Noam Chomsky - "The Occupy Movement"

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the great conversation we're privileged to have with us today one of the most prominent intellectuals the 20th century indeed in a ranking of the most frequently cited academic sources of all time today's speaker ranked eighth just behind Sigmund Freud and just ahead of Hegel and Cicero he was the only living person to make the list our guest today has been a professor of linguistics at MIT for over 50 years and his contributions to the field of linguistics cannot be overstated his recognition of the innate human capacity for human language has not only revolutionized the field of linguistics but proved indispensable the transition from behavioral psychology to cognitive theory yet today's speaker is perhaps best known not for his tremendous academic work but rather for his political activism the genesis of his political activism the Vietnam War is a familiar tale and yet from the very beginning his ideas have been anything but typical weather for taking the media modern corporatism or American imperialism he speaks with a soft but resounding voice he demands that we turned to the fast when evaluating our institutions and our policies not mere rhetoric or intentions since he emerged as a force in the political discourse almost 50 years ago today's speaker has been a singular and consistent voice standing athwart American foreign policy shouting style today he'll be talking to us about Occupy Wall Street there's no exaggeration to say that today's speaker is among the intellectual progenitors of that movement his ideas form the central feces of the Occupy movement both in his critique of growing income inequality and modern capitalism his views have found new residence among a generation both Jason and emboldened by the Great Recession on the political spectrum today's speaker falls to the left but he defies political classification frustrating partisans of major parties in equal measure but no matter our political stripes he challenges each of us to think critically and carefully about the institutions and ideas which shape our lives and to continue in earnest the great conversation please join me in welcoming to rhodes college professor Noam Chomsky start by apologizing for keeping you waiting for too long and it's one of those days when everything that could go wrong did go wrong starting at seven o'clock in the morning I won't take you through the Trail of Tears but I am impressed with your patience and perseverance however I can't give you the prize for that when you travel around a lot in the winter as I do talks all over the place things go wrong constantly and the prize at least in my experience is the labor movement in British Columbia where I was supposed to give a couple years ago keynote address at their annual labour conference supposed to be about seven o'clock and everything went wrong I got there around midnight they were quite cheerful and happy we went on most of the night because there wasn't much point going to sleep I won't keep to that long tonight here okay so let's get to the Occupy movements the I think they will prove as was said to be of historic importance the certainly unprecedented both in their scale and their character their of course have been plenty of popular movements over the years but none quite like this and that makes sense the times are unprecedented this is the first major popular response to a radical change in American history actually look at the trajectory of American history since the beginning it's been on a pretty steady course of growth development industrialization expansion of Rights expansion of democracy there have been ups and downs there's regression to but and it hasn't been very pretty in many respects I won't go into that but the general of course has been fairly steady over a couple hundred years and that's changed it changed in the 1970s quite significantly the during this whole period during the I mean even in the darkest times there was almost always a kind of a sense that of hopefulness we're going to get out of this somehow we'll keep going on our long course um just about old enough to remember the great depression the first couple of years were gruesome but by the mid-1930s things were although that it was in absolute terms much worse than today the there was nevertheless a feeling of kind of optimism about what's going to come my family was mostly unemployed working class I could see they felt but the there was the revived of the labor movement had been totally crushed in the 1920s mainly by woodrow wilson's red scared but it was beginning to revive see ILO was organizing they were sit-down strikes which are very threatening to private power or sit-down strike is one step before the realization that we can take this place over and run it ourselves we don't need the bosses and that's frightening and other the those and other pressures were leading a sympathetic administration to introduce quite significant reforms and you could feel that you could feel at the people's lives that the oppression did man it didn't end until the Second World War but which was a huge government stimulus which did get the country out of depression just as a much smaller stimulus could get us out of this much smaller recession but right throughout the late 30s there was a feeling a definite feeling that's going to be over we can work together we can get out of this it's going to be better than now that's not true now throughout the country there's a feeling of anger or frustration hopelessness despair hatred of everything hatred of institutions you see it in polls and you can see it is just go around there's a there's a recognition of something which unfortunately is true a policy is designed to ensure that it's not going to get better manufacturing in the manufacturing industries the real unemployment today is pretty much like it was during the depths of the depression but then there was an understanding well it's going to come back and now on the present course is not going to come back not on the president corazon please and I stress again by design there are alternatives there always have been the roads are pretty and that's true today in our particular concern always today as well as other times always ought to be with the most deprived African Americans whose fate should be particularly on our minds these few days the commemorating the birth of art Luther King well I'm not going to run through the basic facts I think you're probably all familiar with them they've been very effectively brought to national attention by the Occupy movement fact that's one of the great successes you may have seen that just a couple of days ago there was a poll released as poll done annually by the Pew foundation asking people what they think is the greatest source of tension and conflict in American life and for the first time ever the what was way the top was concerned over income inequality that increased by fifty percent since 2009 it's not that the income inequality has increased but the recognition and comprehension and understanding of its significance have and that's a tribute to the Occupy movement which put this critical fact of modern life on our particular strikingly in our society put it on the agenda so people who may have sort of known and in their own personal experience see that I'm not alone this is all of us and in fact the u.s. is just off the spectrum on this I mean it's like world country the inequality is risen to again historically unprecedented Heights the imagery of the Occupy movement which has taken over of the one percent uh 99 percent there's more or less accurate but if you really want to be precise about it the massive inequality is very largely weighted by a tiny fraction of one percent actually about one-tenth of one percent a group so small that they're not even picked up by the census have too complicated sophistical analysis to dig them up that's hedge fund managers CEOs of financial corporations their incomes of just off into the stratosphere and that weights the distribution very strikingly I'm as bad and the rest of it's bad enough to but that's a major fact the for the general population it's been a generation of essentially stagnation there is of course economic growth not as much as during the great growth periods of the 50s and 60s but there's some and and it's going into very few pockets the real wages for the majority have pretty much sag nated that's prior to the collapse in which everything crashed so have people have gotten by sort of but they've gotten by by chaka sharply increasing work hours there now far beyond Europe which is a scandal in itself that is the richest most privileged country the world is going in comparable advantages but work hours are far higher than Europe or other industrial countries people of going deeply into debt of course unsustainable and they've capitalized on the regular bubbles that have begun ever since the early Reagan years as deregulation said there were no price financial crises in the fifties and sixties the New Deal regulations were in place but starting not late seven days particularly in the Reagan years there's a kind of a fanatic pressure for deregulation and it predictably led to repeated crises the jury bad bubbles you know blow up and people think they're wealthy but Bennett it collapses and you see this old paper foil the latest one I could get worse each time the latest one was the housing bubble which and when that crashed there were literally eight trillion dollars of fake wealth disappeared that's why people can consume and most people's assets were in their houses which were fake if you haven't read it yet you should read the New York Times this morning the yesterday the Federal Reserve released as it does over here the reef it releases the records from discussions five years earlier so you can find out what the Fed was talking about five years ago they released them for 2006 that is pretty incredible look at advise you to do it these are highly trained economists and bankers they could see that the that houses were that house prices were going way out of sight and no relation whatsoever to any economic fundamentals and off a track that had been gone on for a hundred years I'm prevent a hundred years house prices pretty much track gross domestic product size of the economy as you'd expect about ten years ago they started shooting off into the distance no basis for it but they said it's fine nothing's happening and the reason why nothing is happening is because there is a religion we can laugh about you know extremist religious groups but these are some of the most educated smartest people in the world trapped in religious beliefs the religions it had been pointed out joseph stiglitz of ilori at about 17 or 18 years ago warned the profession that they should not be seduced by what he called the religion that markets know best they don't you know and you look at history to see reliance on markets ask her over and over but the religion took over nobody questioned that Alan Greenberg the Greenspan was Saint Allen West economist of all time but just read the discussions from five years ago she puts a few months before the whole thing crashed they tell you a lot about our intellectual culture and sobering and revealing this is that's how people been getting by that none of this happens because of economic loss or it's not the result of Technology it's no other standard of asians it's by design just a couple of weeks ago there's a very good organization the economic policy institute it annually puts out the major the standard kind of databases about what's going on in the economy a very good analyses to state of work in America at school they just came out with a small monograph reviewing what they've been describing and analyzing for the last 25 years it's called federer by design and it's exactly the right title it's a failure for some I'll come back to that but it's all by design it was planned there are choices all the way along and the choices that have been made have led to these outcomes I which should be encouraging because it tells us that other choices can be made it's not something that just kind of happens well what happened in in the 1970s there was a quite a sharp shift in the nature of the economy not the moment but took place by the 80s it was in place went on there there was a shift from 22 major shifts one towards financialization devoting more and more of the economy to financial manipulation rather than making things that people made production continued but it was offshore so there's offshoring and financial manipulations here there were number of reasons for that the one reason was simply that there was through the earlier period of steady decline in the rate of profit in manufacturing so that people who were trying to make money have capital to invest look for we can make money and this is his decline in the rate of profit manufacturing here you go to where you make more profit like by you know assembly Apple computers and Foxconn and China Taiwanese own factory China utterly hideous conditions as suicides strikes and so on but you make a lot of money that way and also just by financial manipulation and that was expedited by the fact by something else that happened the there had been international economic system the Bretton Woods system which was established by Britain in the United States the two victors of the Second World War that right after the Second World War and it sort of on the British side of his John Maynard Keynes and the American side Harry Dexter boy rural economies and they kind of planned out a system designed to encourage growth and equitable growth and in fact that worked in the 50s in the 60s is the highest birth period in modern economic history over a long stretch and it was equitable so the lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quinta that sometimes called the Golden Age of capitalism that was based on the Britain would system which had a number of principles to it one of them was control over capital so controls capital controls can't just export capital and regulated currencies you can't speculate against currencies so that cut down financial you know chicanery and drove investment towards productive investment well that broke down in the early 70s for various regions reasons that change decomp those things change the economy enormously so you go back to the 50s and 60s the banks were thanks they were doing what you're supposed to do in a kind of state capitalist economy like ours they take unused capital like say your bank account and lend it to somebody who's trying to do something productive with it like start business or buy a house it's the college or whatever it might be that's what and there were small part of the economy but now they're they're not banks anymore there you know casinos incredible amounts of money but it all bursts because it's fake and when it bursts the taxpayer has a task family bail bail him out that's how did repeatedly since the early 80s by 2007 read it right before the latest crash and the worst crash i should say the worst crash so far because we're now building the next one which will probably be in the works since everything's still in place but they had about forty percent of corporate profits this is for under probably harming the economy in fact the few general analysis is one came after the Bank of England recently as the try to estimate their impact on the economy and it's a pretty steady DD to downward pressure on the gross domestic product so and that's you know forty percent of corporate profit well of course that is consequences it sets in motion a kind of a vicious cycle when wealth is a wealth is always of course been concentrated but nothing like the way there are a few cases in the past which also were monstrosities but this the only one since the 1920s of the only one you concentrate wealth that automatically yields concentrate on a political power concentrated will and use many devices to influence you control what the government does says concentration of political power concentration of political power Renfield's legislation and the legislation is designed to increase the concentration of wealth so you get a vicious cycle you get a fiscal policy like sharp cutting back of taxes for the very wealthy extreme was the bush tax cuts but it's been going on since the 80s late 70s actually so fiscal policies their rules of corporate governance which give more and more power to corporate executives marginalized shareholders and others there a deregulation which drives the process forward and variety of those devices at their other theme there was a new trick international trade regime instituted in the eighties in the 90s like NAFTA for example North American so-called Free Trade Agreement very bad name the agreement it wasn't it's not free trade and it certainly wasn't an agreement at least if people are part of their countries because it was opposed by the people in all three countries involved kind of a Mexico but it's called the North American Free Trade Agreement it was North America basic very basic component in fact that's true of all the world trade organization structures is to set working people in competition with one another well he said working people in competition with one another that drives down wages capital is mobile after the especially after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system so capitals mobile Labor's in mobile you have you know bitter vicious immigration constraint principles to prevent labor from being mobile so the automatic what that's gonna lead to it it means that capital will gain labor will lose and that was it should mention that the supposed hero of the people who call themselves free market adherence is Adam Smith if you look back at Adam Smith he observed quite plausibly that the foundation of free markets is free circulation of Labor if Labour can't move freely you can't talk about free markets the but that's blocked its capital it's free not labor well there were other things at it as well at the same policy so for example Reagan significantly changed labor relations there had been major attacks on unions for years but Raven escalated it sharply he broke with thee with many years of standard practice in the 30 countries and made it possible for to rely on scabs to break unions by the time that first was the air-controllers then it spread by the time it hit the manufacturing sector doors caterpillar was the first one a couple of years I've broken a UAW strike by bringing strike breakers at that point the I think the US was the only industrial country in the world that allowed it outside of South Africa it was just unheard and this increased when NAFTA came along that it becomes clinton NAFTA offered opportunities for employers to use illegal methods to break strikes the illegal method offered by NAFTA was to make it possible for strike breaking by employers to threaten to move the enterprise to Mexico unless you back off that's illegal but when you have a criminal stage at doesn't matter nothing you do virtually sold the business world that they weren't but of course the labor laws and the number of firing of workers for illegal firing of workers for organizing a shuttle way up and while there were many other good studies in this alongside of this came a government insurance policy for financial firms financial firms increasingly were driving the mostly fake wealth production but it but they continually crash the so they insurance policy and it kind of has a name that's called too big to fail so thanks if two banks are too big to fail you're going to bail them out when they crash well that's an incentive to say you're if you're a bang to work in an investment bank it's Goldman Sachs or whatever it's an incentive to make risky transactions which give high profit us their risky and not to care too much if it crashes the system so called systemic risk because when it does is going to do since its underpricing risk the taxpayer will come and build out it's called too big to fail that's Obama's first major policy picking up from bush but it's happened over and over since the early 80s well it's another measuring and so it continues in fact what we're living with now here it is a kind of a nightmare that was understood by the classical economist so if you read Adam Smith and David Ricardo sort of founders of modern economics they understood that this could happen so Adam Smith for example is interested in England of course he asked the question what would happen if in England the merchants and the manufacturers do the ones who improve the economy then if the merchants and manufacturers decided to invest outside of England and to import from outside of England and what we call neoliberal globalization suppose they decided to do that he said well then they would profit but England would suffer however he said he didn't think that was going to happen because they would what economists on Pensacola home bias they preferred to business in their own country so as if by an invisible hand England would be saved from the ravages of neoliberal globalization they didn't use that phrase that's think it's a pretty hard it's that usage of the term invisible hand is kind of hard to miss it's the one occurrence of the phrase in his book wealth of nations in an argument a warning against the nightmare that we're living in and saying it won't happen because by an invisible hand will be saved since the emergence of manufacturers would prefer to be at home the David record of his successor great economist to notice the same thing and he was even stronger he said you know this could happen everything will fall apart but he he hopes that the people who own and run the economy will care enough about their own countries so they won't let this end and divert sorry to see the sentiment the spirit well the 1970s the first time the sentiment disappeared and we're in the middle of that night not a new one you can find it in the classical texts now there is a lot that the classical economist didn't start didn't attend to pay attention to the one is the growth of democracy remember we're talking about late 18th early 19th century and since that time popular struggles have one major games in expanding rights democratic rights civil rights and so on these two have been under quite severe attack during the you can only call it a really dedicated class war of the past generation there are a lot of devices but one device is just the skyrocketing cost of elections that started same period like plates out of these shut up in the 80s while that hasn't fed as the cost of elections go up the parties are driven into the pockets of those who have the money but in the corporate pockets which permits the corporation is to effectively by hit the election read it on the front page of the newspaper every day now are you watching television you see it this for the Republicans it was kind of reflexive the Democrats sewer and now it used to be coke moderate Republicans shifting to the right and it goes well behind this there's a very good scholar has done the main work on this project Thomas Ferguson's knee right about four years tracing the way back but he's pointed out something else food he points out that uniquely among legislators in the developed world US congressional parties now pose a crisis for key slots in the lawmaking process outside investors and interest groups become decisive in resolving leadership struggles within the parties giving us not the best country Congress that money can buy but the worst that's correct and the notorious Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court two years ago that's escalated it sharply again you see that on the TV screen in the front pages right now well that of course undermines democracy there's a lot more and there are either deeper factors than this which aren't so obvious on the surface but it's a think about it it's it's clear that high concentration of wealth and especially in financial institutions that creates what some economists have called a virtual Senate of investors and lenders who carry out a moment-by-moment referendum on government policies and as they find those policies to be irrational meaning they work for the benefit of people not profit then they vote against the policies by crashing the economy by threatening to we're capital flight tax on the currency and so on so government's end up having what's called a dual constituency their own population theoretically that's one constituency and the virtual Senate and guess who wins surprisingly that's understood in the technical economics literature and it's kind of interesting to see how it's described in the major scholarly literature on Finance or quote from the major standard text barry eichengreen person writes about this he points out that in the 19th century societies societies had not yet been politicized by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary Labour Party's so therefore the severe costs that are imposed by unregulated markets could be just transferred to the population however during the 30s and the court is with the radicalization of the population depression the anti-fascist war that luxury was no longer available to private power so in the Bretton Woods system post-war system limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures that's pretty accurate and then we have to do is add a corollary when you dismantle the system from the seventies functioning democracy is restricted and you got to do some things but one thing have to do is somehow divert and control the public that's pretty dramatic and especially in the Republican Party the more business oriented the two factions of the business very edges what they would be cool the Republicans have just abandoned any pretense of being a traditional parliamentary party they simply serve the corporate sector and extreme wealth and they do it kind of with lockstep uniformity I'm like the old communist party everybody has I repeat the same catechism well you can't win elections that way so you have to find some new constituencies and what they did was a reasonable thing they turn two tendencies of the population that always been there but they haven't been mobilized politically so evangelical religious sectors that's kind of off the international spectrum but in the United States it's quite mainstream and remember this country's way off the spectrum and religious extremism and I'm not even talking about the extremism of those who think that believe in the religion that markets know best that's the worst religion we were talking about the about two-thirds of the population is waiting for the second coming and about half of them expected their own lifetimes about half think the world is created a couple thousand years ago and it's very good I mean this little wanted a long story in American history low reasons for it could this was never active political force between average becoming that it's one of the sectors that the remnants of the Republican Party could mobilize now that they've abandoned any pretense of being a political party the other major sector which has also always been there is a nativist people who are kind of trembling with fear and hatred about somebody's going to come and take everything away from us and so on and so forth that's also a strain that goes way back a lot of ugly repercussions you know them here in fact but it was not really mobilized as a major political force until recently now it is it's connected to another development which is in fact objectively correct namely that whites are becoming a person to become minority so you get the Republican Senate House Leader wailing that they're taking my country away from me they were supposed to be supposed to be our country and this is a real sentiment that's been mobilized and that's why you get what you see in the Republican debates which the world is looking at with kind of amazement believes be going on but if you think about the options available to a political organization that's given up pretending to be a political party and it's just working you know for the one percent if you like they don't have a lot of choices and they actually have a tire by the tail it's very clear that the Republican establishment and the big money most of it wants romney but the constant since they mobilized want anyone but prompting it's too close to kind of sanity how are you the close enough for the big for the establishment you want so every time somebody comes up and wear it maybe there's a flood of money that caused him to destroy them with attack ads so you getting this isolation that's been going on and as I say they have it they may not be able to control when you mobilize constituencies like that they may get out of control actually we have historical examples which aren't so pretty so for example German industrialists in the early thirties figured they could control the Nazis well didn't turn out that way these are dangerous developers the Democrats have their own problem they've abandoned the white working-class almost completely let's used to be their main constituency and all of this is turning electoral politics into racial politics if you look at the statistics on how people identify themselves is pretty frightening could turn out very ugly well let's go back to the monograph epi monograph failure by design they point out the analysts that it's not afraid for everybody it's not a failure for the designers of course and one percent it's they're doing splendidly it is a failure for you know the 99 percent to keep imagery and it's a failure country which is declining to be part of what's called American decline and for future generations is just burdens being handed down to our children and grandchildren not going away some of them are these costs that are being transferred are really colossal infecting species threatening so one of the most remarkable things that's going on you know I'm just trying to look at the world from the outside wouldn't believe it we're systematically destroying the possibility for future tires and so a decent life that's I understood around the world so there's a lot of concern pocket are concerned even in the United States but if you look at their national polls that the u.s. again is kind of off the spectrum there's much less concern about environmental catastrophe in the u.s. than in comparable countries there's a lot but not as much and that's certainly tied to the fact that but this is an unusually business run society highly class conscious business world effectively runs the society and tries to keep things under control more so it's true everywhere but more so than other comparable countries and one of the things they're doing and they're perfectly open about it it's no secret they put at the front page is run major Trump end of the campaign to try to convince the population that global warming anthropogenic global warming is just a liberal folks if you're part of the Republican charade this is part of the catechism everyone has to repeat that lockstep soul the real focus forget it it's not going to happen and some even have explanations like one of the Republican disappointed in 2010 elected in 2010 in and out cheers committee in the house explained to the press that can't happen because God told Noah that he wouldn't have another flood look at the Republicans every single one has to repeat this it's claiming fears like itit says maybe it's true he collapses with the base riches under tremendous pressure from the propaganda campaigns organized by the Chamber of Commerce they've our control him and it's to affect immediate participate in their own ways and that's it's getting to the point where it's you know it's almost surreal so just recently for example the the government tried to it just institute an inquiry would have been a costless inquiry into the weather these affect whether global warming is having an effect on the highly erratic weather patterns that have been coming along Congress block the angry you can't inquire into that and explain why if you do you might be opening the door to doing something about global warming and you can't do it cuts back short-term profit and if the world goes down the tube that's the next generations problem and these guys know what they're what's happening at least many of them do not illiterate the press barely reports it but easily find it out so for example the International Energy Association and so a pretty conservative body I was formed by Henry Kissinger they just came into annual emissions reports their latest one just came out a couple weeks ago they said emissions are going way beyond what anyone had predicted their chief analyst said that in five visit said that we have five years and would try to do something about this after five years the doors amount of clothes will have reached the point roughly two degrees integrated phrasing at which it becomes irreversible and it starts don't like you get these nonlinear processes starts my way out so we're kind of looking at what may be the final closing of the door right before that the couple of weeks before that the US Department of Energy came out with its emissions reports for 2010 the latest figures and they were the highest varieties and emissions on record far beyond the worst-case predictions of the IPCC the international group of scientists who monitor these things at MIT where I have that was not a surprise there's a climate change group which for years has been warning that the IPCC projections are much too conservative and they're plenty of scientists who believe this but kind of out of the discussion you know talk about them well you know all of this is this is I don't have to tell you what this means but it means we are purposely imposing a bird hack on future generations which could be disastrous that's serious another serious a lesser bad enough but not as bad effect is just the continued stagnation and living standards under the one-percent can survive at least for some time on Finance and production from abroad like at Foxconn but the 99 percent can't really survive that way lets you produce the things you need to here and there are other effects the u.s. is slowly losing its technological edge for well understood reasons China up until recently it's been kind of an assembly plant doesn't produce much but it's an assembly plant for the advanced industrial countries on its periphery and for multinational corporations but manufacturing yields understanding and learning it gives you a way to move up the technological ladder you learn how to do things it leads to innovation design and so on and this is taking place one of the domains which is taking place quite strikingly is in solar panels very rapidly growing industry China's almost taken it over and not buy cheap labor as much labor involved but by careful planning by sensible intervention to allow construction and by just moving up just improving low-cost manufacturing which gives you ways of inventing and do I developing new ideas that then take over it's recognized here so the US Secretary of Energy physicists true as in China recently testified to Congress about how we're going to lose the technology edge but we can't believe that we're going to invent the new technology if we're not doing the manufacturing he gave this is his exhibit a he toured one of the main factories they said it's a high-tech automated Factory it's not succeeding because of a cheap labor it's developed solar cells with world record efficiencies and assigning a basis for leaping ahead well that's going to go on the decline of democracy is kind of obvious on the front pages just bouncing plea so for example in Washington the big issue that we're supposed to be concerned about as the deficit the public doesn't agree the public take a look at polls for a long time the public says deficit isn't a big problem its jobs that are the problem and done strictly economic grounds very good reason to think the public's right and that's actually recognized even by the most prestigious conservative economist so there isn't any economics correspondent and the world is more highly regarded in the and Martin wolf natural times he writes that the US fiscal position is not an urgent issue the u.s. is able to borrow easy terms the astonishing feature of the federal fiscal position is that revenues are forecast to be a mere fourteen percent of GDP in 2011 far below their post for average of roughly eighteen percent this non-american can't understand what the fuss is about in 1988 at the end of Reagan's term receipts were eighteen percent of GDP tax residue has to rise substantially if the deficit is too close and we know where has to rise from it has to rise from those who have the most income they've been radically under there may be a fiscal problem but it's because we don't need in the revenues that we had in the reagan years well it is astonishing but it's easy to understand it's a demand of the financial institutions of the super-rich and in a radically declining democracy that's what counts so as an instrument of class war the policies that the public strongly opposes make perfect sense well I should say that wolf has no doubts about the source of the financial crisis it says it's the result of an out-of-control the financial sector that's eating out the mark modern market economy from inside just as the larvae of the spider was eats out the host in which it's been laid and there's good evidence that he's right what's going on you're too in a different way well even if you keep to the secondary issue of the deficit the radical the client democracy is very striking so the public has views on how to deal with the deficit the views of public called the poll after poll is raised taxes on the very rich I get them back to what they were and nobody's calling for getting them back to where they were during the great growth periods fifties and sixties of a way higher but just you know say back to the 90 so taxes on the rich and preserve the the benefit system Social Security and Medicare the it's like even tea party adherence agree to that they don't want you to touch Social Security and Medicare well that's the financial institutions demand the opposite so therefore it's the opposite that's happening no taxes on the rich and carve away at the week benefit system that's again part of the catechism and the Democrats just kind of go along because then I disagree that much there is something that isn't even discussable and that's the obvious way to deal with the deficit is traceable basically to two things one is a huge military spending which is I'd say that's untouchable so we don't do anything with that but the other thing which is very definitely touchable is the completely dysfunctional health care system the US has the only private eyes world as that has more than twice the per capita costs of comparable countries and some of the worst outcomes look at mortality infant mortality and so on he's not very good well it's it has been I think pretty well demonstrated that if we had a healthcare system like other industrial countries hardly utopian there wouldn't be any deficit in fact it actually is surplus but you can't talk about this and you can't talk about this because the financial institutions are too powerful and in a declining democracy it doesn't matter what the facts are the matter what the public wants it's pretty dramatic well these have been major issues for years going back to the Occupy movement are there now much more prominent on much better understood because the Occupy movements but we should recognize thinking about them that there are pitfalls that you have to pay attention to one bit full potential one has to do with tactics so the tactic of occupying space has been brilliantly successful and has great impact but you know tactics have a kind of a half life after a while they start having diminishing returns people don't like if you have to do something else and at some point I think it's maybe it's now the Occupy movements has to go to a broader objectives they just have to reach out to the expand into broader communities that engage much broader communities in the effort have been successfully initiated actually there is one important step that's going to take place in a couple of days a few days ago then chaves one of the better civil rights activists along with some Occupy Wall Street representatives that an ounce the what they call occupy the dream they want to forge an alliance between the old civil rights movement the Occupy movements and it's going to start with the demonstration planned and Washington on mark Luther King Day which is quite appropriate that was King's dream as you know he was of course assassinated here when he was supporting a sanitation workers strike and on his way to Washington to launch a try to launch a poor people's movement well the noon coalition they're saying calling what they're planning an American spring meaning inspired by the Arab Spring and it could happen but will take dedicated effort well the moons have been criticized in the press not issuing demands which is partially true so they haven't tried the four injured party line to which everyone must ask them here like the old Stalinist parties or like the Republican party today is very similar but that part that much is good I think so quite spontaneously without any special planning they have encouraged the kind of letting 100 flowers bloom lots of ideas but demands have emerged in fact from the very first day many of the demands are quite feasible significant feasible very much within reach so for example things like a financial transaction tax tax which every have number of countries works very well that could have an effect on cutting back a short term a speculative manipulations which are a huge waste and take the economy or just having a sane health care system I mean it's not utopian to say why don't we have a health care system like other countries and there are other measures like efforts to allow working people to exercise the right of Free Association card check for example which Obama settings have as a priority that dumped pretty quickly the and it could reach well beyond that and we're thinking about it so another goal is achievable is a shift from managerial control of corporations to what's called stakeholder control controlled by the workforce community no that's not a utopian idea in fact if you look at standard work and business economics it's actually discuss proposed so one of the standard academic studies of the modern corporation points out that nowhere is it written in stone that the short-term interests of corporate shareholders deserve a higher priority than all other corporate stakeholders that means the workforce the community and the rest of the society that's affected by corporate decisions other than I think the reason why the Occupy movements shouldn't be at least as imaginative ambitious as the standard business literature that can reach very far there had back at night most probably at the beginning of this process young late 70s there was one of the early moves to try to shift the economy was the decision of the US Steel to close down some of their major plants in Ohio Youngstown Ohio big steel steel Center effective built the communities and so on they want to close them down well the the Union and the community with considerable outside support offered to buy the plant and running themselves steel company didn't want to do that not for economic reasons but I think for class reasons not a good idea let people think about that so the issue went to court and the lid by storm Lynn Lake long time civil rights labor activist they made it to the courts they didn't win in the courts but if they had more support that would have could easily won however Sanders are often they often carry their own success with them they leave a kind of a germ of ideas you can follow and it happened so in these parts of Ohio there's been quite a spread of work around enterprises not huge ones but quite a lot has very book on it if you're interested by gar alperovitz who's been directly involved and this could go far beyond that so a couple of years ago President Obama essentially july's the auto industry it took it over was collapsing there were a couple of things that could have been done one thing that could have been done is what was done they reconstructed and hand it back to same or similar people who run it privately another possibility would have been to hand the industry over the stakeholders the workforce in the community and have them produced things that the country very badly needs for example one thing the country really badly needs is a high-speed rail you see this a lot more than a safe France or Japan where it's very because the size of the country the scale and so on well interestingly at the very same time that Obama took over the auto industry he sent his Transportation Secretary food to Spain to get contracts from Spanish companies to build high-speed rail installations in the United States and this is kind of sick here we have the we have those skilled workforce and the installations we have the interest with the resources but the decisions of the designers those on the economy said we don't want it so therefore you don't do it well there are many other cases of guys better on westnedge a convention this takes public awareness and support and the Occupy movement could provide that these are old and which move in that direction you're actually moving to radical reconstruction of the society along different lines but it's feasible within region partly being done well the achievements of the above-mentioned more but the changes to finish the achievements of the Occupy movements have another dimension which is quite significant especially in a country like this one of the most significant achievements of the Occupy movements has just been to create authentic communities that people who work together for common n who support each other they have a common kitchen or common library or health services or common assemblies where they talk about things so on that's extremely important in a country this has been tremendous efforts to atomize people to make each people think I'm alone I things for myself period it's drilled into you from childhood you should be out for yourselves and compare of anybody else and it's kind of interesting to know how long this has been going on and how intensely so if you go back to the 19th century at the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution was mostly eastern Massachusetts in it was very lively labor chris it was run by artisans from the town's say irish artisans were lost an hour ago factory girls young women riddick the farms came and worked at the mills and so on quite an interesting press avail a lot of its or even read it issues with a great far-reaching very independent i think the period of the free express in the country and they bitterly condemned the industrial system which they said is just taking away the Freedom and the Liberty and the rights of independent people free people they they believed that standard slogan was that those who work in the mills should own and run them why should we follow the orders of bosses that's kind of like introducing a new aristocracy we thought we were free of that in the mid 19th century it was probably immature a large part of the population certainly northern workers regarded wage labor as fundamentally no different from slavery it was different from slavery only and that it was temporary actually that was such a popular idea that was exploded under Republican Party back in that roughly the period of the civil war that we have to fight against chattel slavery and against nature later people should be free to run their own affair their own factories the but one of the main you know objections and a lot of the anger was directed at once against what they called the new spirit of the age gained wealth forgetting all itself just completely contrary to the most elementary moral consciousness that free people have well you know there's been a 150 years of trying to drive that into people's heads and it's I think it's been some success Snowdown st. new spirit of the age but in these objections it just below the surface it keeps coming up all the time today or maybe yesterday if God is the centenary of the Lawrence strike the great textile strike in lawrence mass and you remember perhaps that the slogan of the strikers with bread and roses we were bred we want decent pay we want these working conditions but we also want dignity we want to dignified life roses and that means control of their own lives and control of what we do and so on control of the institutions in which we work this keeps coming up again in the Lord's town strikes in the early 70s in my senses it's kind of just below the surface when the proper impetus comes it will rise again and i think the Occupy movements are another position to bring them to the fore friend again well if these bonds and associations can survive the repression which is of course inevitable that could be the basis for really turning the tide in a fundamental way and resuming the struggles for freedom and democracy to go way back and have been fought throughout our history always efforts to repress them they keep rising again grows quite dramatically in the popular movements for which Martin Luther King emerged as a great leader and it had many achievements undoubtedly not just for african-americans were lots of others helped carry forward large change in consciousness of a quite a wide range but it certainly felt far short of dr. King's aspirations I'm sure you remember his last speech here at Memphis couple hours before he was killed in which he said that he climbed the mountain top he could see the promised land a sense that he was not going to get there but he promised the poor and the persecuted that they would I said promise that's very far from being fulfilled in fact is going backwards but leaves us with the responsibility and the tasks to try to realize that dream not an easy one but it's one that we have to find ways to carry forward spoke about the community that occupies created the way that the library of the kitchens and the General Assembly's create a sense of togetherness but occupies the criticized for its lack of a leader secure how important is it that occupy maintain an emphasis on community decisions and what are the advantages of a movement that doesn't have a strong well most movements gain a lot of their major successes apparently don't have a leadership it takes a missile regiment went in civil rights movement for decades it really began to take off roughly 1960 with black students in in the South started sitting at lunch counters form snake started writing freedom buses or somewhere their students joined them I'd finally sort of created a swell that Martin Luther King was able to kind of ride he would have been the first to tell you that there the way I did say repeatedly they're the ones who created movement he was able to come and then provide then he and the SCLC Christian labour conference they did provide organized leadership which got somewhere but it ran into a brick wall the as long as they were focusing on you know racist sheriff's in Alabama they got plenty of northern support sunstate started about say 1966 5566 they were starting to talk about the two crucial issues in American society first of all the Vietnam War and secondly poverty and class issues at that point the brick wall window and it's because there wasn't the kind of popular organizing in the north where the real problem was that made it possible to attack this stronghold so it's okay to have you know maybe leaders will come out will help or won't help but the main forces I think Oh typically comes from the popular movements themselves at what point you tried to develop some kind of structured organization on things as any kind of formula for that it becomes the right thing to do it but there are certainly things the word i'm in a leadership can will almost always try to power itself that can under so it's a quite not an answer to question that has to the course of seam puts the sensible thing to do next like for example these Enterprise Development snow highland oaks talking about to have some coordination like its others but leaders of these are they help coordinate and support developments that are taking place at the workplace that's the kind of service that a kind of quayside leadership and perform as a service I said the laws of you follow that comes you made a number that county made a number of allusions to the role of organized labor as a driver of social movements in American history and recently there has been a sort of an effort by the labor movement to reach outfit or occupying late organizations and that to some degree there was a little bit of apprehension that they might be co-opted by those organizations that they would lose some of their authenticity on what would you see is sort of the connection between a labor interests and my own feeling that there are the dangers that you mentioned with my own feeling at least is that unless the labor movement is revitalized the way it was in the 1930s this is going to be dead that's most people don't most people are workers 13 or another and unless they become organized and active it's Eddie anything that develops will be something coming from the periphery and I don't think it will engage to mass of the population or probably should I mean what they say take the Arab Spring so that's not the countries are not the same as ours but this things you can learn the what you read is and the Sun totally false that the Arab Spring is led by a tech savvy young professionals with you know social media Twitter and so on there's a lot of truth to that but take a closer look in Egypt main country the one of the young people who organized the january twenty fifth movement that then took off have a name they call themselves the April sixth move why the April sixth movement well because some you can't remember that in the United States there's some things you're not allowed to talk about that one of them is labor at militancy that's kind of off the agenda but it's not true of other countries in the April sixth movement named april six because in april six 2008 the egyptian labor movement which has been very active in militant for years organized massive strike actions throughout Egypt starting in the main industrial installations elsewhere too and this group of young professionals very properly tried to help him out by using their technical skills so they called themselves the April sixth movement well that was crushed by the US bank dictatorship but it was just one of many efforts and finally the this april six movement really got to be significant when the unions moved in not unions because and I'll had the form unions for the militant labor groups moved in massively within a couple of weeks and then you really got mass movements pepper essentially the same is true in too busy in fact if you look over the whole realm of Arab Spring activities that notice first of all that most of them have been crushed the dictators are very well in place and in particularly they're in place in the countries which the u.s. really cares about the oil dictatorships your show on to their the Gators and do anything they like the but they have for one a couple of places and those happen to be the place is where there has been a long labor militancy in activism busy also has a major labor movement way back were dressed but broke through there's actually good work on this if you're interested is it a joke lino who's that Stanford is the main person who works on labor movements of the were called in many countries release North Africa and he's pointed out that I think he's right that there's a very close correlation between some degree of success in the movements and the level of militant labor participation in fact one of the Egypt you know the old regime is still in power there's a lot of things that are wrong but there have been some achievements and one of the major achievements is that the labor movement has broken through the repression so now you can freely organize and their strikes all over the place they're forming independent unions for the first time they may be able to unify the unions that still has to be done to dismiss the same at my system you know they don't want to draw the analogous to closely but I think something like that will be true here too unless the labor movement is part of it they'll drift off especially the white working class that will be drawn away by nativism you know fear other tendencies that certainly exist and it will turn out to be regressive I just one less comment about that I mean they sound as if it's kind of impossible but look back at the history you live in a history of US labor US has a very violent labor history that much worse than other countries and that again industrial Gunners again reflects the fact it's a business run society to a large extent very high I the class conscious business class so repeatedly labor has grown and developed and then been crushed the most recent period before now is the 1920s the winter there was a lot of militant labor organizing the early part of the century like the Lord strike camp the Ludlow's direct others during the Woodrow Wilson's Red Scare right after the Second World War were pretty much crushed the labor movement was a crushing independent thought a lot more pre awful time in the 1920s the labor movement was practically dead there's one of the major labor historians I'd recently David Montgomery has a he was labor activist himself that became an academic they were historian one of his main books is called the rise and fall of the American labor movement and the fall is the 1920s in the 1920s the situation of organized labor so awful that conservative visitors from England than Australia were appalled that the way important people are being treated hundreds of workers were being killed in the United States at a time when this just wasn't happening anywhere else and the movements were pretty much crushed in the 1920s you know the end of history utopia the Masters be one well ten years later totally different so I don't think it's possible that's right you can't answer my question with what you just said but I think the situation is different now because of globalization I think whenever there's a recession workers are the ones who suffer the most like you mentioned before the they're pitted against each other they were coming so they prepared the workers are pitted against each other companies can threaten to move from one state to another or moved to Mexico and I think now I think the numbers showed that you know that was a plummeted for unions United States at stand up I don't know something like less than ten percent and with so many people needing jobs and the wages going further down and down then you know Chief flavor coming from other countries it seems like the states in a position where it was really bad for working people and you know you were talking about violence before but this is a different type of struggle that I don't think we've seen before and I was wondering if you think it's vital to our society how's it has a wave of movement well I agree on the present course under prison assumptions about how the society has to be designed and run I think that's right but come back to what I said before who says that corporate executives should have a right to decide where production scary down or how it started out I mean you could you know the hundred years ago there were major struggles here against the sweatshop labor great shirtwaist factory fire in New York was just about a hundred years ago where dozens of seamstresses would kill you know well that led to efforts to improve working conditions and there can also be efforts to improve working conditions in Foxconn where they make your Apple computers can yell and they certainly wanted the working people there wanna workers your cooperate with them in doing it and also restoring these opportunities here for the kind of production that the United States is very well placed to carry out like say solar panels or high-speed rail this reason why that can be produced here we've got the skilled labor you've got the resources it's going to take what's called industrial policy but that's used for everything that's why you have computers the internet and so on but these are choice and it and the question is whose number on it is it going to be run by people in communities in the workforce for their own producing the things here that people need or is it going to be run in a way which will increase the profits for investors and bankers that's globalization or not these questions arise we entered in different ways there was a question down here someone had a mic thank you for mentioning the time of idiocy of climate change keeping a few things in mind the witness of current environmental NGOs the shock doctrine and the occupied movement could you give some comments on language in regards to solving climate change over these next important five years and how language can be influential shifting the pattern yeah I mean I the first White Swan tobacco slightly I'm you know the sign on my door says link was but linguistics I have nothing to say about this people should be careful not to kind of pretend that their professional expertise gives them some you know a special right to talk about other topics I think it is a question but it's just one thing about common sense the likeness of course used and modified to try to delude and control people and we can we don't have to accept it we can use it in other words so take take the constant fixate concepts like free market it takes a concept globalization which is already brought up in the last 10 years actually they've been two major globalization movements they one of them and they actually have regular meetings the one of the meats in Davos Switzerland that's corporate executives government officials Thomas Friedman writes about flat earth those guys so there that's the official globalization there are other meetings which are called which the terminology calls anti-globalization the people themselves call it something like alter globalization different kind of globalization those are the meetings that take place a in porto alegre brazil world social forum well both of these are concerned with international integration in that sense they're both involved in globalization but a very different kind the ones who've eaten Devas are concerned with international integration in a manner which expands and extends the rights of investors lenders bankers wealthy professionals and so on the ones who meet in porto alegre or other issues with other countries of the south they beat the south they're interested in international integration interest of people so they bring together people of a very wide range of backgrounds and concerns farmers in this compazine over that meets indigenous people I mean take say it takes a climate change the climate unity constructive / proaches to climate change the ones that might do something are coming out of those meetings out of davis and they're coming from the most repressed people in the world indigenous people in Bolivia for example in an Ecuador where the indigenous populations have finally been able in the last couple of years to become a major force in the political arena in fact in Bolivia they elected their own president run the country they have taken strong steps their way in the lead internationally on trying to do something about global warming for example both in Bolivia Ecuador there's the laws and even in the Constitution to grant rights to nature well you know people in the North kind of laugh about that you know we're too sophisticated for that kind of that's done they're going to have the last laugh that's coming out of the globalization that's being organized carried out developed many ways by people whose main concern is globalization but in the interests of people and interests of their children the interests of coming generations so that's called anti-globalization but we don't have to accept this terminology and it brings over anybody look of course the terminologies are manipulated on the same international affairs so what's the biggest issue today in u.s. foreign policy and national policy is the threat of Iran today just articles in the press this morning about how the United States is going to deal with the threat of your rent by cutting off their experts was supposed to latest cutting off our experts how would we describe that you know well we describe it as an act of war in fact that's defined as an act of war you take a look at policy makers they say attempts to manipulate the financial system that cut back our experts is an active war we have to react with nuclear weapons but when we cut off their exports that's presented as you know as humane to try to improve the world is it ain't different in fact what is the threat of the rent that we're trying to prevent I'm just greeted all the time it's the most threatening thing in the world what exactly is very authoritative answer then mainly from the Pentagon and US intelligence they provide regular reports to Congress on global security what's called security it's another or well as and of course they talk about it ran and if you look at the reports you can pick up on the internet no we were not the present they say it's not a military threat and they go out and see what the threat is it turns out that the threat is deterrence the threat is they might deter the United States and dis clients from carrying out free use of violence so therefore we can't tolerate that was it tell us about us is that amico a threat that it might prevent us from resorting to violence freely the other threat is that there's another the quiz good point if you like then they that Iran that tries to destabilize its neighbors how does it destabilizes neighbors it tries to expand this influence into neighboring countries that's destabilization on the other hand we stabilize the neighbors by invading them that's like this message is so deeply ingrained that you sometimes think one of my favorites is former editor foreign affairs the major establishment international affairs journal that kind of in a good the world scholar he was once writing about the way we overthrew the government of chile 33 said we had to do it we had to destabilize chile in order to establish stability and that's not a contradiction if you live in the or will in language of educated discourse stability means they follow our orders and the destabilizing means moves towards independence which they don't followers well you know this we don't have to accept that terminology and anywhere you look you find examples is all over the place it's but but you don't have to be a linguist to figure this out you just have to think a little which was actually a bit of a follow up on me previous question about language my impression is that there's a lot of wasted wasted effort wasted iron wasted a wasted the electronic ink etc from people failing to agree on what they've gone with are talking about once I'm in the Occupy movement I think a theme in your top has been the apparent tension between capitalism and democracy if you would tell me precisely what you mean by capitalism by democracy and what are depending the fundamental tensions between them what what do you mean by capitalism what do you mean by democracy and what are the fundamental tensions between them yeah that's a good question these terms are almost totally meaningless one of the ways of preventing rational discussion is emptying terms from any real meaning so what is capitalism's but it's very quick that's supposed to be us capitalism it's supposed to be a system based on the market where the government doesn't interfere with the market I mean just that our system I'm do you use a computer that d is the internet define an airplane where'd that come from it came from the state sector do you do almost entirely not totally but all the hard work basic work comes from that has comes with a very dynamic state sector of the economy for decades and then it's handed over to private enterprise for profit takes these jobs who everyone was talking about died recently this undoubtedly a very brilliant to the marketer he turned he took the technology and the science the innovations that had been developed by decades of work primarily in the state sector and he turned them into marketable commodity okay that's a talent but is that is that what capitalism I'm in some kind of state capitalism but then every system in the world is some kind of state capitalism but what about democracy well you know democracy over there said we know the rich you know we know what you learn in eighth grade but if you look at the history of democracy there are issues that are fundamental and that had been debated for centuries so let me take one which is quite critical energy to the founding of this country and it also goes back to classical greece won the first major book on politics is Aristotle's politics which he discussed various kinds of political systems didn't like any of them decided democracies probably at least bed or the best but he noticed the problem with democracy James Madison and the Constitutional Convention notice the same problem the problem is that in a democracy if people if everyone has an equal vote then the poor will be the great majority will get together and they'll find ways to take property away from the rich so in Madison's discussions of the Constitutional Convention if you look back he was fused England as the model of course he said well if in England suppose you allowed everybody to vote well the poor people with carry out measures behind that we now call and reform Aristotle made essentially the same point and they both thought that this would be unjust to be unjust to take away cooperative things from the ridge so they both had solutions but they had opposite solutions Aristotle solution was to eliminate inequality and he proposed what we would call welfare state measures that's sort of a city so things like communal meals you know other things to make everybody more or less middle class more or less equal he said well would you do that this problem would arise the Madison had the opposite conclusion he said undermine democracy so the system that was established here is one designed to make sure that democracy doesn't function you look at the constitutional system which everyone supposed to you know the original list the tea partiers are summarized worship take a look at it power and the constitutional system is vested in the Senate the Senate is Madison pointed out have to be the wealth of the nation the more responsible set of men the ones most removed from the population so there was no vote for senators vote went through the legislators which are controlled by the wealthy so you keep it the wealth of the nation and they're the ones who are who have to run the country then of course you have the House of Representatives in the constitutional system they have very little power and they're too close to the people you know keep voting for them the executive was just an executive not an emperor like today it was somebody who administered things so power was in the hands of the wealth of the nation and had to be that way because as Madison put it a primary task of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority if you don't have that killer the gist system well that's one kind of democracy another kind of democracy is our social democracy we had try to carry out social measures which will put everyone you know more or less on a par economically than they could make their own choices which democracy do we want well that's been battled about for 200 years the United States that's a main theme of American history which some could in these words but which kind of democracy is it so it takes a very interesting one concept that's extremely interesting right up till this present moment is the concept person okay so you look at the Constitution the Fifth Amendment says no person shall be deprived of rights without due process and speedy trial and so on well what did they mean by person suppose your Justice Scalia your original list you wanna what they meant by person well they certainly didn't mean the indigenous population they're not persons you can take away their rights you could kill him drive away anything you want sit in on persons what about blacks and their incursions in fact if three-fifths persons if you look to set up the slave owners get more votes and what about women or they couldn't vote in fact they couldn't even serve on juries freely until the 1960s that's what they achieved Minh to the civil rights movement so you know what about people who don't own property well they're marginally persons because there were all kind of constraints of waiting it boo so person was a very narrow concept much an hour than human being when you get to the Fourteenth Amendment right at the Civil War essentially repairs that wording but by that time the blacks black slaves had been elevated from three-fifths two persons technically actually look run run through the history but it's still not persons that's where they're sent to jail Livan massive poverty gain elements of personhood in about nineteen twenty-four I think when they think that was a year when women were allowed to vote but it literally wasn't until the civil rights movement that they could be allowed to serve on juries really done they could in the north but not most of the country so they weren't real persons meanwhile the concept person since the 14th amendment has been both expanded and contracted by the court not by legislation famously has been expanded to include collectivist legal fictions established and maintained by state power oracle corporation's so there are persons and in fact almost all the cases brought under the Fourteenth Amendment or for them not for freed slaves and since then that's been greatly expanded so in the trade agreements like sayin aston and corporations have rights way beyond persons for example General Motors invests in Mexico has to have what's called national treatment means it has to be treated like a Mexican company if a Mexican comes to New York that s for national treatment many other ways that grates way beyond persons the big Supreme Court decisions like Buckley v Valeo which decided that money and speech and then Citizens United a couple years later that tells these fictitious creatures entities that they are persons who are permitted to vile actions other real persons can't so the concept have been greatly expanded it's also an hour the Fourteenth Amendment says no person shall be deprived of Rights that what about undocumented engines well you had to do something about that so they're not persons literally take a look at the judicial record from then on it keeps redefining that it just came up in recent court cases with evolving Guantanamo in which job committed aliens don't have personal rights so they're not persons well you know this all has to do with how many what democracy is but what would it mean to be a person these are all decisions based on you know power authority social struggle which changes them sometime so women got the right to vote let's say but they're not kind of you can't pick them out of a dictionary these are not concepts and be defined in a dictionary they're defined in the course of complex social struggle class struggle other kinds of struggle and that's where they get their meaning and I think that's true of capitalism's through democracy whatever other current terms you mentioned the role like this I'm not now I am going to bring evening to a close we've been listening this evening to and quiet resolute Laden fact Laden analytic dissident voice that offered no simple solutions no easy slogans that we can take away a give us lots of food for thought gods of food for reflection that's what we aim to offer on an ongoing basis with the communities in conversation series so again I ask you to please go to our Facebook page like us join us again and please thank professor Chomsky

Channel: Rhodes College

Views: 73,124

Keywords: Noam Chomsky, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Communities in Conversation, Rhodes College

Id: NRlhNlzYIb8

Length: 103min 55sec (6235 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 12 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Ulysses1978]

It is hard for me believe that in the 21st century that a person in a position of such responsibility is not laughed out of office for saying such things. America you crazy

[u/technosaur]

When I read that, I cringed with the expectation he would be a Southern bible-thumping yokel. I was so relieved to learn he is from Illinois.

Somebody please tell this fool that God does not intend to flood the earth again, just the coasts and islands. The rest of the world, including his Illinois is going to be desert, the figurative fire predicted by his infallible book of prophecy.

I was once asked by one of the nicest, most caring, giving people I ever knew if I believed in the infallibility of the bible.

"hmmm? Which version?" I asked.

She was always polite after that, but distant.

[u/Lighting]

Quote is at 42:40

[u/aazav]

FYI, it was this guy: John Shimkus.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/11/god-global-warming-congressman-energy/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328366/John-Shimkus-Global-warming-wont-destroy-planet-God-promised-Noah.html

[u/[deleted]]

The problem is not that the Senator believes it, it is that he believes by saying it he will stay in office. A large percentage of Americans really think stuff like this.

[u/[deleted]]

if there isn't to be another flood, why did Katrina cause flooding. GW won;t cause a whole world flood, just any place under 400m and quite slowly.

[u/ondal]

To the contrary, God promised in the Bible the global warming is coming, and it's going to get really, really hot. The Bible predicts that the second judgment (Noah's flood being the first one) will be by fire (Matthew 13:40-43, 25:40-43). Those who invoke God and Bible are the least likely to actually read the Bible.

[u/lucas_of_loxley]

Seems legit.

[u/Unenjoyed]

Umm... He refers to a GOP member of the House, not the Senate, and he does not say who said it or provide a source for his claim.