Noam Chomsky on Keir Starmer's attack on the Labour left, the war on unions and the future of AI

there are people think that pierce armor has all sorts of fine plans for social reform and so on I don't see any evidence of it all he's been doing so far is purifying the labor party of any military activist elements they're very natural trading and Commercial relations between Britain and the continent these have obviously been harmed so it turns Britain even more than before into a basically a vassal of the United States Jeremy corbyn tried to create a labor party that would be a participatory party not just run by Elite set of alarm Bells through the whole establishment if there's a picket line it is preventing you from doing something you want to do with any sense of solidarity with working people you don't cross big headlines and I'm Chomsky hello how's it going how are you I'm going with you yes glad to have you here glad to have you here um I'd like to talk to you about a number of things the British political scene as well as what's happening internationally um to start with domestic affairs here in Britain we're going currently going through a period of intense industrial disputes in Britain with historic strikes amongst groups like nurses Studio doctors Railway workers um what's your analysis of the current situation with trade unions in Britain and also in relation to their future we're obviously seeing the British government trying to pass legislation that will significantly impinge the right to strike here in the UK um go back 40 years uh when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan inaugurated the what's called neoliberalism basically a form of class war one of their first acts was to attack the labor unions that made good sense when you're going to carry out an assault against working people and the poor eliminate the means of Defense main means of defense or labor unions that opened the doors to corporate expansion of modes of crushing worker organization I know the details better in the United States but it was about the same in England that led to a very significant waking weakening of the labor movement and opened the doors to basically highway robbery but in the very rich in England by austerity programs by the huge establishment attack on Jeremy corbyn when he tried to create a genuine labor party that would want to tolerate that and now there is a reaction both in the United States and Britain and of course the government is try it the government which is essentially the government of the rich and the corporate sector is trying to maintain the controls over labor and repression of Labor so as to enable this highly successful class war to proceed and it is highly successful I don't know the figures for England but in the United States about 50 trillion dollars it's not small change have been transferred from working people and the poor to the top one percent during the class war mislabeled neoliberalism it's pretty pretty nope the guys who run the thing don't want that gravy Trend to stop I'd like to talk about Jeremy corbyn in a little bit more detail in a moment but for the moment sticking to uh the Trade union movement and sort of its attempted Revival at least in Britain at the moment um a lot of the media discourse that surrounds the trade unions and their industrial action in Britain focuses on the inconvenience that the strikes caused to the regular public so you know uh delays to operations or the inability to commute into work rather than focusing on the uh the industrial dispute the conditions of the workers um the reasons for these things happening but why do you think the media covers strike action and Industrial action more broadly in the way that it does you have to have much more information than I do about the options available to working babe quite generally strikes do have some degree of negative impact the public in a decent Society public supports that that's why we don't cross picket lines if there's a picket line and you create it is preventing you from doing something you want to do but if you have any sense of solidarity with working people or you don't cross big headlines that goes way back what do you think of the uh the future is then for the Trade union movement we don't have to talk specifically about Britain but more broadly in the west I know that in America at least some workers in Amazon for example uh are trying to unionize and I believe the same is happening in Starbucks is that right yes and it's striking that it's happening in basically the service Industries because one part of the class war of the past 40 years has been the effort to de-industrialize the major economies the United States Britain to a lesser extent to others get much more profit if you can use easily exploited workers and lower wages and repressive governments no environmental insurance so every move was made by the global planners to facilitate the transfer the corporate transfer of operations to places where you could there's more profitable and exploitation is easier that's how the World Trade Organization was structured basically as an investor rights system which facilitated transfer of the work to places which should be more profitable for the ownership of this it was nothing inevitable about that no economic theory behind it just let's enrich ourselves uh well so and there is there are strike waves now going on in the in the service sector to some extent in the industry in The Limited industrial more limited industrial sector and that's very difficult the by now the sophistication of strike breaking has become quite extensive a lot of it's illegal but when you have a criminal state it doesn't matter you can carry out illegal acts so in the United States the National Labor Relations Board has been severely weakened which is supposed to prevent illegal actions defunded weakened not even appoint members appointed it's been slightly improved under Biden but this is a 45-year project there's a lot to recover and and the economy in general domestic economy has shifted considerably from production of goods to production of wealth was the huge growth of financial institutions most of them predatory but they do increase private Wills not production I take a look at a corporation like apple world's leading Corporation uh you look at its uh research and development programs over the years they've declined this more involvement in financial manipulation of one or other kind which are more profitable and don't improve products then of course they don't have to bother paying taxes because set up an office in Ireland and claim that's your and that's your corporate headquarters maybe all kind of shenanigans have been designed to enable the class board or proceed more effectively all of this has to be recovered somehow um in England it's uh there's an extra problem brexit that's going to be very harmful thing and hard to overcome but no it's there it doesn't work but then the United States it's a different kinds of problems the manufacturing was very much in rural areas all factories so on all gone and that leaves a rural environment which is bitter angry resentful greatly they've been shafted uh easy Prairie for demagogues and we see that happening would you be able to talk in a little bit more detail um what you mentioned there about brexit and its consequences um for the United Kingdom why do you why do you believe that brexit will be harmful to the United Kingdom they're over very natural uh trading and Commercial relations between Britain and the continent these have obviously been harmed that arms both Europe and written written more so because it's weaker so it turns Britain even more than before into a basically a vassal of the United States and it restricts the opportunities in England for the kind of healthy relations I could develop with the European with Continental Europe that's kind of intrinsic to the breakup yeah absolutely and I I I do Wonder then is that your view that Britain's role in domestic politics now uh sorry International politics now is as a vassal of the United States because much of the rhetoric I'm sure you're familiar with it around the decisions that need the European Union from the then prime minister Boris Johnson was about this sort of swashbuckling Great Britain that would go out and strike pre-trade deals all around the world and become you know an independent Global power I can see you smirking already as I reel these quotes off you know that was always a fair that is the side maybe from the city of London which could be a major Financial Center though even that's harmed by the uh brexit since it shifts uh Capital Senators to other places but that can remain and they can remain in the considerable wealth concentrated in England the former industrial sectors Northern England and so on just declined collapse uh which is what's been happening even harsh because of the austerity programs which had no economic basis but did have a classmates one of the uh well I think possibly Lies We Tell ourselves in Britain is that we have this special relationship with the United States the the relationship isn't as you just described it at the vassal State the power is asymmetrical um why do you why do you view that relationship in that asymmetrical way rather than perhaps as something different or unique in in foreign policy well back and go back to 1940s the British foreign office recognized and the late 40s that Britain was handing over the mantle of Global Leadership to the United States as the foreign office put it Britain's future was to be a junior partner to the United States it's just because of the circumstances left at the end of the second World War I don't have to go through the details it's pretty obvious and uh some British diplomats pointed out that uh you get the exact word but something like this uh United States will tell us this is what's good for you and you can do it if you like and if you don't like you're going to do it anyway they put it more eloquently but it's approximately like that and that's the arrangement the United the special relationship means the United States does its what it wants Britain observes and follows the rules if the United States doesn't look what like what Britain's doing it kicks it in the face happens over and over even when Britain's survivals at stake that takes Cuban Missile Crisis the real threat that admit there was a severe nuclear threat it was going to hit Europe and Britain was very unlikely to hit the United States even if it blew up just Russia didn't even have InterContinental missiles I think about four but Britain and in Europe would be severely impacted if there was a military crisis the United States didn't even inform Britain of what was happening if you look at the x-com the transcripts of the we have the transcripts of the U.S high level meetings during the missile crisis XCOM meetings they were called Kennedy and McNamara all the rest I mean the question of informing Britain was came up shall we let Britain know what's happening but the answer was no it's none of their business they're not mature enough the Europeans are emotional they're not mature like us so we're not going to tell them anything I mean Harold MacMillan was desperate to try to find out what's going on I tried to get what he could from British intelligence but I didn't have a lot of information here Britain's survival was at stake but the United States wouldn't even inform them of what plans are being made because they're not mature enough we are the ones who understand that at the Saints you should read those very striking the contempt for the Britain particularly Europe altogether Point striking not the only Case skybull Case was another in fact the United States is the Godfather does what it wants if the subordinates go along okay if they don't go along tough for them that's the special relationship yeah you recently claimed that Jeremy corbyn had a historic victory in 2017. why do you think it's important to recognize that result and describe it in those terms not Jeremy Corbin who's a very decent person try to create a labor party that would be a participatory party not just run by Elites and than the Parliament and would furthermore work for the interests of its constituents and was very successful 2017 vote increased the labor vote by huge amounts I think more than in about 50 years that set off alarm bills through the whole establishment handle others we can't have a political party that's a participatory party and that represents its constituents it's not the way politics works politics Works run by small Elite suit tell everyone else what to do then came The Establishment attack on Corbin which was impressive concocting all kinds of tales about anti-semitism all exploded even in the early days at the beginning of this campaign Greg Philo at the Glasgow Media Center wrote in his group wrote a book analyzing it airing at the shreds and all fake didn't matter later it was all totally exposed by the um Al Jazeera series labor series but even labor Zone internal analysis is fundamentally conceded it was total fakery across the board all the way to the guardian I can't allow this and he was basically destroyed he's pretty much been kicked out of the labor party it's true of other organizers recently uh what's his name Henry Driscoll I think one of the activists and which isn't not going to tolerate this it's going to be a top-down party no constituents yeah the um the mayor you're referencing I think in the Northeast Jamie Driscoll who's been prevented from standing uh in the next in you know the seats changing and he's standing well he's not going to be allowed to stand there um why would you think that that result in 2017 isn't more widely recognized in the terms that you just described or indeed discussed in mainstream discourse is it because of the threat that corbined for the establishment mainstream discourses representative of the public any more than the political parties are they answered different voices in I mean I've studied this mostly in the United States but it's pretty much the same in England um the United States the how political economists mind The Economist is done the major work on these issues Thomas Ferguson defensive work on the effect of what he calls the investment theory of politics retraced it back over as an injury and Trace the funding of political organizations related to the policies that are pursued you find very high correlations for congress a funded campaign funding almost for the selectability and the policies that are Then followed and this of course has consequences one consequence is again for the United States where there is extensive study in the mainstream political science literature turns out that a considerable majority of the voters about 70 percent are simply not represented meaning if you study the correlation between their attitudes and concerns and the votes of their own Congressional Representatives the century no correlation and you can see the mechanisms very simply straightforward it's not deep I suppose you're elected to congress first thing you have to do is get on the telephone call the donors and tell them start please fund me for the next election that's coming up if you don't have the big donors you're not going to win the election well while you're on the phone buttering up your donors your staff mostly young people committed young people is being overwhelmed by corporate lobbyists corporate lawyers or into tell them how they have to write the legislation and so on they don't have the resources to combat this so it comes out is Corporate written legislation then the elected representative when he gets off the phone comes back to his office and signs the legislation um exaggerating but that's basically the structure of the system you don't want to break that up by having functioning constituent-based political parties why stop the gravy train it's called quest Ward which dominates what happens you can give it other fancy names if you like like neoliberalism and economic Orthodoxy or something like that but that's basically what it is and you see the results but I think it would be fair to say that one of the current themes of this discussion is Corporate power and what appears to be hegemonic corporate power in in that is capable of repairing the state the people um and their politics I mean it is it it's hard not to despair what do you see as roots to uh challenging that hegemony those corporate interests how how can for example if particularly in this in this the context of this conversation about Jeremy corbyn um it's if that's one of the closest attempts that let's say The British public has gotten to challenging those interests what hope do they have for the future yeah that happened before it's not the first time go back to my childhood 1930s in the 1920s the labor unions had been virtually crushed in the United States in England there were other processes which essentially eliminated the very Lively uh Guild socialism of the early post-war period crushed and contained by austerity programs by the principle of separating economic decision making from public involvement it's a very good study of this if you're interested by Clara mate in her recent book on you know what it's called none but mine will gun the early post-war crushing those labor initiatives in Italy fascism in England other management methods like uh separating economic public policy from the economic decision making it's very striking the United States the labor movement was just crushed by Woodrow Wilson was a repression vicious regression but in the 1930s it began to reconstitute uh industrial organizing CIO organizing militant labor actions uh popular activism political parties a very Lively period there was a sympathetic Administration the Roosevelt administration and it was pressed into taking actions initiated modern social democracy Newton sorry no deal measures which were and the corporate reaction was quite interesting it was split actually Tom Ferguson who I mentioned has done the main scholarly work on this but if you look back to the 30s corporate world was divided on how to respond to the significant Social Democratic measures being undertaken by the Roosevelt administration turns out that Capital intensive internationally oriented Capital like General Electric moderately emphasis they didn't mind much it's fine with them they could have a controlled Workforce which is unionized have fairly decent wages stabilized economy they were internationally oriented so they liked the trade programs of the new deal they didn't object but labor intensive domestically oriented industry was violently opposed to the new deal it was a split then came the Second World War well there was a mobilization of the the state-led mobilization of the economy to to switch to wartime production it's very successful but notice how it had to be done it had nerve what was called the Stimson Doctrine very critical principle Henry Stimson was the Secretary of War he was in charge of the mobilization of the economy for war and he explained virtually in these words he said look in a capitalist Society if you want to get anything done have to make sure the business world is happy that's the nature of a capitalist Society so you guys out there like my family can have your victory garden stop driving and have wage controls but meanwhile we have to have cost less contracts for the business world or they're not going to cooperate uh you can reinforce the power of capital in order to get anything done Stimson Doctrine is very significant holds very clearly today when the Biden Administration tries to push through some climate programs they have to be based on bribery of the fossil fuel companies at the banks you can't just push through programs to cut back emissions have to follow the Stimson Doctrine to see if he can bribe the rich by subsidies credits maybe they'll go along that's the nature of a capitalist economy Stimson was quite correct and but the labor movement in the 30s did reconstitute and had a major effect on the new deal policies which pretty much worth the Forefront for the emerging social democracy and the following uh following years well it's a business offensive immediately picked up Force at the end of the second world war immediately attacks on labor unions test hardly act enormous corporate propaganda to try to undermine labor and social reform and didn't work right away and we took some time so the 50s and the 60s still following basically a new deal balances by the 70s the corporate offensive was the business offensive it was picking Force then Reagan came along just opened the doors centered and we get into the period of open Savage class war of the past 40 years and that's misses a lot of details obviously but I think in rough Airline it's pretty much what happened also a shift from production of goods to production of wealth critical part of the neoliberal assault wealth production for the rich kind of neofutable didn't even describe that way see a little system produced wealth didn't produce Goods that's the system we're moving towards it's a brief history but I certainly think it's an accurate history um within the context of that then politicians who are perhaps capable of potentially driving meaningful and radical change in reversing that class Warfare that you've described in detail so far um the current leader of the labor party in Britain is kirst armor do you think he's capable of delivering those things we've just just discussed well so far there are people like will Hutton for example who think that pure Stormer has all sorts of fine plans for um social reform and so on I don't see any evidence of it all he's been doing so far is purifying the labor party of any military activist elements and putting it onto more central control eliminating people like Corbin of course Driscoll recently and others tools dude work for a constituent-based party with uh dealing with needs so they uh constituency labor constituency so it seems to me will he'll probably move towards a playwright style parliamentary Elite parliamentary party that your light as it used to be called we're currently seeing as well uh I believe this political movement has more weight in the States but the national National conservatism uh is how it's described and there's been an attempt to import it that sort of American Evangelical far-right ideology towards the British right and what potentially happens to the conservative party if it is defeated in an upcoming election and the kind of ideological contest for the soul of the party um do you think that that brand of right-wing politics in America is compatible with British politics could you see the ideas of national conservatism translating over to the conservative party in Britain well you know better than I do but I think there are grounds for him the uh in the United States there's been an enormous I'm the Evangelical movement it's always been very powerful way back to the founding fathers the United States was pretty much off the Spectrum in terms of religious extremism uh you know providentialism I mean until pretty recent I mean even the United States you look at public attitudes in the United States it's pretty shocking I'm about half the population expects uh Jesus to return in the Next Generation or two uh if you look at attitudes towards evolution probably 10 percent of the population accepts the beliefs that you and I have about evolution maybe 40 percent believes in church and God Divine guided Evolution the rest say the world was created ten thousand years ago uh there's this is expanded by extended by an enormous anti-science movement which is quite powerful it goes back a century the corporations that we're producing lethal products uh like lead tobacco as best as recently fossil fuels scientific information was beginning to accumulate about a century ago that about the harmful effects of these of these products crossword sector recognized that it's no use to deny the facts if you try to deny them you'll just be refuted they picked another pass let's so doubt about science why should we believe scientists they keep changing their minds their bought by big corporations the in a bunch of liberal they're mostly liberals why why should we believe them so what's so doubt about science altogether that's had a big effect that's that effect can all Air kind of areas the large part of the basis with anti-vaccine movement which I was surprised to see in recent polls is pretty large and I think is that a third of the population thinks covid was a conspiracy all of this is coming out of the major corporate lid anti-science movement which is going on first century I had extremely harmful effects can't calculate the number of people murdered just from the lethal products like LED tobacco and so on but now it's survival of human species I'm gonna deal with the fossil fuel overuse we're finished but it doesn't matter the corporates actor they have to make profit tomorrow and certainly I don't blame them for that if you're the CEO of JP Morgan Chase the biggest bank and you have to decide whether to find fossil fuel industry you can imagine what's in your mind say well I know I'm killing my grandchildren I'm literally I follow this but what's my choice I suppose I stopped funding them I'm kicked out somebody else comes in as even worse than doesn't have my Good Feet sediments will be even worse to the nature of the institutions you either play there by the rules you're out okay uh I can't that's the Simpson Doctrine again so those are realities that we can't ignore can do something about them like the Social Democratic and reforms did do something do a lot in fact that there's got to be a much more fundamental overturning of the uh enormous less power of concentrated welfare the options are quite Limited if the uh if the polling you're referencing there about uh Brits believing that the pandemic was a conspiracy it's the same one I'm thinking of I would just urge caution because I think the polling the sample was selective so it was 30 of people that are familiar with the conspiracy theory believe it and I think the majority of the population weren't familiar with the conspiracy theory so I think there was a slight technicality there if if we're talking about the same thing um let's let's move the conversation on um let's talk about AI you recently said uh in an interview with Piers Morgan in fact that the threat to humanity from the current iteration of AI is largely overstated um why did you say that well there's a lot of propaganda that comes out of Silicon Valley which basically amounts to look how smart we are pour money into us uh there you get talk about Singularity and machines becoming so intelligent that they'll rule us and so on that's possible in principle but it's so remote and so distant from anything that exists that it's the part that we're thinking about now the current AI which is departed from the early average in AI first you go back to the pioneers of Aeons people like Alan Turing herb Simon Marvin Minsky in the early days they were really interested in what's now called cognitive science which barely existed at the dawn and we use the emerging technology computer technology and new discoveries in mathematical theory of computations and we use this to learn things about human intelligence people like Jeffrey Hendon who won the Pioneers who just pulled out and dismay was trying to see if the models were being constructed was on the basis of neural Nets could teach you something about the brain that kind of interest is mostly disappeared now it's become almost a pure engineering project and we do something that cells basically doesn't tell us anything about language learning cognition just works well there's nothing around with technology in fact I'm using it right now the captions that I'm reading because I'm hard of hearing are developed by Deep learning technology for that it's quite useful maybe is useful for other things but it's not teaching us anything it's not intended to it's as if somebody's stuttering insect navigation I want to figure out insects navigate someone comes along and says not a problem I can do it with a GPS and high technology and so on with you know that's essentially what it is so the technology can be like other technology can be useful can be harmful our decision is how to use it but it's not it's not part of something else anyone it's not telling us any and is it fair to um categorize your concept greater concerns being the prospect of nuclear war or indeed ecological collapse posing far more of a threat to our society than than any artificial intelligence can by orders of magnitude I mean actually the misuse of AI might enhance these problems so if missile defense systems or automated with AI technology we're probably dead they make too many errors we uh there's a long record in fact of of um missile defense and the errors that were made by the automated systems which were aborted by human intervention very serious cases and thousands of them I mean could run through if there's more automation they'll probably be hopeless or terminal or so um could be very harmful but it's harmful right now in other ways so it's the things like the chatbot uh systems that are getting a huge amount of attention terrific for disinformation for defamation or praying non-people availability many cases so for example with contemporary technology AI technology it would be possible to construct an artificial image of you which looks pretty realistic and to duplicate your voice and to have you say some totally outrageous thing except for expert analysis people couldn't tell whether it's real or not has always already been some kind of games with this like with the Pope as you may have seen but that can become a major industry this information but when big players get involved this information can become uncontrollable it's uh and just praying on gullibility is no small point people are misled by these things there are many cases by now where people ask serious questions further from their chatbot you know should I leave my job and move to another city they get an answer and they pay attention to it but you fall for these things there are many cases attested already all of these are really serious dangers uh Singularity I think you can not worry about theoretically he has been very Vermont as we uh draw to the end of this conversation I have too short of questions for you the first is what gives you hope the fact that people are struggling mostly young people to try to overcome the immediate crazies like just stop oil Extinction Rebellion Sunrise movement Amazon workers uh all of these things are plenty of Grounds for Hope and they're all over the global South as well the popular movements in the global south or in Latin America for example all right organizing to try to resist the very harmful assaults of the last 45 years very hard struggle is never easy but it goes on and that's enough to have plenty of what's your advice then for uh for future generations of thinkers and activists confronted with those struggles they have a very simple choice either you say it's hopeless and help ensure that the worst will happen or you grasp the opportunities that exist maybe you can make it a better world basically that's it thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me I really really appreciate it thank you the team

Channel: PoliticsJOE

Views: 60,884

Keywords: Politics, UK politics, British politics, Parliament, Government, Westminster, news, politics news, politicsjoe, joe songs, novara, rishi sunak, labour party, conservatism, Noam Chomsky interview, Noam Chomsky on AI, Noam Chomsky Brexit, Noam Chomsky Jeremy Corbyn, Noam Chomsky amazon workers, Noam chomsky workers' movement, Noam Chomsky on Keir Starmer, Noam Chomsky on the future of the left, Noam Chomsky debate, Noam Chomsky speaking about socialism, Noam Chomsky on Brexit

Id: cA2AxSx0Ohk

Length: 46min 55sec (2815 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023