Noam Chomsky - "Chomsky on Humainsm" (2007)

I'm Chomsky has been a leading intellectual of the left for more than 35 years and has written about and spoken to a variety of issues including capitalist economics the nation-state focusing on an extensive critique of the powers that be and the policies of the United States education socialism war in peace and anarchism he began his career in the study of language and is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century recently professor Chomsky author of over 30 books of science and of politics has been a subject of an interview along with Gilbert ash Carr by New Jersey based political scientist Stephen Shalom in the book titled perilous power the Middle East and u.s. foreign policy in this book he discusses among other things the resurgence of religious fundamentalism in both the Middle East and within this country and offers some perspective on what might be the cause or causes of the trend also in a recent interview in the humanist the flagship magazine of the American Humanist Association professor Chomsky continues his analysis of religious fundamentalism as well as talks about other issues at the core of the humanist worldview equal time for free thought spoke to professor Chomsky a few weeks ago on the substance of humanist thought from naturalism and religious critique to the political and economic structures which must be in place in order for us to affect the social changes necessary toward creating a humanistic futureworld society here is part 1 of that discussion first let me say that equal time and free thought is very happy to have you join us today professor Chomsky your work covers much ground on the human condition from language and the understanding of human consciousness to humanities social political relationships and further to the way we share Earth's natural and human-made resources and still more equal time for free thoughts central mission is to promote a scientific naturalist worldview in understanding the human condition which of course includes much of what I laid out regarding your intellectual curriculum the end result for us is a set of principles and ideas which together form a larger philosophy or way of seeing the world which though not exactly the same thing as conceived by each one of us at every moment we call humanism to begin this conversation I'll give this to my co-host Neil Murphy Neil thank you very much Barry professor Chomsky welcome to equal time for free thought very glad to be with you thank you a few months ago the humanists which is the magazine of the humanist association publish their interview with you on humanism and other related free thought questions now before we move forward do you consider yourself a humanist and if so what characteristics would you include in such a philosophy let me begin by quoting a philosopher friend of mine who once said the right a critical analysis of work of mine and he started off by saying that scratching his head he said the problem with me is that the only ism I believe in his truism so which is not entirely false so the other things I agree with but I don't associate myself with any particular ism now modern humanism is said to be based on scientific naturalism and our philosophy isn't performing by what we learn about the universe and ourselves through the physical and social sciences do you feel that naturalism is the most appropriate point of view toward understanding what sort of creatures we are I think it that's what I that's my professional life so sure I think it's a fine thing to do but the truth of the matter is that these are from the point of view of science most of these topics are almost inaccessible and for now and I suspect for the indefinite future we'll probably learn more about human beings from literature and we will from science that's an interesting point why would you say that science deals with questions that are at the periphery of understanding to try to understand the nature of insects is difficult enough when you reach anything as complicated as humans it's it becomes an extremely hard problem one reason is that we can't do invasive experimentation with humans so when you want to study but we happen to know a lot about the human visual system for example but the reason is because we permit ourselves rightly or wrongly to do invasive experimentation with cats and monkeys and we have a more or less similar visual system but humans are very unusual creature biologically isolated in many respects and we don't really learn a lot about them from some but not a lot from the stations we allow ourselves to conduct with other organisms that's one impediment understanding another is this just very complicated what is your view overall and supernaturalism now for the moment let's separate this for we might call religion which can mean several things like established churches and organized ideology do you think holding a supernatural worldview is healthy and beneficial for Humanity it's not for me I don't see any point to it at all on the other hand I know that it means religious beliefs and other forms of supernatural and having to mean a lot to a lot of people if I find someone who's say mourning the loss of a dead child and is comforted by the idea that they will be reunited with a child in heaven it's not my business to take to try to convince them that their belief is incorrect in fact in a way I think they're lucky to be able to have such a belief I don't have it and I don't think in the long run it's healthy but the can't legislate to other people of what they should believe in order to say comfort themselves it almost sounds like you have a lazy fair attitude towards religious belief in other words as long as one person's private morality doesn't interfere with someone else's then you can sort of live and let live is that a fair assessment absolutely fair okay what in general do you feel that about religions role in human society both historically and here in the 21st century overall I think it's in terms of its effect on policy ranging from social policy to war I think it's been mostly negative in fact often extremely negative with regard to individuals it varies for a lot of people it just means a lot and always has what do you attribute to that do you think there's something biological like many people have argued that we're sort of hardwired for religion do you think that religion is sort of keeping in lockstep with evolutionary processes first of all we know very little about the evolution of humans in any relevant respect I mean we know a lot about you know the fossil record and so on but when you get to human cognitive capacities or and so however what we call sometimes higher mental faculties the evolutionary record is just extremely thin we're a very recent product of evolution modern humans from a cognitive perspective cognitive behavioral perspective only emerged within roughly the last hundred thousand years which is a like a flick of an eye in evolutionary time and we're all more or less identical this for a little genetic variation one relevant genetic variation among humans because there's been we probably come from a small breeding group somewhere in East Africa you know probably no later than say fifty thousand years ago there's no time for anything to have happened uh and we could in a sense it's like almost my view virtually a tautology to say that the commitment to religious belief is the result of evolution because we're the result of evolution just like my my chin is my toenails are so so are my higher mental faculties but that just doesn't tell you very much I mean we all know without playing kind of doing pop science that people do want to find ways to give an intelligible picture of the universe around them to find comfort to find association with others and they do it in all kinds of ways some of them we call religion a lot of some what we call magic in modern and the modern period period of the rise of organized modern science course goes way back but really as a major phenomenon in human life there's been a concerted attempt to explain to gain an understanding of the world by means that do permit confirmation dis confirmation building on the results of others and so on so we call science ok that we should push that as far as we can surely we want to understand as much as we can about the world and that's the best way to understand it do you think that religion overall I'm talking here about monotheistic religions Christianity Judaism Islam do you think that it's the case that religious believers are asking the right questions about the meaning of life and creating some type of order but that the solutions are dangerous well personally I don't think they're asking the right questions about life but and that's why I don't ask those questions so Jewish in background but I don't repeat the I believe X plus all the XY z-- and Z's that you're supposed to do because I don't believe no I don't see any reason to believe them my grandfather did repeat them and whether he believes them or not I frankly don't even know because Judaism traditional Judaism was more a religion of practice than of belief so he observed his very Orthodox but the observed the practices and I never asked him did he believe what he was saying because it kind of wasn't relevant that's not what the religion was there were others who may believe choose to believe let's say this or other monotheistic religions but I don't seek that and it's the same less a fair attitude if you like if that's if that kind of belief contributes to people's sense of where they stand in the world personal comfort does identification with the community and so on well that's their choice it's quite a different matter when their choices impinge on what others do so I think we should have for example I was appalled the other day when I was listening to reports and problems on NPR or maybe I was reading reports of Mitt Romney's first talk on maybe was the Republican debate you know one of those places where he gave read yeah I was listening to pieces of it and he gave a what was considered a very high-minded speech about the role of religion and politics he said the word something like this that the constitute we should keep to the constitutional separation of church and state which means that it doesn't matter what faith president has but of course it's presuppose that he must be committed to one of the monotheistic religions that's not what that amendment says I find it interesting that in today's political climate it almost seems that you have to be close to a religious extremists to be taken seriously I mean if you listen to even John Kerry in the O for election he was trying to profess his you know Catholic beliefs as a kind of litmus test for his legitimacy does that trend in American politics concern you very much so it's extremely dangerous I think it's extremely cynical I mean the US has been a deeply fundamentalist society since its origins I mean the early colonists were religious extremists and the various waves of colonization that here at sins in New England you know that spread across the country also were you know waving the holy book while they exterminated the evens and that sort of thing but and there's been repeated periods of religious revival ISM there's kind of like mass hysteria of religious revival ISM the most recent and quite significant one was in the 1950s far back and there were others since nineteen seventeen eighty I guess something new has happened the religious fundamentalism has been a political managers party managers and so on recognized something that they kind of ignored before that you can manipulate religious beliefs extremist religious beliefs into creation of a voting bloc and since about 1980 what you describe has been the case every just about every candidate for high office a president portrays themselves whether accurately or not as you know a person of deep religious faith I suspect some of them are about as religious as you and I are right Clinton yeah the for instance Karl Rove has repeatedly said that he's not in fact he was mentioned in a recent article that he's not one of them in other words that they're cynically manipulating this base for their own personal power so it's not that they're sincerely motivated by religious concerns but they see this base as a way of ensuring their own self interest is that a fair assessment I didn't see that comment but that that's the way I that's what I conclude from just observing what's been happening I suspect I've never really seen a study of this but I suspect that it began with Carter who was undoubtedly quite sincere but he's the first president who's or went out of his way to present himself or Trey himself as a deeply believing Christian and I think party managers got the point yeah you can use that way of appealing to a substantial electoral base and since starting with the 1980 election I think it's just been just about every candidate in 1980 I recall there were three candidates Carter Reagan Anderson all presented themselves as are their managers you know their handlers presented them as deeply religious whether they were not to knows I'm Carter probably I'm sure was and Robert the others and since then that's been the case and it's extremely cynical and at first I will nobody cared very much whether say Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon went to church maybe they did maybe they didn't but it wasn't an issue it wasn't relevant it didn't pay a lot of attention to it since in these last roughly 25 years it's right in the front and of course it's not called religion anymore so called faith everything has to be faith based meaning some form of commitment dedication is one of the organized religions leading ultimately to the kind of comment from Romney that I mentioned which was lauded whereas it should have been bitterly denounced and yes that's head of our negative impact in a lot of respects as is intended I mean it's a way to from the point of view of party managers it's a way to marginalize control and a demise a population that they're afraid of I mean they can read the same opinion polls you and I can and they know perfectly well that the positions of the two political parties are too sometimes they call to factions of the same party on many crucial issues way to the right of the population so therefore elections have to keep away from issues as they do I want to follow up on the point you made about faith because it almost seems that there's a connection between you know the Republican Party maybe in some ways the Democratic Party and a faith-based worldview because if faith is believing something for which there is no evidence and the Republicans paint themselves as the sort of divine managers for lack of a better phrase it would seem that what the Republican electorate wants is a kind of submissive faith-based populace to secede their own political power and representation to them to sort of act on their interest but yet at the same time as you said they're being cynically manipulated do you agree with that if you look at the opinions of the Republican base they are not being represented by the Republican Party that's true an issue after issue go through the details now but there's a lot of detailed study of that both on some and there's others the population including the Republican part of the Republican base is strongly opposed to policy on many crucial issues a domestic and international to give one example out of a thousand short in the last electoral campaign 2004 it turns out that Bush voters were barely aware of his policies some small percentage of them may be you know two digits were familiar with his policies in one case and there are many a majority of people who voted for Bush thought that he supported the Kyoto Protocol Wayne did not of course it was strongly you know I don't know what he thinks but his party was strongly against it but people believed it and they believed that because they're in favor of it very very strongly in favor of it and he's a kind of a nice guy that's the way he's presented in the imagery and delusion that passes for elections here so he must believe it and it's the same and a whole bunch of issues in the humanist magazine interview you talk about Americans as being one of the most Americans me as being one of the most fearful societies how does religion in European come into play with regard to this fear organized religion can be used and often is you as a way to separate ourselves from menacing Outsiders who don't share our fundamental belief and that can be manipulated into creating fear actually the the long-standing element of fear in American society I think has different origins and you can see it when you ask what are people afraid of actually good study this in literature popular literature by Bruce Hank Franklin who studies a little literary scholar at the Rutgers told the worst stars he runs through the striking theme of fear in popular American literature since colonial times it turns out that pretty consistently people have been terrified of some group that they are destroying so in the early days it was fear of these avid Indians no later it was fear of the blacks than it was fear of the heathen Chinese who were going to conquer us this is late nineteenth century and and so it continues I mean take say Ronald Reagan perhaps recall just twenty years ago he was a cowering in his cowboy boots about the threat of the Nicaraguan army only two days from Arlington Texas had to call a national emergency informed the press that he remembers Winston Churchill and how Churchill stood up for Hitler and despite the odds against him a Reagan will not be different you know will not succumb to this awesome threat and will defendant ourselves and we will defend ourselves I mean looking at this from the outside you don't know whether to laugh or cry you know but yeah that strike support regarding terrorism from the point of view of religious fundamentalism there have been writers who have been dubbed in New Atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins who feel that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and al-qaeda are not acting on economic or even political motivations so much as they're acting on their conviction of how humans ought to act and think based on the Koran others would argue that the political motivations are what's driving the issues in the Middle East and not religious motivations on this issue of religion as the chicken or the egg what are your thoughts depends or you're talking about I mean first of all Muslim brothers is not it is not essentially a terrorist groups a social and political group no it's been involved in terrorism but who hasn't the if you look at the appeal of groups like say the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots like Hamas in Israel which kind of offshoot of it or or Hezbollah and Lebanon they have a trans mount of popular appeal but it would be very misleading to say that it's religious there's an element of that I mean they provide social services and that the government does mega Veil the air they're a kind of a populist social economic group that's where their support comes from it sounds I'm sorry to interject I just wanted to get your opinion on this it sounds like what you're saying is because there are no secular nationalist alternatives these groups are filling a vacuum that secular nationalist governments would fill is that a fair that's not only fair but it's been concerted US policy and concerted Israeli policy secular nationalism has been regarded by as an extreme threat it's and it finally collapsed partly from its own internal corruption and so on but partly just from the hammer blows against it but I'm going to take us Palmas for example with its earlier manifestations in clubs of Hamas then were supported by Israel as a weapon against secular Palestinian nationalism of the United States our oldest and most valued ally in the Middle East is the most extreme fundamentalist tehrani in the world Saudi Arabia by comparison Iran looks like a modern developed Society and the reason is of course where the oil is but the US was constantly backing it was in the 60s supporting Saudi Arabia against secular nationalism represented by Nasser who was regarded as the main threat he was Hitler as Dulles called how Hitler yeah secular nationalism has always been regarded as a major threat you don't want that it's dangerous might have a PE or might even begin to use resources for the population general population that's a danger and there you know not a hundred percent but quite systematically a US policy and in their own region Israeli policy has tended to support religious fundamentalism as a weapon against secular nationalism I mean perhaps the most dramatic case is Pakistan dangerous countries in the world with a strong element of religious extremism well I was sponsored by a Ronald Reagan you know in fact Reagan there was a brutal dictator at the Reagan years as heel hook who worked really hard to eliminate the secular elements in society brought in Saudi Arabian money poured in to build the Madras as you know the religious schools which became terrorist training schools a lot of them Reagan even went to the extent of denying that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons although the US government of course no you wouldn't know they were and you know then we end up with you know the Kahn networks have been distributing and the nuclear weapons and missiles around the world it was strongly sponsored by the United States when I say Reagan I don't mean to imply that he actually knew about it he may not have known anything about it but his administration certainly did do you think overall I'm gonna ask if this might seem a little naive but I'd like to get your opinion on this do you think religion overall is the main cause for conflict and suffering over the last thousand years in the sense of creating the conditions that we have in the 21st century or do you think that's a little bit simplistic I think it's not a little bit but the Norma Street simplistic I just take the current period right now some of the worst maybe the worst atrocities going on in the world in the last few years are in the eastern Congo where estimates are maybe four million people killed I don't think religion had anything significant to do about it right now the the u.s. invaded Iraq of course hundreds of thousands of people killed the society devastated you know millions fleeing may move on to conceivable it might move on to attack it Rand is a religion involved in fact the u.s. attacked a secular tyranny in Iraq and you've been listening to part one of the discussion on humanism with professor Noam Chomsky part two of our discussion will air next week at 6:30 p.m. meeting everyone my name is Barry Simon and this is equal time for free thought a forum to explore the evidence based worldview built upon a foundation of scientific naturalism and secular humanism on this program we examine why we think such a worldview should be the basis of a progressive future society today we are proud to present part 2 of a two-part series with famed political analyst Nam Chomsky we've asked professor Chomsky questions about religion what he thought about human nature as well as economics and political ideals that might help us articulate what we need to do towards a future humanist society Noam Chomsky has been leading intellectual on the left for more than 35 years and has written about and spoken to a variety of issues including capitalist economics the nation-state focusing on an extensive critique of the powers that be and the policies of the United States as well as on education socialism war and peace and anarchism he began his career in the study of language and is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century recently professor Chomsky author of over 30 books of science and of politics has been a subject of an interview along with Gilbert ash Carr by new jersey-based political scientist Steven Shalom in the book titled perilous power the Middle East and u.s. foreign policy equal time for free thoughts spoke to Professor Chomsky a few weeks ago on the substance of humanist thoughts from naturalism and religious critique to the political and economic structures which must be in place in order for us to affect the social changes necessary toward creating a humanistic futureworld society here is part two of that discussion last week we began our talk on religion with the discussion of supernaturalism and naturalism the primary attribute of supernatural thinking is that there are magical entities or for which control the fate of humanity on the contrary most natural ists argue that humans are actually just one sort of animal very much part of the natural world this then means that our behaviors are determined by some combination of a genetic makeup and the environment from birth to death act and how that environment acts on those genes do you think such a naturalism leaves open the possibility of free will which seems to contradict our notion of cause-and-effect universe no it doesn't contradict anything it just says that we don't know whether the phenomenon that we will experience it's our most immediate experience the phenomena of freedom of will is a real aspect of the universe that we simply don't comprehend yet or maybe ever or whether it's an illusion that can be explained in some other fashion that question just remains open there's plenty of things we don't understand for example we don't really have a an intuitive grasp of something which now naturaliss take for granted namely that if I move my hand I can I'm moving the moon you know that there can be interaction at a distance when Newton proposed that he regarded as a total absurdity that's why he which is he said no person of sound scientific understanding can imagine to be true for a moment if I could spent the rest of his life trying to find some way to get around it as did leading scientists of his day but for centuries afterwards it finally became scientific common sense well there are things about the world we just can't comprehend and it's we don't know how far if we are just part of the animal world as I believe and I think you believe then our cognitive capacities are going to be like all our other capacities they'll have a certain scope and they'll have certain limits that's the nature of a biological organism you're suggesting that until we know more about the workings of the human mind or you know that neuroscience is it's starting to show us we can't divinity come down one way or another on the freewill question it's more of a matter of intuition and still the realm of philosophy Bertrand Russell pointed out back in the 1920s and I think correctly that there are several grades of confidence that we have or we should have in our belief system the highest confidence is in our immediate experience mmm the second level of confidence he said is in the report of immediate experience by others who are like us and the third level lowest level of confidence would be in the scientific constructions that we develop to try to make some sense out of our experience well you know our most immediate experience I can't think of anything more immediate and less questionable is that I could decide right now to say hang up the phone or start talking about you know the Boston Red Sox or thousand other things but I'm not going to do it because it wouldn't be appropriate our most immediate experience is that we act in ways which are somehow appropriate situations which is quite different than saying they're caused by them now maybe there is some way of accounting for our choices in terms of the circumstances in which were placed and something internal to us but you know that's a thesis it's certainly counterintuitive and and I think philosophers who discuss what do you call themself determinists like your friend of mine ten hundred would argue that it is counterintuitive and it might be easier to dismiss what they call counter causal freewill and then to affirm pure determinism but it is it is a very complex question I don't even believe that it's a complex question I think it's something that we simply do not know mmm-hmm there are a lot of things we don't know one of them is whether the immediate experience of freedom of will is an illusion or whether it is in fact an aspect of the universe that we have not yet come to comprehend and that our cognitive capacities may not allow us to comprehend just as our cognitive capacities we are serious about it are like Newton's they do not like allow us to comprehend the that action without contact as possible we accept it and we understand theories about it but as a big difference between intelligibility of theories and intelligibility of the world in fact what happened in the Newtonian revolution took a long time for it to sink in was that the aspirations of science were lower in the early modern scientific revolutions a Galileo up through Newton and beyond the assumption was guiding idea was that the world is like is a kind of a complicated machine sort of like a clock you know the fancy clocks that artists entitled just a lot more complicated and we can understand and and our goal is to try to gain the understanding of how this machine works well when Newton came along he was accused of reviving occult forces the things that machine can't have like action at a distance and he really was accepted that and you know he's not a fool nor were the other great scientists of the day and in fact if you look at what really happened over time the aspirations were lowered the goals of science were lowered from intelligibility of the world which we kind of give up to intelligibility of theoretical explanations of the world which we hold and try to pursue well the reason why I'm asking this question at all because I think it might be important due to the understanding it might offer us and how we treat one another especially with regard to say the criminal justice system for instance if we understand that we're not ultimately responsible for our actions as determinants say we might want to alter our rather punitive methodology regarding methodology regarding punishment and reward and we focus our efforts on creating a healthier environment from the get-go I think I mean I agree with your goal we should what you're describing but I think that's totally independent of what speculations we have about the nature of freedom of the will we do it anyway I mean in our ordinary lives and in human affairs we simply take for granted that people have freedom of will just as we see in ourselves and that they therefore have more responsibilities how we proceed to deal with the questions that arise that's a matter of the level of humanity and of civilization that we've achieved for example really serious problems in the United States about this take for example incarceration the u.s. is just off the chart in incarceration and it's not you know in our culture you go back 25 years it wasn't true the same society 25 years ago and incarceration levels were within the spectrum of other industrial societies will it or the high end but not much another off the chart did our culture change that takes a incarceration of children children with life and the International did a report about a year or so ago on a cross-country examination of children who are in prison for life without possibility of parole well there very few I think there's a couple of thousand around the world I mean in countries which have any sort of statistics I'm not talking about eastern Congo the and the United States had almost all I mean that's just scandalous a kid is in prison for life without possibility of parole because when they were 12 years old they happen to be at the scene of a robbery where felony was committed yeah you know how to comment on this this has absolutely nothing to do with what we what speculations we may have about the nature of freedom well I want to get into those kind of questions which had to do with the state of our economics and the like but just as a sort of a segue into that and coming from the freewill question what do you think behaviorally speaking humans primarily are that is do you think we have a sort of Hobbesian human nature or plastic human nature or something else because this seems to when you hear either conservatives or liberals or people on the far right or far left discuss what kind of policies and what kind of economics and what we should have you know how we should deal with the rest of the world it usually always often comes back Lisa to justify their opinions it always comes back to well this is what humans are and this is therefore more natural for us to do a you know have a capitalist society or B have a social Society what do you think is the basic human nature that or do you think that we have a basic human nature I believe that we are part of the natural world okay therefore we have a nature it's our genetic endowment determines substantially what our nature is in fact if you look at the growth of any organism us bees you know yeast would have a like there are actually three factors that enter into its growth and development one is its genetic Constitution another is environmental effects and a third is just the way laws of nature work which is a turns out as a major effect and the inquiry into biological organisms takes all of those into account or should as for our human nature the genetic endowment that we essentially share very little is known about it I mean it's just a really hard question and as I mentioned in our earlier discussion a lot of the ways of studying it are excluded simply because we don't allow invasive experimentation hmm the and it you know it's hard enough to learn about insect nature where we allow ourselves anything much simpler organisms so what do we know about human nature well most of our knowledge comes from history experience literary exploration and so on that's what our knowledge comes from what does it tell us it tells us that of course humans are partially plastic-like I'll speak Swahili for example so we're partially plastic on the other hand there's there has to be an enormous uniformity at a level right below the surface and what we see on the surface is a wide range of possibilities I mean we see people who are acting in a beastly fashion we see others who are kind of sacrificing their lives to save dolphins one of the the sciences and I'm not sure it would be categorized the hard science or soft science or it's a it's an emerging science evolutionary psychology people like yo Wilson and Steven Pinker have come around and and said they understand what human nature is and it's based on this new science are you saying then that they are either still just guessing or do they have some some scientific backing that from what you have if you've read any of their work yes I know there were a lot of them it was now called evolutionary psychology was in fact initiated about a century ago over a century ago by Peter Kropotkin the analyzed thinker and naturalist wrote a book called the mutual aid a factor in evolution mmm-hmm and in it he investigated he was basically trying to counter social Darwinist he was Darwin Darwinist himself and he argued by looking at a lot of naturalistic phenomena other animals human history and so on he argued that if you look at it you discover that mutual aid had a provided a selectional advantage and therefore organisms were had evolved through selection including humans to be deeply committed to one or another form of mutual aid well you know that's not what elite opinion wants to hear mmm they want to hear some other story so therefore for potkins form of evolutionary psychology essentially disappeared I've been revived to some extent the actual modern the modern state of evolutionary psychology as I mean it's not that there's no science there at all there's some you know like sake in selection is real reciprocal altruism is real a couple other things are real but very little is known it's Finn this is not physics and certain it's not molecular biology it's not chemistry it's a largely guess is not it's a worthwhile topic to pursue thank you mine topic to pursue in fact it's where my own professional work is in particular areas but we should be scientists particularly should be very cautious about inducing the in diluting the public to think that they know more than they do mmm science has held an enormous respect for good reasons and therefore scientists have a responsibility to make very clear here's what we know here's we don't know and what we know in these areas happens to be extremely thin not because they're not good scientists but because the questions are too hard so you consider yourself an anarchist or libertarian socialist I believe one species of anarchist pardon the phrase since we're talking about biology no is called free-market anarchists they argue that markets market societies become a problem only via corporate capitalism or as in me Milton Friedman's brand of conservative libertarianism and that market abolitionism is tossing out the baby with the bathwater do you think there can be a place for markets in in a non capitalistic perhaps even non statist society and it was sort of quickly jumping into this maybe we should backtrack a little bit and discuss what what you think about capitalism and markets well first first of all I'm you know I have to kind of give the same response that Gandhi gave when he was asked what he thought about Western civilization that maybe it'd be a good idea right right okay one can say the same about markets maybe it would be a good idea but there are no markets some of the only market societies that the only social systems that approximate market societies are poor colonized underdeveloped countries where it's been rammed down the throats and that goes way back I mean if the United States se had ever been a market Society we would now be pursuing our comparative advantage of exporting fish and fur a few scattered people who lived here the u.s. developed as did every other rich and developed society by a radical violation of market principles extremely high tariffs most protectionist country in the world through its period of growth a state intervention to manage and control industry Industrial Policy right at this moment it's essentially a logical impossibility for the United States to enter into free-trade agreements because our own economy depends crucially on the state sector that's where we get computers and the internet and telecommunications and the containers that allow trade and lasers also see an aircraft just look across the board relies very heavily on the state sector for its dynamism its innovation and so on so it's room very remote from a free-market society and so is every other one that had choices the societies that it takes a the modern so-called Tigers you know the East Asian Tigers with great growth period Taiwan South Korea China Japan they did it the same way the currently rich societies did namely by violating market rules but you do separate I assume markets from capitalism itself correct I don't know what capitalism is supposed to be if capitalism is supposed to be a market society it's never existed except iron countries Richmond rammed down the throats okay okay but we have a situation now obviously United States which is which is pretty terrible and it is a statist society and it is a capitalist society do you think we ought to be shipped back to some sort of New Deal social welfare state model like we saw in Scandinavia several decades ago you know perhaps one in other words with with even regulated markets but not you know corporate capitalism if that's possible do you think that's a remedy or at least on a short term earth well the New Deal was a corporate state capitalist society Roosevelt himself was strongly supported supported by a major sector of corporate capitalism it's been shown by research of Thomas Ferguson and others rose was a lot of a strongest support was coming from the high tech internationally oriented sector of American state capitalism like GE and others and the modern corporation its modern form goes back about a century earlier predecessors but New Deal style welfare state measures were introduced under tremendous popular pressure and that has extended there wasn't any Medicare under the New Deal or Medicaid popular pressure has continually attempted to bring about government involvement intervention in ensuring social welfare I mean for decades and right now large majority the population usually runs around two-thirds or more is in favor of a national health care system of the kind that most other industrials apparently every other industrial society has something kind of like maybe Medicare extended to the population that's an overwhelming majority of the population and that's the highest domestic concern of people in poll after poll right now the latest polls the highest concern is Iraq second-highest concern is health care well how come these measures aren't enacted well because they're regarded as by elites as what's called politically impossible meaning the insurance wall street's opposed the financial institutions were opposed the pharmaceutical corporations are opposed the matter of 90% of the population wants it so therefore it's not on the political agenda it is interestingly getting on the political agenda now because a major sector of US corporate state capitalism is supporting it beginning to support it namely manufacturing industry who are being harmed by the extreme and efficiency of the privatized health care system here it's twice the per capita expenditures of any place in the world whether an industrial society and some of the worst outcomes I was asking about that because what it would be New Deal or even a new keynesian kind of a model that we saw in Sweden in the 60s and 70s they've been economists who have argued you know a few of them Robin Han they'll talk it's Fotopoulos that the this kind of social democracy has failed not only because of outside pressure neoliberal globalization but also because it's sort of putting a human face on capitalism and it's capitalism itself that's the actual problem so it's sort of putting a bandaid on a ruin rather than curing it what's your thoughts on on on the social welfare state in that sense even if we mean it to be something that's temporary in order to rollback the neoliberal agenda well I think take someone who's a committed revolutionary and I think we really have to throw out the whole capitalist whatever there is a capitalist system market system and so on pick someone like that they're still reformists I mean all the people imagined are still in favor of sate developing a decent health care system through government intervention because that's the only option today none of them say let's not improve lives for people because we'd like to see a revolutionary change they'd all be in favor for example take say OSHA you know safety and health roles in the workplace I mean especially under four years it's been declining there Bush probably disappeared but everyone you imagined it'd be in favor of strengthening those regulations they're government regulations because what you're in favor of if you're serious and the people you mentioned are is pressing the institutions to their limits seeing what they can achieve when they're you're not going to get mass popular movements trying to overthrow the institutions until people recognize they cannot satisfy our needs okay therefore you try to press reform as far as possible within the structure of existing institutions meanwhile developing alternative institutions from within building the future in the present society goes on simultaneously right that that's called a sort of but the next question was an email conversation you and I had you said that libertarian socialism is a long-term goal one that you and I both I think agree with is a good goal what should we be doing from within towards the long-term goal of libertarian socialism partly its educational partly its organizational so at the educational dimension what we would do and have to do is first of all develop their own visions of the future Society and try to learn about them and try to get others to understand them try to get others to contribute our understanding of that's educational programs at the organizational side we should be simply developing alternative institutions for example self-manage workplaces with sharing of work rules Robin Hahnel who you mentioned is one of the people is a lot of work on this is Michael Albert and others yeah we can do that and a lot of its going on recent book by gar alperovitz reviewing initiatives of that kind all over the country so it's both both develop the understanding of some better future for yourself and for others and you also try to work through words of constructing it in my own personal opinion I think the great question of not only you know practical politics but of political theory er is how do you balance the needs of liberty and equality because those two impulses always seem to be in conflict conservatism would put in a sort of an extreme emphasis on individual liberty and sort of neglect equality liberals you could argue probably want a little bit of both and radicals or they're anarchists communists or socialists would in some sense lean more toward equality over liberty I'm just curious to know from you how do you think first up do you think there is a tension between liberty and equality and secondly how do we best create a society that balances those two tensions the idea that there's a conflict between them is ideological dogma we don't know that there's a conflict between them and in fact classical liberals didn't think there was so it takes a Adam Smith who were supposed to review but not Reid is one of his core arguments for markets I'd rather nuanced arguments for markets but one of the basic ones was that as he said in a free society markets will lead to equality and he meant equality of outcome not equality of opportunity no he met equality of outcome which he took for granted to be a deserter out of well that was one of his core arguments for markets uh the under particular social and economic conditions you get different results but I don't think there's anything generally can be said about this I was going to say because Adam Smith and I actually did read my Adam Smith one of the reasons he believed in markets was because he was anti monopolies and that he viewed you know these concentrations of power as inherently dangerous to Liberty is that accurate that's correct and he was opposed to mercantilist structures which have been reconstructed in many ways in modern corporations yeah he was strongly opposed to that in fact when the modern corporation that was introduced by state power about a century ago classical liberals conservatives they were often called bitterly condemned it is return to feudalism thank you very much professor Chomsky for coming on equal time for free thought today this has been truly an honor and a privilege and maybe hopefully you'll come back on our show someday and thank you very much okay glad to have you bye-bye

Channel: infiniteinfiniteinfi

Views: 14,427

Rating: 4.8989897 out of 5

Keywords: Human Nature, Science, Religion, Evolution, Politics, Economics, Isaac Newton (Physicist), Scope, Limit, Bertrand Russell, Intelligible, Theory, World, Understand, Genetic, Psychology, Corporate, Capitalism, New, Deal, Popular Pressure, GE, General Electric, Libertarian Socialism, Education, Organizing, Alternative Institutions, Michael, Albert, Gar Alperovitz, Liberty, Justice

Id: N4KDw1rx8ps

Length: 51min 14sec (3074 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 26 2012