From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jan 21 2005 - 14:10:22 GMT
Hi Mark (MSH),
Finished reading Understanding Power on my holiday, and I thought I'd let you have some feedback.
1. He's a very interesting and stimulating read. I'm glad he's around to provide his perspective,
and I shall make sure I read more of him in future (I have Deterring Democracy and Manufacturing
Consent on my shelves, which are next in line).
2. I think he's particularly good at exhuming otherwise ignored malefactions by the US Government; I
'm thinking of Central America in particular, but it does go more widely. So as someone who doesn't
like state power in general, he's good at providing ammunition for the dispelling of some illusions.
3. Last unambiguously positive point: I think he's good on media bias, and with some quibbles (some
of which he accepted in UP) I think his "Propaganda model" is basically right.
4. I think that he is significantly wrong about capitalism. In particular I think his analysis is a)
incoherent and naïve and b) parochial to the US. I'll say a bit more about these two:
a. The incoherence/naivete shows itself in his attribution of motives to businesses. On p391 of my
copy he describes the "institutional necessity" that corporations work under as "to the extent that
you have a competitive system based on private control over resources, you are forced to maximise
short term gain"; on p394, as part of an analysis of how scientific research is corrupted by
business patronage, he says "big corporations understand that if they want to keep making profits
five years from now, there'd better be some science funded today". Both of those can't be true. Now
he's being colloquial in the book, which makes it more readable, but this was just one instance of a
prevalent confusion in his perspective, ie that businessmen are rapacious short-term capitalists -
except for when they're rapacious long-term capitalists. I just find his comments on business
processes weak, as compared to his foreign policy analysis.
b. More specifically I think that his criticisms have most force when applied to an Anglo-Saxon
publicly listed company. I don't think that they're applicable to European companies/ social models,
and they're definitely not applicable to Asian companies. The cheibatsu/keiretsu model, for example,
is geared around the maintenance or increase of long term market share. That's very different to the
maximisation of the bottom line.
5. Part of the underlying disagreement I have with his analysis rests upon his anthropology. Our
friend Platt often makes the point that a strongly left-wing analysis minimises the role of
individual choice, and in particular, it has the logical consequence of being forced to argue that
most people (are forced to) choose the wrong things - whereas the anointed are free from such malign
influences. I think Chomsky is guilty of this, and this is one of the key progressive/conservative
debates. In part it's (paradoxically) about a letting go of control over outcomes. But we can pursue
this further.
6. One of the most important disagreements flows from this: I think that he systematically
underestimates the importance of individual choice and leadership. So he says "Nobody does anything
on their own", and to the extent that he is describing the importance of social organisation he is
right. But I think there is a necessary role for spokesmen who can articulate a vision which
inspires the movement as a whole, and that no amount of organisation can make up for the lack of
such a leader. (I don't think I'm arguing for a Fuhrerprinzip here, just that "without a vision the
people perish").
7. Finally, he is admittedly focussed on the US, and to the extent that "the great majority of state
sponsored terrorism" is conducted by the USG that's fair enough. But it reinforces the parochial
point I made above - I'm not sure how far his wider analysis and social perspective is translatable
across the oceans.
Anyhow, I greatly enjoyed reading it, and I look forward to further conversation.
Regards
Sam
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