Very similar processes are under way in the United States, for somewhat similar reasons, a matter of significance and concern not just for the country but, because of US power, for the world. The executive director of the Paris-based research group EuropaNova attributes the general disenchantment to “a mood of angry impotence as the real power to shape events largely shifted from national political leaders to the market, the institutions of the European Union and corporations”, quite in accord with neoliberal doctrine. Mainstream parties have been rapidly losing members to left and to right. Riot police line up outside a closed branch of the National Bank of Greece during a general strike in protest against austerity measures. The European Union (EU), one of the more promising developments of the post-world war II period, has been tottering because of the harsh effect of the policies of austerity during recession, condemned even by the economists of the International Monetary Fund (if not the IMF’s political actors).ĭemocracy has been undermined as decision-making shifted to the Brussels bureaucracy, with the northern banks casting their shadow over their proceedings.

The neoliberal programs of the past generation have concentrated wealth and power in far fewer hands while undermining functioning democracy, but they have aroused opposition as well, most prominently in Latin America but also in the centers of global power. People are incidental, with the consequences one might anticipate. The designers regularly do quite well, not surprisingly. The intention is to have them adopted in good Stalinist style with “fast track” procedures designed to block discussion and allow only the choice of yes or no (hence yes). They are negotiated in secret, apart from the hundreds of corporate lawyers and lobbyists writing the crucial details. When we consider the role of the masters of mankind, we turn to such state policy priorities of the moment as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the investor-rights agreements mislabeled “free-trade agreements” in propaganda and commentary. In the contemporary global order, the institutions of the masters hold enormous power, not only in the international arena but also within their home states, on which they rely to protect their power and to provide economic support by a wide variety of means. Still following Smith, it is also wise to attend to the “vile maxim” to which the “masters of mankind” are dedicated: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people” – a doctrine known otherwise as bitter and incessant class war, often one-sided, much to the detriment of the people of the home country and the world.

Who rules the world chomsky