Noam Chomsky interview on Dissent (1988)

Noam Chomsky has been called many things the most important intellectual alive America's leading dissenter and a few other things not suitable for polite company scholars around the world know him for his revolutionary work on the structure of language studies he has pursued at MIT since 1955 but he's most controversial as a freelance critic of politics and power honest dissidents is what he calls it the blunt scrutiny of national power arbitrary government and injustice in dozens of books and hundreds of articles over the past quarter century he has criticized the superpowers from u.s. involvement in Southeast Asia and Central America to Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia 20 years ago he was an early volunteer in the protest against the war in Vietnam we met in Boston to talk about dissent and democracy then in now you said recently that this country is more dissident now than you ever remember it more so than even during the Vietnam War when I read that I my mind went back immediately to that period to the protest in the streets the mass demonstrations the riots on college campuses and in in the ghettos that dissidents that was powerful and emotional and unprecedented and you say we're a more dissident nation now the dissidents now is much wider and more deeply rooted and it's found in sectors of the population that were excluded from the the dissident movements of the 1960s I think to compare the present situation with the late 60s is a little misleading because of the scale of what what is being protested the movements of the 60s became well partly the the peace movement at least anti-war movement became a significant movement at a time when we had hundreds of thousands of troops attacking South Vietnam and expanding the war to all of Indochina major war with hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered and just one of the major Wars of the century in fact until that time the peace movement was very limited as late as mid nineteen sixty six here in Boston is a pretty liberal city we had a hard time having public meetings because they would be broken up often broken up by students and and in fact it wasn't really until late 1966 early 1967 and remember at that time we had what was it about four hundred thousand troops fighting in Vietnam that you got a large-scale protest movement going not compare the 80s when Ronald Reagan came into office one of the first things he did was lay the basis for his advisors one of the first things they did was to lay the basis for direct military intervention in Central America the white paper of February 1981 was a clear effort to test the waters to see if you could get the population to support direct dispatch of troops to El Salvadoran probable military intervention in Nicaragua well the react now that that's kind of comparable to we might let roughly comparable to the situation that say John F Kennedy faced in 1961 or even to the late 50s now at that time intervention could take place without any protest but as soon as the Reagan people made to be just the beginnings of an indication that there might be direct military intervention there was substantial protest spontaneous protests from all over the country horde of you know there were there were demonstrations that were the church was protesting there were letters to Congress in fact the protest was sufficient so that they backed off and they tried the administration backed off because they were afraid that it was going to harm the programs that they were really interested in they went underground with it and the Reagan administration was literally driven underground by a dissident population the scale of clandestine activities in fact is a pretty good measure of domestic dissidents after all clandestine activities are secret from no one except the domestic population are you talking only about dissidents toward Central American policies do you see it's much broader for example on its a striking fact that on almost every major issue the population has been quite strongly opposed to the policies of the Reagan administration this has been true from the beginning if you take a look at the polls the poll results have been quite consistent about this fact apart from a brief period in the very first part of the first year of the administration when there was support for a military buildup briefly apart from that the population has been basically tending towards classical New Deal positions it favors public spending over social spending over military spending the population has been in favor of increased taxes if they are used for improving the environment or education or social welfare and so on if you look at the questions on the polls which ask would you spend sessions such an amount of money for new weapons or for say medical insurance the answers of all have consistently been in favor of social spending against military spending the population has been quite strongly opposed to the direct intervention ISM in fact the only exceptions to this are the sort of one-day quick victories you defeat Grenada Libya and things like that of course everybody rallies around the flag but anything that has extended even to a limited extent beyond that has has in fact had public opposition now it's not organized public opposition you are saying that the negative pole on an issue constitutes dissidents no it's only constitute distance if it becomes articulated yeah and on many issues it doesn't become articulated on Central American policy it did in fact become articulated and that's what drove the government underground even as we talk however 55 percent of the people in the latest Gallup poll express approval of President Reagan as he is preparing to leave office now so that you have what you you just have said polls showing opposition to his policies while he himself remains unusually popular in the public standing I think there's nothing much more striking than the polls and that is the events of the 1980s in the 1980s I think it's a very dramatic fact that in the 1980s the government was driven underground it was forced to undertake large-scale clandestine activities because of its domestic enemy because the domestic population not tolerate those activities in fact the Reagan administration was great and interesting in this respect it's the first administration to have created anything like the State Department office of public diplomacy I mean there were elements of that before but here we had I have to tell you that Kennedy administration that jobs limitation the Nixon administration all engaged in domestic propaganda that Rosa Wilson is the creole commissioner it began in other words but but there's a substantial increase in scale I mean in the Reagan administration you really had a massive enterprise to control the public mind in fact when this was exposed during the iran-contra hearings partially exposed one high administration official described that it's the most successful operation that carried out he said it's the kind of operation that you carry out in enemy territory and that expresses the attitude toward the population completely the population is the enemy and you've got a control enemy territory and the way you do it is by very extensive public diplomacy meaning propaganda sure it's always been there but the and the dozen considered you subversive people like you so that's right Richard Nixon there's a quality the enemy was the people in the streets the demonstrators but the point is there's a qualitative change in the resources that have been devoted and the intelligence that has been devoted and the resources drawn upon to ensure that the that enemy territory is controlled now why go into the what why do that it's because the enemy is much more dangerous the people when the enemy is quite a pope the protesters at dissenters yeah and the enemy is quiet you don't have like for example when John F Kennedy sent the American Air Force to start bombing South Vietnam in 1962 as he did he didn't have to keep it secret it was in the front page of the New York Times nobody cared when Johnson sent 20,000 Marines in the Dominican Republic in fact to prevent a democratic revival there it was there was a little bit of protest but it basically wasn't secret when Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of troops to invade South Vietnam it wasn't secret when we subvert it the only free election and Laos in Denine wasn't sacred nobody ever cared about these things the population was really marginalized that changed it changed as a result of the popular movements of the 60s which had a dramatic effect on the country and I think a lasting effect you keep coming back though to to the opposition to the Central American policies and I have to keep coming back asking what's the evidence of other dissidents in the early sixties there was nothing like an environmental movement there was nothing like a feminist movement the there wasn't anti-nuclear movement but it was a few people sitting in a room somewhere it's now it's it's now a movement so vast that it in fact got something like 75% support for a nuclear freeze couldn't do anything with that support but that's because it again because the organizational structure was lacking but all of these developments are extremely significant I mean take say the churches in the 1960s the church the church is by and large were either supportive of government military intervention or else quiescent now it's very different neither oh no no no the bit William Sloane coffin this the civil rights movement was taught as a co-conspirator - but it was was driven by a churchman and it hurts women but the civil rights movement was different and and what luther crane was a himself with a baptist minister absolutely and in fact it was a tremendously important movement and it was a popular movement which for the first time after close to 200 years at least technically and franchised a significant segment of the population now that was a movement which did in fact have wide scale support even isn't a support for that matter but it would it's the thrust of the civil right rights movement was not directed against the interests of centralized power in the United States and that's crucial the the protests against the war or the environmental movement or even the feminist movement in other respects is directed against power and those are the kinds that didn't exist then they've developed in the 6th time they existed to an extent there's more democracy today well there's on the one hand a a lot more popular expression of democracy on the other hand it's less and less part of the official of the actual institutions of the system its outside if all this firm it is going on if there is more dissidents now than you can remember why do you go on to write that the people feel isolated because I think much of the general population recognizes that the organized institutions do not reflect their concerns and interests and needs they do not feel that they participate meaningfully in the political system they do not feel that the media are telling them the truth or even reflect their concerns they go outside of the organized institutions to act and so on the one hand you have a lot of popular ferment dissidents sometimes very effective on the other hand you have remoteness of the general public from the functioning institutions we see more and more of our elected leaders and no less and less of what they're doing this medium does that very striking in fact the the presidential elections have been almost removed from the point where the public even takes them seriously as involving a matter of choice take congressional elections Congress especially the house is more responsive to public opinion that higher levels but even here the the rate of electoral victory by incumbents has become it has been going up high 90s well that virtually is a way of saying that there aren't any elections you know it means that other sis you get okay Kannada so tell me it's something else is happening not choice you know that means that options are not being presented and so on the one so I think you do have a kind of a complex situation in the United States there's a break taking place a cleavage taking place between a rather substantial part of the population and elite elements well that includes a lead intellectuals into them but that elite element is supported by a substantial part of the population I mean there are people who take seriously the debates who go out and vote who think that they're participating and believe they're participating in a in a legitimate exercise of democracy it's not a cleavage of the point of revolution it's not that you have a narrow it's not as if you had an aristocracy facing a mass population it's not you ran in 1979 nothing like that sure it's it's split and complex and fluid and so on but I think you can see tendencies you can see tendencies towards popular marginalization from functioning institutions and and abstraction of those institutions from a reflection of the pop from public participation or even reflection Acula that means what well it means that the political system increasingly increasingly functions without public input it means to an increasing extent not only do people not ratify decisions presented to them but they don't even participant they don't even take the trouble of ratifying them they assume that the decisions are going on independently of what they may do in the polling booth and they feed us that even ratification of decisions made elsewhere is a very weak form of democracy ratification would it would be what well ratification would mean a system in which there are two positions presented to me the voter I go into the polling booth and I push one or another button depending on which of those positions I want that's a very limited form of democracy a real really meaningful democracy would mean that I play a role in forming those decisions and makin creating those positions that those positions reflect my active creative participation at it not just me but of course everyone that would be real democracy it's not very far from that but we're even departing from the point where there is ratification when you have stage-managed elections with the public relations industry determining what words come out of people's mouths you in fact they're going beyond to the point where we are even then even the element of ratification is disappearing because you don't expect the candidates to stand for anything candidates decide what to say on the basis of tests that determine what the effect will be across the population somehow people don't see how profoundly contemptuous that is of democracy contemptuous yeah suppose I'm gonna come running for office and I don't tell people what I think or what I'm gonna do I tell them what the pollsters have told told me is gonna get me elected that's expressing utter contempt for the electorate that's saying okay you people are gonna have the chance to push your buttons but once you're done I'll do exactly what I intend which is not what I'm telling you see if you if you if you if you express what you believe you don't have to ask what the polls tell you then you express it you don't believe what the polls tell you that's what you say and in fact the whole construction of their political system is increasingly moving towards a real articulated expression of contempt for the general population I think people understand it if you conduct polls to tell you what people want and they tell you or you're not listening to the voice of the people only if that changes your mind but of course the whole structure of the system is that system is based on the assumption that that doesn't change your mind it changes what you say so in other words a popular a political figure is not testing the waters and saying okay that's what I believe if we had that kind of a political figure wouldn't bother voting for him he's not a barometer the the political figure represents something is supported by certain interests has certain commitments and so on and the political figure then comes before us and produces things which the pollsters tell him or his advisers on the average will increase his chances of gaining office after which he will follow his commitments his interests what is demanded of him by those who supported him by those who provide him with resources and so on well this is always of course been true but what is interesting now is the extent to which it is recognized to be the democratic system it is recognized that we don't care what we say we don't express interest what we do is reflect power say I think Reagan is a very interesting political figure and I think in a way he may represent the future of where capitalist democracy is tending he's very natural kind of phenomenon in a capitalist democracy in a capitalist democracy you have the problem and it is always perceived as a problem that the popular general population has a method of participating in the decision-making they can participate in politics the state is not capable of stopping them you can't shut them up you can't put them in jail you can't keep them away from the polls and so on and it's striking that that has always been perceived as a problem to be overcome it's what's called the crisis of democracy too many people organizing themselves to become too part to enter the public arena that's a crisis we have to overcome boarding to a certain view it has always been understood by I'm I would say even the mainstream of democratic theorists that when the voice of the people is heard you're in trouble because they're always going to make the wrong decisions the stupid and ignorant masses as they're called are going to make the wrong decisions so therefore what we have to have what water Lippman back in nineteen twenty years oh called manufacturer of consent we have to ensure that actual decision-making actual power is in the hands of what he called a specialized class a smart guys you know we're gonna make the right decisions and we've got to keep the general population marginalized because they're always going to make mistakes marginalizing meaning reduce them to epitheliums allow them to participate in the political system but as consumers not as true participants that has allowed them a method for ratifying decisions that are made by others but eliminate the methods by which they might first inform themselves second organize and third act in such a way as to really control decision-making that is the ideas our leaders control us not we control them now that is a very widespread view from liberals to conservatives and how do you achieve this well there are a lot of ways of achieving it but one of the ways of achieving it is by creating a stirring the elected offices into ceremonial positions if you could get to the point where people would essentially vote for the Queen of England then you and take it seriously then you would have gone a long way towards marginalizing the public and I think we've made a big step in that presidency as ceremonial leaders and see that's why Reagan's so interesting because you know although a lot of intellectuals try to put the best face can on it the fact of the matter is and most of the population knows that Ronald Reagan had only the foggiest ideas of what the policies of his administration were and in fact nobody much cared the Democrats were always surprised that he could get away with these incredible bloopers and crazy statements and so on the detachment and I think the reason is that much of the population understood very well that they were supporting someone like the Queen of England there the flag for the Queen of England opens Parliament by reading a political program but nobody asks whether she understands it or does she believe it or anything like every book from within the Reagan administration from the stockmen book to the Regan book to the new book that's now on the on the newsstands says that says that the president was detached from more than detached I think he doesn't know what it is and I think and I think much of the population understood it now I think that explains the combination of moderate not an enormous but moderate popularity with opposition to the programs what do we do about it I mean I don't want to leave people on a wholly negative analysis although I believe in facing reality for ordinary people is extremely hard and that's why you need organization what is if a real democracy is going to thrive if the real values that are deeply embedded in human nature are going to be able to flourish and I think that's necessary to save us if nothing else it will be it's an absolute necessity that peak that groups form in which people can join together can share their concerns can articulate their ideas can gain a response can discover what they think can discover what they believe what their values are this can't be imposed on you from above you have to discover it by experiment by by by effort by trial by application and so on and this has to be done with others furthermore surely central to human nature is a need to be engaged with others in cooperative effort of solidarity and concern that can only happen almost by definition through group structures and unless tzedakah organization political and other civic or business or a sub trade association which people can associate with one another and I think what I would like to say is a move towards a society which is really based on per Lacan proliferating voluntary organization with eliminating as much as possible structures of hierarchy and domination and the basis for them and ownership and control and becoming the means by which we govern ourselves by which we control our lives does every level does a citizen have to have far-reaching specialized knowledge to understand the realities of power to understand what's really going on you know it's not absolutely trivial but I mean as compared with intellectually complex tasks it's pretty slight it's not like the sciences I mean I think this big effort made to make everything seem mysterious but you know there are things that you have to study and know something about but Brian large which at what happens in social political and political life is relatively accessible it does not take special training it doesn't take any unusual intelligence what it really takes is honesty oh yeah if you're honest you can see it do you believe in common sense I mean yours will you do believe in Cartesian and common sense I think people have the capacities to see through the deceit in which there and sneered but they got to make the effort seems a little in Congress to hear a man from the ivory tower of Massachusetts Institute of Technology a scholar a distinguished linguistics scholar talk about common people with such appreciation and common sense yeah I think that the scholarship but at least the field that I work in has the opposite consequences my own studies in language and human cognition demonstrate to me at least what a remarkable creativity ordinary people the very fact that people talk to one another is a reflection just in the normal way I don't mean anything particularly fancy reflects deep-seated features of human creativity which in fact separate human beings from any other biological system we know you get tremendous respect for human beings when you begin to study their normal capacities you have said that we live in tangled in webs of endless deceit that we live in a highly indoctrinated society where elementary truths are easily buried elementary truths such as such as the fact that we invaded South Vietnam or the fact that we're standing in the way of significant and had four years of significant moves towards arms negotiation or the fact that the military system is to an abstention extent not totally but to a substantial extent a mechanism by which the general population is compelled to provide a subsidy to high technology industry since they're not going to do it if you ask them to you have to deceive them into doing it I think there are many truths like that and we don't we don't face them even we have an interesting political system in the United States it's different from those of the other industrial democracies this is a very free country I mean the individuals are by comparative standards the state is very restrictive in its capacity to coerce and control us there's very little they can do police can't come in and stop us from talking or anything remotely like that in fact even as compared with other industrial democracies we're very free in this respect on the other hand the practical limits on those freedoms are unusually high this is the optical limit well there are sophisticated mechanisms that have been devised to prevent us from making use of those freedoms and furthermore it has been understood for a long period that in a society that's free in a society where the state does not have the right the power to coerce other mechanisms must be found to ensure that the pub the population doesn't get in the way other mechanisms being indoctrination elimination of secondary organization say unions you know other political clubs ways in which people if for a single isolated individual to participate in a meaningful way in the political system is almost impossible I mean you have to have you don't have to have means to inform yourself to have ideas to interchange those ideas with others to to turn them into possible programs to press for those programs now that takes access to information it takes independent media it requires what sociologists call secondary organizations means by which isolated people to the world together what I call it active political parties political clubs unions have often played this role in many countries the United States is unusual in the in the extent to which all of these structures are weak so we're very the level of unionization is extremely low and under the Reagan period is declined even further furthermore the American unions have always been basically a political or largely so the political system is also unusual we're the only major industrial democracy that doesn't have a political party which is basically labor based we only have one political party with two factions it's the business party we have two factions of the business party called the Democrats and the Republicans and that's unusual in fact these these this perception is transmuted in an odd way into political terminology so for example in the 1980s each election in the 1980s the Democrats have been accused of being the party of the special interests and then they hotly deny it and they say no they're not the party of the special interest but who are the special interests well take a look behind the rhetoric and you find that the special interests are women labor youth the elderly ethnic minorities the poor farmers in fact it's the entire population to point-b the entire population are the special interests now if you look closely there's one group that's never identified as being among the special interests that's corporations and that's correct they are the national interest and both parties are basically beholden to them just a whereas the special interests have to be marginalized the population so everyone denies that they represent the special interest that is the people and they don't say who they do represent but there is somebody the group notably lacking in this list of special interests and in fact it's the group with anyone with his head screwed on nose has inordinate power in controlling economic decisions and setting the parameters for political life and controlling the ideological system and so on they are not among the special interest do you think it is corporations or it is it is it the the capitalist business system whose first priority is the well-being of profit-making for the general welfare as it is of course everyone you know you ask the chairman of the board and he'll always tell you that he spends his every waking hour laboring so that people will get the best possible product at the cheapest possible price and work in the best possible conditions and so on and so forth now there's an it's an institutional fact independently of who the chairman of the board is that he'd better be trying to maximize profit and market share and if he doesn't do that he's not gonna be chairman of the board anymore if he were ever to succumb to the delusions that he expresses he'd be out now he can hold those delusions as long as he performs his institutional role and the same is true across the board so for example you can be take say Walter Lippman specialized class the experts some of them are candid enough to tell you the truth like Henry Kissinger who defined an expert as a person who is capable of articulating the consensus of people with power that's what made him an expert that's true if you want to be an expert part of the specialized class you have to be able to serve the interests of objective power that's an institutional role that has to be played and if you do that you can be in it if you want to be a journalist let's say you have to accord to the needs of the institutions and the institutions have very definite needs I mean the major media are they're all corporations they're major corporations they slike any other business they have a product and an audience and a product in a market the market is other businesses they sell their product to advertisers that's what keeps them going and the product is audiences and in fact for the elite media privileged audiences because I improves advertising rates so what the media are fundamentally from as far as institutions are concerned their major corporations selling relatively privileged audiences to other businesses it's not very surprising to discover that those are the interests they reflect furthermore if you take a look at the managing position it's the managerial positions the cultural managers more-or-less editors and so on there first of all very privileged themselves they share associations and concerns with other privileged people there's a close interaction and in fact a flow of people even between corporate boardrooms and government decision-making centers and media and so on and there are many other factors in fact which yield the consequence that the independent media without government coercion there's also some of that that even without government coercion tend to accept and adopt as the framework for discussion the interests and concerns and the perspective of the privileged sectors of the society that's true of the information system it's true the political system the distribution of resources alone determines it as other modes of organization and articulate expression and so on have declined isolated individuals find themselves marginalized and they end up by voting for a ceremonial figure they bother to vote at all are you suggesting that there are that there's a conspiracy that there are people who gather and decide we're going to eliminate unions we're going to we're going to eliminate popular participation in political parties we're going to do this we're gonna do it is there a conspiracy well my point is in fact exactly the opposite I mean I think and stress again that these are institutional facts these are the ways the institution functions let's go back to the chairman of the board there's no conspiracy in the board of managers to try to raise profits and market share in fact if the board of managers didn't pursue that program they wouldn't be in business any longer it's it's part of the structure of the social system and the way in which the institution's function within it that they are going to be trying to maximize profit market share decision-making capacity and so on doing what comes naturally it's not that it's yeah it's part you might say it comes naturally because they would never have gotten to that point unless they did internalize those values but it's also constrained if they stopped doing it their stocks gonna decline and so on and so forth and somebody else or know they'll be bought up and so on now pretty much the same is true of these other institutions if the if some segment of the political system suppose we had an authentic political party reflecting the needs of special interests the population it would no longer be supported it would be denounced by the information system they would be condemned for being anti-american or subversive and so on it would not even have the minimal resources to keep functioning and since we don't have a network of popular structures to sustain it it would disappear you've said that the primary function of the mass media is to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government in the private sector but that's not how the media see it they claim we claim that our news judgments rest on unbiased objective criteria that's how we see it but in fact the chairman of the board also sees what he is doing as service to humanity you know we like a lobster in the trap we can't see it close behind us well the point is that no one would even make it to a high decision-making position in the media whether as columnist or managing editor or whatever unless they had already internalized the required values internalized they believed them the number of things you have to believe to make it to top managerial positions you have to believe that the United States is unique in history and that it acts from benevolent motives not benevolent motives are not properties of states whether it's the United States or any other one they don't have which is a meaningless to talk about a that the United cannonade for I mean it acts because of the interests of groups that have power with like any other society but anyone who believes this truism is already excluded you have to believe that whatever the United States does is defensive if we bomb South Vietnam we're defending South Vietnam if the Russians invade Afghanistan that's not defense now of course if you I suppose if you go to the pelipper they'll tell you they're defending Afghanistan they're defending it against terrorists supported from the outside and of course there's a you know we know that there's a villa in fact you can tell you they were invited in and there's a kind of an element of truth to all of that but if we naturally dismiss it as nonsense on the other hand when we create a government in South Vietnam to invite us in and we attack the population of South Vietnam and we bomb people to drive them into concentration camps to separate them from the guerrillas who we concede they're supporting and so on we're defending South Vietnam and anyone who doesn't agree with this is not part of the system you're equating the Soviet Union in the United States and and the Jean Kirkpatrick's and others would say of course that's the fundamental fallacy of dr. Chomsky's approach is that he is saying there is a moral equivalency or anything of the kind that's a that's that's in the these notions are in fact inventions of the Jean Kirkpatrick's and other reactionary Jean duysts the Soviet Union in the United States are at opposite poles among contemporary political systems what I'm saying is that even though they are at opposite poles in some respects they behave alike and that's that's for deep-seated reasons that have to do with the exercise of power and institutions and so on and you do it more alike will you do admit that we that we are our free society of them we're admitted I insist upon it I insist that we are a free society and that Soviet Union is a dungeon and therefore we have completely different methods of population control completely different methods in fact I've written a lot about this it's no moral equivalence here the totalitarian I mean there's no you know nothing no state is truly totalitarian but as we move toward the totalitarian end of the spectrum the technique of control is roughly that satirized by or will you have a center of truth you have a Ministry of truth it announces official truths people can believe it or not nobody cares very much it's sufficient that they obey the palette Aryan states can be more or less behaviorist ik they don't really care what people think because they always have a club at hand to beat them over the head if they do the wrong people to do what they want as long as they can think what they like in private but they better do what we tell them in public that's that's the model towards which to palette Aryan states tend as a result the propaganda it may very well be not too effective on the other hand democratic state can't use those mechanisms can't force anybody you can't force people therefore you have to control what they think since since power is still concentrated but in different hands in our society largely in private ownership and you can't control people by force you'd better care what they think so that's why you have to have other forms and in fact more sophisticated forms of indoctrination I didn't interview once with Edward Bernays who was considered the pioneering figure in American business public relations and he talked through there about the engineering of consent that's his phrase and he thought it's wonderful thing in fact he described it as the essence of democracy he said if the consent of the government presupposes that efforts had persuasion it trying to persuade people to see things your way I don't have a picture the picture is certain people are in a position to persuade and the essence of democracy is that they have the freedom to persuade now who has the freedom to persuade well who runs the public relations industry it's not the special interests they're the targets of the public relations industry public relations industry is a major industry closely linked other corporations and those are the people who have the power to persuade that's the essence of democracy and they must engineer the consent of others there was a vice president of AT&T in 1909 who said he thought the public mind was the chief danger to the colorization exactly the general public might have funny ideas about corporate control for example you know people who really believe in democracy people who take eighteenth-century value seriously people who really might merit the term conservatives that much abused term are against concentration of power they remember that the after all the the the doctrines of the Enlightenment held that individuals should be free from the coercion of concentrated power the kind of concentrated power that they were thinking about was the church and the state and the feudal system and so on and that you could sort of imagine a collect a population of relatively equal people at least equal white male property owners who would be not controlled by those private powers but in the subsequent period a new form of power developed namely corporations with highly concentrated power over decision making in the in economic life that is they can control over what's produced which distributed what's invested and so on and so forth it's very narrowly concentrated is this why the vice-president Vallauris corporation doesn't say the public mind is totally mine might have funny ideas about democracy which say that we should not be forced simply to rent ourselves to the people who own the country rather and own its institutions rather we should play a role in determining what those institutions do that's democracy if we were to move towards democracy and I think democracy even in the 18th century sense we would say that there should be no male distribution of power in determining what's produced what's distributed what's invested and so on rather that should be that's a that's a problem for the entire community in fact there are in my own personal view unless we move in that direction the human society probably isn't going to survive why well we now face the most awesome problems of human history problems such as the likelihood of nuclear conflict either among the superpowers are through proliferation the destruction of a fragile environment which finally we're beginning to recognize those obvious decades ago that we're heading for disaster other problems of this nature there they're of a level of seriousness that they never were in the past why do you think more participation by a public by the public more democracy is the answer because well more democracy is a value in itself so quite a part because democracy is a value doesn't have to be defended anywhere in freedom has to be defended that's just it's it's a part of it's an essential feature of human nature that people should be free they should be able to participate they should be coerced and so on I told others in themselves why do you think if we go that route because I think that there's that's the only hope that I can see that other values will come to the fore I mean if the society is based on controlled by private wealth it will reflect the values that in fact does reflect the value that the highest the only real human property is the desire for covetous green and the desire to maximize personal gain at the expense of others now any society made that small society based on that principle is ugly but it can survive a global society based on that principle is headed for a massive destruction and that's what we are we have to have a mode of social organization that reflects other values that I think are inherent in human nature that people recognize and that would be I want to see exactly I mean what are human beings I mean in your family for example it's not the case that in the family every person tries to maximize personal gain at the expense of others or if they do it's kind of pathological it's not the case that if if you and I are say walking down the street and we see a child eating a piece of candy and we see the nobody's around we don't and we happen to be hungry we don't steal it if we did that would be would be pathological I mean the idea of care for others and concern for other people's needs and concern for a fragile environment that must sustain future generations all of these things are part of human nature these are elements of human nature that are suppressed in a social and cultural system which is designed to maximize personal gain or I think we must try to overcome that suppression and that's in fact what democracy could bring about it could lead to the expression of other human needs and values which tend to be suppressed under the institutional structure of a system of private power and private profit but do you believe that by nature human beings yearn for freedom are how do we settle in the interest of safety and security and conformity do we settle for order these are really matters of faith rather than knowledge on the one hand you have the Grand Inquisitor who tells you that what people what humans create this submission and therefore Christ is a criminal and we have to vanquish freedom that's one view you have the other view of se Rousseau and some of his moments that people are born to be free and that their basic instinct is the desire to free themselves from coercion Authority and oppression it's the answer to which you believe is more or less where you stake your hopes I'd like to believe that people are going to be free but if you ask for a proof they couldn't give it to you you've dealt in such unpopular truths and have been such a lonely figure as a consequence of that do you ever regret either that you took the stand you took it I have written the things you have written or that they would listen to you earlier I don't I mean there are particular things which I would do differently because do you think about things you're doing differently but in general I would say I do not regret it I mean I've been declawed reversal No you know it's a nuisance because this mass medium pays little attention to the views of dissenters not just Noam Chomsky but but but most dissenters do not get much of a hearing in this meeting Oh in fact that's again completely understandable they wouldn't be performing their societal function if they allowed favored truths to be challenged because after all their role their very institutional role is to establish certain truths and beliefs not to allow them to be challenged society does in order to cohere does need a consensus does it not I think it needs tentative assumptions but we should remember what Justice Holmes said in one of his famous dissents that fighting faiths have repeatedly been seen to be false we should recognize that yes we need tentative assumptions in order to continue with their lives but we also ought to be open to a healthy society would not only tolerate but encourage challenge that's what happens in the sciences and the sciences where the world is keeping you honest and you can't be dishonest fundamentally not only is challenge tolerated but it stimulated the student comes along with a new idea that threatens established beliefs don't kick him out of your office you you pay attention you're struck but in politics well political life is preserving privilege and power but that's not a value that should be protected that's a property that should be overcome I'm not suggesting I'm not saying question everything always that's hopeless you know like I walk out the door I don't think the floor is gonna collapse of course you accept things you have faith oh yeah beliefs and so on and you operate on the basis of them but you should if honest recognize that they are subject to challenge and that if the past is any guide they're probably wrong because beliefs have generally been wrong in the past also we unjust understand more we understand more about ourselves as history continues it's hard to look at the 20th century and be an optimist but still there's some moral progress in history now it takes a slavery it wasn't very long ago that slavery was considered moral not just we want to do it the slave owners didn't normally say look right nice for me so I'll do it they offered a moral basis for slavery nobody does that anymore that's an improvement just in our own lifetimes this has happened I'm gonna take the issues raised by the by the feminist movement that women do have equal right he's worthy things that many people simply did not see the 30 years ago now the problems are still there at least we see them that's that's greater insight into our own nature its insight its discovery of forms of repression and authority that we know we do not accept as moral human beings and we want to try to overcome and I think you can sense such progress at the same time you also have decline honey Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia or genocide of this century the Holocaust undescribable so there's that's why I say it's hard to look at the 20th century and say that you're an optimist without the 21st century well I don't think we're gonna get far into the 21st century unless these problems are overcome because the problems are no longer localized I mean Hitler's genocide was probably the worst moment in human history but it was still in a sense localized it was a huge massacre but it was bound the problems we're now facing they're not going to be pounded a nuclear war for example if there's a superpower confrontation or even a confrontation among the lesser nuclear powers that's not going to be bounded in any sense that words were in the past or if we all unplug the environment or if we do not if we if we continue to act on the assumption that the only thing that basically matters is personal greed and personal gain the Commons will be destroyed we didn't have to worry about that too much in the past it was happening but now it is clear that they are going to be destroyed other human values have to be expressed if we hope even to if future generations are going to even be able to survive from Boston this has been a conversation with Noam Chomsky I'm Bill Moyers

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

Views: 47,711

Rating: 4.9500961 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: mEYJMCydFNI

Length: 49min 11sec (2951 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/seeking-abyss]

This feels like a good interview to get a Chomsky-pulse on the late 1980s.

I have to say that the interviewer is exceptional, considering that he seems like a very mainstream journalist.