Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power

One of Chomsky’s main objectives in Requiem for the American Dream is to shed light on the correlation between the rise of income inequality and the rise of corporate power. The author begins by stating that the American Dream, if defined as the capacity for upward social mobility, is veritably dead in the current socioeconomic conditions. The simultaneous timing of the death of the American Dream and the rise of corporate power and income inequality isn’t coincidental but rather the result of a deliberate, coordinated, and sustained effort on the part of elites and business tycoons to consolidate wealth and monopolize power. Income inequality is the product of this coordinated corporate initiative, which continues to concentrate wealth to the elite at the expense of the lower classes—that is, the rest of the people.

Chomsky argues that throughout history, the tendency for elites to seek power alternates with periods of great democratization during which the people fight to regain control of society. This back-and-forth is a particularly overt characteristic of US history. Current corporate power stems from initiatives launched during the 1970s in reaction to the civilizing efforts of the 1960s, including the civil rights movement. Appalled at the political power that women, environmentalists, Black people, and other minorities gained over that decade, corporations and elites fought to regain control and were widely successful, particularly through