Noam Chomsky - The Future of Capitalism

question about the

future

of

capitalism

general

future

yes, first of all, we must keep in mind that

capitalism

is a kind of myth and that we don't really have capitalist societies, we now have state capitalist societies and the state has always played an essential central role . role in the development and extension of the capitalist system, that goes back to 17th century England and throughout the entire history of development, but let's take the recent period, so let's take today's high-tech economy, you need an iPhone If you take your iPhone and you take the technology and you take it apart it turns out that almost everything comes from the state sector GPS was developed by the Navy Electronics was developed in military laboratories you know everything the computer that is in front of you Computers began to be developed in the 1950s, actually a big part of it in the lab where I was working, it wasn't until 1977, but Apple was able to produce a computer that could be marketed and made a profit, after about 30 years of research and development in the state sector now suppose that we had capitalist societies, but one of the principles of capitalism is supposed to be that if you invest in something, especially if you invest to make an expensive, risky investment for let's say 30 years and there's supposed to be some profit, Back to you, but our system doesn't work like that, it goes to Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, now the public pays the costs through various devices, now university labs, etc., and then after many years something has been handed over to private corporations. and they make the same profits with the Internet.

The beginnings of the Internet were in the late 1950s, in fact, in the same laboratory where I worked at MIT, which began to think about the Internet and it developed for decades under the government system, which ultimately meant the support of the taxpayers. Around 1995, the public gave a gift, just a gift to private corporations, to say, "Well, you can have the Internet that we developed." We now have half a dozen huge mega corporations running the Internet. It's a public gift, you know, and in fact across the board it's like that, it's the same thing if we go back to the 19th century, when what was called the American production system was developed that kind of amazed the world, you know, mass production, quality control of interchangeable parts and most of those that are developing government armor, that's where you can experiment, you can, you can make long term investments for private corporations, don't do that, they want to make profits tomorrow, You know, don't invest for what might happen 30 years from now, you know, and that's actually the whole story of development. of what we call capitalism and its current function, if you look at the present, take the people who say we have to have small government and dedicate ourselves to the market and just look at how they live, there are enormous public subsidies, government subsidies for all important sectors of the economy, energy financing for agribusiness, they are all heavily publicly subsidized, but that's fine, it's a proper function of government, but not pensions, security, health and irrelevant things like that.

That is what is called capitalism, but it is a very specific function. shaped and designed form of capitalism, so it can survive well, it certainly shouldn't survive and I think that can be changed, in fact the public wants it to be changed, so again, if you take a look at the United States, it's a highly surveyed country. society mainly because companies want to know what people think, but it's important, that's why we've known for a long time about people's attitudes, all we know is that across the spectrum people want much higher taxes on rich, taxes keep going down, in fact, those results are generally not I have even reported that even people you know are considered far-right Tea Party.

Let's say if you take a look at their actual attitudes, they are more or less social democrats. They say yes, we want a very small government, but I want more spending on health and education and support for people who can't feed their children, etc., but just a small government, but all the things that a big government does, in fact, even attitudes about things like foreign aid or very interesting things that can In surveys about foreign aid, everyone says it's too high and we're giving it all away to foreigners who don't deserve it. When you ask them what foreign aid should be, this is about ten times higher than it actually is, you know, because these are the results. of extensive propaganda systems that indoctrinate people to have certain conceptions, you know, everyone is robbing us, the poor are being taken away, you know, the government is putting the poor in front of us, immigrants are flooding the country that accepts great concern about immigration in the United States.

The United States knows Mexican rapists and criminals, almost half of the immigration comes from Asia, educated and trained for people who are being brought in to help develop the high-tech economy. It is approximately 40% of immigrants. It's not what people start here, you know what they hear. something that doesn't exist, you know, Mexican criminals, but it's more or less the same in Europe, so, for example, it's actually very surprising. I mentioned the other day that the last election in Europe was in Sweden a couple of weeks ago, which again the right-wing got a much higher percentage in everyone wanted, which is a scary fact, but there was a study careful of the rise of the right in Sweden and what he showed was very interesting and, when generalizing, it turns out that the rise of the right in Sweden was Before the wave of immigrants, it was a reaction of people who were basically left aside by the abandonment of social democratic policies as the government, including the so-called social democratic left, began to move towards so-called austerity programs.

The vast majority of the population has left out some people who do well, you know, they get rich, the elites, as they are called, so what most people see is that those guys over there are doing well. well, and in the case of Oslo, I am opposed and I am going to respond by voting for the xenophobic nationalist party that existed before the wave of immigrants. Once immigrants arrive, they serve as convenient scapegoats, so it's their fault, it's not the fault of the corporations up there, we don't see them in Finland. The same study showed that the same increase in right-wing parties has generated almost no immigration.

If you look at the United States, it's quite interesting that the 2016 election has been extensive studies on why people voted for Trump and almost all the studies say. it's racism and sexism, which is not false, but the question is why these attitudes arose and if you look back, they arise from people who were excluded and who have been stagnant for forty years, even worse wages, declining benefits, declining in the organization, those are communities that are ripe for the demagogue who can blame everything on a scapegoat racism undoubtedly exists misogyny exists xenophobia exists and comes out of the bottle when people are angry and resentful and don't know who to turn to for help. get an explanation of your difficult situation.

I think the source of a lot of this is simply the neoliberal policies of the last generation that were designed, they are not a law of nature, you know they are designed to have certain consequences, and one of them is to leave the mass of the population as what is sometimes called a precariat people who live precarious existences there are no security pensions no organization comes we have no place Osaka Popes let's look for someone responsible and the easiest place to look since the people are even more vulnerable than you and this is shown in these dangerous antisocial attitudes the decline of democracy is a consequence and in fact a desired consequence of the policies that were instituted they overcame what was called the crisis of democracy too much democracy so now we have achieved reduce the crisis of democracy with the consequences that arise from the resistance you said that this system will not survive like this it cannot yes impossible for a reason that we have not discussed there are two major crises growing one of them we know about the nuclear threat yes If you look the history of the nuclear age, it is an absolute miracle that we survived.

There was a time when we were able to get through it, but case after case, dozens of times, sometimes by accident, mostly by accident, sometimes by reckless acts of the leaders, they were converted literally within a few minutes of the terminal. destruction literally some of the cases are shocking when you look at them and the miracles don't continue so sooner or later we will manage and destroy ourselves the other is global warming which is very serious I mean if the use of fossil fuels continues like this Any anything remotely close to the current level by the end of this century, let's say we could see a sea level rise of 6 to 10 meters.

You can imagine what that would mean, on top of what we already see: severe weather conditions, droughts, hurricanes, typhoons, all on the rise and already having big effects. like the Syrian war, for example, at one of its roots there is an unprecedented drought, nothing and hundreds of thousands of years of history, an enormous drought is surely the result of global warming that expelled farmers from the land to the cities , there is no way for them to survive. a kind of fire that any Sparkle said is part of the background of the conflicts that arose. The same thing happened in Darfur, the great drought of nomads in the agricultural areas and also there are ethnic conflicts there immediately led to the conflict and the confrontation ended in great massacres.

These things are not just the future, we are living in their beginnings. Take a look at Bangladesh which is mainly a coastal plain. Sea level begins to rise. What will happen to hundreds of millions of people if glaciers continue to melt? and the Himalayas, the already scarce water supply in South Asia will be seriously threatened and right now there are several hundred million people in India who do not have clean water, we are taught in Pakistan that it will be even worse, I mean, We are talking about the fate of hundreds of millions of people in the near future.

The rich may think they can escape by going up a mountain somewhere, but that's not going to happen and the policies being implemented are aimed at intensifying the problem. just nothing and it's not just Trump, I take the big banks, take a look at the huge JPMorgan Chase banks, they know exactly what the consequences are and they are increasing their investments in fossil fuels, that's the nature of capitalism. I said we have a mixed form of capitalism, but there is an underlying market system somewhere and an imperative of the market system is to try to make the maximum profit tomorrow and ignore what are called externalities, the things that are not recorded and if If you don't do that, you're out of the game, it's part of the structure of the system, so Jamie Dimon, the clever head of JP Morgan Chase, fully understands the consequences, but is still forced by the logic of the institutions to maximize the consequences. threatens his own grandchildren, he may not like it, maybe on the other hand he gives money to the environmental groups of the Sierra Club, but since they operate within the system, they are destroying the possibility of an organized life, that is nothing to that you can put band-aids on it. much deeper than, of course, the Trump administration, that is, although by far we should have big headlines and newspapers every day saying that these guys are trying to destroy the possibility of organized human life and, if you think about it honestly, there has been nothing at all. of human history to compare with this it is not Atilla the Hun nor Angus Kahn nor Hitler horrible as they were they never tried to destroy organized human life this is something new if there is a word to describe it an evil it does not capture it it is madness it does not capture it because it does not It is crazy, their plan is unconscious and part of the very logic of the system in which they work now of course with Trump and his associates they are trying to extend it to make it worse that is not part of the logic of the system with which the system could work, you know, the palliative efforts that Obama was actually making and most of the world is not doing enough, but at least some, but it's a very deep problem, it's like class hatred in Brazil, this is deep.

Don't put a band-aid on it, there are fundamental things that need to be addressed, how about the resistance, the resistance, the movement against capitalism, against this strike? Things believe that it is going to be encouraging for the store around the world, there is a resistance and it is you who has so, the most popular political figure in the United States by a considerable margin is Bernie Sanders, which is something unthinkable in the framework of American political history. It has never happened in American political history that someone like Sanders could even be noticed, much less becomein the most popular. political figure in the country now just think about what happened here's a guy who has to admit that the US elections are literally bought, he can predict the outcome of the election with remarkable accuracy just by looking at the campaign finance executive and Congress backs down much more than a hundred years ago here is someone who entered the campaign virtually unknown no media support barely mentioned if the media mentions it they just made fun of him you know no zero support from any of the funders no corporate support no support of private wealth even used what's in America, the kind of four-letter word that America, I guess, is the only country in the world outside of maybe some dictatorship where you can't say the word socialism, no, no .just communism, but it's just indescribable, you know, it's literally a four letter word, yeah, then he called it, said he was a socialist, socialist really means the New Deal Democrats mean something very profound, but with all that she was very close to winning the nomination for the Democrats are they for Hillary at that time no, no, not after the nomination yes, but that's not for Hillary, that's against Trump, that's something quite different, she was terrible , but whether Sanders could have won the nomination, frankly, I don't know.

I know what would have happened because the Republican propaganda machine that had not been directed against Sanders and which is a huge, fantastic corporate backer, would be directed against Sanders and what you would start to hear are things about this Jewish atheist communist who wants to destroy everything very badly. I probably couldn't have endured things like that, but it's a bit unpredictable, but that's what would certainly have happened and how people would react to that, you don't really know, it's hard for you to see that in England, right? Now, with the attack on Corbin, I mean, there is enormous fear, including the Labor point.

You know the old Labor Party. The Guardian. You know the idea that you could have a political party that actually represents the general public and their interests and the people suffering abroad and that is led. by a decent human being, that's totally intolerable, then you have this huge attack of the kind that you can't defend yourself against, like anti-Semitism, since you say, and someone is a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite, you know there's basically no defense and it's just across the board a big attack on Corbin and the Labor Party and that's the kind of thing you would have seen if Sanders and the commentator, you know, choose a little bit differently, but anti-Israel, you know all this huge propaganda with the one he's so familiar with that you can just do it since there's a lot to get through, but what the Sanders campaign showed and what Corbin's success shows is that you do quite a few of these Sanders and Yanis Varoufakis just came out with a statement Baro's joint approach which I think is very important. our focus is a very smart and interesting guy you have, he is the center of this new diem25 political organization that is actually fielding transnational candidates for the European Parliament and ultimately for the Greek elections and later for others, which is a sort of counterpart to Corbin and Sanders and his FACA Sanders statement a couple of days ago is that he is not radical, he is calling for a instant sensible multipolar and then liberal democratic stew in Europe to preserve the good of the European Union and overcome the serious defects.

The same thing in the Western Hemisphere and things like the Obrador election in Mexico or another example, so I think if you look around the world, there is a bit of a simple level of activism, mainly among young people, it's quite surprising, surprising, I think which is much higher than ever. It has been there except for a few brief moments, but in 1968 there is a brief peak, but this is lasting, so I think the base is there or if it can be united and organized.