Optimism over Despair: On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change

by Noam Chomsky

The United States is, to an unusual extent, a business-run society, without roots in traditional societies in which, with all their severe flaws, people had some kind of place. Its history as a settler-colonial and slave society has left its social and cultural legacy, along with other factors, such as the unusual role of religious fundamentalism.

One consequence is what Walter Dean Burnham calls a “crucial comparative peculiarity of the American political system: the total absence of a socialist or laborite mass party as an organized competitor in the electoral market.” He showed that this accounts for much of the “class-skewed abstention rates” that he demonstrated for the United States, and the downplaying of class-related issues in the largely business-run political system. In some ways the system is a legacy of the Civil War, which has never really been overcome. Today’s “red states” are solidly based in the Confederacy, which was solidly Democratic before the civil rights movement and Nixon’s “Southern strategy” shifted party labels.

The nineteenth-century reactionary opponent of the Enlightenment, Joseph de Maistre, criticized Thomas Hobbes for adopting the Roman phrase, “Man is a wolf to man,” observing that it is unfair to wolves, who do not kill for pleasure.

Trump draws substantial support from nativists and racists—it’s worth remembering that the United States has been at the extreme, even beyond South Africa, in the strength of white supremacy,

And there is every reason to believe that there would be enormous savings if the United States adopted the far more efficient national health care programs of other countries, which have about half the health care expenditures of the United States and generally better outcomes. The same is true of his proposals for higher taxes on the rich, free higher education, and other parts of his domestic programs, mostly reflecting New Deal commitments and similar to policy choices during the most successful growth periods of the post–World War II period.

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ’50s and ’60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschild’s sensitive and illuminating portrayal of a Trump stronghold in Louisiana, where she lived and worked for many years.2 She uses the image of a line in which residents are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they work hard and keep to all the conventional values. But their position in the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see people leaping forward, but that does not cause much distress, because it is “the American way” for (alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is what is happening behind them. They believe that “undeserving people” who do not “follow the rules” are being moved in front of them by federal government programs they erroneously see as designed to benefit African Americans, immigrants, and others they often regard with contempt. All of this is exacerbated by Ronald Reagan’s racist fabrications about “welfare queens” (by implication Black) stealing white people’s hard-earned money and other fantasies.

Trump, who gives voice to people with legitimate grievances—people who have lost not just jobs but also a sense of personal self-worth—and who rails against the government that they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason).

Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The Republicans have moved so far toward a dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that they cannot hope to get votes on their actual programs, and have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists, and the victims of the current forms of globalization.

There is good reason to believe that we have already entered the Sixth Extinction, a period of destruction of species on a massive scale, comparable to the Fifth Extinction 65 million years ago, when three-quarters of the species on earth were destroyed, apparently by a huge asteroid.

What immediate but realistic and enforceable actions could or should be taken to tackle the climate change threat? Rapid ending of use of fossil fuels, sharp increase in renewable energy, research into new options for sustainable energy, significant steps toward conservation, and, not least, a far-reaching critique of the capitalist model of human and resource exploitation; even apart from its ignoring of externalities, the latter is a virtual death knell for the species.

No belief concerning US foreign policy is more deeply entrenched than the one regarding the spread of American-style democracy. The thesis is commonly not even expressed, merely presupposed as the basis for reasonable discourse on the US role in the world.

Desperately needed food supplies were withheld to coerce obedience, and gangsters were organized to provide goon squads and strike breakers, a matter that is described with some pride in semiofficial US labor histories, which praise the AFL (American Federation of Labor) for its achievements in helping to save Europe by splitting and weakening the labor movement

The CIA reconstituted the Mafia for these purposes, in one of its early operations. The quid pro quo was restoration of the heroin trade. The US government connection to the drug boom continued for many decades.

The Vatican announced that anyone who voted for the Communists in the 1948 election would be denied sacraments, and backed the conservative Christian Democrats under the slogan O con Cristo o contro Cristo (Either with Christ or against Christ). A year later, Pope Pius excommunicated all Italian Communists.

Every time there is a crisis, the taxpayer is called on to bail out the banks and the major financial institutions. If you had a real capitalist economy in place, that would not be happening. Capitalists who made risky investments and failed would be wiped out. But the rich and powerful do not want a capitalist system.

The United States professes to be a democracy, but it has clearly become something of a plutocracy, although it is still an open and free society by comparative standards.

Now, the so-called American Dream was always based partly in myth and partly in reality. From the early nineteenth century onward and up until fairly recently, working-class people, including immigrants, had expectations that their lives would improve in American society through hard work. And that was partly true, although it did not apply for the most part to African Americans and women until much later. This no longer seems to be the case. Stagnating incomes, declining living standards, outrageous student debt levels, and hard-to-come-by decent-paying jobs have created a sense of hopelessness among many Americans, who are beginning to look with certain nostalgia toward the past.

Sanders is an honest and committed New Dealer. The fact that he’s considered “radical” tells us how far the elite political spectrum has shifted to the right during the neoliberal period.

Medicaid only helps poor people who “don’t matter” and don’t vote Republican anyway. So, according to Republican logic, why should the rich pay taxes to maintain it?

it is important to remember that the United States does not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—though in fact the UDHR was largely the initiative of Eleanor Roosevelt,

The Bush II administration maintained the tradition by voting alone to reject a UN resolution on the right to food and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (the resolution passed 52–1).

Comparison of the attitude toward elementary rights of labor and extraordinary rights of private power tells us a good deal about the nature of American society.

Insurance companies are in the business of making money, not providing health care, and when they undertake the latter, it is likely not to be in the best interests of patients or to be efficient. Administrative costs are far greater in the private component of the health care system than in Medicare, which itself suffers by having to work through the private system.

“Reducing U.S. administrative costs to Canadian levels would save at least $209 billion annually, enough to fund universal coverage.”

Another anomalous feature of the US system is the law banning the government from negotiating drug prices, which leads to highly inflated prices in the United States as compared with other countries.

At the same time, polls in the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, the Washington Post, and other media found overwhelming public support for government guarantees to everyone of “the best and most advanced health care that technology can supply.” But that is only public support. The press reported correctly that there was little “political support” and that what the public wants is “politically impossible”—a polite way of saying that the financial and pharmaceutical industries will not tolerate it, and in American democracy, that’s what counts.

The question directs our attention to a profound democratic deficit in an atomized society, lacking the kind of popular associations and organizations that enable the public to participate in a meaningful way in determining the course of political, social, and economic affairs. These would crucially include a strong and participatory labor movement and actual political parties growing from public deliberation and participation instead of the elite-run candidate-producing groups that pass for political parties.

An educated public is surely a prerequisite for a functioning democracy—where “educated” means not just informed but enabled to inquire freely and productively, the primary end of education. That goal is sometimes advanced, sometimes impeded, in actual practice, and to shift the balance in the right direction is a major task—a task of unusual importance in the United States, in part because of its unique power, in part because of ways in which it differs from other developed societies. It is important to remember that although the richest country in the world for a long time, until World War II, the United States was something of a cultural backwater. If one wanted to study advanced science or math, or to become a writer and artist, one would often be attracted to Europe. That changed with World War II for obvious reasons, but only for part of the population. To take what is arguably the most important question in human history, how to deal with climate change, one impediment is that in the United States, 40 percent of the population sees it as no problem because Christ will return within the next few decades—symptomatic of many other pre-modern features of the society and culture.

In more recent years, higher education was virtually free. After World War II, the GI Bill provided tuition and even subsidies to millions of people who would probably never have gone to college, which was highly beneficial to them and contributed to the great postwar growth period. Even private colleges had very low fees by contemporary standards. And the country then was far poorer than it is today.

In assessing developments in Cuba since it achieved independence under Castro in January 1959, one cannot overlook the fact that from almost the first moment, Cuba was subjected to vicious attack by the global superpower. By late 1959, planes based in Florida were bombing Cuba. By March, a secret decision was made to overthrow the government. The incoming Kennedy administration carried out the Bay of Pigs invasion. Its failure led to near hysteria in Washington, and Kennedy launched a war to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba, in the words of his close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his semiofficial biography of Robert Kennedy, who was placed in charge of the operation as his highest priority. It was no small affair, and was one of the factors that led to the missile crisis, which Schlesinger rightly described as the most dangerous moment in history. After the crisis, the terrorist war resumed. Meanwhile, a crushing embargo was imposed, which took a huge toll on Cuba. It continues to this day, opposed by virtually the entire world. When Russian aid ended, Clinton made the embargo harsher, and a few years later, the Helms-Burton Act made it harsher still. The effects have of course been very severe. They are reviewed in a comprehensive study by Salim Lamrani. Particularly onerous has been the impact on the health system, deprived of essential medical supplies. Despite the attack, Cuba has developed a remarkable health system, and has an unmatched record o...

Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation.

Is Bernie Sanders merely a New Dealer, or perhaps a European social democrat, or something further to the left? He seems to me a decent and honest New Dealer—which is not so different from European social democracy

US political history is rather unusual among the developed state capitalist societies. The political parties have not been class-based to the same extent as elsewhere. They have been regional in large part, a residue of the Civil War, which has still not ended. In the last election, for example, the red (Republican) states looked remarkably like the Confederacy—party names switched after the civil rights movement opened the way for Nixon’s racist “Southern strategy.” The parties have also been based on rather ad hoc coalitions, which blur any possible class lines further, leaving the two parties as basically factions of the ruling business party, in the familiar phrase.

On socialism establishing roots among the young, one has to be cautious. It’s not clear that “socialism” in the current context means something different from New Deal–style welfare-state capitalism—which would, in fact, be a very healthy development in today’s ugly context.

Furthermore, work that Lenneberg also initiated reveals that the human language capacity appears to be dissociated quite sharply from other cognitive capacities. It is, furthermore, not only the vehicle of thought, but also probably the generative source of substantial parts of our thinking.

In his book Propaganda, a founding document of the industry, Bernays explained that engineering consent and “regimentation” were necessary in democratic societies so as to ensure that the “intelligent minority” will be able to act (of course, for the benefit of all) without the interference of the annoying public, who must be kept passive, obedient, and diverted; passionate consumerism is the obvious device, based on “creating wants” by various means.

In both domains, we can perceive, or at least hope, that at the core of human nature is what Bakunin called “an instinct for freedom,” which reveals itself both in the creative aspect of normal language use and in the recognition that no form of domination, authority, hierarchy is self-justifying: each must justify itself, and if it cannot, which is usually the case, then it should be dismantled in favor of greater freedom and justice. That seems to me the core idea of anarchism, deriving from its classical liberal roots and deeper perceptions—or beliefs, or hopes—about essential human nature. Libertarian socialism moves further to bring in ideas about sympathy, solidarity, mutual aid, also with Enlightenment roots and conceptions of human nature.

We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up, and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the opportunities that surely exist, and maybe help make the world a better place. Not much of a choice.