Chomsky on the one-party system

While addressing a group of students, noted linguistic scholar and social critic Noam Chomsky was asked for this thoughts on whether the Republicans and the Democrats belong in the same “category.” His response, which strikes me as historically and structurally accurate, was as follows:

Well, Democrats and Republicans aren’t a category—the Republicans and Democrats differ. Like on the rare occasions when I vote–and they are pretty rare–sometimes I vote for Democrats, sometimes for Republicans, sometimes for somebody else. It’s not a sharp split. They are two factions of the same party. We have a one-party state with two somewhat different factions with a lot of overlap; the business party has a couple of factions. You find some difference between them. I wouldn’t say there’s no difference on the average. So what should you do in that case? Well, like everything, it’s your own choice. Do you want to live in a democratic society or do you want to live in the society we have, which remember is not a democratic society and is not intended to be. If you take a course in political theory here, I’m sure they’ll teach you that the United States is not a democracy. It’s what is called, in the technical literature, a polyarchy. That’s the term invented by the leading democratic theorist, Yale professor Robert Dahl, but the idea is old, its goes way back to James Madison and the foundation of the Constitution. A polyarchy is system in which power resides in the hands of those who manage the wealth of the nation, the responsible class of men. And the rest of the population is fragmented, distracted, allowed to participate every couple years—they’re allowed to come and say “yes, thank you, why don’t you continue for another four years.” They have a little choice among the responsible men, the wealth of the nation. That’s the way the country was founded. It was founded on the principle explained by Madison at the Constitutional Convention that the primary goal of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. And then the Constitution was designed to sort of ensure that. There’s been a lot struggle about it over the years, a lot of victories have been won by the public, so it’s not the same as it was two centuries ago. But that remains. That remains the elite ideal. And it’s a constant struggle. And most of the population is well aware of it.