A society can have formal trappings of democracy and not be democratic at all. For example, the US is a top-down democracy; it holds elections but leaves traditional structures of power, namely corporations and their allies in effective control. In the US, policy is insulated from politics. People can have their opinions: they can even vote if they like but policy making goes on its merry way, determined by corporate forces. This is traditionally a fascist system. It can vary in the way it works, but the ideal state that it aims at is absolutist top-down control with the public essentially following orders.
Fascism is a term from the political domain, so it doesn't apply strictly to corporations, but if you look at them, power goes strictly top down from the board of directors to managers to lower managers and ultimately to the people on the shop floor, typists etc. There is no flow of power or planning from the bottom up. Ultimate power resides in the hands of investors, owners, banks etc. People can disrupt, make suggestion, but the same is true of a slave society. People who aren't owners and investors have nothing much to say about it. They can choose to rent their labour to the corporations, or to purchase the commodities or services that it produces, or to find a place in the chain of command, but that's it. That's the totality of their control over the corporation.
At the deepest level, the media contributes to the sense that the government is the enemy; it suppresses the sources of real power in society which are the fascist institutions - the corporations, now internationally in scale - that control the economy and much of our social life. In fact, the corporations set the conditions within which the government operates. This is not an exaggeration: the Republicans tend to be the party of business while the Democrats tend to favour big business over small businesses. We just show up once in a while to cast votes and then go home banking institutions, monied incorporations and businesses run the country.
John Dewey said that democracy is not an end in itself, but a means by which people discover, extend and manifest their human nature and human rights. Democracy is rooted in freedom, solidarity, and the ability to participate in the social order. The real product of democracy is real people doing real work for the welfare of human kind. Today, the top two hundred corporations in the world control over a quarter of the world's total assets, and their control is increasing for their benefit. They are a private, absolutists, fascist and unaccountable power structures.
Given all this, US policies in the Middle East are easy to understand. The US has consistently opposed democracy if it results does not favour a puppet government. Middle Eastern governments, for the most part, respond to the needs of the US investors and corporations, instead of their general populations. A study of the inter-American system published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that, while the US pays lip service to democracy, the real commitment is to "private, capitalist enterprise." When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy is vanquished: if these rights are safeguarded, killers and tortures remain in power."
Source: Noam Chomsky, How The World Works
Fascism is a term from the political domain, so it doesn't apply strictly to corporations, but if you look at them, power goes strictly top down from the board of directors to managers to lower managers and ultimately to the people on the shop floor, typists etc. There is no flow of power or planning from the bottom up. Ultimate power resides in the hands of investors, owners, banks etc. People can disrupt, make suggestion, but the same is true of a slave society. People who aren't owners and investors have nothing much to say about it. They can choose to rent their labour to the corporations, or to purchase the commodities or services that it produces, or to find a place in the chain of command, but that's it. That's the totality of their control over the corporation.
At the deepest level, the media contributes to the sense that the government is the enemy; it suppresses the sources of real power in society which are the fascist institutions - the corporations, now internationally in scale - that control the economy and much of our social life. In fact, the corporations set the conditions within which the government operates. This is not an exaggeration: the Republicans tend to be the party of business while the Democrats tend to favour big business over small businesses. We just show up once in a while to cast votes and then go home banking institutions, monied incorporations and businesses run the country.
John Dewey said that democracy is not an end in itself, but a means by which people discover, extend and manifest their human nature and human rights. Democracy is rooted in freedom, solidarity, and the ability to participate in the social order. The real product of democracy is real people doing real work for the welfare of human kind. Today, the top two hundred corporations in the world control over a quarter of the world's total assets, and their control is increasing for their benefit. They are a private, absolutists, fascist and unaccountable power structures.
Given all this, US policies in the Middle East are easy to understand. The US has consistently opposed democracy if it results does not favour a puppet government. Middle Eastern governments, for the most part, respond to the needs of the US investors and corporations, instead of their general populations. A study of the inter-American system published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that, while the US pays lip service to democracy, the real commitment is to "private, capitalist enterprise." When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy is vanquished: if these rights are safeguarded, killers and tortures remain in power."
Source: Noam Chomsky, How The World Works
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