Noam Chomsky Quotes
Chomsky, Noam. Understanding Power: The Essential Chomsky.
200 - MAN: What's the difference between "libertarian" and "anarchist," exactly?
There's no difference, really. I think they're the same thing. But you see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the United States. The United States is off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called "libertarian" here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that's always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a socialist--because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority.
If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"--but that's a joke. If you're choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice--it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.
The American version of "libertarianism" is an aberration, though--nobody really takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by American libertarian principles would self-destruct in three seconds. The only reason people pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as a weapon. Like, when somebody comes out in favor of a tax, you can say: "No, I'm libertarian, I'm against that tax"--but of course, I'm still in favor of the government building roads, and having schools, and killing Libyans, and all that sort of stuff.
Now, there are consistent libertarians, people like Murray Rothbard [American academic]--and if you just read the world that they describe, it's a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it. This is a world where you don't have roads because you don' see any reason why you should cooperate in building a road that you're not going to use: if you want aroad,you get together with a bunch of other people who aregoing to use that road and you build it, then you charge people to ride on it. If you don't like the pollution from somebody's automobile, you take them to court and you litigate it. Who would want to live in a world like that? It's a world built on hatred.19
The whole things not even worth talking about, though. First of all, it couldn't function for a second--and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something. But this is a special American aberration, it's not really serious.
254 - [. . .]
Look: the basic assumption of the classical economists was that labor is highly mobile and capital is relatively immobile--that's required, that's crucial to proving all their nice theorems. That was the reason they could say, "If you can't get enough to survive on the labor market, go someplace else"--because you could go someplace else: after the native populations of places like the United States and Autralia and Tasmania were exterminated or driven away,then yeah, poor Europeans could go somewhere else. [. . .] And back then, capital was indeed immobile--first because "capital" primarily meant land, and you can't move land, and also because to the extent that there was investment, it was very local: like, you didn't have communication systems that allowed for easy transfers of money all around the world, like we do today.
[. . .]
Well, by now the assumptions underpinning these theories are not only false-- they're the opposite of the truth. By now labor is immobile, through immigration restrictions and so on, and capital is highly mobile, primarily because of technological changes. So none of the results work anymore.
255 - [. . .] there is not a single case on record in history of any country that has developed successfully through adherence to "free market" principles: none. Certainly not the United States. I mean, the United States has always had extensive state intervention in the economy, right from the earliest days--we would be exporting fur right now if we were following the principles of comparitive advantage.
Look, the reason why the industrial revolution took off in places like Lowell and Lawrence is because of high protectionist tariffs the U.S. government set up to keep out British goods. And the same thing runs right up to today: like, we would not have successful high-tech industry in the United States today if it wasn't for a huge public subsidy to advanced industry, mostly through the Pentagon system and N.A.S.A. and so on--that doesn't have the vaguest relation to a "free market."
256 - [. . .]
Of course, the "free market" ideology is very useful--it's a weapon against the general population here, because it's an argument against social spending, and it's a weapon against poor people abroad, becuase we can hold it up to them and say "You guys have to follow these rules," then just go ahead and rob them. But nobody really pays any attention to this stuff when it comes to actual planning--and no one ever has.
So there was just a British study of the hundred leading transnational corporations in the "Fortune 500," and it found that of the hundred, every single one of them has benefited from what's called "state industrial policy"--that is, from some form of government intervention in the country in which they're based. And of the hundred, they said at least twenty had been saved from total collapse by state intervention at one point or another. [. . .]
Or take the fact that so many people live in the suburbs and everybody has to drive their own car everywhere. Was that the result of the "free market"? No, it was because the U.S. government carried out a massive social-engineering project in the 1950s to destroy the public transportation system in favor of expanding a highly inefficient system based on cars and airplanes-- because that's what benefits big industry. It started with corporate conspiracies to buy up and eliminate streetcar systems, and then continued with huge public subsidies to build the highway system and encourage an extremely inefficient and environmentally destructice alternative.
257 - [. . .] Bengal was one of the first places colonized in the eighteenth century, and when Robert Clive [British conqueror] first landed there, he described it as a paradise: Dacca, he said, is just like London, and they in fact referred to it as "the Manchester of Indian." It was rich and populous, there was high-quality cotton, agriculture, advanced industry, a lot of resources, jute, all sorts of things--it was in fact comparable to England it in its manufacturing level, and really looked like it was going to take off. Well, look at it today: Dacca, "the Manchester of India [incomplete: hope to return]
286 - [...] See, I focus my efforts against the terror and violence of my own state for really two main reasons. First of all, in my case the actions of my state happen to make up the main component of international violence in the world. But much more importantly than that, it's because American actions are the things that I can do something about. So even if the United States were causing only a tiny fraction of the repression and violence in the world--which obviously is very far from the truth--that tiny fraction would still be what I'm responsible for, and what I should focus my efforts against. And that's based on a very simple ethical principle--namely that the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated consequences for human beings: I think that's kind of like a fundamental moral truism.
So, for example, it was very eaasy thing in the 1980s for people in the United States the denounce the atrocities of the Soviet Union in its occupation of Afghanistan--but those denunciations had no effects which could
287 - have helped people. In terms of their ethical value, they were about the same as denouncing Napoleon's atrocities, or things that happened in the Middle Ages. Useful and significant actions are ones which have consequences for human beings, and usually those will concern things that you can influence and control--which means for people in the United States, American actions primarily, not those of some other state.
Actually, the principle that I think we ought to follow is the principle we rightly expected Soviet dissidents to follow. So what principle did we expect Sakharov [a Soviet scientist punished for his criticism of the U.S.S.R.] to follow? [. . .] Sakharov did not treat every atrocity as identical--he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, "I don't know anything about them, I don't care abvout them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities." And that was right--because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to influence. [. . .]
Now, just personally speaking, it turns out that I do spend a fair amount of effort talking about the crimes of official enemies--in fact, there area number of people now living in the United States and Canada from the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who are there because of my own personal activities on their behalf. But I don't take great pride in that part of my work, particularly; I just do it because I'm interested in it. The most important thing for me, and for you, is [. . .] what you can have the most effect on. And especially in a relatively open society like ours, which does allow a lot of freedom for dissent, that means American crimes primarily.
355 - MAN: Noam, another view I frequently encounter [. . .] stems from the idea the human nature is corrupt [. . .] and that as a result, society will always have oppressors and oppressed, be hierarchical, exploit people, be driven by individual self-interest, etc. [. . .] I'm curious what you would say to someone like that.
Well, there's a sense in which the claim is certainly true. First of all, human nature is something we don't know much about: doubtless there is a rich and complex human nature, and doubtless it's largely genetically determined, like everything else--but we don't know what it is. However,
356 - there is enough evidence from history and experience to demonstrate that human nature is entirely consistent with everything you mentioned [. . .] But what does that mean? Should people therefore not try to stop torture? If you see somebody beating a child to death, should you say, "Well, you know, that's human nature"--which it is in fact: there certainly are conditions under which people will act like that.
To the extent that the statement is true, and there is such an extent, it's just not relevant: human nature also has the capacity to lead to selflessness, and cooperation, and sacrifice, and support, and solidarity, and tremendous courage, and lots of other things too.
www.understandingpower.com [for footnotes to text]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky [has links to other sources]
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20050113.htm
200 - MAN: What's the difference between "libertarian" and "anarchist," exactly?
There's no difference, really. I think they're the same thing. But you see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the United States. The United States is off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called "libertarian" here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that's always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a socialist--because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority.
If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"--but that's a joke. If you're choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice--it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.
The American version of "libertarianism" is an aberration, though--nobody really takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by American libertarian principles would self-destruct in three seconds. The only reason people pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as a weapon. Like, when somebody comes out in favor of a tax, you can say: "No, I'm libertarian, I'm against that tax"--but of course, I'm still in favor of the government building roads, and having schools, and killing Libyans, and all that sort of stuff.
Now, there are consistent libertarians, people like Murray Rothbard [American academic]--and if you just read the world that they describe, it's a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it. This is a world where you don't have roads because you don' see any reason why you should cooperate in building a road that you're not going to use: if you want aroad,you get together with a bunch of other people who aregoing to use that road and you build it, then you charge people to ride on it. If you don't like the pollution from somebody's automobile, you take them to court and you litigate it. Who would want to live in a world like that? It's a world built on hatred.19
The whole things not even worth talking about, though. First of all, it couldn't function for a second--and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something. But this is a special American aberration, it's not really serious.
254 - [. . .]
Look: the basic assumption of the classical economists was that labor is highly mobile and capital is relatively immobile--that's required, that's crucial to proving all their nice theorems. That was the reason they could say, "If you can't get enough to survive on the labor market, go someplace else"--because you could go someplace else: after the native populations of places like the United States and Autralia and Tasmania were exterminated or driven away,then yeah, poor Europeans could go somewhere else. [. . .] And back then, capital was indeed immobile--first because "capital" primarily meant land, and you can't move land, and also because to the extent that there was investment, it was very local: like, you didn't have communication systems that allowed for easy transfers of money all around the world, like we do today.
[. . .]
Well, by now the assumptions underpinning these theories are not only false-- they're the opposite of the truth. By now labor is immobile, through immigration restrictions and so on, and capital is highly mobile, primarily because of technological changes. So none of the results work anymore.
255 - [. . .] there is not a single case on record in history of any country that has developed successfully through adherence to "free market" principles: none. Certainly not the United States. I mean, the United States has always had extensive state intervention in the economy, right from the earliest days--we would be exporting fur right now if we were following the principles of comparitive advantage.
Look, the reason why the industrial revolution took off in places like Lowell and Lawrence is because of high protectionist tariffs the U.S. government set up to keep out British goods. And the same thing runs right up to today: like, we would not have successful high-tech industry in the United States today if it wasn't for a huge public subsidy to advanced industry, mostly through the Pentagon system and N.A.S.A. and so on--that doesn't have the vaguest relation to a "free market."
256 - [. . .]
Of course, the "free market" ideology is very useful--it's a weapon against the general population here, because it's an argument against social spending, and it's a weapon against poor people abroad, becuase we can hold it up to them and say "You guys have to follow these rules," then just go ahead and rob them. But nobody really pays any attention to this stuff when it comes to actual planning--and no one ever has.
So there was just a British study of the hundred leading transnational corporations in the "Fortune 500," and it found that of the hundred, every single one of them has benefited from what's called "state industrial policy"--that is, from some form of government intervention in the country in which they're based. And of the hundred, they said at least twenty had been saved from total collapse by state intervention at one point or another. [. . .]
Or take the fact that so many people live in the suburbs and everybody has to drive their own car everywhere. Was that the result of the "free market"? No, it was because the U.S. government carried out a massive social-engineering project in the 1950s to destroy the public transportation system in favor of expanding a highly inefficient system based on cars and airplanes-- because that's what benefits big industry. It started with corporate conspiracies to buy up and eliminate streetcar systems, and then continued with huge public subsidies to build the highway system and encourage an extremely inefficient and environmentally destructice alternative.
257 - [. . .] Bengal was one of the first places colonized in the eighteenth century, and when Robert Clive [British conqueror] first landed there, he described it as a paradise: Dacca, he said, is just like London, and they in fact referred to it as "the Manchester of Indian." It was rich and populous, there was high-quality cotton, agriculture, advanced industry, a lot of resources, jute, all sorts of things--it was in fact comparable to England it in its manufacturing level, and really looked like it was going to take off. Well, look at it today: Dacca, "the Manchester of India [incomplete: hope to return]
286 - [...] See, I focus my efforts against the terror and violence of my own state for really two main reasons. First of all, in my case the actions of my state happen to make up the main component of international violence in the world. But much more importantly than that, it's because American actions are the things that I can do something about. So even if the United States were causing only a tiny fraction of the repression and violence in the world--which obviously is very far from the truth--that tiny fraction would still be what I'm responsible for, and what I should focus my efforts against. And that's based on a very simple ethical principle--namely that the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated consequences for human beings: I think that's kind of like a fundamental moral truism.
So, for example, it was very eaasy thing in the 1980s for people in the United States the denounce the atrocities of the Soviet Union in its occupation of Afghanistan--but those denunciations had no effects which could
287 - have helped people. In terms of their ethical value, they were about the same as denouncing Napoleon's atrocities, or things that happened in the Middle Ages. Useful and significant actions are ones which have consequences for human beings, and usually those will concern things that you can influence and control--which means for people in the United States, American actions primarily, not those of some other state.
Actually, the principle that I think we ought to follow is the principle we rightly expected Soviet dissidents to follow. So what principle did we expect Sakharov [a Soviet scientist punished for his criticism of the U.S.S.R.] to follow? [. . .] Sakharov did not treat every atrocity as identical--he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, "I don't know anything about them, I don't care abvout them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities." And that was right--because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to influence. [. . .]
Now, just personally speaking, it turns out that I do spend a fair amount of effort talking about the crimes of official enemies--in fact, there area number of people now living in the United States and Canada from the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who are there because of my own personal activities on their behalf. But I don't take great pride in that part of my work, particularly; I just do it because I'm interested in it. The most important thing for me, and for you, is [. . .] what you can have the most effect on. And especially in a relatively open society like ours, which does allow a lot of freedom for dissent, that means American crimes primarily.
355 - MAN: Noam, another view I frequently encounter [. . .] stems from the idea the human nature is corrupt [. . .] and that as a result, society will always have oppressors and oppressed, be hierarchical, exploit people, be driven by individual self-interest, etc. [. . .] I'm curious what you would say to someone like that.
Well, there's a sense in which the claim is certainly true. First of all, human nature is something we don't know much about: doubtless there is a rich and complex human nature, and doubtless it's largely genetically determined, like everything else--but we don't know what it is. However,
356 - there is enough evidence from history and experience to demonstrate that human nature is entirely consistent with everything you mentioned [. . .] But what does that mean? Should people therefore not try to stop torture? If you see somebody beating a child to death, should you say, "Well, you know, that's human nature"--which it is in fact: there certainly are conditions under which people will act like that.
To the extent that the statement is true, and there is such an extent, it's just not relevant: human nature also has the capacity to lead to selflessness, and cooperation, and sacrifice, and support, and solidarity, and tremendous courage, and lots of other things too.
www.understandingpower.com [for footnotes to text]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky [has links to other sources]
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20050113.htm
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