Noam Chomsky
Interview with Professor Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recorded 7pm BST, Friday 13th October, 2000.
Chris Stone: With reference to the recent protests in Prague against the IMF and the World Bank, and the protests in Seattle against the WTO, how successful do you think these new forms of protest are in breaking down or challenging the manufactured consent (of the Western Media)?
How much ideological impact have they made?
Noam Chomsky: Well I would say that they are more a reflection than a cause. There have been very extensive protests building up around the world for years, a lot of it initiated in the South, the so-called Third World. But it's had big effects, even before Seattle. For example in the United States there was a lot of protest against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
It was kind of repressed, but it was plainly there, and the population stayed highly critical of it. Shortly after it became impossible for the Administration to get Congress to pass what's called fast track legislation, which permits the President to negotiate trade deals with the kind of rubber stamping by congress that had been routine in the past. And it's a pretty arcane issue, but the public was sufficiently aware and opposed, so that, even though the whole establishment was entirely in favour - the press, corporations and government and so on - there was tremendous popular opposition, and Congress just had to block it.
They had constituents banging on their doors and so on. The Wall Street Journal at that time had an interesting comment. It was distraught that this wonderful thing hadn't gone through, but it said that the opponents had what it called "an ultimate weapon": namely the population's just resolutely against it, and that's kind of hard to deal with.
About a year or so after that, when the information about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment leaked out - they'd been trying to suppress it for several years of negotiations - within a couple of months a substantial protest developed, grass roots organisations, NGOs (Non-Government Organisations), others, and at the, I guess that it was April 1998, OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) meeting, where it was supposed to be ratified, they had to back off.
Later they came up with other reasons, but the basic reason was in fact recognised at the time and very accurately, discussed in the business press, like the Financial Times, which described with almost terror how what they called "a horde of vigilantes" had overwhelmed the weak and fragile OECD, business world etc., which couldn't stand up to this onslaught.
And they quoted trade representatives, as saying that it may be impossible in future to make deals in secret and have them rubber stamped by parliaments, which is a total catastrophe and so on. That's all well before Seattle. What happened in Seattle was the dam broke through. It was quite unusual in scale, but also in character.
It brought together very diverse constituencies that are very rarely seen together, international and very committed. And the follow up demonstrations in Washington - there was another one in Canada, and then in Prague and several others - it had quite a momentum and had had effects.
There's no question about the effects.
I mean, some of the effects were accidental. For example the Washington protests happened to coincide with a major protest in Bolivia. The government was following World Bank demands about privatising in this case utilities - privatising everything, but in this case it happened to be utilities - and the water companies had been essentially given away to a conglomerate (based in the US and the UK) which had followed World Bank directives to have user fees for water - user fees for water in a poor country, you know what that means - and had led to enormous protests.
In fact martial law was declared, people were killed, and so on. It happened to be timed at the same time as the Washington protest which allowed some of the activists in Bolivia to turn it into an international protest. They came up to Washington and got a lot of momentum from that.
Protests as far as New Zealand and so on, and the government had to back off. The conglomerate pulled out. They'll probably try to do it some other way, although the protests are continuing, in fact right now.
That's just one illustration of the international character of it. It brings together protesters against.... It should not be called a protest against globalisation. I mean, globalisation could be a fine thing. Like you and I are talking now.
But a particular form of globalisation, that has been instituted by state and corporate power, with primacy given to the rights of investors, financial institutions, and so on, and with the effects on people being incidental. This has had pretty negative effects. In just general macroeconomic terms, during the period of what's called globalisation, the last 20 years or so, growth rates have slowed down, interest rates are much higher, productivity growth has slowed.
By general macroeconomic measures the period has seen a decline from the previous period, you know, the early post war period, roughly the Bretton Woods period, before the Bretton Woods system was dismantled in the early 70s. (1).
It's much worse in general measures. And that's not really questioned. And it's also been very different in character. So such growth as has taken place has been highly concentrated in very narrow sectors. That's true in the South, where it's been devastating. But it's also true in the rich countries, with variations: the United States and Britain are the worst in this respect. Just to talk about the United States - it's similar in Britain - for most of the workforce, for non-supervisory workers, people who get wages and don't give orders...
Chris Stone: Ordinary people...
Noam Chomsky: Yes, ordinary people, which is the majority of the workforce, they're barely back to the level of wages of ten years ago, and have not reached twenty years ago.
Which is very unusual, except in periods of depression. Usually there's at least slow, steady growth. And this is with much heavier work loads.
So the average family, a typical family, what's called a middle-income family, which means a working family as they call it elsewhere - you're not allowed to use the word working class in the United States - so what's called a middle income family is working typically six weeks a year more than they were in 1989. (2).
That's the heaviest work load in the industrial world. It passed Japan a couple of years ago. And that's for basically stagnating incomes, that's kept them more or less stagnating over the globalisation period, about a twenty year period. And people know it.
There's a lot of talk about the excitement about the stock market - until recently when it's starting to crash - there's a lot of exuberance about that, but that has been tempered by the fact that close to half of the stock is in the hands of about 1% of the population. The bottom 80% have maybe 4% of the stock, distributed over an enormous number of people, which means, essentially, nothing.
And the same is true on other measures. The International Labour Organisation just came out with a study of the very sharp rise in mental health disorders among working people. It's actually global, attributed in part to things like what's called "labour market flexibility" - kind of a fancy term for saying you don't know when you go to sleep at night whether you're going to have a job tomorrow - and that's very stressful.
I should say that flexibility in the labour market - "worker insecurity" it's called - is considered a very good thing. So the World Bank a couple of years ago developed a report (The World Bank Development Report, an annual publication) that identified flexibility of labour markets as the prime, what they called, "reform measure" that has to be instituted.
And they recognised, they said in fact, that it's become a euphemism for keeping wages down and pushing workers out, and it's gotten that reputation cos it's pretty much what it is. But nevertheless that's the core necessity. Alan Greenspan has testified before Congress that what he calls the stellar American economy, one factor in it, a crucial factor is "growing worker insecurity" (these are his words).
So from some points of view it's a good thing. It keeps wages down, keeps the workforce under control, keeps inflation down, keeps profits high. So from that point of view, yeah, it's a good thing. I should mention on the side that this flexible labour market - I hate the term, but it's the one that's used - is generally considered, it's considered the sort of basis for the fact that unemployment figures are lower in the United States than in Europe.
But that's a pretty misleading comparison. For one thing, it's not strictly true, if you look over, say, a ten year period. But for another it overlooks a rather crucial fact.
A substantial part of the American workforce, especially the male workforce, is out of the labour market. That's simply because they're in jail. That's by now, about two million people in jail. That's way higher than in other industrial countries. But not because of crime. Crime is not any higher.
There have been a couple of attempts - there was one recent one about a year ago in the American Journal of Sociology - to calculate actual unemployment rates if you bring this part of the workforce back into the picture - and notice it's mostly a male, working age workforce, and in fact disproportionately black and minorities - so that's a large part, a substantial part of what they call the unskilled, less skilled workforce. If you add that in, the conclusion of these authors is that the unemployment rates in the United States and Europe are pretty comparable.
In fact they compare this form of labour market intervention with things like unemployment insurance, and other modes of intervention: of course, in human terms, quite different, but they're all interventions in the labour market.
Well without going on with details, whatever may be said in the editorials, the ecstatic columns, written by and for the people who are in fact sharing in the "growth", as people, say, in my income level are, whatever that may be, much of the population knows that this isn't what's happening. (3). And in the Third World it's even more substantial. And under such conditions, of course you're going to see protest.
It'll take various forms, and the forms that it has taken have reflected the character of the dissidents. Well, what effect did it have? It certainly had an effect on the international financial institutions and the governments, at least at the rhetorical level. So the rhetoric and - it is claimed - the plans of the World Bank and the IMF and the G7 and so on, that's changed.
They say it's changed out of the goodness of their hearts, because they realise that what they've been doing in the past was wrong, and they understand it's now necessary to focus more on poverty amelioration and debt relief and health and education and other nice things. But whatever they say, it's perfectly obvious that this is simply a reaction to the popular protests.
In fact, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, the main business journal, during Prague - which has reported this pretty straight I'd say, and pretty honestly - they had a column in which they pointed out that, yes of course, this was just a reflection of the protests.
And they said that among the protesters, the ones who look respectable, you know, who wear jackets and ties, some of them are now allowed in, and you know, they're allowed to have tea in the anteroom and so on so they can listen to them.
And they quoted one, I think it was maybe someone from Oxfam, who said I guess they'll now talk to us, but the reason is because of the noises on the street; if that declines, even the talking to us is going to decline. Which is a reflection of reality. There's a lot of denigration of the protesters, by denunciation: but you know, as in any popular movement you're going to find crazy things. It's inevitable.
But substantially they do know what they're doing. It's organised, very organised, based on a lot of organisation and education. Maybe the ideas are wrong, maybe they're right, but they're there, and they've already had an effect on the formulation of plans and commitments of the international institutions. How much of an effect you can debate, and what it will mean in practice, that's another question.
And all of that depends on the form the protests continue to take, how significant and meaningful they are, how much international integration there is - there's quite a lot now, there should be more - and so on. These are very live issues, and there's a lot of engagement with them, and it's a very healthy phenomena by and large.
Chris Stone: Following on from that, I'd like to ask you about the world institutions, the World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organisation as economic institutions.
I was wondering if you see any difference between those particular institutions and the United Nations and the World Court, and whether you can see any possibility of any of these institutions being reformed in the future?
Noam Chomsky: Anything can be reformed. Nothing is graven in stone.
And in fact the popular mood and popular action can make a significant difference in how they're reformed. That's always been true through history, and probably true in the future as well. There's a big difference between the two categories you mentioned.
The first category, the World Bank and IMF, the World Trade Organisation, those are basically agencies of the rich countries. I mean, they're overwhelmingly dominated by the G7 or G3, or, to be honest G1, the United States - it has an enormous impact.
They're primarily dedicated, not very surprisingly, to serving the needs and interests of the groups that have power within these societies. We know who they are. You know, high concentrations of private power, and of course it has overwhelming influence. The UN and the World Court - and we could mention others, like the ILO (International Labour Organisation), to a degree UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) - they tend to have a much broader constituency.
So they reflect to some extent, to a limited extent, the world population, at least the governments of the world. Most of them are not representative governments, but they to some extent reflect their populations.
And they have different interests. And that's the reason why they're all out of favour among the powerful. Let's take the history of the relation of the United States and the United Nations, because it's very indicative. In the early days, round the early fifties, say, the United Nations got a wonderful press in the United States.
Everyone loved it. And the reason was, it was totally under the thumb of the United States, for perfectly obvious reasons. In the early post war period, of course it was going to be. So it was great. Everyone loved the United Nations.
By the mid-1950s de-colonisation was beginning, and by the early sixties the UN had a much broader international constituency. The non-aligned countries were in, and so on. As that proceeded, the attitude in the United States towards the United Nations cooled. You can see that in many ways. From, say, the mid-sixties on, just take a look at Security Council vetoes, the United States is way in the lead.
Britain is second. France is a distant third. The Soviet Union way behind and China not even there.
That's exactly contrary to the picture that's presented, that somehow the Russian veto is blocking everything. That's just not true. From the sixties it's quite the opposite. And it's part of the reflection of the fact that the United States and Britain just didn't have any use for the United Nations anymore.
It was taking positions that they didn't like.
That was particularly true of the United States. In fact that's pretty explicit. The same with the World Court. So when the World Court did condemn the United States for what it called "unlawful use of force" against Nicaragua, the US, as is known, just disregarded the judgement with a complete contempt.
And that was true pretty much across the spectrum. So you got the same kind of comments from many left-liberal commentators. But what was particularly interesting, and was not very much reported - though it should be memorised by everybody - was the reasons.
They gave official reasons. And, as I say, these should be memorised by anybody who cares about how the world works. The official reason of the State department, what they said was something like this: in the early days of the United Nations we could count on most of the world to agree with us - a nice way of saying, to do what we said - but that's no longer the case; by now a majority of the countries of the world don't agree with what we do, and therefore we must make the decision to determine for ourselves what falls within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States.
And in this case what fell within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States was it's right to make war against Nicaragua. And we have to determine that for ourselves because the rest of the world doesn't agree with us.
That's not the exact wording, but it's pretty close. But the wording is well worth knowing. It's the same in other regards. So, for example, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) which did, to some extent reflect Third World interests, the United States virtually destroyed it, on totally fraudulent grounds...
Chris Stone: Can you just remind us what UNESCO is?
Noam Chomsky: It deals with social and cultural issues primarily.
But in the 70s, the Third World countries, the non-aligned countries, had made some real proposals. They called for a new international economic order, which would be concerned with Third World interests - UNCTAD was formed to represent that at first - and they also called for a new international information order, which would allow the poor countries of the world to share to some extent in the international information system, which is overwhelmingly dominated by a few rich countries.
They're institutions in the West, private institutions mostly. And both of those proposals outraged the United States, and both were punished very quickly, and UNESCO was virtually destroyed on completely fraudulent grounds. There's an interesting history. The pretence was they were trying to censor the press. That's not true.
They were trying to open it up. But they were trying to undercut the Western, dominantly the US, monopoly of international propaganda and opinion, and that's intolerable. So UNESCO was almost destroyed. Tamed certainly. Same happened with UNCTAD. Their proposals for a new international economic order were shot down right away, with complicated effects.
One of the things that they were proposing was regulation of commodity prices, so that they don't oscillate wildly, don't shoot up and down very fast, and the Third World of course, are primary commodity exporters mostly - coffee for example - a huge element of international trade.
They tried to have this regulated. Well if it's unregulated it's just devastating for small farmers. You can't survive if one year the coffee price is too low to feed your children. The US wouldn't tolerate it. The rich countries do it for themselves. Like the European Union does it internally.
The United States does it internally. There are massive state intervention programmes to more or less stabilise agricultural commodity prices. But they wouldn't let the poor countries do it. So that was shot down. And actually that's one of the causes of the shift to drug production.
There there was a stable export market and with high prices. If you can't make it producing coffee, OK, produce coca and poppies. It is a fact. Susan Strange, a very good British political economist who died recently, discusses this in her latest book. But any how, that programme, the new international economic order, was destroyed; the new international information order was destroyed, and in general there was a major effort to try to put the Third World back in its box.
An effort which, incidentally, continues. So - I don't know about Britain, I followed it here - this last April there was a meeting in Havana of what's called G77, the hundred and thirty three countries that account for about 80% of the world's population - the former non-aligned countries essentially - and it was the most important meeting they ever had, it was the first meeting ever at the level of heads of state. But they came out with a long, detailed declaration of the South Summit, it was called, with a lot of interesting things in it.
Very critical of the international economic order, on pretty much the grounds of the protesters; very critical of what they called "the so-called right of humanitarian intervention", meaning, from their point of view, the insistence of the West of its right to use military force unilaterally on humanitarian pretexts.
They sharply condemned that. And in general it was quite an interesting, detailed declaration. The reaction here was mostly to ignore it. There were a few words, but they were mostly simply dismissing it as absurd, actually pretty similar to the way the protesters are dismissed. That's only the countries that account for 80% of the world's population.
That's another reflection of this process.
Well to get back to your point from a long detour: the organisations you mentioned, like the World Court, ILO, UNCTAD, UNESCO, to some extent, they do reflect the actual international community, not what they call the international community in the West. In the West the term international community refers to NATO. But the actual international community, they reflect it to some extent.
Not enormously, but to some extent. And for that very reason they're undermined. Cos they're not supposed to have any voice in world affairs. World affairs are supposed to be run by the rich and powerful in their own interests.
And the international financial institutions are much more reliable in that respect. Not totally reliable: like they too go in directions the West doesn't like, but more reliable just by the nature of the interactions they have control over them. I should say that some of the more constructive proposals for modifying the international institutions, for example those of Walden Bello, the Thai based international economist, who has written very well and importantly on these things, he's proposed not dismantling the World Trade Organisation, but reducing it.
Reducing its role in a much more diffuse international system, which would include, as equal participants, the ILO, the UN, other agencies which have a different constituency. And of course, changing it as well. These are not unserious proposals.
Chris Stone: The next question is about the forthcoming elections in the United States. The elections seem to represent a further hollowing out of democracy, a sham democracy. The question I'd like to ask is about the impact of the Nader campaign (Ralph Nader, Green Party Presidential candidate) on the elections. I heard that he was excluded from the first Presidential debate, hosted by the University of Massachusetts...
Noam Chomsky: All the debates. He's denounced by the press, including the liberal press. There's article after article. The usual style that's preferred is something like:
Dear Ralph, after all we've been through together, we've worked so hard together, how come you're betraying your comrades?
That's the preferred style. There's article after article like this. He's never given an opportunity to respond. They're afraid of him. Partly just because he's shaking up the very comfortable two-faction system. C. Wright Mills, I guess it was, pointed out probably fifty years ago almost, that the US has one party: the business party. (4).
And it's had that one party for a long time. And the party has two factions, which have somewhat different constituencies, and therefore behave a little differently. That pretty much has been the case, and it still is the case. So you now have two moderate Republicans running, and that satisfies the corporate media very, very much.
I'm not saying that there aren't arguments for voting for Gore, yeah. But what really worries them is that Nader is taking a kind of populist position, which they know has a lot of appeal, and therefore he has to be shot down.
(1). Bretton Woods System: a system of international financial regulation, set up in the post war period, in which all other currencies were fixed relative to the dollar, while the dollar was fixed relative to gold.
Created international financial stability by discouraging speculation. Dismantled unilaterally by the US in the early 70s. In the 1960s approximately 90% of capital was given over to investment and trade, while 10% was speculative. By the 1990s those figures were reversed.
As Chomsky says (World Orders, Old And New, p272): “Daily speculative flow now regularly exceed the combined foreign exchange reserves of all the G7 governments.”
(2).”During the Reagan years real wages declined for the lower 60% of American males... rising for the top 20%.” (World Orders, Old And New, p242.)
(3). MIT economist Rudiger Dornbusch points out that of the gain in per capita income in Reagan-Bush years, “70% accrued to the top 1% of income earners, while the bottom lost absolutely,” so that “for most Americans, it is no longer true that the young generation can count on being economically ahead of its parents,” a significant turning point in the history of industrial society. Mid-1992 polls found that 75 percent of the population do not expect life to improve for the next generation. (Quoted in World Orders, Old And New, p242.)
(4). ‘As Adam Smith observed, they pursue “the vile maxim of the masters,” using state power to ensure that the interests of the “principal architects” of policy will be “most peculiarly attended to,” whatever the effect on others. Their minions meanwhile cloak social reality in the guise of benevolence and harmony, labouring to keep the “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” in their place: far removed from the political arena though granted a periodic choice between representatives of the business party, with little danger of much deviation in any event, given the constraints imposed on policy by concentrated private power, increasingly international in scale, with financial power (and its low growth, low wage impact) gaining unprecedented importance.’ (World Orders, Old And New, p322). /|\