considerablemente y su capacidad para hacer frente a los problemas, incluso muchos de los que tenía antes, ha disminuido.” El politólogo italiano Giovanni Sartori se hizo la pregunta: “¿La Democracia mata a la Democracia?”:

Estamos persiguiendo objetivos que están fuera de proporción, demasiado aislados y perseguidos ciegamente y que, por lo tanto, están en el proceso crear… una sobrecarga totalmente inmanejable y siniestra… Estamos empezando a darnos cuenta en las prósperas democracias que estamos viviendo por encima de nuestras necesidades. Pero estamos igual y más gravemente viviendo por encima y más allá de nuestra inteligencia, por encima de la comprensión de lo que estamos haciendo. [9]

King explicó que, “Los politólogos se han ocupado tradicionalmente de mejorar el desempeño del gobierno.” Un error evidente, concluyó King, quien sugirió que, “Tal vez en los próximos años deberían preocuparse más por cómo el número de tareas que el gobierno espera llevar a cabo pueda reducirse.” El “remedio” para toda esta “sobrecarga” de las sociedades democráticas es, en primer lugar, poner “fin a la política de las “promesas”,” y la segunda, “intentar reducir las expectativas de los votantes y los consumidores” en el proceso político. [10]

La “amenaza” de la juventud educada era especialmente pronunciada. En 1978, el Management Development Institute (una importante escuela de negocios de la India) publicó un informe en el que afirmaba:

Quizá la tendencia más perniciosa de la nueva década es el abismo creciente entre una mano de obra crecientemente mejor educada y el número de ofertas de trabajo que pueden hacer uso de esas habilidades y calificaciones… El potencial de frustración, alienación y disrupción resultante de la disparidad entre el nivel educacional alcanzado y el trabajo apropiado no puede ser menospreciado. [11]

En estos comentarios, estamos tratando con dos definiciones diametralmente opuestas de democracia: popular y elitista. La democracia popular es el gobierno del, por y para el pueblo, la democracia elitista es el gobierno de los, por y para los ricos (pero con la estética exterior de las democracias), canalizando la participación popular en la votación en lugar de la toma de decisiones o de la participación activa. La democracia popular implica que las personas participan directamente en las decisiones y las funciones y el mantenimiento de la “nación” (aunque no necesariamente del Estado), mientras que la democracia elitista implica la participación pasiva de la población lo suficiente como para permitir que se sientan como si desempeñaran un papel importante en la dirección de la sociedad, mientras que las élites controlan todas las palancas importantes de poder y las instituciones que dirigen y se benefician de las acciones del Estado. Estas diferentes definiciones son importantes porque al leer los informes por escrito y publicados por los intereses de la elite (como el informe de la Comisión Trilateral), cambia la sustancia y el significado del propio informe. Por ejemplo, tomemos el caso de Samuel Huntington, lamentándose por la amenaza a la democracia que representa la participación popular: desde la lógica de la democracia popular, esta es una afirmación absurda que no tiene sentido, desde la lógica de la democracia elitista, esa afirmación es correcta y profundamente importante. Si las élites entienden esta diferenciación, también debe hacerlo el público.

El Memo Powell: Protegiendo a la Plutocracia

Mientras las élites se lamentaban por el aumento de la democracia, sobre todo en la década del 60, no se quedaron sólo quejándose por el “exceso de democracia”, sino que fueron planeando activamente la reducción de la misma. Cuatro años antes del informe de la Comisión Trilateral, en 1971, fue publicado el infame y secreto Memo Powell, escrito por un abogado corporativo y miembro directivo de una compañía de tabaco, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (a quien el presidente Nixon colocó en la Corte Suprema dos meses después), el cual fue dirigido al Presidente del Comité de Educación de la Cámara de Comercio de Estados Unidos, que representa los intereses empresariales estadounidenses.

Powell estipula que “el sistema económico estadounidense está bajo un amplio ataque” y que “el asalto al sistema empresarial tiene una base amplia y es perseguido constantemente… ganando impulso y conversos.” A pesar de que las ‘fuentes’ del ‘ataque’ fueron identificadas como amplias, incluyen a la multitud habitual de críticos, comunistas, la Nueva Izquierda, y “otros revolucionarios que quieren destruir todo el sistema, tanto político como económico.” Además de esto existían “extremistas” que eran cada vez “más bienvenidos y alentados por otros elementos de la sociedad, más que nunca antes en nuestra historia.” La verdadera “amenaza”, sin embargo, eran las “voces que se unen al coro de críticas [que] vienen de elementos perfectamente respetables de la sociedad: desde el campus de la universidad, el púlpito, los medios de comunicación, las revistas intelectuales y literarias, las artes y las ciencias, y de los políticos”. Aun reconociendo que en estos mismos sectores, los que hablan en contra del “sistema” son todavía una minoría, Powell señaló que “estos son a menudo los más elocuentes, y los más prolíficos en su escritura y expresión oral”. [12]

Powell, discutió la “paradoja” de cómo los líderes empresariales parecen estar participando – o simplemente tolerando – los ataques contra el “sistema de libre empresa”, ya sea por dar voz a través de los medios de comunicación que les pertenecen, o a través de las universidades, a pesar del hecho de que “los consejos de administración de nuestras universidades están compuestos mayoritariamente de hombres y mujeres que son líderes en el sistema”. Powell lamentó las conclusiones de los informes que indican que desde las universidades se estaban graduando estudiantes que “desprecian el sistema político y económico”, y por lo tanto, que estarían dispuestos a entrar en el poder y generar un cambio, o directamente cuestionar el sistema desde la cabeza. Esto marcó una “guerra intelectual” librada contra el sistema, de acuerdo a Powell, quien citó a continuación al economista Milton Friedman de la Universidad de Chicago (y ‘padre’ del neoliberalismo), quien declaró:

Está muy claro que los fundamentos de nuestra sociedad libre son objeto de ataques extendidos y poderosos – no por comunistas o cualquier otra conspiración, sino por personas equivocadas que cacarean como loros el uno al otro y sin darse cuenta que sirven a fines que nunca promoverían intencionalmente [13]

Powell, incluso identificó específicamente a Ralph Nader como una “amenaza” para el empresariado estadounidense. Powell se lamentó más por los cambios y el “ataque” que se realiza a través de los tribunales y el sistema legal, que comenzaron a atacar a la evasión de impuestos y los vacíos legales, con los medios de comunicación apoyando este tipo de iniciativas ya que ayudan a “los pobres”. Powell, por supuesto, se refiere a la noción de ayudar a “los pobres” a expensas de los ricos, y la formulación del debate como tal, como “demagogia política o analfabetismo económico”, y que la identificación de políticas de clase – los ricos contra los pobres – “es la más barata y más peligrosa clase de política.” Lamentablemente la respuesta del mundo empresarial ante este “amplio ataque”, según Powell, era “el apaciguamiento, la ineptitud e ignorar el problema.” Powell, sin embargo, explicó en simpatía a la “ineptitud” del empresariado y las elites financieras que, “hay que reconocer que los empresarios no han sido entrenados ni equipados para llevar a cabo una guerra de guerrillas como la de los que hacen propaganda contra el sistema”. [14]

Mientras que el “papel tradicional” de los empresarios ha sido el de obtener beneficios, “crear empleos”, para “mejorar el nivel de vida”, y por supuesto, “en general, ser buenos ciudadanos”, lamentablemente han demostrado “poca habilidad efectiva en el debate intelectual y filosófico.” Por lo tanto, declaró Powell, los empresarios primero deben “reconocer que el tema final puede ser la supervivencia – la supervivencia de lo que llamamos sistema de libre empresa, y todo lo que esto significa para la fuerza y la prosperidad de Estados Unidos y la libertad de nuestro pueblo.” Como tal, “la gestión [corporativa] debe estar igualmente preocupada der proteger y preservar el sistema en sí mismo”, en lugar centrarse en los beneficios. Las sociedades anónimas, reconoció Powell, estaban involucradas en este tiempo en las “relaciones públicas” y los “asuntos gubernamentales” (léase: propaganda y política pública), sin embargo, el ‘contraataque’ debe ser más amplio:

Pero la actividad independiente y no coordinada de las empresas individuales, por muy importante que sea, no será suficiente. La fuerza reside en la organización, en una cuidadosa planificación y aplicación a largo plazo, en la coherencia de la acción durante un periodo indefinido de años, en la escala de financiamiento disponible sólo a través de un esfuerzo conjunto, y en el poder político disponible sólo a través de la acción conjunta y las organizaciones nacionales. [15]

Si bien el ‘asalto’ contra el sistema se desarrolló a lo largo de varias décadas, Powell declaró que, “existe razón para creer que el campus de la [universidad/educación] es la fuente individual más dinámica”, ya que “las facultades de ciencias sociales suelen incluir miembros que son indiferentes al sistema empresarial”. Estos académicos, explicó Powell, “no tienen que ser mayoría”, ya que “son personalmente atractivos y magnéticos; son profesores estimulantes, y su controversia atrae a los estudiantes que los siguen; son prolíficos escritores y profesores, además de autores de muchos de los libros de texto, y ejercen una influencia enorme – muy desproporcionada para su número – ante sus colegas y en el mundo académico.” Esta situación es, por supuesto, ¡terrible y deplorable! ¡Imagina la clase de horror y desesperación que traería al mundo tener profesores atrayentes, estimulantes y prolíficos!

Pretendiendo que muchos politólogos, economistas, sociólogos e historiadores “tienden a ser más liberales”, Powell sugirió que “la necesidad de un pensamiento liberal es esencial para un punto de vista equilibrado”, pero que el “equilibrio” no existe, con “unos pocos miembros de la [facultad] conservadores o [de] poca persuasión… y siendo menos articulados y agresivos que sus colegas opuestos.” Aterrorizados por las perspectivas de que estos jóvenes potencialmente revolucionarios lleguen a posiciones de poder, Powell dijo que cuando lo hacen, “la mayoría de ellos rápidamente descubre las falacias de lo que se les ha enseñado”, esto, en otras palabras, quiere decir que se transforman rápidamente al socializar con las estructuras, las jerarquías y las instituciones de poder que demandan conformidad y sumisión a los intereses de la élite. Sin embargo, todavía existen muchos que podrían aparecer en “posiciones de influencia donde podrían moldear la opinión pública y a menudo dar forma a la acción gubernamental.” Por lo tanto, recomienda Powell, la Cámara de Comercio debe convertir en “tarea prioritaria de los empresarios” y sus organizaciones afines “abordar el origen de esta hostilidad en el campus.” Puesto que la libertad académica era vista como algo sacrosanto en la sociedad estadounidense, “sería fatal atacarla como un principio”, lo que por supuesto implica que debe ser atacada indirectamente. En cambio, sería más eficaz utilizar la retórica de la “libertad académica” contra el principio de libertad académica misma, utilizando términos como “apertura”, “equidad” y “equilibrio” como puntos de crítica que darían “una gran oportunidad para la acción constructiva.” [16]

Por lo tanto, una organización como la Cámara de Comercio debería, recomienda Powell, “considerar el establecimiento de un equipo de especialistas altamente calificados en ciencias sociales que crean en el sistema… [incluyendo] varios de reputación a nivel nacional cuya autoría sea muy respetada – incluso cuando no se esté de acuerdo con ellos.” La Cámara también debe crear “un equipo de oradores de la más alta competencia”, que “podrían incluir estudiosos”, y establecer una “Oficina de Oradores” que “incluya a los defensores más capaces y más eficaces de los niveles más altos del empresariado estadounidense.” Este equipo de investigadores, que subraya Powell, debe ser conocido como “investigadores independientes”, deben participar en un programa continuo de evaluación de “los libros de texto de ciencias sociales, especialmente en economía, ciencias políticas y sociología.” El objetivo de esto sería “orientarse a restablecer el equilibrio esencial para la libertad académica genuina”, lo que significa, por supuesto, la implantación del adoctrinamiento ideológico y la propaganda del mundo empresarial, que Powell ha descrito como nuestra garantía “de un trato justo y objetivo de nuestro sistema de gobierno y sistema empresarial, sus logros, su relación básica con los derechos y libertades individuales, y la comparación con los sistemas del socialismo, el fascismo y el comunismo.” Powell se lamentó que el “movimiento de derechos civiles insista en reescribir muchos de los libros de texto en nuestras universidades y escuelas”, y que “los sindicatos insistan en lo mismo [ó] que los libros de texto sean justos con los puntos de vista de los trabajadores organizados.” Por lo tanto, Powell sostuvo, dentro el mundo empresarial el intentar reescribir los libros de texto y la educación, el proceso “debe ser considerado como una ayuda hacia una auténtica libertad académica y no como una intrusión en ella.” [17]

Además, Powell sugirió que la comunidad empresarial debía promover oradores en las universidades y ciclos de conferencias “que parecieran ir en apoyo del sistema norteamericano de gobierno y empresa.” Aunque explicó que los grupos de estudiantes y profesores no son susceptibles de estar dispuestos a dar la palabra a la Cámara de Comercio o a líderes empresariales, la Cámara debía “insistir agresivamente” en ser escuchada, exigiendo “tiempos iguales”, lo que sería una estrategia efectiva debido a que “los administradores de la universidad y la gran mayoría de los grupos y comités de estudiantes no estarían en posición púbica de rechazar un foro para diversos puntos de vista.” Los dos ingredientes principales de este programa, explicó Powell eran, primero, “tener oradores atractivos, articulados y bien informados”, y en segundo lugar, “ejercer cierto grado de presión – pública y privada – que pueda ser necesario para asegurarse la oportunidad de hablar.” El objetivo, escribió Powell, “siempre debe ser el de informar e iluminar, y no simplemente hacer propaganda.” [18]

El mayor problema en los campus, sin embargo, era la necesidad de “equilibrar” las facultades, lo que significa simplemente que el mundo empresarial debía trabajar para implantar portavoces y apologistas de la élite económica y financiera en las facultades. La necesidad de “corregir” este desequilibrio, escribió Powell, “es de hecho un proyecto a largo plazo y difícil”, que “debe llevarse a cabo como parte de un programa general”, incluyendo la aplicación de presión “para mantener el equilibrio de la facultad sobre los administradores de la universidad y los consejos de administración.” Powell reconoció que tal esfuerzo es un proceso delicado y potencialmente peligroso, lo que requiere “una reflexión cuidadosa”, ya que la “presión indebida sería contraproducente.” Enfocarse en la retórica del equilibrio, la equidad y la “verdad” crearía un método “difícil de resistir, si se presenta al consejo de administración.” Por supuesto, todo contraataque del mundo empresarial no sólo debía dirigirse a la educación universitaria sino que, como sugirió Powell, también “a las escuelas secundarias”. [19]

En tanto Powell abordada el “ataque” desde – y el “contraataque” propuesto hacia – el sistema educativo por la élite empresarial y financiera, sugirió que, si bien se trataba de una estrategia a más largo plazo, en el corto plazo, sería necesario hacer frente a la opinión pública. Para ello:

El primer elemento esencial es el de establecer un personal de prominentes académicos, escritores y oradores, que piensen, analicen, escriban y expongan. También será esencial contar con personal que esté muy familiarizado con los medios de comunicación, y la manera más eficaz de comunicarse con el público. [20]

Los medios de comunicación con el público incluyen el uso de la televisión. Powell recomendó monitorear la televisión de la misma manera que se vigila los libros de texto, con objeto de mantener los medios de comunicación bajo “vigilancia constante” ante la crítica del sistema empresarial que, asume Powell, se deriva de una de dos fuentes: “la hostilidad o la ignorancia económica.” Se trata simplemente de asumir que las críticas al empresariado y al “sistema” no están justificadas, se derivan de un odio fuera de lugar o de la ignorancia de la sociedad. Este punto de vista es consistentemente regurgitado a lo largo del memo. Para “corregir” adecuadamente a los medios, Powell sugirió que la vigilancia presentara quejas tanto a los medios de comunicación como a la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones, y al igual que en ciclos de conferencias universitarios “debe ser exigido el mismo tiempo [para los oradores empresariales]“, especialmente en “programas con formato de foro” como Meet the Press o el Today Show. Por supuesto, la radio y la prensa escrita también debían controlarse y “corregirse”. [21]

La “facultad de los eruditos”, establecida por la Cámara de Comercio o por otros grupos empresariales, debe publicar especialmente artículos académicos, ya que tales tácticas han sido efectivas en el “ataque” al sistema empresarial. Por lo tanto, estos “investigadores independientes” deben publicar en revistas populares (como Life, Reader ‘s Digest, etc.), revistas intelectuales (como The Atlantic, Harper’s, etc.) y revistas profesionales. Además, se deben publicar libros, ensayos y panfletos que promuevan “nuestro postura” para “educar al público.” La publicidad pagada también debe ser utilizada crecientemente para “apoyar el sistema”. [22]

Powell se volvió su atención a la arena política, a partir de la suposición básica de que la idea de que las grandes empresas controlan los gobiernos occidentales es simplemente “doctrina marxista” y “propaganda izquierdista”, que lamentablemente, informa Powell, “tiene un amplia recepción del público entre los estadounidenses.” Afirmó inmediatamente después que “todos los ejecutivos de negocios saben… que pocos elementos de la sociedad estadounidense de hoy en día tienen tan poca influencia en el gobierno como el hombre de negocios estadounidense, la corporación, o incluso los millones de accionistas de las empresas.” Powell afirma que, increíblemente, en términos de influencia en el gobierno, el pobre y desafortunado hombre de negocios y el ejecutivo corporativo estadounidense son “el hombre olvidado”. [23]

Olvídate de los sectores pobres, negros, y de los marginados de la sociedad, olvida las personas con discapacidad, los estereotipados, y los encarcelados, olvídate de los que dependen del bienestar social, los cupones de alimentos, o dependen de los servicios sociales o de caridad locales, y olvídate de toda la población de los Estados Unidos, que sólo consiguió el reconocimiento y apoyo del gobierno después de años de lucha, protestas constantes, represión policial, asaltos, reducción de sus derechos humanos y dignidad, esas luchas que sólo buscan conseguir un verdadero estatus de ser humano, el ser tratados de forma igualitaria y justa … no, ¡olvídate de esas personas! Los verdaderos “olvidados” y “oprimidos”, son los ejecutivos de Union Carbide, Exxon, General Electric, General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow, Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, y Monsanto. Ellos, en verdad, son los marginados… Por lo menos, al menos según Lewis Powell.

Para Powell, la educación y las campañas de propaganda son necesarias, pero los pobres ejecutivos marginados de una empresa estadounidense deben darse cuenta de que “el poder político es necesario”, y que tal poder debe ser “utilizado agresivamente y con determinación – sin vergüenza y sin la resistencia que ha sido tan característica en el empresariado estadounidenses”. Además, no es sólo en las ramas legislativa y ejecutiva del gobierno donde los líderes empresariales deben tomar el poder “agresivamente”, sino también en la rama judicial – los tribunales – que “pueden ser el instrumento más importante para el cambio social, económico y político”. Asegurando que tanto los “liberales” como la “extrema izquierda” han sido “explotadores del sistema judicial” – como la American Civil Liberties Union, los sindicatos y las organizaciones de derechos civiles – los grupos empresariales como la Cámara de Comercio tendrían que establecer “un personal altamente competente de abogados” para explotar el poder judicial en su propio beneficio. [24] Powell pasó a jugar un papel muy importante en este proceso; fue nombrado a la Corte Suprema de Justicia casi inmediatamente después de haber escrito este memo, tomando muchas decisiones importantes con respecto a los “derechos corporativos”.

Al abogar por un impulso agresivo en beneficio de sus propios intereses, Powell alentó a la comunidad empresarial “a atacar a los [Ralph] Nader, los [Herbert] Marcus y otros que abiertamente buscan la destrucción del sistema”, así como “sancionar políticamente a los que se oponen a éste”. La “amenaza para el sistema empresarial” no debe ser meramente presentada como una cuestión económica, sino que debe ser presentada como “una amenaza a la libertad individual”, lo que Powell describió como una “gran verdad”, que “debe ser reafirmada, para que este programa tenga sentido”. Por lo tanto, las “únicas alternativas a la libre empresa” son presentadas como “distintos grados de regulación burocrática de la libertad individual – desde que el socialismo moderado hasta el talón de hierro de la dictadura de derecha o de izquierda.” El objetivo era vincular la propia concepción individual promedio de los estadounidenses de su libertad personal a los derechos de las empresas y líderes empresariales. Por lo tanto, afirmó Powell, “la contracción y la negación de la libertad económica es seguida inevitablemente por restricciones gubernamentales sobre otros derechos preciados.” Este es el mensaje preciso, Powell explicó, “que por encima de todos los demás, debe ser llevado a los hogares del pueblo estadounidense”. [25] Así, según esta lógica, si hoy Monsanto y Dow son regulados, mañana, tu mamá y tu papá estarán en una dictadura.

La Nueva Derecha: Neoliberalismo y Educación

El Memo Powell es reconocido en mayor medida como una especie de “Constitución” o “documento fundacional” de la aparición de think tanks derechistas en los años 1970 y 1980, de acuerdo con sus recomendaciones para el establecimiento de “un equipo de especialistas altamente calificados en ciencias sociales que crean en el sistema.” En 1973, apenas dos años después de que el documento fuese escrito, fue fundada la Heritage Foundation como una “organización de expertos agresiva y abiertamente ideológica”, que adquirió gran influencia durante la administración Reagan. [26]

La página web de la Heritage Foundation explica que la misión del think tank “es formular y promover políticas públicas conservadoras basadas en los principios de libre empresa, gobierno limitado, libertad individual, valores tradicionales estadounidenses, y una defensa nacional fuerte.” Después de su fundación en 1973, la Heritage Foundation comenzó a “entregar investigación convincente y persuasiva al Congreso proveyendo hechos, datos y argumentos sólidos a favor de los principios conservadores.” En 1977, Ed Feulner se convirtió en presidente de la fundación y estableció “un nuevo personal directivo superior” y una ” banco de recursos” para “destronar al establishment liberal y establecer una red nacional de grupos políticos y expertos conservadores” en última instancia, un total de más de 2.200 “expertos en política” y 475 “grupos políticos” en Estados Unidos y en otros lugares. En 1980, Heritage publicó un “modelo de política pública”, titulado “Mandato para el Liderazgo”, que se convirtió en “la biblia política de la recién electa administración Reagan para todo, desde los impuestos a la regulación a la delincuencia y la defensa nacional.” En 1987, Heritage publicó otro plan de política, “Fuera de la Trampa de la Pobreza: Una Estrategia Conservadora para la Reforma del Bienestar”, que, según su página web afirma jactanciosamente, “cambió la mentalidad de las obligaciones en Estados Unidos, sacando a miles fuera de los subsidios [bienestar] y hacia la responsabilidad personal”, o, en otras palabras, a una mayor pobreza. [27]

El modelo de la Heritage Foundation llevó a la rápida proliferación de think tanks conservadores, de 70 a más de 300 en más de 30 años, que “a menudo trabajan juntos para crear múltiples redes a nivel local, estatal y federal y usan medios masivos y alternativos de comunicación para promover la agenda conservadora.” El objetivo final, al igual que con todos los think tanks y fundaciones, es “difundir la ideología”. [28]

El Cato Institute es otro think tank conservador – o “libertario” -, como se describe a sí mismo. Fundado en 1974 como la Charles Koch Foundation por Charles Koch (uno de los multimillonarios más ricos de Estados Unidos y principal financista del movimiento del Tea Party), así como por Ed Crane y Murray Rothbard. En 1977, había cambiado su nombre por el de Instituto Cato, después de las “Cartas de Catón”, una serie de ensayos escritos por dos escritores británicos del siglo dieciocho, bajo el seudónimo de Catón, que era un senador romano que se opuso firmemente a la democracia, y luchó contra la sublevación de esclavos dirigida por Espartaco. Fue idolatrado en el período de la Ilustración como progenitor y protector de la libertad (para unos pocos), lo que se reflejó en la ideología de los Padres Fundadores de los Estados Unidos, en particular, de Thomas Jefferson y James Madison, lo que para el Cato Institute justificó el cambio de nombre. Mientras que los pensamientos y pensadores de la Ilustración son idolatrados – muy especialmente en la formación de la Constitución de Estados Unidos – como defensores de la libertad y los derechos individuales, era el “derecho” de “propiedad privada” y para aquellos que poseían la propiedad (que, en ese momento, incluían a los propietarios de esclavos) la forma última de la sacrosanta “libertad”. Una vez más, una concepción claramente elitista de la democracia que se conoce “republicanismo”.

Estos think tanks derechistas se ayudaron en la era del neoliberalismo, reuniendo a “eruditos” que apoyaban el llamado sistema de “libre mercado” (sí, una falacia mítica), y que se burlan y se oponen a todas las formas de bienestar social y apoyo social. Los think tanks generaron la investigación y el trabajo que apoyó el dominio de los bancos y las corporaciones por sobre la sociedad, y los miembros de los think tanks conseguían que sus voces fueran escuchadas a través de los medios de comunicación, en el gobierno, y en las universidades. Se facilitó el cambio ideológico en los círculos de poder y la política hacia el neoliberalismo.

El Memo Powell y la “crisis de la democracia” establecieron una circunstancia política, social y económica donde el neoliberalismo emergió para administrar el “exceso de democracia.” En lugar de un enfoque más amplio en el neoliberalismo y la globalización en general, me centraré en sus influencias sobre la educación en particular. La era de la globalización neoliberal marcó un rápido declive de los estados de bienestar liberales que habían surgido en las décadas anteriores, y como tal, la educación se vio directamente afectada.

Como parte de este proceso, el conocimiento se transformó en “capital” – dentro del “capitalismo del conocimiento” o de una “economía del conocimiento”. Los informes del Banco Mundial y la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE) en la década de 1990 transformaron estas ideas en una “plantilla directiva.” Esta buscaba establecer “una nueva coalición entre la educación y la industria”, donde “la educación una vez reconfigurada aparecería como una forma de capital del conocimiento masivamente subvalorado que determinará el futuro del trabajo, la organización de las instituciones del conocimiento y la forma de la sociedad en los próximos años.” [29]

El conocimiento se define así como un “recurso económico”, lo que llevaría al crecimiento de la economía. Por lo tanto, en la era neoliberal, donde todos los aspectos de la productividad y el crecimiento económico se privatizan (supuestamente para aumentar su eficiencia y capacidad productiva, ya que sólo el “libre mercado” lo puede hacer), la educación – o la “economía del conocimiento” – sí, estaba destinada a ser privatizada. [30]

En el modelo educativo de revisión neoliberal, “se vio que la productividad económica no proviene de la inversión pública en educación, sino de transformar la educación en un producto que podría ser comprado y vendido como cualquier otra cosa – y en un mercado globalizado, la educación occidental puede ser vendida como una mercancía valiosa en los países en desarrollo.” Por lo tanto, dentro de la propia universidad, “el significado de “productividad” se apartó de un bien social y económico generalizado hacia un valor en dólares ficticios para determinados productos y prácticas designadas por el gobierno”. Davies et. al. explica:

Cuando estos productos son estudiantes graduados, o investigaciones publicadas, el gobierno podría ser interpretado como financista de la labor académica, como siempre. Cuando los ‘productos’ que se financiarán son investigación con dólares de subvención, con mecanismos para fomentar la colaboración con la industria, puede interpretarse como la manipulación directa de los académicos para volverse autofinanciados y prestar servicios a los intereses de las empresas y la industria. [31]

La nueva “gestión” de las universidades implica una disminución de los fondos estatales al mismo tiempo que aumenta las “pesadas (y costosas) demandas en materia de contabilidad de la forma en que se utilizan los fondos”, y por lo tanto, “la confianza en los valores y prácticas profesionales ya no fue la base de la relación” entre las universidades y el gobierno. Se argumentó que los gobiernos ya no eran capaces de pagar los costos de la educación universitaria, y que la “eficiencia” del sistema universitario – definida como “hacer más con menos” – iba a requerir un cambio en el sistema de liderazgo y la gestión interna hacia “una forma de gerencia pública inspirada en la del sector privado” de la estructura universitaria. El “objetivo principal” de este programa neoliberal, sugiere Davies:

no era simplemente para hacer más con menos, ya que los sistemas de vigilancia y auditoría son extraordinariamente costosos e ineficaces, sino volver a las universidades más gobernables y de aprovechar sus energías en apoyo de las ambiciones programáticas del gobierno neo-liberal y las grandes empresas. Un cambio hacia la economía como la única medida de valor sirve para erosionar la situación y actividades de aquellos académicos que encuentran valor en ámbitos sociales y morales. Por el contrario, los tecnócratas de orientación política de los círculos académicos, que sirven a los fines del capital corporativo global, son alentados y recompensados. [32]

Si la década del 60 vio un crecimiento de la democracia y la participación popular en un grado significativo, emanando de las universidades, los intelectuales disidentes y los estudiantes, la década del 70 vio la articulación y actualización de los ataques de la élite contra la democracia popular y el propio sistema educativo. Desde la Cámara de Comercio de Estados Unidos y la Comisión Trilateral, que representan los intereses de la élite financiera y corporativa, el principal problema fue identificado como la participación activa y popular del público orientada a la sociedad. Esa era la “crisis de la democracia.” La solución para las élites era simple: menos democracia, más autoridad. En el ámbito educativo, esto significó un mayor control de la élite sobre las universidades, menos libertad y activismo de intelectuales y estudiantes. Las universidades y el sistema educativo de manera más amplia era crecientemente privatizado, corporativizado, y globalizado. La época de la militancia llegó a su fin, y las universidades iban a ser meras plantas de ensamblaje de unidades económicamente productivas que apoyasen el sistema, no que lo impugnasen. Uno de los métodos clave para asegurarse que esto funcione fue a través de la deuda, que actúa como un mecanismo disciplinario en el que los estudiantes se ven limitados por el peso de la servidumbre por deudas, y por lo tanto, su propia educación debe orientarse hacia una carrera específica y una expectativa de ingresos. El conocimiento se busca para obtener beneficio personal y económico más que por el bien del conocimiento como tal. Graduarse con una gran deuda implica entonces la necesidad de entrar inmediatamente al mercado de trabajo, si es que no se había entrado ya al mercado de trabajo a tiempo parcial mientras se estudiaba. Por lo tanto, la deuda disciplina a los estudiantes hacia un propósito diferente en su educación: hacia un puesto de trabajo y a los beneficios financieros en lugar de hacia el conocimiento y el entendimiento. El activismo entonces, es más un impedimento que un partidario del conocimiento y la educación.

En la siguiente parte de esta serie, voy a analizar el propósito y el papel de la educación y los intelectuales en un contexto histórico, diferenciando entre los propósitos de “bien social” y “control social” de la educación, así como entre los intelectuales orientados a la política (de elite) y los orientados a los valores (disidentes). A través de una mirada crítica de los fines de la educación y los intelectuales, podemos entender la crisis actual en la educación y la disidencia intelectual, y por lo tanto, entender los métodos y orientaciones positivas para el cambio.
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Andrew Gavin Marshall es un investigador independiente y escritor residente en Montreal, Canadá, que escribe sobre una serie de cuestiones sociales, políticas, económicas e históricas. También es Project Manager del The People’s Book Project y presenta un programa semanal de podcast, “Empire, Power and People”, en BoilingFrogsPost.com.
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Notas

[1] Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy, (Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, New York University Press, 1975), pages 61-62, 71.
[2] Ibid, pages 74-77.
[3] Ibid, pages 93, 113-115.
[4] Ibid, page 162.
[5] Jay Peterzell, “The Trilateral Commission and the Carter Administration,” Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 12, No. 51, 17 December 1977), page 2102.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Wayne Parsons, “Politics Without Promises: The Crisis of ‘Overload’ and Governability,” Parliamentary Affairs (Vol. 35, No. 4, 1982), pages 421-422.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Val Burris, “The Social and Political Consequences of Overeducation,” American Sociological Review (Vol. 48, No. 4, August 1983), pages 455-456.
[12] Lewis F. Powell, Jr., “Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System,” Addressed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 23 August 1971:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/sources_document13.html

[13-25] Ibid.
[26] Julie E. Miller-Cribbs, et. al., “Thinking About Think Tanks: Strategies for Progressive Social Work,” Journal of Policy Practice (Vol. 9, No. 3-4, 2010), page 293.
[27] The Heritage Foundation, “The Heritage Foundation’s 35th Anniversary: A History of Achievements,” About: http://www.heritage.org/about/our-history/35th-anniversary
[28] Julie E. Miller-Cribbs, et. al., “Thinking About Think Tanks: Strategies for Progressive Social Work,” Journal of Policy Practice (Vol. 9, No. 3-4, 2010), pages 293-294.
[29] Mark Olssen and Michael A. Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy: From the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism,” Journal of Education Policy (Vol. 20, No. 3, May 2005), page 331.
[30] Ibid, pages 338-339.
[31] Bronwyn Davies, et. al., “The Rise and Fall of the Neo-liberal University,” European Journal of Education (Vol. 41, No. 2, 2006), pages 311-312.
[32] Ibid, page 312.

04.03.12
by

Podcast: The College Crisis

Empire, Power, and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall

The College Crisis

EPP

We are in the midst of a major college crisis: more students than ever before are graduating with professional educations and immense debt into a jobless market with no opportunities. The result of such a scenario, as any historian would warn, is the development of social unrest, dissatisfaction, rebellion, and potentially, revolution. As over 100,000 students on strike protested last week in Quebec against increased tuition costs, with the government stating its intent to dismiss and ignore them, student movements and protests are developing all over the world: Egypt, Tunisia, Chile, Taiwan, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Where did this college crisis come from?

It helps to look back at the activism of the 1960s which saw a “surge in democracy” among the population, and which created a terrifying scenario for elites. The response of elites to this “crisis of democracy” was to reduce democracy. In a secret memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a 1975 Trilateral Commission report, the “crisis” of popular participation in politics was identified, and the groundwork was laid for a counter-attack: neoliberalism, debt, and discipline. Today, we are seeing a further attack upon the population and democracy, and the students are beginning to stand up.

Listen to the podcast show here (Subscribers only):

Also see:

“Class War and the College Crisis: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education”

04.02.12
by

Class War and the College Crisis: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education

Class War and the College Crisis: The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education

The following is the first part of a series of articles, “Class War and the College Crisis.”

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

Part 2: The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?

Part 3: Of Prophets, Power, and the Purpose of Intellectuals

Part 4: Student Strikes, Debt Domination, and Class War in Canada

Part 5: Canada’s Economic Collapse and Social Crisis

Part 6: The Québec Student Strike: From ‘Maple Spring’ to Summer Rebellion?

Today, we are witnessing an emerging massive global revolt, led primarily be the educated and unemployed youth of the world, against the institutionalized and established powers which seek to deprive them of a future worth living. In Chile over the past year, a massive student movement and strike has become a powerful force in the country against the increasingly privatized educational system (serving as a model for the rest of the world) with the support of the vast majority of the population; in Quebec, Canada, a student strike has brought hundreds of thousands of youth into the streets to protest against the doubling of tuition fees; students and others are on strike in Spain against austerity measures; protests led by or with heavy participation of the youth in the U.K., Greece, Portugal, France, and in the United States (such as with the Occupy Movement) are developing and growing, struggling against austerity measures, overt corruption by the capitalist class, and government collusion with bankers and corporations. Students and youth led the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt last year which led to the overthrow of the dictators which had ruled those nations for decades.

All around the world, increasingly, the youth are taking to the streets, protesting, agitating, and striking against the abuses of power, the failures of government, the excesses of greed, plundering and poverty. The educated youth in particular are playing an active role, a role which will be increasing dramatically over the coming year and years. The educated youth are graduating into a jobless market with immense debt and few opportunities. Now, just as several decades ago, the youth are turning back to activism. What happened in the intervening period to derail the activism that had been so widespread in the 1960s? How did our educational system get to its present state? What do these implications have for the present and future?

The “Crisis of Democracy”

In the period between the 1950s and the 1970s, the Western world, and especially the United States, experienced a massive wave of resistance, rebellion, protest, activism and direct action by entire sectors of the general population which had for decades, if not centuries, been largely oppressed and ignored by the institutional power structure of society. The Civil Rights movement in the United States, the rise of the New Left – radical and activist – in both Europe and North America, as elsewhere, anti-war activism, largely spurred against the Vietnam War, Liberation Theology in Latin America (and the Philippines), the environmental movement, feminist movement, gay rights movements, and all sorts of other activist and mobilized movements of youth and large sectors of society were organizing and actively agitating for change, reform, or even revolution. The more power resisted their demands, the more the movements became radicalized. The slower power acted, the faster people reacted. The effect, essentially, was that these movements sought to, and in many cases did, empower vast populations who had otherwise been oppressed and ignored, and they generally awakened the mass of society to such injustices as racism, war, and repression.

For the general population, these movements were an enlightening, civilizing, and hopeful phase in our modern history. For elites, they were terrifying. Thus, in the early 1970s there was a discussion taking place among the intellectual elite, most especially in the United States, on what became known as the “Crisis of Democracy.” In 1973, the Trilateral Commission was formed by banker and global oligarch David Rockefeller, and intellectual elitist Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Trilateral Commission brings together elites from North America, Western Europe, and Japan (now including several states in East Asia), from the realms of politics, finance, economics, corporations, international organizations, NGOs, academia, military, intelligence, media, and foreign policy circles. It acts as a major international think tank, designed to coordinate and establish consensus among the dominant imperial powers of the world.

In 1975, the Trilateral Commission issued a major report entitled, “The Crisis of Democracy,” in which the authors lamented against the “democratic surge” of the 1960s and the “overload” this imposed upon the institutions of authority. Samuel Huntington, a political scientist and one of the principal authors of the report, wrote that the 1960s saw a surge in democracy in America, with an upswing in citizen participation, often “in the form of marches, demonstrations, protest movements, and ‘cause’ organizations.” Further, “the 1960s also saw a reassertion of the primacy of equality as a goal in social, economic, and political life.” Of course, for Huntington and the Trilateral Commission, which was founded by Huntington’s friend, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and banker David Rockefeller, the idea of “equality as a goal in social, economic, and political life” is a terrible and frightening prospect. Huntington analyzed how as part of this “democratic surge,” statistics showed that throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, there was a dramatic increase in the percentage of people who felt the United States was spending too much on defense (from 18% in 1960 to 52% in 1969, largely due to the Vietnam War).[1]

Huntington wrote that the “essence of the democratic surge of the 1960s was a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private,” and further: “People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents.” He explained that in the 1960s, “hierarchy, expertise, and wealth” had come “under heavy attack.” The use of language here is important, in framing power and wealth as “under attack” which implied that those who were “attacking” were the aggressors, as opposed to the fact that these populations (such as black Americans) had in fact been under attack from power and wealth for centuries, and were just then beginning to fight back. Thus, the self defense of people against power and wealth is referred to as an “attack.” Huntington stated that the three key issues which were central to the increased political participation in the 1960s were:

social issues, such as use of drugs, civil liberties, and the role of women; racial issues, involving integration, busing, government aid to minority groups, and urban riots; military issues, involving primarily, of course, the war in Vietnam but also the draft, military spending, military aid programs, and the role of the military-industrial complex more generally.[2]

Huntington presented these issues, essentially, as the “crisis of democracy,” in that they increased distrust with the government and authority, that they led to social and ideological polarization, and ultimately, to a “decline in the authority, status, influence, and effectiveness of the presidency.” Huntington concluded that many problems of governance in the United States stem from an “excess of democracy,” and that, “the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.” Huntington explained that society has always had “marginal groups” which do not participate in politics, and while acknowledging that the existence of “marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic,” it has also “enabled democracy to function effectively.” Huntington identifies “the blacks” as one such group that had become politically active, posing a “danger of overloading the political system with demands.” Of course, this implies directly an elitist version of “democracy” in which the state retains the democratic aesthetic (voting, separation of powers, rule of law) but remains exclusively in the hands of the wealthy power elite. Huntington, in his conclusion, stated that the vulnerability of democracy – the ‘crisis of democracy’ – comes “from the internal dynamics of democracy itself in a highly educated, mobilized, and participant society,” and that what is needed is “a more balanced existence” in which there are “desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy.”[3] In other words, what is needed is less democracy and more authority.

The Trilateral Commission later explained its views of the “threat” to democracy and thus, the way the system ‘should’ function:

In most of the Trilateral countries [Western Europe, North America, Japan] in the past decade there has been a decline in the confidence and trust which the people have in government… Authority has been challenged not only in government, but in trade unions, business enterprises, schools and universities, professional associations, churches, and civic groups. In the past, those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young in their rights and obligations as members of society have been the family, the church, the school, and the army. The effectiveness of all these institutions as a means of socialization has declined severely.(emphasis added)[4]

The “excess of democracy” which this entailed created a supposed “surge of demands” upon the government, just at a time when the government’s authority was being undermined. The Trilateral Commission further sent rampant shivers through the intellectual elite community by discussing the perceived threat of “value-oriented intellectuals” who dare to “assert their disgust with the corruption, materialism, and inefficiency of democracy and with the subservience of democratic government to ‘monopoly capitalism’.” For the members and constituents (elites) of the Trilateral Commission, they did not hold back on the assessment of such a threat, stating that, “this development constitutes a challenge to democratic government which is, potentially at least, as serious as those posed in the past by the aristocratic cliques, fascist movements, and communist parties.”[5] This is a very typical elitist use of rhetoric in which when identifying any perceived threat to elite interests, they are portrayed in near-apocalyptic terms. The implication, therefore, is that intellectuals who challenge authority are presented as much of a threat to democracy as Hitler and fascism were.

The Trilateral Commission report explained – through economic reasoning – how increased democracy is simply unsustainable. The “democratic surge” gave disadvantaged groups new rights and made them politically active (such as blacks), and this resulted in increased demands upon the very system whose legitimacy had been weakened. A terrible scenario for elites! The report explained that as voting decreased throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, active political participation on campuses increased, minority groups were demanding rights (how dare they!), and not only were they demanding basic human rights, but also “opportunities, positions, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled to before.” That is, unlike the rich, who have considered themselves entitled to everything, always, and forever. Thus, government spending on social welfare and education increased, explained the report: “By the early 1970s Americans were progressively demanding and receiving more benefits from their government and yet having less confidence in their government than they had a decade before.” Most people would refer to that as the achievement of democracy, but for the Trilateral “intellectuals” it was an “excess of democracy,” and indeed, a threat.[6]

Samuel Huntington, naturally, assumed that the decline of confidence in the government was irrational, and had nothing to do with the Vietnam War, police and state repression of protest movements, the Watergate Scandal or other obvious crimes. No, for Huntington, the decline in confidence is tied magically to the “increased expectations” of the population, or, as Jay Peterzell explained in his critique of the report, “the root cause of public disillusionment is consistently traced to unrealistic expectations encouraged by government spending.” Huntington justified this absurd myth on his skewed analysis of the “defense shift” and “welfare shift.” The “defense shift,” which took place in the 1950s, described a period in which 36% of the increase in government spending went to defense (i.e., the military-industrial complex), whereas welfare declined as a proportion of the budget. Then came the “welfare shift” of the 1960s, in which between 1960 and 1971, only a paltry 15% of the increase in spending went to the military-industrial complex, while 84% of the increase went to domestic programs. Thus, for Huntington, the “welfare shift” basically destroyed America and ruined democracy.[7]

In reality, however, Jay Peterzell broke down the numbers to explain the “shifts” in a larger and more rational context. While it was true that the percentages increased and decreased as Huntington displayed them, they were, after all, a percentage of the “increase” in spending, not the overall percentage of spending itself. So, when one looks at the overall government spending in 1950, 1960, and 1972, the percentage on “defense” was 44, to 53, to 37. In those same years, spending on welfare amounted to 4%, 3% and 6%. Thus, between 1960 and 1972, the amount of spending on defense decreased from 53-37% of the total spending of government. In the same years, spending on welfare increased from 3-6% of the total government expenditure. When viewing it as a percentage of the overall, it can hardly be legitimate to claim that the meager increase to 6% of government expenditures for welfare was anywhere near as “threatening” to democracy as was the 37% spent on the military-industrial complex.[8]

So naturally, as a result of such terrifying statistics, the intellectual elite and their financial overlords had to impose more authority and less democracy. It was not simply the Trilateral Commission advocating for such “restraints” upon democracy, but this was a major discussion in elite academic circles in the 1970s. In Britain, this discussion emerged on the “governability thesis” – or the “overload” thesis – of democracy. Samuel Brittan’s “The Economic Contradictions of Democracy” in 1975, explained that, “The temptation to encourage fake expectations among the electorate becomes overwhelming to politicians. The opposition parties are bound to promise to do better and the government party must join in the auction.” Essentially, it was a repetition of the Trilateral thesis that too many promises create too many demands, which then create too much stress for the system, and it would inevitably collapse. Anthony King echoed this in his piece, “Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s,” and King explained that governing was becoming “harder” because “at one and the same time, the range of problems that government is expected to deal with has vastly increased and its capacity to deal with problems, even many of the ones it had before, has decreased.” The Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori asked the question, “Will Democracy Kill Democracy?”

We are pursuing targets which are out of proportion, unduly isolated and pursued blindly, and that are, therefore, in the process of creating… a wholly unmanageable and ominous overload… We are beginning to realize in the prosperous democracies that we are living above our means. But we are equally and more grievously living above and beyond our intelligence, above the understanding of what we are doing.[9]

King explained that, “Political scientists have traditionally been concerned to improve the performance of government.” An obvious mistake, concluded King, who suggested that, “Perhaps over the next few years they should be concerned more with how the number of tasks that government has come to be expected to perform can be reduced.” The “remedy” for all this “overload” of democratic societies was to, first, bring “an end to the politics of ‘promising’,” and second, “attempt to reduce the expectations of voters and consumers” on the political process.[10]

The “threat” of educated youth was especially pronounced. In 1978, the Management Development Institute (a major business school in India) released a report in which it stated:

perhaps the most pernicious trend over the next decade is the growing gap between an increasingly well educated labor force and the number of job openings which can utilize its skills and qualifications… The potential for frustration, alienation and disruption resulting from the disparity between educational attainment and the appropriate job content cannot be overemphasized.[11]

In these commentaries, we are dealing with two diametrically opposed definitions of democracy: popular and elitist. Popular democracy is government of, by, and for the people; elitist democracy is government of, by, and for the rich (but with the outward aesthetic of democracies), channeling popular participation into voting instead of decision-making or active participation. Popular democracy implies the people participating directly in the decisions and functions and maintenance of the ‘nation’ (though not necessarily the State); whereas elitist democracy implies passive participation of the population so much as to allow them to feel as if they play an important role in the direction of society, while the elites control all the important levers and institutions of power which direct and benefit from the actions of the state. These differing definitions are important because when reading reports written and issued by elite interests (such as the Trilateral Commission report), it changes the substance and meaning of the report itself. For example, take the case of Samuel Huntington lamenting at the threat posed to democracy by popular participation: from the logic of popular democracy, this is an absurd statement that doesn’t make sense; from the logic of elitist democracy, the statement is accurate and profoundly important. Elites understand this differentiation, so too must the public.

The Powell Memo: Protecting the Plutocracy

While elites were lamenting over the surge in democracy, particularly in the 1960s, they were not simply complaining about an “excess of democracy” but were actively planning on reducing it. Four years prior to the Trilateral Commission report, in 1971, the infamous and secret ‘Powell Memo’ was issued, written by a corporate lawyer and tobacco company board member, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (whom President Nixon nominated to the Supreme Court two months later), which was addressed to the Chairman of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing American business interests.

Powell stipulated that “the American economic system is under broad attack,” and that, “the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued… gaining momentum and converts.” While the ‘sources’ of the ‘attack’ were identified as broad, they included the usual crowd of critics, Communists, the New Left, and “other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic.” Adding to this was that these “extremists” were increasingly “more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history.” The real “threat,” however, was the “voices joining the chorus of criticism [which] come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.” While acknowledging that in these very sectors, those who speak out against the ‘system’ are still a minority, Powell noted, “these are often the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.”[12]

Powell discussed the “paradox” of how the business leaders appear to be participating – or simply tolerating – the attacks on the “free enterprise system,” whether by providing a voice through the media which they own, or through universities, despite the fact that “[t]he boards of trustees of our universities overwhelmingly are composed of men and women who are leaders in the system.” Powell lamented the conclusions of reports indicating that colleges were graduating students who “despise the American political and economic system,” and thus, who would be inclined to move into power and create change, or outright challenge the system head on. This marked an “intellectual warfare” being waged against the system, according to Powell, who then quoted economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago (and the ‘father’ of neoliberalism), who stated:

It [is] crystal clear that the foundations of our free society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack – not by Communists or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one another and unwittingly serving ends they would never intentionally promote.[13]

Powell even specifically identified Ralph Nader as a “threat” to American business. Powell further deplored the changes and “attack” being made through the courts and legal system, which began targeting corporate tax breaks and loop holes, with the media supporting such initiatives since they help “the poor.” Powell of course referred to the notion of helping “the poor” at the expense of the rich, and the framing of the debate as such, as “political demagoguery or economic illiteracy,” and that the identification of class politics – the rich versus the poor – “is the cheapest and most dangerous kind of politics.” The response from the business world to this “broad attack,” Powell sadly reported, was “appeasement, ineptitude and ignoring the problem.” Powell did, however, explain in sympathy to the ‘ineptitude’ of the corporate and financial elites that, “it must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system.”[14]

While the “tradition role” of business leaders has been to make profits, “create jobs,” to “improve the standard of living,” and of course, “generally to be good citizens,” they have unfortunately shown “little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate.” Thus, stated Powell, businessmen must first “recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival – survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people.” As such, “top [corporate] management must be equally concerned with protecting and preserving the system itself,” instead of just focused on profits. Corporations, Powell acknowledged, were long involved in “public relations” and “governmental affairs” (read: propaganda and public policy), however, the ‘counter-attack’ must be more wide-ranging:

But independent and uncoordinated activity by individual corporations, as important as this is, will not be sufficient. Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.[15]

While the ‘assault’ against the system developed over several decades, Powell elaborated, “there is reason to believe that the campus [university/education] is the single most dynamic source,” as “social science faculties usually include members who are unsympathetic to the enterprise system.” These academics, explained Powell, “need not be in the majority,” as they “are often personally attractive and magnetic; they are stimulating teachers, and their controversy attracts student following; they are prolific writers and lecturers; they author many of the textbooks, and they exert enormous influence – far out of proportion to their numbers – on their colleagues and in the academic world.” Such a situation is, naturally, horrific and deplorable! Imagine that, having magnetic, stimulating and prolific teachers, what horror and despair for the world that would surely bring!

In purporting that political scientists, economists, sociologists and many historians “tend to be liberally oriented,” Powell suggested that “the need for liberal thought is essential to a balanced viewpoint,” but that the ‘balance’ does not exist, with “few [faculty] members being conservatives or [of] moderate persuasion… and being less articulate and aggressive than their crusading colleagues.” Terrified of the prospects of these potentially revolutionary youths entering into positions of power, Powell stated that when they do, “for the most part they quickly discover the fallacies of what they have been taught,” which is, in other words, to say that they quickly become socialized to the structures, hierarchies and institutions of power which demand conformity and subservience to elite interests. However, there were still many who could emerge in “positions of influence where they mold public opinion and often shape governmental action.” Thus, recommended Powell, the Chamber of Commerce should make the “priority task of business” and its related organizations “to address the campus origin of this hostility.” As academic freedom was held as sacrosanct in American society, “It would be fatal to attack this as a principle,” which of course implies that it is to be attacked indirectly. Instead, it would be more effective to use the rhetoric of “academic freedom” itself against the principle of academic freedom, using terms like “openness,” “fairness,” and “balance” as points of critique which would yield “a great opportunity for constructive action.”[16]

Thus, an organization such as the Chamber of Commerce should, recommended Powell, “consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system… [including] several of national reputation whose authorship would be widely respected – even when disagreed with.” The Chamber should also create “a staff of speakers of the highest competency” which “might include the scholars,” and establish a ‘Speaker’s Bureau’ which would “include the ablest and most effective advocates form the top echelons of American business.” This staff of scholars, which Powell emphasized, should be referred to as “independent scholars,” should then engage in a continuing program of evaluating “social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology.” The objective of this would “be oriented toward restoring the balance essential to genuine academic freedom,” meaning, of course, implanting ideological indoctrination and propaganda from the business world, which Powell described as the “assurance of fair and factual treatment of our system of government and our enterprise system, its accomplishments, its basic relationship to individual rights and freedoms, and comparisons with the systems of socialism, fascism and communism.” Powell lamented that the “civil rights movement insist[ed] on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools,” and “labor unions likewise insist[ed] that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor.” Thus, Powell contended, in the business world attempting to re-write textbooks and education, this process “should be regarded as an aid to genuine academic freedom and not as an intrusion upon it.”[17]

Further, Powell suggested that the business community promote speakers on campuses and lecture tours “who appeared in support of the American system of government and business.” While explaining that student groups and faculty would not likely be willing to give the podium over to the Chamber of Commerce or business leaders to espouse their ideology, the Chamber must “aggressively insist” on being heard, demanding “equal time,” as this would be an effective strategy because “university administrators and the great majority of student groups and committees would not welcome being put in the position publicly of refusing a forum to diverse views.” The two main ingredients for this program, Powell explained, was first, “to have attractive, articulate and well-informed speakers,” and second, “to exert whatever degree of pressure – publicly and privately – may be necessary to assure opportunities to speak.” The objective, Powell wrote, “always must be to inform and enlighten, and not merely to propagandize.”[18]

The biggest problem on campuses, however, was the need to “balance” faculties, meaning simply that the business world must work to implant spokespeople and apologists for the economic and financial elite into the faculties. The need to “correct” this imbalance, wrote Powell, “is indeed a long-range and difficult project,” which “should be undertaken as a part of an overall program,” including the application of pressure “for faculty balance upon university administrators and boards of trustees.” Powell acknowledged that such an effort is a delicate and potentially dangerous process, requiring “careful thought,” as “improper pressure would be counterproductive.” Focusing on the rhetoric of balance, fairness, and ‘truth’ would create a method “difficult to resist, if properly presented to the board of trustees.” Of course, the whole counter-attack of the business world should not simply be addressed to university education, but, as Powell suggested, also “tailored to the high schools.”[19]

As Powell had addressed the “attack” from – and proposed the “counterattack” on – the educational system by the corporate and financial elite, he then suggested that while this was a more long-term strategy, in the short term it would be necessary to address the public in the short-term. To do so:

The first essential is to establish the staffs of eminent scholars, writers and speakers, who will do the thinking, the analysis, the writing and the speaking. It will also be essential to have staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media, and how most effectively to communicate with the public.[20]

The means of communicating with the public include using television. Powell recommended monitoring television in the same way that they monitor textbooks, with an aim to keep the media under “constant surveillance” for criticism of the enterprise system, which, Powell assumed, was derived from one of two sources: “hostility or economic ignorance.” It is simply assumed that the critiques of business and the ‘system’ are unjustified, derived from a misplaced hatred of society or from ignorance. This point of view is consistently regurgitated throughout the entire memo. To more properly “correct” the media, Powell suggested that surveillance would then prompt complaints to both the media and the Federal Communications Commission, and just as in university speaking tours, “equal time [for business spokespeople] should be demanded,” especially on “forum-type programs” like Meet the Press or the Today Show. Of course, the radio and print press were also to be monitored and “corrected.”[21]

The “faculty of scholars” established by the Chamber of Commerce or other business groups must publish, especially scholarly articles, as such tactics have been effective in the “attack” on the enterprise system. Thus, these “independent scholars” must publish in popular magazines (such as Life, Reader’s Digest, etc.), intellectual magazines (such as the Atlantic, Harper’s, etc.) and the professional journals. Furthermore, they must publish books, paperbacks and pamphlets promoting “our side” to “educate the public.” Paid advertising must also increasingly be used to “support the system.”[22]

Powell then turned his attention to the political arena, beginning with the base assumption that the idea of big business controlling Western governments is mere “Marxist doctrine” and “leftist propaganda,” which, Powell sadly reports, “has a wide public following among Americans.” He immediately thereafter asserted that, “every business executive knows… few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders.” Powell amazingly claimed that in terms of government influence, the poor unfortunate American businessman and corporate executive is “the forgotten man.”[23]

Forget the poor, black, and disenfranchised segments of society; forget the disabled, the labeled, and the imprisoned; forget those on welfare, food stamps, dependent upon social services or local charity; forget the entire population of the United States, who can only incite government recognition and support after years of struggle, constant protests, police repression, assault, curtailment of basic human rights and dignity; those struggles which seek only the attainment of a genuine status of human being, to be treated equal and fair… no, forget those people! The true “forgotten” and “oppressed” are the executives at Union Carbide, Exxon, General Electric, GM, Ford, DuPont, Dow, Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, and Monsanto. They, truly, are the disenfranchised… At least, according to Lewis Powell.

For Powell, education and public propaganda campaigns are necessary, but the poor disenfranchised American corporate executive must realize that “political power is necessary,” and that such power must be “used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.” Further, it is not merely in the legislative and executive branches of government where business leaders must seize power “aggressively,” but also in the judicial branch – the courts – which “may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.” Charging that both “liberals” and the “far left” have been “exploiters of the judicial system” – such as the American Civil Liberties Union, labor unions and civil rights organizations – business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce would need to establish “a highly competent staff of lawyers” to exploit the judiciary for their own benefit.[24] Powell went on to play a very important role in this process as he was appointed to the Supreme Court almost immediately after having authored this memo, where he made many important decisions regarding “corporate rights.”

In advocating aggression in pushing their own interests, Powell encouraged the business community “to attack the [Ralph] Naders, the [Herbert] Marcuses and other who openly seek destruction of the system,” as well as “to penalize politically those who oppose it.” The “threat to the enterprise system” must not be merely presented as an economic issue, but should be portrayed as “a threat to individual freedom,” which Powell described as a “great truth” which “must be re-affirmed if this program is to be meaningful.” Thus, the “only alternatives to free enterprise” are to be presented as “varying degrees of bureaucratic regulation of individual freedom – ranging from that under moderate socialism to the iron heel of the leftist or rightist dictatorship.” The aim was to tie the average American’s own individual conception of their personal freedom and rights to that of corporations and business leaders. Thus, contended Powell, “the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights.” This is the precise message, Powell explained, “above all others, that must be carried home to the American people.”[25] So, by this logic, if today Monsanto and Dow are regulated, tomorrow, your Mom and Dad will be in a dictatorship.

The New Right: Neoliberalism and Education

The Powell Memo is largely credited with being a type of ‘Constitution’ or ‘founding document’ for the emergence of the right-wing think tanks in the 1970s and 1980s, as per its recommendations for establishing “a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system.” In 1973, a mere two years after the memo was written, the Heritage Foundation was founded as an “aggressive and openly ideological expert organization,” which became highly influential in the Reagan administration.[26]

The Heritage Foundation’s website explains that the think tank’s mission “is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” Upon its founding in 1973, the Heritage Foundation began to “deliver compelling and persuasive research to Congress providing facts, data, and sound arguments on behalf of conservative principles.” In 1977, Ed Feulner became President of the foundation and established “a new senior management staff” and a ‘resource bank’ in order “to take on the liberal establishment and forge a national network of conservative policy groups and experts,” ultimately totaling more than 2,200 “policy experts” and 475 “policy groups” in the U.S. and elsewhere. In 1980, Heritage published a “public policy blueprint” entitled, “Mandate for Leadership,” which became “the policy bible of the newly elected Reagan administration on everything from taxes and regulation to crime and national defense.” In 1987, Heritage published another policy plan, “Out of the Poverty Trap: A Conservative Strategy for Welfare Reform,” which, as their website boastfully claimed, “changed the entitlement mentality in America, moving thousands off the dole [welfare] and toward personal responsibility,” or, in other words, deeper poverty.[27]

The model of the Heritage Foundation led to the rapid proliferation of conservative think tanks, from 70 to over 300 in over 30 years, which “often work together to create multi-issue networks on the local, state, and federal level and use mainstream and alternative media to promote conservative agendas.” The ultimate objective, like with all think tanks and foundations, is “spreading ideology.”[28]

The Cato Institute is another conservative – or “libertarian” – think tank, as it describes itself. Founded in 1974 as the Charles Koch Foundation by Charles Koch (one of America’s richest billionaires and major financier of the Tea Party movement), as well as Ed Crane and Murray Rothbard. By 1977, it had changed its name to the Cato Institute, after “Cato’s Letters,” a series of essays by two British writers in the 18th century under the pseudonym of Cato, who was a Roman Senator strongly opposed to democracy, and had fought against the slave uprising led by Spartacus. He was idolized in the Enlightenment period as a progenitor and protector of liberty (for the few), which was reflected in the ideology of the Founding Fathers of the United States, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, for which the Cato Institute credits as the reasoning for the re-naming. While Enlightenment thought and thinkers are idolized – most especially in the formation of the U.S. Constitution – as advocates of liberty, freedom and individual rights, it was the ‘right’ of ‘private property’ and those who owned property (which, at the time, included slave owners) as the ultimate sacrosanct form of “liberty.” Again, a distinctly elitist conception of democracy referred to as ‘Republicanism.’

These right-wing think tanks helped bring in the era of neo-liberalism, bringing together “scholars” who support the so-called “free market” system (itself, a mythical fallacy), and who deride and oppose all forms of social welfare and social support. The think tanks produced the research and work which supported the dominance of the banks and corporations over society, and the members of the think tanks had their voices heard through the media, in government, and in the universities. They facilitated the ideological shift in power and policy circles toward neoliberalism.

The Powell Memo and the general “crisis of democracy” set out a political, social, and economic circumstance in which neoliberalism emerged to manage the “excess of democracy.” Instead of a broader focus on neoliberalism and globalization in general, I will focus on their influences upon education in particular. The era of neoliberal globalization marked a rapid decline of the liberal welfare states that had emerged in the previous several decades, and as such, directly affected education.

As part of this process, knowledge was transformed into ‘capital’ – into ‘knowledge capitalism’ or a ‘knowledge economy.’ Reports from the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the 1990s transformed these ideas into a “policy template.” This was to establish “a new coalition between education and industry,” in which “education if reconfigured as a massively undervalued form of knowledge capital that will determine the future of work, the organization of knowledge institutions and the shape of society in the years to come.”[29]

Knowledge was thus defined as an “economic resource” which would give growth to the economy. As such, in the neoliberal era, where all aspects of economic productivity and growth are privatized (purportedly to increase their efficiency and productive capacity as only the “free market” can do), education – or the “knowledge economy” – itself, was destined to be privatized.[30]

In the revised neoliberal model of education, “economic productivity was seen to come not from government investment in education, but from transforming education into a product that could be bought and sold like anything else – and in a globalised market, Western education can be sold as a valuable commodity in developing countries.” Thus, within the university itself, “the meaning of ‘productivity’ was shifted away from a generalized social and economic good towards a notional dollar value for particular government-designated products and practices.” Davies et. al. elaborated:

Where these products are graduating students, or research published, government could be construed as funding academic work as usual. When the ‘products’ to be funded are research grant dollars, with mechanisms in place to encourage collaboration with industry, this can be seen as straightforward manipulation of academics to become self-funding and to service the interests of business and industry.[31]

The new ‘management’ of universities entailed decreased state funding while simultaneously increasing “heavy (and costly) demands on accounting for how that funding was used,” and thus, “trust in professional values and practices was no longer the basis of the relationship” between universities and government. It was argued that governments were no longer able to afford the costs of university education, and that the “efficiency” of the university system – defined as “doing more with less” – was to require a change in the leadership and management system internal to the university structure to “a form of managerialism modeled on that of the private sector.” The “primary aim” of this neoliberal program, suggests Davies:

was not simply to do more with less, since the surveillance and auditing systems are extraordinarily costly and ineffective, but to make universities more governable and to harness their energies in support of programmatic ambitions of neo-liberal government and big business. A shift towards economics as the sole measure of value served to erode the status and work of those academics who located value in social and moral domains. Conversely, the technocratic policy-oriented academics, who would serve the ends of global corporate capital, were encouraged and rewarded.[32]

As the 1960s saw a surge in democracy and popular participation, to a significant degree emanating from the universities, dissident intellectuals and students, the 1970s saw the articulation and actualization of the elite attack upon popular democracy and the educational system itself. From the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Trilateral Commission, both of which represent elite financial and corporate interests, the key problem was identified as active and popular participation of the public in the direction of society. This was the “crisis of democracy.” The solution for elites was simple: less democracy, more authority. In the educational realm, this meant more elite control over universities, less freedom and activism for intellectuals and students. Universities and the educational system more broadly was to become increasingly privatized, corporatized, and globalized. The age of activism was at an end, and universities were to be mere assembly plants for economically productive units which support the system, not challenge it. One of the key methods for ensuring this took place was through debt, which acts as a disciplinary mechanism in which students are shackled with the burden of debt bondage, and thus, their education itself must be geared toward a specific career and income expectation. Knowledge is sought for personal and economic benefit more than for the sake of knowledge itself. Graduating with extensive debt then implies a need to immediately enter the job market, if not already having entered the job market part time while studying. Debt thus disciplines the student toward a different purpose in their education: toward a job and financial benefits rather than toward knowledge and understanding. Activism then, is more of an impediment to, rather than a supporter of knowledge and education.

In the next part of this series, I will analyze the purpose and role of education and intellectuals in a historical context, differentiating between the ‘social good’ and ‘social control’ purposes of education, as well as between the policy-oriented (elite) and value-oriented (dissident) intellectuals. Through a critical look at the purpose of education and intellectuals, we can understand the present crisis in education and intellectual dissent, and thus, understand positive methods and directions for change.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project. He also hosts a weekly podcast show, “Empire, Power, and People,” on BoilingFrogsPost.com.

Notes

[1]            Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy, (Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, New York University Press, 1975), pages 61-62, 71.

[2]            Ibid, pages 74-77.

[3]            Ibid, pages 93, 113-115.

[4]            Ibid, page 162.

[5]            Jay Peterzell, “The Trilateral Commission and the Carter Administration,” Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 12, No. 51, 17 December 1977), page 2102.

[6]            Ibid.

[7]            Ibid.

[8]            Ibid.

[9]            Wayne Parsons, “Politics Without Promises: The Crisis of ‘Overload’ and Governability,” Parliamentary Affairs (Vol. 35, No. 4, 1982), pages 421-422.

[10]            Ibid.

[11]            Val Burris, “The Social and Political Consequences of Overeducation,” American Sociological Review (Vol. 48, No. 4, August 1983), pages 455-456.

[12]            Lewis F. Powell, Jr., “Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System,” Addressed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 23 August 1971:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/sources_document13.html

[13-25]                        Ibid.

[26]            Julie E. Miller-Cribbs, et. al., “Thinking About Think Tanks: Strategies for Progressive Social Work,” Journal of Policy Practice (Vol. 9, No. 3-4, 2010), page 293.

[27]            The Heritage Foundation, “The Heritage Foundation’s 35th Anniversary: A History of Achievements,” About: http://www.heritage.org/about/our-history/35th-anniversary

[28]            Julie E. Miller-Cribbs, et. al., “Thinking About Think Tanks: Strategies for Progressive Social Work,” Journal of Policy Practice (Vol. 9, No. 3-4, 2010), pages 293-294.

[29]            Mark Olssen and Michael A. Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy: From the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism,” Journal of Education Policy (Vol. 20, No. 3, May 2005), page 331.

[30]            Ibid, pages 338-339.

[31]            Bronwyn Davies, et. al., “The Rise and Fall of the Neo-liberal University,” European Journal of Education (Vol. 41, No. 2, 2006), pages 311-312.

[32]            Ibid, page 312.

12.13.11
by

The Council on Foreign Relations and the “Grand Area” of the American Empire

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

NOTE: The following is a brief six-page excerpt from a 60 page chapter on the origins of the American Empire at the end of World War II. The chapter, nearly complete, is one of several chapters in a book being funded and facilitated through The People’s Book Project, which is aimed at producing a multi-volume book on a modern history of institutions and ideas of power and resistance. Included within the volumes are: the emergence of nation-states, capitalism, and central banking; the rise of the European empires and colonization; the emergence of new dynastic powers, namely the banking and industrial families of the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, et. al.; the development of the mass education system as a means of social control; the emergence and evolution of university education, the social sciences, and the formation of new concepts of social control and methods of social engineering; the development, purpose, and effects of philanthropic foundations on society; the emergence and evolution of the consumer culture, advertising, public relations, and advanced systems of propaganda; the development of the ‘modern institutional society’, with an examination of the different brands in Communist, Fascist, and Liberal Democratic states; the development and intent of the Welfare State, social services, and management of the poor; the effect of two world wars, and the formation of the American Empire with its political, military, intelligence, economic, financial, and cultural apparatus and institutions of expansion, including the American foundations, think tanks, World Bank, IMF, UN, NATO, CIA, Pentagon, etc.; the role of international think tanks like the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission in shaping and re-shaping world order and expanding dominance and control of the world; the formation of an apparatus of global governance and the ideology of globalism; population control and the environmental movement; and finally the emergence, evolution, and role of science, technology, psychology, and psychiatry on the development of a global scientific dictatorship… and what we can do to change all of this!

The above is not even an exhaustive list of the scope of this multi-volume book. Over 500 pages has been written thus far, and there is a great deal more to go, at which point the end result will be broken up into relevant sections as a complete volume on the modern history of ideas and institutions of power in our world, asking and answering the questions: What is the nature of our global society? How did we get here? Who brought us here? When did this begin? Where are we going? Why? … and what can we do to change it.

The People’s Book Project is currently in need of support, as it has run out of funds. Please donate to help ensure that this project can move forward and help support an effort to provide a new examination of our world, and a new understanding in how we can go about changing it! Thank you.

Chapter Excerpt: The Making of the American Empire

The process of establishing an American Empire during and after World War II was not – as has been postulated (by those who even admit there is such a thing as an ‘American Empire’) – an ‘accident’ of history, something America seemingly stumbled into as a result of its unhindered economic growth and military-political position as arbiter of world peace and prosperity. A vast literature has developed in the academic realm and policy circles – particularly within Political Science and the think tank community, respectively – which postulates a notion of ‘American empire’ or ‘American hegemony’ as accidental, incidental, benevolent, reluctant, and desirable.

Robert Kagan is a prominent American neoconservative historian. He is a Senior Fellow at the prestigious think tank, the Brookings Institution, was a founder of the neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), formerly worked at the State Department in the Reagan administration under Secretary of State, George Shultz, and served for over a decade as a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is, of course, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Kagan has written a great deal on the notion of American hegemony. As he wrote in the journal, Foreign Policy, in 1998, “the truth about America’s dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed international observers.” This truth, according to Kagan, “is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world’s population.” Samuel Huntington, another Council member and prominent American strategist, wrote that, “A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country shaping global affairs.”[1] This “Benevolent Empire” – as Kagan titles his article – rests on such fundamental ideas as the notion “that American freedom depends on the survival and spread of freedom elsewhere,” and that, “American prosperity cannot occur in the absence of global prosperity.” For half a century, Kagan wrote, Americans “have been guided by the kind of enlightened self-interest that, in practice, comes dangerously close to resembling generosity.”[2]

Sebastian Mallaby, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, former Editorial Board Member and columnist at the Washington Post as well as correspondent and bureau chief for The Economist, wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs, that “empire’s are not always planned,” referring to America as “The Reluctant Imperialist.”[3] Lawrence Summers, another prominent economist, politician, and policy-maker for the Clinton and Obama administrations, referred to America as “history’s only nonimperialist superpower.”[4] Niall Ferguson, a prominent British liberal economic historian, has written extensively on the open acknowledgement of “American Empire,” but stipulates, as he did in his book Colossus, “that the United States is an empire and that this might not be wholly bad.” Referring to America as an “Unconscious Colossus,” Ferguson stressed that, “a self-conscious American imperialism might well be preferable to the available alternatives.”[5] Ferguson in fact stresses the need for Americans to “recognize the imperial characteristics of their own power today [writing in 2005] and, if possible, to learn from the achievements and failures of past empires.” This, Ferguson felt, would reduce the so-called “perils” of being an “empire in denial.”[6]

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., famed American liberal historian and adviser to President Kennedy, wrote that the United States enjoys “an informal empire – military bases, status-of-forces agreements, trade concessions, multinational corporations, cultural penetrations, and other favors,” yet, contends Schlesinger, “these are marginal to the subject of direct control,” and instead, “far from ruling an empire in the old sense,” America “has become the virtual prisoner of its client states.”[7] Some other commentators referred to America as a “virtual” or even “inadvertent” imperial power.[8]

The notion of America as a “reluctant imperialist” or a “benevolent empire” is not a new one. This has been the mainstay within the academic literature and policy-planning circles to both advocate for and justify the existence of American domination of the world. The concept of the reluctant, yet benevolent great power presents an image of a dutiful personage coming to the aid of those in need, following the responsibility which is derived from great power; that America’s rise to economic prominence – also seen as the product of free and democratic initiative and ideals (thus negating America’s long history of being a slave state and subsequently a brutal industrial society) – was the precursor to America being thrown the title of ‘global power,’ and with that title bestowed upon it – like a child-king still unsure of his own abilities to rule – took up the activities of a global power with a desire to bring the rest of the world the same altruistic truths and enlightened ideals which made America flourish so; that America’s gift to the world was to spread freedom and democracy, in the economic, political, and social spheres. This myth has been a constant foundation for the advocacy and justification of empire. Its importance rests most especially on the ideals and global public opinion which prevailed as the great European empires waned and ultimately collapsed through two World Wars.

The colonized peoples of the world had had enough of empire, had suffered so immeasurably and consistently under its tutelage, that the concept of empire was so discredited in the eyes of the world’s majority as to be incapable of justifying in the formal imperial-colonial sense. At home, America’s domestic political situation and public opinion had been largely isolationist, seeking to refrain from an expansive foreign policy, leading many American presidents and strategists to bemoan the struggle for empire beyond the continent on the reluctance of the American people and Congress to pursue aggressive expansionism (save for the expansion across the continent, wiping out Native American populations for American Lebensraum and the slow, increasing expression of trans-sovereign rights in Latin America, long considered “America’s backyard”).

World War II, then, presented a new opportunity, and a new challenge for America in the world. The opportunity was to become the worlds most powerful empire history had ever witnessed; the challenge, then, was to justify it in explicitly anti-imperial rhetoric. America, thus, was not a reluctant or accidental empire, nor, for that matter, a benevolent one. America was chosen to be an empire; it was strategised, discussed, debated, planned and implemented. The key architects of this empire were the bankers and corporations which arose out of America’s Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, the philanthropic foundations they established in the early 20th century, the prominent think tanks created throughout the first half of the 20th century, and the major academics, strategists and policy-makers who emerged from the foundation-funded universities, institutes, think tanks, and the business community, and who dominated the corridors of power in the planning circles that made policy.

No sooner had World War II begun than American strategists began calling for a new global American empire. Henry R. Luce, a Yale graduate and founder of Time Magazine, Life, and Fortune, was among America’s most influential publishers in the first half of the 20th century. A strong supporter of the Republican Party and virulent anti-Communist, Luce was also a staunch advocate of fascism in Europe – notably Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany – as a means of preventing the spread of Communism. In 1941, Luce wrote a famous article in Life entitled, “The American Century,” in which he stated that, “the 20th Century must be to a significant degree an American Century.” Luce wrote that America has “that indefinable, unmistakable sign of leadership: prestige.” As such, unlike past empires like Rome, Genghis Khan, or Imperial Britain, “American prestige throughout the world is faith in the good intentions as well as the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people.”[9] Luce felt that the “abundant life” of America should be made available “for all mankind,” as soon as mankind embraces “America’s vision.” Luce wrote:

It must be a sharing with all peoples of our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our magnificent industrial products, our technical skills. It must be an internationalism of the people, by the people and for the people… We must undertake now to be the Good Samaritan of the entire world.[10]

While Luce was perhaps the first theorist to posit the specific concept of “the American Century,” the actual work done to create this century (or at least the latter half of it) for America was chiefly initiated by the Council on Foreign Relations, and the prominent strategist Dean Acheson, among others. As Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Dean Acheson delivered a speech at Yale entitled, “An American Attitude Toward Foreign Affairs,” in which he articulated a vision of America in the near future, and as he later recalled, it was at the time of delivering this speech that Acheson began “work on a new postwar world system.” Acheson declared in his speech that, “Our vital interests… do not permit us to be indifferent to the outcome” of the wars erupting in Europe and Asia. The causes of the war, according to Acheson, were in “the failure of some mechanisms of the Nineteenth Century world economy,” which resulted in “this break-up of the world into exclusive areas for armed exploitation administered along oriental lines.” Recreating a world peace, posited Acheson, would require “a broader market for goods made under decent standards,” as well as “a stable international monetary system” and the removal of “exclusive preferential trade agreements.” Essentially, it was an advocacy for a global liberal economic order as the means to world peace, and without a hint of irony, Acheson then called for the immediate establishment of “a navy and air force adequate to secure us in both oceans simultaneously and with striking power sufficient to reach to the other side of each of them.”[11] Dean Acheson was also closely involved in the Council on Foreign Relations’ plans for the shaping of the post-War world order.

The Council on Foreign Relations and the ‘Grand Area’

Before America had even entered the war in late 1941, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was planning for America’s assumed entry into the war. The CFR effectively undertook a policy coup d’état over American foreign policy with the Second World War. When war broke out, the Council began a “strictly confidential” project called the War and Peace Studies, in which top CFR members collaborated with the US State Department in determining US policy, and the project was entirely financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.[12] The War and Peace Studies project had come up with a number of initiatives for the post-War world. One of the most important objectives it laid out was the identification of what areas of the world America would need to control in order to facilitate strong economic growth. This came to be known as the “Grand Area,” and it included:

Latin America, Europe, the colonies of the British Empire, and all of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was necessary as a source of raw materials for Great Britain and Japan and as a consumer of Japanese products. The American national interest was then defined in terms of the integration and defense of the Grand Area, which led to plans for the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank and eventually to the decision to defend Vietnam from a Communist takeover at all costs.[13]

In 1940, the Council on Foreign Relations also began a wide-ranging study of the war-time economic needs of the United States (prior to U.S. entry into the war), called the Financial and Economic Experts, which divided the world into four main blocs: continental Europe (which was dominated by Germany at the time), the U.S. –Western hemisphere, the United Kingdom and its colonial and commonwealth nations, and the Far-East-Pacific Area, including Japan, China, and the Dutch East Indies. The study compiled a list of each region’s main imports and exports. Upon completion of the study in the fall of 1940, the Council sent its conclusions and policy recommendations to President Roosevelt and the State Department. The conclusions stated that the United States needed larger export markets for its products, and specifically that the U.S. needed “living space” (or as the Nazi German state referred to it, Lebensraum) throughout the Western hemisphere and beyond, as well as trade and “economic integration” with the Far East and the British Empire/Commonwealth blocs. The report stated bluntly, “as a minimum, the American ‘national interests’ involved the free access to markets and raw materials in the British Empire, the Far East, and the entire Western hemisphere.”[14]

This was the foundation for the Grand Area designs of the Council in the post-War world. The Grand Area project emphasized that for America to manage the “Grand Areas” of the world, multilateral organizations would be needed to help facilitate “appropriate measures in the fields of trade, investment, and monetary arrangements.” The study further emphasized the need to maintain “military supremacy” in order to help facilitate control of these areas. As the Council’s 1940 report to the U.S. State Department stated: “The foremost requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold unquestioned power is the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete re-armament,” which would “involve increased military expenditures and other risks.”[15]

While the Grand Area project was made and designed for the United States during World War II, it included plans for the post-War world, and included continental Europe in its designs following the assumed defeat of Germany. Thus, as economist Ismael Hossein-Zadeh wrote, “making the Grand Area global.” The idea behind the “Grand Area” was “even more grandiose – one world economy dominated by the United States,” and the study itself suggested that the Grand Area “would then be an organized nucleus for building an integrated world economy after the war.”[16] As Shoup and Minter wrote in their study of the Council, Imperial Brain Trust, “the United States had to enter the war and organize a new world order satisfactory to the United States.”[17] Benevolent, indeed.

Following Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the War, the Council concluded as early as 1941 that the defeat of the Axis powers was simply a matter of time. As such, they were advancing their plans for the post-War world, expanding the Grand Area to:

include the entire globe. A new world order with international political and economic institutions was projected, which would join and integrate all of the earth’s nations under the leadership of the United States. The Unification of the whole world was now the aim of the Council [on Foreign Relations] and government planners.[18]

As a part of this planning process, the U.S. Department of State formed the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy in late December of 1941, of which the first document that was produced, “stressed the danger of another world depression and the need to provide confidence in world economic stability.” Thus, “the United States had to be involved with the internal affairs of the key industrial and raw materials-producing countries.” A key question in this was, as one postwar planner articulated, “how to create purchasing power outside of our country which would be converted into domestic purchasing power through exportation.” The idea was about “devising appropriate institutions” which would fulfill this role, ultimately resting with the formation of the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (later known as the World Bank). The postwar planners had to continually construct an idea of an international order, directed by the United States, which would not so easily resemble the formal colonial period or its methods of exerting hegemony.[19]

Recommendations of the Council suggested that such new international financial institutions were necessary in terms of “stabilizing currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions.” These plans included for the establishment of an International Reconstruction Finance Corporations and an “international investment agency which would stimulate world trade and prosperity by facilitating investment in development programs the world over.” These plans were drafted in recommendations and given to President Roosevelt and the Department of State.[20]

One Council member suggested that, “It might be wise to set up two financial institutions: one an international exchange stabilization board and one an international bank to handle short-term transactions not directly concerned with stabilization.” Thus, the Council drafted in 1941 and 1942 plans that would result in the formation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which formally emerged from the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, an event that is commonly acknowledged as the “birthplace” of the World Bank and IMF, thus ignoring their ideological origins at the Council on Foreign Relations two-to-three years prior. The internal department committees established in the Department of State and Treasury were well represented by Council members who drew up the final plans for the creation of these two major institutions.[21]

Whereas the League of Nations had been a major objective of the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation-funded Council on Foreign Relations following World War I, so too was the United Nations near the end of World War II. A steering committee consisting of U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and five Council on Foreign Relations members was formed in 1943. One of the Council members, Isaiah Bowman,

suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a Council [on Foreign Relations] meeting in May 1942, he stated that the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure “security,” and at the same time “avoid conventional forms of imperialism.” The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body.[22]

The “secret steering committee,” later called the Informal Agenda Group, undertook a series of consultations and meetings with foreign governments which would be essential in creating the new institution, including the Soviet Union, Canada, and Britain, and the Charter of the United Nations was subsequently decided upon with the consent of President Roosevelt in June 1944.[23] The Informal Agenda Group was made up of six individuals, including Secretary of State Cordell Hull. All of them, with the exception of Hull, were Council members. President Roosevelt had referred to them as “my postwar advisers,” and aside from formal policy recommendations, they “served as advisers to the Secretary of State and the President on the final decisions.” By December 1943, a new member was added to the Group, Under Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., who was not only a Council member, but was also a former top executive at United States Steel and was the son of a partner in the J.P. Morgan Bank. After the Group had drafted the recommendations for a United Nations body, Secretary Hull had asked three lawyers to rule on its constitutionality. The three lawyers he chose were Charles Evan Hughes, John W. Davis, and Nathan L. Miller. Both Hughes and Davis were Council members, and John Davis was even a former President of the Council and remained as a Director.[24] John D. Rockefeller Jr. subsequently gifted the United Nations with $8.5 million in order to buy the land for its headquarters in New York City.[25]

 

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

NOTE: This was but a small sample from the chapter on the origins of the American Empire in the post-World War II world. The very same chapter includes the internal policy discussions relating to the formation of the Cold War, the establishment of the National Security State, and the advancement of policy programs aimed at securing the “Grand Areas” for American dominance around the world. The chapter also studies the emergence of the Marshall Plan, NATO, European integration, the Bilderberg Group, and a number of other institutions and ideas related to establishing and expanding a ‘New World Order.’

Please support The People’s Book Project and donate today!

 

 

Endnotes

[1]            Robert Kagan, “The Benevolent Empire,” Foreign Policy (No. 111, Summer 1998), page 26.

[2]            Ibid, page 28.

[3]            Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire,” Foreign Affairs (Vol. 81, No. 2, March-April 2002), page 6.

[4]            Ibid, page 2.

[5]            Niall Ferguson, “The Unconscious Colossus: Limits of (& Alternatives to) American Empire,” Daedalus (Vol. 134, No. 2, On Imperialism, Spring 2005), page 21.

[6]            Ibid, pages 21-22.

[7]            Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The American Empire? Not so Fast,” World Policy Journal (Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2005), page 45.

[8]            Michael Cox, “Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,” International Affairs (Vol. 81, No. 1, January 2005), page 18.

[9]            Geir Lundestad, “‘Empire by Invitation’ in the American Century,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring 1999), page 189.

[10]            Bruce Cumings, “The American Century and the Third World,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring 1999), page 356.

[11]            Ibid, pages 358-359.

[12]            CFR, War and Peace. CFR History: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html

[13]            Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), page 74.

[14]            Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pages 43-45.

[15]            Ibid, page 45.

[16]            Ibid, page 46.

[17]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), page 118.

[18]            Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), page 48.

[19]            Ibid, pages 49-51.

[20]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), pages 166-167.

[21]            Ibid, pages 168-169.

[22]            Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), page 159.

[23]            Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), page 51.

[24]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), pages 169-171.

[25]            Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), page 160.

 

11.30.11
by

Sneak Peak at My Book: The Rockefeller World, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission

The Rockefeller World: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

The following is a sneak peak from a chapter in Marshall’s upcoming book funded through The People’s Book Project.

 

It is quite apparent in the history of America from the late 19th century and into the 20th century, that the Rockefeller family has wielded massive influence in shaping the socio-political economic landscape of society. However, up until the first half of the 20th century came to a close, there were several other large dominant families with whom the Rockefellers shared power and purpose, notably among them, the Morgans. As the century progressed, their interests aligned further still, and following World War II, the Rockefellers became the dominant group in America, and arguably, the world. Of course, there was the well-established business links between the major families emerging out of the American Industrial Revolution going into the 20th century, followed with the establishment of the major foundations designed to engage in social engineering. It was with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that the changing dynamics of the Morgan-Rockefeller clan became most apparent.

As discussed earlier in this book, the Council on Foreign Relations is the ultimate networking and socializing institution among the American elite. The influence of the CFR is unparalleled among other think tanks. One study revealed that between 1945 and 1972, roughly 45% of the top foreign policy officials who served in the United States government were also members of the Council, leading one prominent member to once state that membership in the Council is essentially a “rite of passage” for being a member of the foreign policy establishment. One Council member, Theodore White, explained that the Council’s “roster of members has for a generation, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, been the chief recruiting ground for Cabinet-level officials in Washington.”[1]

The CIA, as previously examined, is also no stranger to this network, since more often than not in the first several decades of the existence of the Agency, its leaders were drawn from Council membership, such as Allen Dulles, John A. McCone, Richard Helms, William Colby, and George H.W. Bush. As some researchers have examined:

The influential but private Council, composed of several hundred of the country’s top political, military, business, and academic leaders has long been the CIA’s principal “constituency” in the American public. When the agency has needed prominent citizens to front for its proprietary (cover) companies or for other special assistance, it has often turned to Council members.[2]

Roughly 42% of the top foreign policy positions in the Truman administration were filled by Council members, with 40% in the Eisenhower administration, 51% of the Kennedy administration, and 57% of the Johnson administration, many of whom were holdovers from the Kennedy administration.[3] The Council has had and continues to have enormous influence in the mainstream media, through which it is able to propagate its ideology, advance its agendas, and conceal its influence. In 1972, three out of ten directors and five out of nine executives of the New York Times were Council members. In the same year, one out of four editorial executives and four of nine directors of the Washington Post were also Council members, including its President, Katharine Graham, as well as the Vice-President Osborn Elliott, who was also editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Of both Time Magazine and Newsweek, almost half of their directors in 1972 were also Council members.[4]

The Council also has extensive ties to the other major American think tanks, most especially the Brookings Institution, as well as the RAND Corporation, the Hudson Institute, the Foreign Policy Association, and of course, the special-purpose foundations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of which fifteen of its twenty-one trustees (as of 1971) were also Council members, and its president from 1950 to 1971, Joseph E. Johnson, was also a director of the Council during the same time period.[5]

The Council and the major philanthropic foundations have had extensive ties not only to each other, but in working together in constructing research and programs of study in foreign affairs. The State Department undertook a study of 191 university-connected centers for foreign affairs research, which revealed that the largest sources of funding came from the Ford Foundation (which funded 107 of the 191 centers), the federal government (which funded 67 centers), the Rockefeller Foundation (18 centers), and the Carnegie Corporation (17 centers), and that, “for eleven of the top twelve universities with institutes of international studies, Ford is the principal source of funding.”[6] These foundations, aside from being major sources of funding for the Council throughout the years from its origins, also share extensive leadership ties with the Council. At the top of the list is the Rockefeller Foundation, which in 1971 had fourteen out of nineteen of its directors also being members of the Council; the Carnegie Corporation followed with ten out of seventeen; then came the Ford Foundation with seven out of sixteen; and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund with six out of eleven board members also being members of the Council. It should also be noted that the Carnegie network extended beyond the Carnegie Corporation, and also included the Carnegie Endowment, the Carnegie Institute of Washington, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. From its founding until 1972, one-fourth of all the Council’s directors had served as trustees or directors of at least one of the several Carnegie foundations. John J. McCloy had served as chairman of both the Council and the Ford Foundation at the same time, from the 1950s until the late 60s.[7]

Of all the networks associated with the Council, the most highly represented is the New York financial oligarchy. This broadly refers to the capitalist class, and more specifically the elite financial and banking groups. In a 1969 survey it was found that seven percent of the total membership of the Council are drawn from the propertied rich, with 33% more being top executives and directors of major corporations. Roughly 11% of Council members had relatives who were also members, and the most common occupation for members of the Council, at 40%, was in business. When adding in media corporations, the number reaches nearly 50%, with less than 1% representing labour or working class organizations.[8]

When it comes to Council leadership, the officers are almost exclusively drawn from membership of the ruling capitalist class, with 22% of Council directors having relatives who were also Council members. Financing for the Council has also been largely drawn from this group, primarily from foundations and corporations, as well as various investments and subscriptions to Foreign Affairs. When the Council got its own building in 1929, a Council director, Paul Warburg, contributed a significant portion, and John D. Rockefeller II contributed even more. When the Council moved into a larger building in 1945, the house was donated by Mrs. Harold Pratt, whose husband had made his fortune from the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil enterprise, and John D. Rockefeller II contributed $150,000 for upkeep of the house. Between 1936 and 1946, funding from the major foundations averaged roughly $90,000 per year, mostly from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, who continued their funding into the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In 1953, the Ford Foundation made its first major contribution to the Council at $100,000 for a study of US-Soviet relations which was chaired by John J. McCloy. In that same year, McCloy became Chairman of the Council, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller-owned Chase Bank.[9]

Among the top corporations and banks represented in the Council (as of 1969/70) were: U.S. Steel (founded by J.P. Morgan in 1901 after acquiring Andrew Carnegie’s steel companies for a hefty sum), Mobil Oil (now merged with Exxon), Standard Oil of New Jersey (later to be Exxon Mobil), IBM, ITT, General Electric, Du Pont, Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan and Co. (now merged with Chase into J.P. Morgan Chase), First National City Bank, Chemical Bank, Brown Brothers Harriman, Bank of New York, Morgan Stanley, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, and several others.[10]

The New York financial oligarchy could previously be divided into separate groups, notably among them, the Rockefeller group, Morgan group, Harriman group, the Lehman-Goldman, Sachs group, and a few select others. The Rockefeller group included: Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Bank of New York, Equitable Life, Metropolitan Life, Mobil Oil, Kuhn, Loeb, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy (law firm), and Standard Oil. The Morgan group included: J.P. Morgan and Co., Morgan Stanley, New York Life, Mutual of New York, Davis, Polk (law firm), U.S. Steel, General Electric, and IBM. As Laurence Shoup and William Minter examined in their book on the Council:

At the Council’s origin and until the early 1950s, the most prominent place within the Council was held by men tied to Morgan interests. Since the 1950s the Rockefeller interests have taken the major role in directing Council affairs.[11]

The Council, while always representative of Rockefeller interests, had seemed to officially pass from Morgan hands into those of the Rockefeller family in 1953. Three of John D. Rockefeller II’s sons, John D. III, Nelson, and David joined the Council in the late 30s and early 40s, and David became a director in 1949. From 1953 until 1971, George S. Franklin became executive director of the Council. Franklin was a college roommate of David Rockefeller’s, and they were related by marriage, and he had worked at the law firm of Davis, Polk (within the Morgan group), before becoming an assistant to Nelson Rockefeller. In 1950, David Rockefeller became a vice-president, and John J. McCloy, a long-time representative of the Rockefeller group, became chairman of the Council in 1953, as well as chairman of the Rockefeller’s Chase Bank. It could also be said that the Rockefeller group overtook the Ford group around this time, as indicative of McCloy taking position as chairman of the Ford Foundation in the same year (while also being a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation). In the following years, several leadership positions in the Council were drawn from organizations within the Rockefeller group. John W. Davis, Robert Roosa, and Bill Moyers were all Council leaders who were connected with the Rockefeller Foundation.[12]

As the years and decades passed, the Rockefeller group became even more powerful and dominant within the American establishment and indeed around the world, firmly establishing itself alongside the Rothschild family as the principle dynastic rulers of the globalized world. Of course, there were and still are several connections between these dynastic ruling families, perhaps so much so that it may be difficult to entirely differentiate between them. Both were involved in the founding and remain involved in the leadership of the Bilderberg Group. In the 1970s, however, it became apparent that the Rockefellers had certainly become the most influential dynasty in America, if not the world (as America was and remains the imperial hegemon of the world). More specifically, David Rockefeller arose as perhaps the most influential man in America, if not the world.

David Rockefeller graduated from Harvard in 1936, and then went to school at the London School of Economics, where he first met John F. Kennedy, and had even dated JKF’s sister, Kathleen.[13] During World War II, David Rockefeller served in North Africa and France, working for military intelligence.[14] In 1947, he became a member of the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a major international think tank, a job that was offered to him by the Carnegie’s President, Alger Hiss. Other members of the board included John Foster Dulles, who in 1953 would become Secretary of State; Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1953 would become President; and Thomas J. Watson, the CEO of IBM.[15] Thomas J. Watson had previously overseen IBM’s deep business relationship with Hitler in providing the technological machinery for organizing the Holocaust.[16] In 1949, David joined the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1946, he had joined Chase Bank, and through the years rose up to becoming President in 1960, and became Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan in 1969.

David Rockefeller had long family ties to the Dulles brothers, whom he knew personally since his college years.[17] Allen Dulles had been the CIA Director and John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. David was also associated with Richard Helms, former top CIA official, as well as Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., a former CIA agent who worked with Chase Manhattan, and whose brother, Kermit Roosevelt was another CIA agent who had been responsible for organizing the 1953 coup in Iran.[18] David Rockefeller also developed close ties with a former CIA agent, William Bundy, who was close to CIA Director Allen Dulles, and who later served in both the Defense Department and the State Department in the JFK and Lyndon Johnson administrations, where he was a pivotal adviser on matters related to the Vietnam War. In 1971, one year following David Rockefeller becoming Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bundy was invited by David to become the editor of Foreign Affairs, the influential journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, which he then ran for 11 years.[19] David had also been extensively briefed on covert intelligence operations by various CIA division chiefs at the direction of Director Allen Dulles, David’s “friend and confidante.”[20]

Thus, in the early 1970s, David Rockefeller has risen to a position of great influence as Chairman of the Council and Chase Manhattan, placing him at the centre of the network which defines, designs, and profits from America’s imperial interests. Thus, the international situation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, of a general feeling of American imperial decline, competition increasing and cooperation decreasing between the major industrialized nations, and the general independence and liberations struggles throughout the ‘Third World’ and at home had created a general sense of oligarchic uncertainty. Of particular interest, and much more so to a banker, was the international functions of the debt market, specifically for the ‘Third World’ nations. As examined in Holly Sklar’s book, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management:

West European and Japanese firms invaded the U.S. market and competed for the growing Third World market. Moreover, European nations began to give aid and loans to Third World nations, becoming an alternative source of aid and strengthening economic ties to their former colonies. Third World nations began to use U.S. aid to repay debts to Western Europe or relied on U.S. aid to offset chronic balance-of-payments shortages incurred, in part, through buying European products. In effect, the U.S. saw itself as paying for Third World importation of European and Japanese goods… In short, the problem from the perspective of the U.S. was that the situation then unfolding gave Third World borrowing nations too much freedom to manipulate the system, to the partial advantage of Western Europe and the Third World and to the definite disadvantage of the U.S. … In particular, the U.S. was concerned with extending its economic (and political) hegemony over the emerging Third World politically-independent nations without creating undue tensions with Western Europe and Japan.[21]

Naturally, these concerns raised the importance and the increasing potential behind institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, themselves products of the Council on Foreign Relations. Various proposals began to emerge in ‘reforming’ these institutions to meet the changing international circumstances. One proposal was to increase the practice of what was referred to as ‘tied’ aid: “aid to a country under the conditions that it be used by the country to buy U.S. goods and services.” Another proposal favoured cooperation among the major industrial nations, a “consortium approach to aid, which involved increased coordination among donor nations about scheduling payments due them by recipient nations.” Further, “each donor nation would refuse to grant aid except on terms identical to those of other donor nations in the consortium.” A third proposal, gaining in popularity, was referred to as “program aid,” which was “aid given with definite stipulations, often within the context of an overall program of economic planning, to which a recipient nation had to agree in order to obtain the aid or loans.”[22] George Ball, a long-time Council member and Bilderberg participant, was Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, said in 1967 that, “the political boundaries of nation-states are too narrow and constricted to define the scope and activities of modern business.”[23]

This was the context in which Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg group, had written his book, Between Two Ages, in which he called for the creation of a ‘Community of Developed Nations.’ David Rockefeller had taken note of Brzezinski’s writings, and was “getting worried about the deteriorating relations between the U.S., Europe, and Japan,” as a result of Nixon’s economic shocks. In 1972, David Rockefeller and Brzezinski “presented the idea of a trilateral grouping at the annual Bilderberg meeting,” which was rejected on the idea of not wanting to admit the Japanese into the Bilderberg group. Many Europeans did not want to include the Japanese at the high table. In July of 1972, seventeen powerful people met at David Rockefeller’s estate in New York to plan for the creation of the Commission. At the meeting were Brzezinski, McGeorge Bundy, the President of the Ford Foundation, (brother of William Bundy, editor of Foreign Affairs) and Bayless Manning, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.[24] So, in 1973, the Trilateral Commission was formed to address these issues. Initial funding to set up the Commission came from David Rockefeller and the Ford Foundation.[25] For the first several years, most of the Commission’s funding came from foundations, with increasing support from major corporations, which contributed roughly 12% of its funding in 1973-76, to roughly 50% in 1984.[26] Thus, in the 1970s David Rockefeller rose to an even more prominent international position, simultaneously holding a leadership position within the Bilderberg Group, and being Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was the Executive Director of the Trilateral Commission, and at the same time served as a director of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Trilateral Commission acted as an organization through which ‘hegemony of consent’ could be organized, particularly that of socializing elites from the ‘trilateral’ nations to one another, integrating their views, ideologies, objectives, and methods just as think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations have done within the United States. As the CFR acts domestically, the Trilateral Commission acts internationally (at least with the leading industrial nations of the North). The first European Chairman of the Commission, Max Kohnstamm, emphasized the role of ‘intellectuals’ in the construction of hegemony within the Commission:

This, which must be done by absolutely first-rate intellectuals will tend to become irrelevant unless it is done in constant checking with those who are in power or who have a considerable influence on those in power. It seems to me that the linkage between the kind of people we must get for our Trilateral Commission and the intellectuals doing the indispensable work of thinking about the elements for a new system is of the greatest importance. A Trilateral Commission without the intellectuals will become very soon a second-class negotiating forum. The intellectuals not being forced to test their ideas constantly with the establishment of our world will tend to become abstract and therefore useless… [It must be] the joint effort of our very best minds and a group of really influential citizens in our respective countries.[27]

In a 1972 speech at the Bilderberg meeting at which David Rockefeller proposed (alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski) the establishment of the Trilateral Commission, he stated that the Commission would be “bringing the best brains in the world to bear on the problems of the future… to collect and synthesize the knowledge that would enable a new generation to rebuild the conceptual framework of foreign and domestic policies.”[28]

 

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

 

 

Notes

[1]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), pages 58-59.

[2]            Ibid, pages 60-62.

[3]            Ibid, pages 62-64.

[4]            Ibid, pages 66-67.

[5]            Ibid, pages 66-70.

[6]            Ibid, pages 77-78.

[7]            Ibid, pages 78-79.

[8]            Ibid, pages 86-88.

[9]            Ibid, pages 92-95.

[10]            Ibid, pages 97-98.

[11]            Ibid, pages 102-104.

[12]            Ibid, pages 106-107.

[13]            David Rockefeller, Memoirs. (New York: Random House, 2002), page 85.

[14]            Ibid, page 113.

[15]            Ibid, pages 149-151.

[16]            Richard Bernstein, ‘I.B.M. and the Holocaust’: Assessing the Culpability. The New York Times: March 7, 2001: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/arts/07BERN.html?pagewanted=all

[17]            David Rockefeller, Memoirs. (New York: Random House, 2002), page 149.

[18]            Ibid, page 363.

[19]            Obituaries, William Bundy. The Telegraph: October 9, 2000: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1369483/William-Bundy.html

[20]            Cary Reich, The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958. (New York: Doubleday, 1996), page 559.

[21]            Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (South End Press, Boston: 1980), page 472.

[22]            Ibid, pages 472-473.

[23]            Ibid, pages 474-475.

[24]            Ibid, pages 76-78.

[25]            Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1990), page 141.

[26]            Ibid, page 165.

[27]            Ibid, page 52.

[28]            Ibid, page 117.

09.20.11
by

A Revolutionary Idea for a Revolutionary Time: A Plan of Action for the Global Political Awakening

[The Rockefeller Foundation’s policies] were directed to the general problem of human behavior, with the aim of control through understanding. The Social sciences, for example, will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control; the Media and Natural sciences propose a closely coordinated study of sciences which underlie personal understanding and personal control.

- Max Mason, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, 1933[1]

Much of [the Global Political Awakening] is also fueled by globalization, which the United States propounds, favors and projects by virtue of being a globally outward-thrusting society. But that also contributes to instability, and is beginning to create something altogether new: namely, some new ideological or doctrinal challenge which might fill the void created by the disappearance of communism… But [communism] is now totally discredited, and we have a pragmatic vacuum in the world today regarding doctrines. But I see the beginnings, in writings and stirrings, of the making of a doctrine which combines anti-Americanism with anti-globalization, and the two could become a powerful force in a world that is very unequal and turbulent.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Carnegie Council, 2004[2]

Introduction

We are in revolutionary times. Our societies – the political, economic, and social institutions and ideas that comprise our global, national, and local social structure – are in a state of transformation. We are entering into the Greatest Depression in history, our governments are driven by the logic of imperial insanity, whereby we are increasingly headed for a World War III scenario. The imperial strategists who advise and determine the policies of our nations are bent on a system of total global control. We undertake an imperialist war against the country of Libya, we seek to expand the global war into Pakistan, largely in order to challenge China’s growing influence in the world, and we have set the stage for another imperialist war in Yemen. The covert apparatus – military and intelligence – of our imperialistic nations have and continue to employ the techniques and support of terrorism in order to achieve strategic goals, including using terrorism against our domestic populations themselves.

The middle classes of the Western industrialized world are on the verge of total extinction, with the likely result of leading to riots, rebellion, and revolution. We have entered the era of the ‘Global Political Awakening,’ where for the first time in human history, as American imperial strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski articulated, “almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.” With the Arab uprisings, we have seen a new phase in the Global Political Awakening, which is itself a process in the long road to world revolution. Naturally, our imperial governments seek to co-opt, control, or totally oppress these revolutionary sentiments into more evolutionary, stable, and secure structures.

Elite think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission work to establish consensus among elites in a global project of social engineering, seeking to establish a system and structure of global governance and ultimately, global government. A major facet of this global social engineering project is through the global economic crisis – the Greatest Depression – whereby a great global debt depression will create and conditions necessary to serve as an excuse for a global government. Already, this process is well under way in the establishment of global economic governance, in the forms of a global central bank and a global currency.

Indeed, the system being constructed and engineered by the elite is not simply a global government as we may understand the notion of government in today’s context, but an entirely new structure, driven by the social engineering techniques of science and technology, into a Global Scientific Dictatorship.

So where are we? How did we get here? Who drove us here? What ideas created these circumstances? Where are we going? Why?

Understanding Power

These are questions I ask and seek to answer in my current book project, which is a historical, political, economic and social analysis of the ideas, institutions, and individuals of power in our world. Included in this examination is the history and emergence of the nation state, capitalism, central banking, and the rise of the powerful and dominant banking dynasties – such as Rothschild, Morgan, and Rockefeller – which have come to manifest themselves as the modern imperial families of the global era. Included in this heavily-researched study is the emergence of the concept of ‘social control’ and its manifestation through the creation of the public education system, the university education system, the development and evolution of the ‘social sciences’ as tools of ‘social engineering,’ the emergence of the major philanthropic foundations, founded, funded, and run by the dominant dynastic powers for the purposes of creating consensus among elites, and engineering consent among the governed. Also examined in the book is the apparatus of empire, including the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, the Bank for International Settlements, the Pentagon, CIA, and the uses and techniques of war and covert operations. However, the role of the foundations is a significant facet of the book.

The foundations play a significant part in the examination of power in our global society, and are a major focus of my book. The foundations were created in an era in large part defined by the elite ideology of eugenics, where the elite sought to engineer humanity itself, to establish themselves as entrenched in the social structure of the world, and to create the conditions through which that domination may be expanded and secured. The foundations not only funded and helped engineer the eugenics movement, but they have played a pivotal role in the control, co-optation, consensus-building, ideology construction, and engineering of consent in a large number of other areas: the formation and evolution of the social sciences (including political science, economics, sociology, psychology), the development and direction of science (in particular genetics, microbiology, physics, chemistry, psychiatry, medicine), the population control movement, funding and directing into ‘safe’ avenues major social movements which would otherwise threaten the global social structure and elite interests, such as the Civil Rights movement, the environmental movement, and the anti-globalization movement. The foundations have essentially created and managed a global civil society, supporting the development and proliferation of Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which act as modern equivalents to the missionary societies of the formal colonial era, whereby they contribute moderately to relieving the symptoms of imperialism and domination (such as supporting efforts for education, health care, and human rights) while ultimately undermining and co-opting indigenous resistance movements which might otherwise challenge the power structures that created those symptoms in the first place. The foundations helped establish and fund the major think tanks, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission, which function by bringing together elites from banking, industry, media, academia, politics, military, intelligence and other areas in order to help establish consensus among the elites in the broader goal of engineering a system of global governance. As such, the foundations are ‘engines of social engineering,’ effectively constructing ideology, and aiding in the institutionalization of ideas.

It is the concept of the institutionalization of ideas which is a primary focus of my book, understanding power as being particularly relevant in this context. While certainly there are individuals, families, and groups which are dominant and hold enormous power, there were first ideas and institutions which allowed and facilitated the rise of these very individuals to such positions of power. In the book, I do not refrain from naming the names of the elite, with a particular focus on the roles of the Rothschild and Rockefeller families; however, I also place these dynastic influences within a wider context: understanding that these families were only able to rise to the positions of power they now hold because of the effect of particular ideas and institutions, such as those of the nation-state, capitalism, central banking, private banking, hegemony, empire, and social engineering. More than ingenuity, it was opportunity that allowed these families to rise to power. While since coming to power, they have generally been the dominant forces in steering the direction of the global social, political, and economic structures, they are as much a product of previous social, political, and economic power structures as the rest of us are. As such, we cannot erroneously and simplistically identify all the problems of our world with a few individuals or families. This would be a monumental error if we are to ever move forward and find new solutions. It is, in fact, the power of ideas which is central to understanding our world, and in particular, the effect of the ‘institutionalization of ideas.’

While critically examining the roles of these dynastic powers in our society is imperative in order to understand how we got to this place, if we limit ourselves to that focus alone, we risk the eventual failure of any attempt at true change. If we focus simply on these dynastic influences, we neglect the role played by the various ideas and institutions which have made possible the development of dynastic power; thus, if we fail to properly understand the nature and interaction of ideas and institutions in the context of power, we will ultimately only replace the names of those who dominate the world, not the system of domination itself. If we seek to only criticize and change the dynastic rulers, new ones will rise in their place, for we would hold onto various ideas and institutions which gave rise to them in the first place. After all, if it had not been the Rothschilds or Rockefellers, it would have been someone else. Even if we remove all the ideas and institutions which these dynasties have established, we neglect to see that there were previous institutionalized ideas which brought them to power in the first place. This is the focus of my book, seeking to understand power in the context of the institutionalization of ideas.

As such, we also can come to understand a different notion of human nature, manifested and made possible only by the removal of those ideas and institutions which dominate and oppress humanity, and thus, we can see a possibility of an era of true human liberation, a true global revolution. The circumstances for this global revolution are developing and increasing. Already, we are thrust within the era of the ‘Global Political Awakening,’ where all of humanity is socially conscious, politically aware, and economically exploited. Thus, the conditions for radical change are made present. However, there still remains the multiplicity of views, understandings, ideologies, and intricacies of actions which make the ‘Global Awakening’ at present, a disunited, fractured, largely divided, often antagonistic, and easily co-opted global social phenomena.

The concept of the ‘Global Political Awakening’ has been popularized by the American imperial strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, former director of the Council on Foreign Relations, former Bilderberg group member, and co-founder with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission, who continues to serve on a number of boards of prominent elite think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the RAND Corporation. Brzezinski identifies the ‘global political awakening’ as the greatest strategic threat to the institutionalized powers of the world, and proposes that policies initiated by governments and other institutions must address this as the fundamental issue of our time, and thus support the expansion of global governance as a means to deal with this phenomenon. In discussing this concept, Brzezinski warned fellow elites in a speech to the Carnegie Council, that the ‘global political awakening’ remains relatively adolescent and disunited:

But I see the beginnings, in writings and stirrings, of the making of a doctrine which combines anti-Americanism with anti-globalization, and the two could become a powerful force in a world that is very unequal and turbulent.[3]

This book attempts to help fill the “doctrinal void” that Brzezinski identifies as being the fundamental force preventing the unification of the Global Political Awakening. I am attempting to write this book as a study of power in our world unlike any previous examination: how did we get here? Where are we going? And why? Further, the book, through its more comprehensive examination of the power of ideas and institutions, simultaneously undertakes an examination of resistance and potential solutions. As such, the book attempts to articulate a ‘Philosophy of Liberation,’ one that may appeal to the majority of the world’s population.

The Philosophy of Liberation

This philosophy, intended to serve as a potential doctrine for the ‘Global Political Awakening,’ has a broad appeal which can unite the left and right, which has the potential to gain support from both socialists and libertarians. Fundamentally, it is a simple concept: the ‘philosophy of liberation’ entails the absolute and total liberation of humanity from the ideas and institutions which dominate, co-opt, control, oppress and destroy humanity. The aim in such a concept of absolute and total liberation is to free humanity so that we may understand the true ‘human nature’, which has otherwise always been subject to various forms of control and oppression.

Apart from abstract notions of liberation and freedom, however, the book proposes particular plans of action and initiative which seek to bring such ideals to reality. The critical importance of understanding power in our world as a product of ideas and institutions is that we can come to see that what is needed to change this world into something that supports and liberates humanity (as opposed to controlling and oppressing humanity) is simply… a new idea. If ideas built this world and its power structures, if ideas built the institutions which dominate and control, if ideas gave rise to the dynastic powers which rule our world like modern imperial families, then what is required to bring all of this tumbling down is a new idea.

This new idea, which I set forth in the book, is a concept of anti-institutionalism: those ideas which seek to dominate must be challenged by those which seek to liberate; the institutionalization of those dominating ideas must be challenged by a counter-institutional structure which seeks to establish a parallel global system, so that the old institutions may be made irrelevant, antiquated, and extinct. The paradox here is that we must construct a counter-hegemonic system of institutions, but that they must be endowed with a strict adherence to a ‘philosophy of liberation’ which manifests itself as ‘anti-institutionalism.’ In short, we must create anti-institutional institutions.

Why is this so? Is this not entirely contradictory?

Indeed, these are fair questions, but they have fair answers. While we may have ideas of what is ideal, what is desired, and what is important; namely, concepts of peace, justice, democracy, freedom, and liberation. But we must establish a plan of action – a concept of how to achieve those ideals – yet this can only be done by understanding the world as it is, and therefore, the plan of action for liberation must be based on a realistic conception of the world if it is to have any chance of success in changing that world.

We live in a world of institutions and ideas. That is established. To create something new, to progress toward true liberation and freedom, we have to establish plans of action that act within – though opposed to – the global power structure of ideas and institutions. This does not propose a strategy of “change from the inside” where well-intentioned people join the institutions that dominate in the hopes that they may change the system from within those institutions. That strategy leads to folly and failure. Why? Because those institutions are dominated more by ideas than they are by individuals. The idea pervades, penetrates, and dominates the institution and infects the individuals within it, so that those with even the greatest and most humane of intentions can be corrupted and have their intentions disrupted by the institution they inhabit. No, what is needed is the formation of a counter-institutional structure.

The formation of institutions can allow them to flourish, spread, expand, and proliferate in a world which is predominantly institutional. If one wants to cross the sea to get to a new shore, one must first find a way to build a boat that facilitates the crossing. When the shore is reached, the boat has no more purpose. This is the concept of the counter-institutional structure: that it is only temporary, and that these institutions may seek to institutionalize – on a global scale – ideas which imbue a ‘philosophy of liberation’, and thus, they seek to bring about their own obsolescence. They deal with the world as it is, by creating structures within the global system (instead of isolating themselves from it), and thus in the same way that the ideas and institutions which seek to dominate have become so predominant and powerful in our world, we can effectively use the system against itself until the ideas and institutions which seek to liberate can become as powerful among the world’s people. Once a ‘philosophy of liberation’ has taken hold within the world’s population, and these counter-hegemonic institutions have helped establish an alternative system – helping to create people-oriented, locally organized, yet globally cooperative polities, economies, and societies – the institutions may be made irrelevant and dismantled, so that they may not be transformed through the potential to themselves dominate and control.

While the Global Political Awakening is a present reality in the world, the conditions for a true global revolution and challenge to the global power structures has yet to manifest itself. There are movements in different places, through different peoples, with differing ideas, but they are not yet united in aim, ideology, or action. The elite are seeking to establish a system and structure of global government, and are working very hard to establish such consensus among the global elite, as well as to employ specific strategies of action to effect such a change. We must do the same in order to counter this process.

Living in the era of the ‘Technological Revolution’, we are faced with an unprecedented dichotomy, whereby we are in the circumstances where for the first time in all of human history, a truly global oppressive system and structure of governance is made possible, and simultaneously, for the first time in human history, a global resistance and revolution against power structures is made possible via the communication and information revolutions, with the ultimate potential for all of humanity to become free simultaneously. This is unprecedented. Never before have all of humanity had the possibility of achieving liberation at the same time. Thus, we have never truly had a liberated human society. This is both the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity that humanity has ever faced. The elite see these developments in the same context, but with the perspective reversed. The elite see the greatest opportunity they have ever faced in human history as being to achieve the actual construction of a global government, never before possible, but now made plausible through advancements in technology; they also see the greatest challenge they have ever collectively faced in human history as being from a globally aware, active, and philosophically united world population seeking liberation and freedom. The elite are articulating these realities, and attempting to strategize and plan actions based upon these concepts. Brzezinski is perhaps the best example of this, as he has been articulating the notion of the ‘Global Political Awakening’ for many years, and has traveled to several of the more prominent think tanks among the imperial nations, warning the elites of the true realities of the world in which they seek to operate and dominate.

So too must the people of the world begin discussing these ideas, issues, and realities in order to establish consensus in understanding and initiatives for action. So long as we remain divided by artificial separations such as seeking change within the context of the ‘nation-state’ (as many in the anti-globalist movement seek a return to nationalism as a “solution”), which keeps them divided from the rest of the world. Only through solidarity of philosophy and action on the part of the world’s people may we come to actually and effectively create true change. The elite understand this. It’s time that we do too.

A Plan of Action: The People’s Project

The plan of action for establishing the anti-institutional counter-hegemonic system I set forth in my book is what I refer to as “The People’s Project.” The book, by setting forth a more comprehensive analysis of the global structures and systems of power, builds a solution based upon this more elaborate understanding. In particular, as the role of the philanthropic foundations is of particular interest and focus in the book, I propose that in order to properly counter the global power structures, we must create a type of ‘people’s foundation.’ This is what I refer to as “The People’s Project.”

Instead of being funded by wealthy billionaires, philanthropists, bankers and industrialists, the People’s Project would be funded by the people, using the means made available through the Technological Revolution: utilizing social media networks in order to fundraise from people and communities around the world, and to advertise, promote and disseminate the idea globally. As such, the Project is democratically funded, and in fact, it is a representation of genuine free-market principles, something which could appeal to the libertarian elements of resistance. The funding would be directed for specific initiatives and projects that the organization undertakes.

While the funding is democratic and free-market oriented, in that if an idea is not welcomed by the people, it simply wouldn’t be funded by them; the actual organization, operations, and day-to-day decision making process must be undertaken by a relatively small and cooperative group of individuals. If we attempt to make the entire decision-making process democratic, we would be attempting to manifest a democratic institution in an anti-democratic world, and it would be stalled, stagnant, and ultimately a failure. Thus, it must act as an institution of the likes of a major philanthropic foundation. Its operations must be effected and decisions made by a group of people so that it may function effectively within the global institutional system. However, this group of people must abide by a strict adherence to a ‘philosophy of liberation,’ and all the Project’s financial information, decisions, and initiatives must be made publicly available, so that they may be analyzed, discussed, and assessed by the public. The people must be treated as the patrons, since they provide the money. Projects will be proposed and planned by the group within the institution, and the people will discuss, debate, assess, and ultimately vote with their dollars. If a project does not have popular appeal or support, it will not be funded, and thus, will not move forward into action.

The initiatives of The People’s Project itself must seek to create the counter-institutional structure that would make the present global system of power structure irrelevant and extinct. As this is ultimately a process of de-institutionalization, we must understand it in a similar context: that of the de-institutionalization of psychiatric patients over the past several decades. Certainly, releasing prisoners of psychiatric institutions was the right thing to do, as the momentum built for this endeavour and many of these institutions were closed down, and their prisoners (or as they are often referred to, “patients”) were released. However, many of these released prisoners simply ended up as homeless people, having no where to go and nothing to be able to do. Does this mean that the institution was a good thing? No, it was and remains an incredibly dehumanizing idea and structure. The problem was multi-faceted: most important in the failure of de-institutionalization of psychiatric prisoners was the fact that the vast majority of society suffers a severe misunderstanding of what we commonly refer to as ‘madness’ or ‘mental illness.’ This misunderstanding is an intentional consequence of the ideas and institutions of psychiatry, psychology, and pharmacology which are extremely prominent within our society, and which have been largely influence by the major philanthropic foundations. Namely, without a more coherent understanding of what we refer to as “mental illness,” we cannot even begin to understand those who experience different emotional and psychological states of being, which we mistakenly refer to as “diseases.” However, as an impulse, we tend to quickly attempt to define, label, and control that which we do not understand, and therefore we often mistreat those who we are labeling as such. In 1933, Max Mason, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, wrote that the foundation’s policies:

were directed to the general problem of human behavior, with the aim of control through understanding. The Social sciences, for example, will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control; the Media and Natural sciences propose a closely coordinated study of sciences which underlie personal understanding and personal control. Many procedures will be explicitly co-operative between [Foundation] divisions. The Medical and Natural Sciences will, through psychiatry and psychobiology, have a strong interest in the problems of mental disease.[4]

What we refer to as “mental illness” or “madness” is yet another avenue and means through which power is exercised in our world, and this is perhaps the most pervasive, damaging, and destructive powers that exist in our world, largely brought about through the institutions and ideas of psychiatry and psychology, which have predominantly sought the prescription laid out by the Rockefeller Foundation, “to the general problem of human behavior, with the aim of control through understanding.” Psychology and psychiatry were largely avenues through which power sought to control the human mind, not to liberate it. Indeed, it is an incredibly important though little-known fact that in 1992, the World Health Organization released a study of comparing treatment of schizophrenia in the developed and developing world (rich vs. poor) that began in 1968, which concluded that patients in poor countries “had a considerably better course and outcome than (patients) in developed countries. This remained true whether clinical outcomes, social outcomes, or a combination of the two was considered.”[5] A follow-up study by the WHO again confirmed that in poor countries, patients suffering “severe mental health” issues had a much higher rate of recovery than those in the rich, ‘developed’ nations, which tend to treat such experiences as a biological disease, and confuse treatment with causation: as in, because we treat such conditions with chemicals (i.e., drugs), the cause of the condition must itself be chemical.

As we largely misunderstand and misinterpret (and thus mislabel) such conditions as “diseases,” we fail to be able to deal properly with those who are subject to such conditions. Thus, the process of de-institutionalization of psychiatric facilities led in most places to human tragedy. From the 1960s onward, radical psychiatrists and philosophers began to challenge the way people view and understand madness and “mental illness.” Among them were Thomas Szasz, who challenged the entire notion of “mental disease” with his famous essay and subsequent book, “The Myth of Mental Illness,” which was perhaps the greatest intellectual challenge to the entire psychiatric establishment ever developed. There was also the French philosopher Michel Foucault who took on the challenge of understanding the history, ideas and institutions of psychiatry as an exercise in power – what he referred to as ‘biopower’ – the direct influence upon the biology and psychology of the individual. There was the radical Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, who posited a different understanding of madness, explaining that, “Insanity is a sane reaction to an insane society.” And there was also the radial Italian psychiatrist, Franco Basaglia, who challenged the dominant ideas and who had actually created a successful method of de-institutionalization of psychiatric centers in Italy. Compared to the failures of North American deinstitutionalization, Italy achieved relative successes, largely at the initiative of Franco Basaglia, who sought to destroy the psychiatric institution itself. Basaglia understood that for deinstitutionalization to be successful, one must create the conditions which make the integration of patients into society possible. In one interview, Basaglia said:

It is not that we put illness aside, but rather that we believe in order to have a relationship with an individual it is necessary to establish it independent of the label by which the patient has been defined.[6]

What Basaglia realized was that, “psychiatric diagnoses were not independent of the prevailing moral and social order which tended to define normality and abnormality in its own class-based terms.” Psychiatry then, provided a “medical rationale” behind the “institutionalized violence” against the prisoners of psychiatric hospitals, which were largely poor, dispossessed individuals. As Basaglia explained:

Once the medical pretenses are gone, we can see the misery and the poverty that are the true nature of the asylum. The specificity of madness is also gone. The deception is obvious: it is one thing to say that an institution locks up fifty ‘sick’ people. It is quite another to say hat fifty ‘poor’ people have been locked up because there is no other solution to their problems.[7]

Psychiatry was thus understood as “a covert apparatus of brutal social control,” and psychiatric physicians were agents of social control. These technicians “diagnosed, with greater and greater precision and specificity, thus fragmenting the problem of ‘mental illness’ into a multitude of diseases so as to avoid confronting its wholeness, its unifying dimensions as a shared experience of alienated human needs.” In fact, “the inhuman regulations of the institution produce signs and symptoms that justify locking up the inmate,” and the “transformation of patient into object is almost literal.”[8] Thus, the institution itself often creates the ‘disease’ more than the individual experiences it as separated from the institution.

Basaglia’s program of deinstitutionalization included having the patients themselves help in physically destroying the institution with their own hands, most especially the physical barriers that confined and excluded them, such as doors, bars, and window gratings. Subsequently, ‘patients’ would work in the hospital, getting paid for their work, thus replicating the notion of a paid labour force on the outside of the institution. There would be daily meetings between staff and patients, and the meetings – known as the assemblea – were gradually transformed from a venue to express personal problems “toward using it as a vehicle for translating the personal into the collective and the political.”[9] The process of “destroying and, ultimately, closing down the wards of the [institution] had to be accompanied by the far more radical and difficult task of ‘opening up’ communities.”[10] The anti-institutional slogan put forward in this movement was, “Freedom is Therapeutic.” Thus, “alternative solutions had to be worked out, links re-established with the community; ex-patients had to develop new personal and social identities and to regain contractual power within the community.” Hence, the process of deinstitutionalization took place on two fronts: “in the hospital and in the community.”[11]

As the communities began to be integrated with the ex-patients, “townspeople could begin to recognize in the distress and suffering of former inmates some of the problems in living that plagued their own lives.” Further, “through the vehicle of art there existed yet another way of sensitizing the public at large to the violence of segregative control.” The physical institution itself, had been converted into a place for community interaction and life, turning wards and rooms into shops, college dorms, radio stations, and day care centers.[12]

Basaglia had to also “confront the old and uneasy alliance between psychiatry and the law. Demedicalizing and decriminalizing madness went hand in glove.”[13] Thus, laws had to be challenged and changed with made for a more effective and humane treatment of ‘patients’ and process of deinstitutionalization.

Why I spent so much time and space discussing the notion of psychiatry and its institutions of control is because the institution of psychiatry – both physical and ideational – can serve as a microcosm for understanding the global institution we live within today. Sociologist Erving Goffman published his monumental study of what he referred to as ‘total institutions’ in his 1961 book, Asylums. He defined the ‘total institution’ as “a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.”[14] In short, we can understand the power structures of the world as a type of ‘total institution’: whereby people are segregated – or confined – from one another, where they live, eat, work, sleep, remain enclosed and entrapped, where their actions and personal psychological health are often resulting from the institution itself: they become a product of the institution, not simply a resident within it. The institution itself creates the conditions it purportedly seeks to treat. The world is, in fact, a total institution. As we move down the road to a system of global governance, that institution is being further defined, segregated, controlling, and dehumanizing. Within the total institution of global society, psychiatry does come to play a particularly dehumanizing and personally pervasive role. As a 1944 Annual Report of the Rockefeller Foundation indicated:

It is not too much to assert… that in its actual and potential contribution to general medicine, to education, to sociology, indeed to the general business of living, psychiatry, without claiming omniscience in itself, is cast for a role of fundamental importance in helping to shape any world that may come out of the present one.[15]

Just as Basaglia sought the means to more effectively and efficiently deinstitutionalize the mental asylums, so too must we – globally – seek to create a more effective process of deinstitutionalizing global society. This requires the dual process of breaking down the institutions that confine us, while simultaneously – and more painstakingly – seeking to establish links, changes, positions, and possibilities within the community itself.

The People’s Project would seek to establish these community initiatives on a number of levels. Just as the philanthropic foundations have engineered much of our society in the world today, down to the very construction of knowledge itself, so too must The People’s Project engage in social engineering, but not with a purpose to control; rather, with a purpose to liberate. These initiatives of the major philanthropic foundations have been articulated by many of their former leaders and administrators. Warren Weaver, a director of the Rockefeller Foundation who led the natural sciences department in the 1930s, wrote that:

The welfare of mankind depends in a vital way on man’s understanding of himself and his physical environment. Science has made magnificent progress in the analysis and control of inanimate forces, but science has not made equal advances in the more delicate, more difficult, and more important problem of the analysis and control over animate forces.[16]

In 1934, Warren Weaver wrote a proposal to the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation in which he asked:

Can man gain an intelligent control of his own power? Can we develop so sound and extensive a genetics that we can hope to breed, in the future, superior men? Can we obtain enough knowledge of physiology and psychobiology of sex so that man can bring this pervasive, highly important, and dangerous aspect of life under rational control? Can we unravel the tangled problem of the endocrine glands, and develop, before it is too late, a therapy for the whole hideous range of mental and physical disorders which result from glandular disturbances? … Can we release psychology from its present confusion and ineffectiveness and shape it into a tool which every man can use every day? Can man acquire enough knowledge of his own vital processes so that we can hope to rationalize human behavior? Can we, in short, create a new science of Man?[17]

The Foundation, however, is an important and potent example to follow for a counter-hegemonic institution. This is because of the nature of how the foundation influences and exerts its power, which while largely through funding initiatives, it can spur developments of entire fields and initiatives simply through the act of suggestion. As a former president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Raymond Fosdick, wrote in 1934 in a letter to the board of trustees of the Foundation:

We do not have to be cynical to admit that if a foundation announces an interest in anthropology or astronomy or physio-chemical reactions, there will be plenty of institutions that will develop a zeal for the prosecution of these studies. The responsibility which this inescapable fact throws upon a foundation is enormous. The possession of funds carries with it power to establish trends and styles of intellectual endeavour… Indeed we would strongly advocate a shift of emphasis in favor not only of the dissemination of knowledge, but on the practical application of knowledge in fields where human need is great and opportunity is real. As a means of advancing knowledge, application can be as effective an instrument as research.[18]

Thus, as the Foundation influences, so too can The People’s Project influence. The key differences, however, are the ideology and patronage of the institution itself. As the former Rockefeller Foundation president Max Mason articulated, the foundation’s policies were directed “to the general problem of human behavior, with the aim of control through understanding.”[19] The People’s Project, however, would be directed “to the general problem of human society, with the aim of liberation through understanding.” Patronage is another important difference. In the private foundation, patronage is the result of wealthy philanthropists, industrialists, bankers and billionaires who fund the foundations, and thus influence and determine the direction it takes. With The People’s Project, patronage would lie with the people, funding would be democratically accountable, and thus, the direction of a project – if undesired by the people – would be made impossible by their refusal to fund the project. It is in this sense that the People’s Project may be accountable, even while its institutional structure is undemocratic.

As for specific initiatives that The People’s Project could and should undertake, I outline this somewhat more specifically in the “Project Philosophy” on the website for the Project; however, I will explain a general concept here.

The first initiative is referred to as The People’s Book Project, whereby the book I am writing may be funded and made possible. I will publish and make available the financial information, donations received, as well as logging the hours I have worked on the book, and thus, how much I am being paid to do so. I will update the site – The People’s Book Project – with information on what I am writing about at that time, giving an up-to-date and interactive process of writing the book, with comments and suggestions from readers and supporters. The book itself will serve as the philosophical foundation for the larger initiative of The People’s Project, laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive analysis and understanding of the world, and thus, serving as the basis for which the organization understands and acts in our world. The book also, as a conclusion, proposes the concept of The People’s Project in terms of solutions. Thus, if the book is itself funded and brought into being through this initiative, its very existence will be brought about by the recommendations it sets forth in its conclusions; thus, its existence may serve as evidence of its validity as a solution.

To put it simply: the book does not simply ‘recommend’ a solution, as it’s very existence would be evidence of that solution. Once the book is complete, The People’s Project can begin to undertake its larger initiatives.

Like the foundations, it must start with the formation of ideology and consensus. That is the purpose of the book itself, to establish a concrete understanding and to support the dissemination of those ideas to people and places around the world, to help institutionalize those ideas in the institutions which the Project creates and supports. Such institutions could and should include: radical think tanks, which are designed to produce research and recommendations for strategies aimed at the global liberation of humanity. The creation of liberation-oriented think tanks, as well as supporting them to become self-sufficient (perhaps in the same democratically funded way as the Project itself) could draw intellectual talents away from the powerful think tanks, or the “alternative” think tanks, which are supported by the major foundations and which draw intellectual talents which might otherwise support radical social change and revolutionary movements into a structure, institution, and context which forces them to be placated by the ideas of slow, evolutionary change to the system, but that type of change which simply addresses the symptoms of the global system, but doesn’t challenge the power structure outright. These types of think tanks exist as controlled opposition to the dominant imperial think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations. These “alternative” think tanks must be made irrelevant by the development of radical, liberation-oriented think tanks which seek to directly challenge the system itself, and help in the construction of new alternatives. Their existence alone would create the potential to attract intellectual talent, and thus, become successful initiatives.

Another avenue which The People’s Project should undertake is that of supporting the formation of a ‘new economy’, essentially helping establish a parallel economy to the global system we are all subjugated under. This would initially involve supporting initiatives aimed at creating local currencies, controlled and operated by local communities. The Project should organize conferences and meetings, bringing together representatives from various community currency projects around the world, in order to help understand the different projects, the failures and successes, and come to a better understanding of what works. Further, bringing such representatives together should also facilitate the establishment of trade and exchange ties between these communities, which is important to ensure that a project of building a parallel economy and community currency does not isolate itself from the world (and thus ensure its eventual failure, as it would ultimately be crushed by power-institutional forces from without), but that the parallel economy can establish itself globally. The key difference is that instead of operating through the dominant central banks, private banks, and multinational corporations, this parallel global economy would establish itself among the people directly. Of course, this implies the absolute necessity of – early on – bringing farmers and produce distributors into this system. In this sense, control over food is essential. We must reduce and ultimately eliminate our dependence upon the dominant institutions in our world.

Once community currencies can begin to be established, an immediate initiative of those communities (which the People’s Project can help begin) is to create a community foundation, funded entirely by the community bank, which is accountable to the people, not bankers. The initiatives and projects of the community foundation would mirror those of the People’s Project, but on a local scale. It must be funded by the community bank, without interest or debt. Since the concepts of interest and debt are just ideas, all we have to do to change their existence is to simply agree, collectively, that they are bad ideas. After all, currencies are faith-based, so we need to place our faith in a different currency system which supports people, not bankers. The community foundation could then be perpetually funded by the community bank in order to support local initiatives and community projects. Of course, this is a complex process which would take a great deal of time and effort, and not least without a great many failures along the way. But the point is that we need to establish a plan of action to begin effecting change and interaction and communication on a global scale.

This is not a utopian ideal, it is a humane ideal. Up until present time, what we refer to as “human civilization” is often the process of a coercive and socially constructed method of shaping humanity to fit within the confines and adjust itself to ‘society.’ Human history continuously shows examples whereby societies were constructed and people were then forced to adjust to those societies. Often this was done violently and coercively, but also, and more effectively, and most especially in the past century, this was done through the engineering of consent. The point of this Project is to help free humanity, so that we can properly understand human nature for the first time, and thus construct society around the needs and desires of human nature. Human civilization must come to reflect human nature; human nature can no longer be shaped within the confines of human civilization. As people are largely a product of their environment, down to the very notion of what we know as “mental illness,” we must begin to reshape the environment to support the people. We must construct our society in such a way that enhances and flourishes all that is good in human nature, while minimizing and undermining all that is bad in human nature. Currently, our society does the opposite. That is why war, poverty, dehumanization, and destruction are so common, whereas cooperation, liberation, peace, and harmonious existence are so rare.

It seems quite apparent that our little experiment known as ‘human civilization’ is actually more properly identified as a “dehumanized civilization,” as it ruins, oppresses, controls, co-opts, and seeks to destroy all that is good, wonderful, and beautiful in human nature. We must then, construct a new civilization, a “humane civilization,” one that undermines the negative aspects of human nature and supports the positive. Humans have a tendency to be corrupted by too much power, no matter the intentions and beliefs of that individual, too much power in one person or institution is self destructive. Subsequently, too much power in too few hands implies the de facto circumstance of too little power in too many hands, so that the vast majority of the world’s people are left with very little power even over their own lives. This leads to poverty, despair, violence, terrorism, war, hunger, hatred, and madness. What is implied then, is that power must be decentralized, people must gain more, and institutions must have less. In such a situation, we can begin to see the potential for humanity to gain – for the first time in all of human history – the ultimate liberation, the true freedom. As such, we would be able to see the true reality of “human nature.”

If you study mice in a maze, no matter for how long you may do so, you cannot ever hope to understand the mouse outside of the context of the maze itself. The mouse or mice you study and observe are products of that maze, as they are confined within it and their lives dictated by its walls and parameters. Therefore, you can never hope to conclude a true ‘nature’ of the mouse through observing it in such circumstances. Only when you break the walls of the maze and erase its foundations, thus freeing the mice to their own devices, can you even begin to understand the nature and potential of the mouse. This is the perspective we must come to understand in regards to humanity. We can commonly deduce that it is “human nature” to be violent, to hate, to kill, to destroy; that we need states and governments and powers to stand above and look over us, preventing us from destroying ourselves. Yet, we act in accordance with the confines of our own maze – the global institutional social system – and thus, we are a product – and our nature is thus a product – of the system we live within. If our nature is violent, hateful, and destructive, it is because the system we live within has made it so. Thus, we need to liberate humanity from that system, and simultaneously create a parallel system which may help to establish a society that requires cooperation, true individuality, respect, understanding, peace, and love. We are largely a product of our environment, therefore we must change both the individual – through our personal perceptions and understanding of the world – and the environment around the individual, in order to create a truly ‘humane’ society.

These are the aims and objectives of The People’s Project. The Book Project, as the first phase in the wider initiative explained above, seeks to establish itself as a basis upon which the People’s Project would understand and act in the world. The People’s Book Project can only be made possible through the support, donations, and word of mouth of the people themselves, activated through social media and the Internet, using the unprecedented opportunity we have before us as a result of the Technological, communication and information revolutions.

Indeed, nothing would be a greater shame than to exist in revolutionary times without revolutionary ideas.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of the People’s Book Project.

[1] Lily E. Kay, “Rethinking Institutions: Philanthropy as an Historigraphic Problem of Knowledge and Power,” Minerva (Vol. 35, 1997), page 290.

[2] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. Speech at the Carnegie Council: March 25, 2004: http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/4424.html

[3] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. Speech at the Carnegie Council: March 25, 2004: http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/4424.html

[4] Lily E. Kay, “Rethinking Institutions: Philanthropy as an Historigraphic Problem of Knowledge and Power,” Minerva (Vol. 35, 1997), page 290.

[5] The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. Leff, J. Psychological Medicine, 22 (1992):131-145: http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Antipsychotic%20drugs%20and%20chronic%20illness.html

[6] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), page 160.

[7] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), page 161.

[8] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), pages 161-162.

[9] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), pages 164-165.

[10] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), page 167.

[11] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), page 168.

[12] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), page 169.

[13] Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Anne M. Lovell, “Breaking the Circuit of Social Control: Lessons in Public Psychiatry from Italy and Franco Basaglia,” Social Science and Medicine (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 1986), page 170.

[14] Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (First Anchor Books, New York: 1961), page xiii.

[15] Annual Report, The Rockefeller Foundation, 1944, page 31.

[16] Daniel J. Kevles, “Foundations, Universities, and Trends in Support for the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1900-1992,” Daedalus (Vol. 121, No. 4, Immobile Democracy?), Fall 1992, page 206

[17] Robert E. Kohler, “The Management of Science: The Experience of Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Programme in Molecular Biology.” Minerva (Vol. 14, No. 3), 1976, page 291

[18] Robert E. Kohler, “The Management of Science: The Experience of Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Programme in Molecular Biology.” Minerva (Vol. 14, No. 3), 1976, page 293

[19] Lily E. Kay, “Rethinking Institutions: Philanthropy as an Historigraphic Problem of Knowledge and Power,” Minerva (Vol. 35, 1997), page 290.

09.11.11
by

Andrew Gavin Marshall (SGTreport Exclusive): The Bilderberg Group, the Press & 9/11

SGT Report, 10 September 2011

Here’s my in-depth 2-part interview with Globalization researcher and GlobalResearch.ca contributor Andrew Gavin Marshall. We talk about the Bilderberg Group, the controlled Press and 9/11. You can read Andrew’s work at AndrewGavinMarshall.com.