Priorities and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Hegemony or Survival)
Wilson ‘s own view was that an elite of gentlemen with “elevated ideals” must be empowered to preserve “stability and righteousness”; “stability” is a code word for subordination to existing power systems, and righteousness will be determined by the rulers. Leading public intellectuals agreed. “The public must be put in its place,” Walter Lippmann declared in his progressive essays on democracy. That goal could be achieved in part through “the manufacture of consent,” “a self-conscious art and regular organ of popular government.” This “revolution [in the] practice of democracy” should enable a “specialized class [of] responsible men” to manage the “common interests [that] very largely elude public opinion entirely.” In essence, the Leninist ideal. Lippmann had observed the revolution in the practice of democracy first-hand, as a member of Wilson ‘s Committee on Public Information, which was established to coordinate war-time propaganda and achieved great success in whipping the population into war fever.
The “responsible men” who are the proper decision-makers, Lippmann continued, “have obtained their training… in the law schools and law offices and in business,” and in their “executive action” they must “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd,… ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who are to be “spectators,” not “participants.” The herd do have a “function”: to trample periodically in support of one or another element of the natural leadership class in an election, then to return to private pursuits. Unstated is that the responsible men gain that status not by virtue of any special talent or knowledge, but by subordination to the systems of actual power and loyalty to their operative principles. Basic decisions over social and economic life are to be kept within institutions with top-down authoritarian control, while within a diminished public arena, the participation of the beast is to be limited.
Wilson ‘s own view was that an elite of gentlemen with “elevated ideals” must be empowered to preserve “stability and righteousness”; “stability” is a code word for subordination to existing power systems, and righteousness will be determined by the rulers. Leading public intellectuals agreed. “The public must be put in its place,” Walter Lippmann declared in his progressive essays on democracy. That goal could be achieved in part through “the manufacture of consent,” “a self-conscious art and regular organ of popular government.” This “revolution [in the] practice of democracy” should enable a “specialized class [of] responsible men” to manage the “common interests [that] very largely elude public opinion entirely.” In essence, the Leninist ideal. Lippmann had observed the revolution in the practice of democracy first-hand, as a member of Wilson ‘s Committee on Public Information, which was established to coordinate war-time propaganda and achieved great success in whipping the population into war fever.
The “responsible men” who are the proper decision-makers, Lippmann continued, “have obtained their training… in the law schools and law offices and in business,” and in their “executive action” they must “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd,… ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who are to be “spectators,” not “participants.” The herd do have a “function”: to trample periodically in support of one or another element of the natural leadership class in an election, then to return to private pursuits. Unstated is that the responsible men gain that status not by virtue of any special talent or knowledge, but by subordination to the systems of actual power and loyalty to their operative principles. Basic decisions over social and economic life are to be kept within institutions with top-down authoritarian control, while within a diminished public arena, the participation of the beast is to be limited.
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