Utopia 6/13 | "Practical Utopias" with Noam Chomsky and Che Gossett

this is Bernard do you hear me yes I do can you hear me yes I can hear you well thank you [Music] um can you see us I can see you sorry for being a little late ahead computer problems no worries that's what technology yeah yeah um if you're ready we can get started are you ready um is it okay to get started you know okay with me okay all right welcome back uh welcome to Utopia 1313 and happy New Year this is the first session of the spring at a very special session where we welcome Professor Noam Chomsky and my colleague extraordinaire Jay Gossett are problematic at this seminar is to Identify and discuss what we have been calling concrete Utopias with the idea that the best way to ignite social transformation is to highlight the fact that it is possible and that it is happening all around us whether it is cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi or the longo Mai and Terra eco-cooperatives in southern France or the U.S Federation of worker cooperatives the Freelancers Union or Starbucks unionization right here in New York City or the Columbia student Workers Union right here at Columbia and we've had representatives from all of those uh organizing spaces here at Utopia 1313 the point is that concrete change is possible is here and can help guide us towards more social change now as part of that discussion we've also taken some theoretical steps back to think about the place of concrete utopian thinking and practice and social transformation so we've had for instance the French philosophers to focus on the critical theoretic foundations of concrete Utopias and today with Professor Noam Chomsky and Jay Gossett we hope to once again theoretically and practically work through some ideas about Utopia and utope and concrete Utopias as you all know as evidenced from this over crowded space which hopefully we won't be violating too many fire laws Professor Noam Chomsky is and has been for years now a role model for critical thinkers and practitioners um an Engaged intellectual Chomsky unfailingly speaks truth to power in the great and long tradition of the parisiasts um as I wrote in my introduction I was thinking of Professor Chomsky is a modern day Voltaire or Rosso or Walston Craft um and uh in his humility and his brutal honesty I often think of Chomsky as one of the greatest parisiasts along with the philosopher diogenes of sinata so it was with utter Delight when my colleague extraordinaire chair Jay Gossett organized to have Noam Chomsky join us this evening thank you Jay uh we'll proceed in the following fashion I'll introduce Che will introduce Noam Chomsky after uh gnome will have a chance to present his thoughts on the question of concrete Utopias then Jay and I will co-facilitate a discussion and moderate a question and answer session as I mentioned twice now uh Che Gossett is my colleague extraordinaire here at the Columbia Center for contemporary critical thought at Columbia University uh the racial Justice post-doctoral fellow at our Initiative for a just Society Che is a writer and critical theorist specializing in queer trans studies aesthetic Theory abolitionist thought black study and critical animal studies Jay is also currently a visiting fellow at Harvard Law school's animal law and policy program uh she's a prolific writer and researcher they've published extensively including a numerous anthologies such as trap door transcultural production in the politics of visibility uh out in 2018 death and other penalties Continental philosophers on prisons and capital punishment from Fordham University press and the transgender studies reader Rutledge press and they also received the 2022 art Journal award along with with co-author Professor David getze for their syllabus on trans art history which is currently working on two book projects both with Duke University press the first is related to it's a revision of their dissertation on the politics and Aesthetics of abolition and the second is a political biography of queer AIDS activist kiyoshi Kuro mia Who in many ways instantiated many of the values that Noam Chomsky has defended over the years uh Jay and my hope for this session would be able to address the larger theoretical issues surrounding concrete Utopias and also focus on at least three now four texts of Professor Chomsky the famous 1967 essay the responsibility of intellectuals famous Chomsky Foucault debate from 1971 professor chomsky's book on anarchism and also uh the Dewey lectures on what kind of creatures we are so I'm totally thrilled to turn it over to my colleague Jay Gossett who will introduce Professor Noam Chomsky and then facilitate the discussion welcome to Utopia 613. thanks so much uh Bernard for that kind introduction thank you so much uh Professor Chomsky for being here with us I'm just gonna introduce you um which is like quite a quite a honor and a responsibility so um and then I'll say the prompt as well that you'll speak about and then I'll hand it over to you so Professor Noam Chomsky is currently the Laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute professor and professor of linguistics Emeritus at MIT his path-breaking contributions to the field of linguistics such as syntactic structures Cartesian Linguistics the minimalist program and other texts many other texts are indispensable for the study of language and understanding its role for humans as a biolinguistic species his recent books what kind of creatures are we and why only us language and evolution co-authored with Robert C B Warwick who is Professor of computational linguistics and MIT explores the origins and development of human language in a writing style that as always engages a multitude of publics in its Ambit Professor chomsky's almost too numerous to name contributions to political Theory media studies and activist knowledges include but aren't limited to of course his book the Fateful triangle the United States Israel and the Palestinians manufacturing consent the political economy of mass media which was co-authored with the late Edward S Herman who for uh many many years was a professor of finance and communication at University of Pennsylvania also failed States the abuse of power and the attack on democracy he's also done you know participated in lectures Lively debates about perhaps the most well-known being with the French philosopher Michelle Foucault in 1971 Professor Chomsky is the recipient of the Kyoto prize uh the Benjamin Franklin medal and computer and cognitive science the Sydney Peace Prize and many other Awards he is as generous in spirit as he is prolific devoting and incredible amounts of time to cultivating social justice pedagogy across the globe we're so looking forward Professor Chomsky to your remarks on in political analysis of uh the question of concrete Utopias and what steps we might take or you might Envision to enacting those aspirations of the here now so for Professor chomsky's talk we re-read and Revisited his 2017 preface to Michael Albert's book practical Utopia strategies for a desirable Society the preface ends with the following quote it is to these critical questions that practical Utopia is dedicated few have thought as long and hard about these matters as Michael Albert along with constructive efforts to planting the seeds of the future in the present quote what he presents here is a distillation of a life searching for sort of of searching thought and dedicated activism that merits great respect and close attention so we asked professor professor Chomsky to share his views on how white how we might plant the seeds of the future in our present and uh we're so excited to hear your thoughts so the floor is yours Professor Chomsky thank you well the concept of planting the hmm the features of the future in the prison Society goes back to the leading anarchist theoretician and activist in the 19th century bakunan was a was a utopian socialist but said we don't have to wait we can start right now we can start planting the seeds of the future right in the prison society and that which should be doing this takes a sort of a middle position be on a spectrum of plans for the future for a post-capitalist society uh we can think of the ends of the spectrum as being on one hand Karl Marx who had almost nothing to say about it if you read through his works there few scattered sentences about what a post-capitalist society might be his reasoning was that when the Fitters when worked working people are freed from the Fetters of capitalism they will be able to think through work together deliberate address the problems of developing a new society and doing it in the way that they will develop and work out that's when it end to the Spectrum uh at the other end of the spectrum you have Anarchist theorists like about this anti-on Spanish Anarchist 1930s writing at the period of the greatest achievements of kind of practical Utopia in the anarchist revolution of 1936. uh which was I should say just personally extremely significant in my own life I learned about it not far from where you are 42nd Street used to be a it's not what it is now but it used to be a center of radical offices and activism including the Freya orbital stima which had many works of anarchist thinking and activism and down Fourth Avenue or secondhand bookstores many of them run by emigries including Spanish anarchistemic rays and hanging around them and talking to people and picking up materials and playing pants let's say learned quite a lot which wasn't known at the time is only beginning to be understood now but his he tried this on the Android to give it detailed specific outline of what an anarchist society would be that's the other end of the spectrum Mike Albert whose book was just mentioned and discussed and I hope you'll have a chance to look at uh is towards the Santi on end of the spectrum he and his colleagues like Robin hannel Stephen sotom uh have worked out an extensive detail ideas about what I post a capitalist Society might look like on the other hand as the title of his book indicates he's also interested in Practical developments of steps towards the post-capitalist Cooperative participatory Society of the kind that they spell out in detail my own position for what it's worth is uh somewhere in the middle um skeptical about whether we know and understand enough about human beings or Human Society to say anything very definite about what would work successfully and I think a good deal of experimentation would be necessary when conditions of Freedom are sufficiently established so that these problems can be properly considered now to some extent can be done right away and it is being done there are very striking examples uh the I should say that one of the oreticians who an activist who was prominent in developing these ideas was Columbia University professor Seymour Melman personal friends for many years who worked on uh did very interesting work on a working class work takeover of Enterprises and industries and studied them in some detail there was a variety of them and argued for their feasibility and desirability in a to construct a better world along participatory Democratic lines huh and there are significant examples some of which have been partially inspired by his work like the ones that were mentioned before in the old rust build uh to review the basic facts when the neoliberal globalization projects were instituted Reagan particularly Clinton uh designed to undermine uh domestic labor and to strengthen the power of the international capital one of the effects was the end the industrialization of the what's now called the Rust Belt similar things in other parts of the developed world the uh Youngstown still Mills were closed by the ownership basically uh financial institutions in New York who decided they could recognize that they could make more profit by shifting production to Northern Mexico later other place China and other places where workers are far more effectively exploited much lower wages no working conditions uh the uh no environmental conditions and so on uh end result the industrialization and uh Indiana Chicago and the Cleveland and so on well there was an attempt to encounter the the steel workers offered that would of course meant not just destruction of the uh the working class itself but also the community communities were built around these Mills they fought back they proposed to buy the steel mills from the owners and run them themselves this was led by the process was led by mostly by starting land uh activists civil rights anti-war activists kicked out of his academic jobs and went into the legal profession became a a an advocate of Labor rights and labor activism he and others Goro parovitz was another worked together to try to organize an effort to Simply take over the Mills and put them in the hands of the workers a lot of popular support for that in the working class in the community well ultimately it failed uh turns out very often the financial managers who run these things or unwilling even to do something profitable if it provides the conception and idea that workers can take over plants and run the Enterprises and run them for themselves not a good idea to put in people's minds you're supposed to believe that the optimal world is one in which you spend your life most of your working Life as a uh a surf slave taking orders from a master it's called the job contract uh that's the ideal in life is to enter into the job contract and devote your working life your waking hours the following orders it's very important to instill that conception in people's minds because if they begin to think otherwise they may realize that we don't need any bosses one of my comfort books in fact it's called No bosses why should we accept this it's not a very novel idea goes back to the early Industrial Revolution or in fact the idea was so considered so obvious and the late 19th century it's the Industrial Revolution was developing so obvious it was even a slogan of the Republican Party under Lincoln that what was commonly called wage slavery is intolerable uh working people felt friendly then Republican party agreed that it was a fundamental attack on human rights and human dignity to be compelled to submit yourself to a Master for in fact most of your Waking Life the great Knights of Labor the first great Labor movement was based on the ideas they put it that those who work in the Mills should own them run them and manage them the famous Factory girls young women driven from the Farms to work in the Mills at a very extensive they ran their own newspapers Publications extensive material there with the same ideas being generated and produced Philip phoner great Labor historian added many of these these are very common ideas in the late 19th century and it's been very important to drive them out of people's minds to make sure you can't have such conceptions this comes up over and over again through history one time was a very important moment at the end of the first World War when there was a lot of a wave of radical democracy people wanted a different world than the one that had been constructed they had learned during the war the private Enterprise is not even an efficient way to run an economy to run the an efficient economy the state took it over uh and as that turned out to be a far more effective way of producing the economy that could fight the war than private Enterprise same thing happened in the second world war the same consequences a realization that these ideas that you must subject yourself to a master or necessary for efficient life there was at the end of the first world war a wave of radical democracy uh in Europe and mostly in Europe in the United States it was beaten down by vicious repression the famous Red Scare mostly anti-labor and devastated the fibrant social Socialist Party labor movements deported hundreds of activists anarchists Emma Goldman and others uh said a established a legacy in the United States which has been hard to break up until today Europe even more soon strong measures were taken to counter it in some countries fascism Italy later Germany other countries basically austerity programs there's a great book that just appeared on this if you want to learn more about it by Clara mate discover discusses the manner in which these ways were put down they keep coming up and they have to be put down while going back to Youngstown the idea that working people should take over the Enterprise themselves is offensive to the capitalist owners for pretty good reasons they don't want such Concepts to spread didn't work well they didn't give up what they did was try to form uh working close Enterprises a worker-owned Enterprises that would fit into the kind of economy that was developing out of the collapse of the industrial economy so work her own laundry services for hospitals and other uh Enterprises that were developing in the Cleveland area this is now spread fairly substantially there are many such examples and networks have developed that's one concrete way to respond to the crisis imposed by the neighbor neoliberal assault on the population cooperatives thousands of cooperatives or another form uh same is happening in other countries take Brazil the our counterpart in South America in many ways the largest popular movement in the world and happens to be in Brazil is the uh MST the landless workers movement began with landless workers just taking over unused agricultural areas owned by uh the billionaires corporations the foreigners and just settling on them resisting the efforts of the state of the security forces of the state to expel them it's now developed extensively they've moved on to creating small Enterprises like growing out of Agriculture like Dairy Enterprises that fit into the surrounding economy provide dairy products and so on this is developing quite extensively and there are other similar things throughout the world we can find many of them well all of these are concrete ways to create the seeds of the future in the present society and that extends as was mentioned in the introduction but to things like say the Columbia workers the student organ student unionization program how does that fit in boy breaking the conception which is at the heart of the neoliberal assault that we have to be alone isolated atomized facing the Market ravages alone without defense notice that one of the first acts of Thatcher and Reagan when the new liberal programs was instituted First Act was to attack unions that means the standard means of Defense of working people against capitalist assault so it was very important to break them to break down the idea and the that you can work cooperatively uh to produce conditions proper conditions for your own future you have to be isolated by atomized separated from one another well uh unions in the past can remember this from childhood in New York we're not just uh organizations to protect wages they were a way of life the union that was involve cultural activities educational activities my own family mostly lived in New York extended family unemployed first immigration first generation immigrants my aunts were unemployed seamstresses they had quite a rich life through the union International ladies garment worker Union which had cultural programs educational programs even a week up in this Catskills it was a whole rich life now that's what unions were in the past one of their major principles was that education should be available to everyone throughout life so at adult education programs were core part of the existing unions radical intellectuals often participated people like JD Burnell and others in engaged in radical education programs all of that has to be broken it's necessary for people to be alone it's been more effective in the United States than in other countries I see it constantly just my own experience so if I give a talk and uh Australia Canada England the continent can often be at a union hall not here because they've been so successfully crushed and demolished that these things don't exist going back to the union efforts at Columbia Starbucks and elsewhere begins to rebuild that kind of Consciousness that leads to the background from which constructive activities can be undertaken to build the kinds of society we should hope to have in which those who produce or in control of their own production and their productive lives make Democratic decisions democratically as to how the Enterprise should function work in conjunction with democratically run communities uh they of course interact [Music] deeply deeply integrated with one another same people in fact just in different functions in life and out of that develop a Cooperative Society democratically run eliminating illegitimate hierarchies and domination then we're on to moving towards something that could be a realistic approach to Utopia my unfeeling is we'll if such processes can proceed as I think they shouldn't meet many obstacles of course we will find along the way the problems that we didn't Envision the social progress is kind of like mountain climbing you see a peak of a hill you work hard you get to the peak and you discover it's not the peak there's another one farther behind that you didn't know about then you climb that one that's what social progress has been like things that you didn't even perceive and comprehend come into Vision when you make when you make certain achievements so I think there's a lot to learn a lot of prospect for Progress if we can manage to escape the crises existential crises that are imminent and May in fact terminate the human experiment before there's any chance to proceed with this and that's not an exaggeration I would urge anyone who hasn't is not aware of it to pay close attention to the announcement on January 24th of how the hands of the Doomsday Clock are being said you know what that is I'm sure established by the bulletin of atomic scientists at the shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima the hands of the clock are set a certain distance from midnight Midnight where midnight essentially means termination uh originally said It Seven Minutes to Midnight oscillated over the years depending on assessments of the global situation during the Trump years it was the analysts abandoned SEC minutes moved to seconds it's now said at 100 seconds to midnight on January 24th it will the second hand will probably be we moved closer to midnight certainly should be since all of the fundamental problems have been exacerbated during the past year well there are feasible methods to overcome those these crises they're known requires will determination energy and if they can be overcome the prospects are open to develop a concrete Utopias which will carry us forward on the long effort over human history to try to create a livable and more viable world stop there thank you so much um Professor Chomsky uh I thought it was really profound and Powerful to think about unions as you said as a way of life and the kind of uh sites of study that and culture and um you know the presence how that time period before now um like the sense of cooperativity collaboration and Co-op cooperativity that that uh was functioning there that maybe is different now and I and you talked about the theme of austerity and the neoliberal assault on ways of life and we mentioned Union several times at Columbia and I wanted to ask I know in 67 you wrote your now classic essay on the responsibility of intellectuals and given the state of the University now in terms of the kind of neoliberal University model I'm wondering if you can speak to how those responsibilities might have changed and what might the role of the intellectual be today given these conditions well I think the role is the same and it goes back through history you can trace it back to Classical Greece and uh the biblical period swords or so take Classical Greece there was someone as you know who was forced to commit suicide because he was uh he was carrying out a dangerous crime he was asking too many questions it was corrupting the Youth of Athens by asking them to think about things that uh were not conducive to sustaining power and domination same time roughly the same era in the biblical record the oral Traditions that became the Bible there were people who were called Prophets Prophet is a dubious translation of an obscure Hebrew word they were basically uh but we would call dissenting intellectuals people giving a critique of the power and the exercise of Power by the brutal Kings calling for Mercy for widows and orphans calling for an honest more a decent life they were treated very poorly imprisoned driven into the desert and so on that's a pattern that goes right through history different varies depending on the nature of the society the responsibility of intellectuals has always been to be to take those that dedication to truth justice Mercy as guiding values and that always means struggling against existing power structures no as for the responsibility of intellectuals today as compared with 50 years ago same responsibility different structural different institutional structures that take the universities they have changed in a number of ways one way they've changed is that they've come more open free uh inquiring deliberatives that's been the one of the effects of the as one of the civilizing effects of the student activism of the 1960s in their aftermath which broke through a lot of the uh dominant uh conventions that controlled and suppressed students and others a lot of that is gone there's a reaction the reaction is to undermine the universities so and the school so over the past 50 years there are major efforts on the part of private power State authorities which they dominate simply to eliminate the or undermine the institutions that uh I'll quote a famous it should be a famous statement the institution's responsible for the indoctrination of the young got to undermine those institutions are not doing their job and Eric either they have to become more forceful in indoctrinating the young or else just defunded and undermined I'm quoting from very important book I urge you to read it it's called the crisis of democracy support first publication of the trilateral commission 1975 uh it's uh trilateral because it was liberal intellectuals of the Europe Japan and the United States three major centers of contemporary Democratic State capitalism uh the you can get the political tenor of it from the fact that the Carter Administration was drawn almost entirely from their ranks so Carter Styles liberal Democrats I was quoting from the uh uh American reporter particip spokesperson for this conference Samuel Huntington professor of the science of government at Harvard University well-known liberal intellectual he was concerned as he put it that the universities were not performing their proper function of indoctrination of the young that's why you see young people out in the streets protesting the Vietnam War calling for women's rights calling for civil rights supporting the Civil Rights Movement moving on to environmental concerns we don't want all of that students are supposed to be passive obedient doing their job like other people not causing problems the general conclusion of the trilateral commission is that there's the crisis of democracy is there's too much democracy people who are supposed to be passive and obedient or breaking out and calling for their rights people who were called special interests like young people old people women working people farmers in other words the general population no they didn't mention it but there's another group that is not to be touched they represent the national interests the ownership Cliffs the rich the privilege the corporate sector that's the national not naturally the national interest so we don't touch them but the special interests have to have more moderation and democracy go home and be quiet that was the liberal end of the spectrum at the harsher end it was just plain defunding universities state universities have been severely defunded schools have been defunded the neoliberal gurus like Milton Friedman thought you should just get rid of the public school system entirely why should we have that interference with markets like a public school system and it has been carried out to a significant extent the in several ways the at the right like the Trump Administration the Secretary of Education Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was committed to the idea that the public schools ought to be eliminated uh why should we have that you should just have a private education religious education and so on and the policies were designed for that they go to the other end Obama or Duncan education directed education they had a different way of undermining education namely what's called teaching to test let's set up an educational system in which students are trained to answer questions on a general exam which will be monitored and get all the metrics you can rank every school but and every teacher by how well it's working this is the absolute worst form of Education John Dewey photos spent most of his life opposing it and calling for a kind of education which would instill and encourage the natural creativity and inquisitiveness of students who get them to work on their own and together collaboratively to develop their minds and their intellects and their interests back in the 18th century the Obama Duncan approach was ridiculed as being like pouring water into a vessel and then having it come out in little bits called taking a test now I'm sure you've all had experiences where you had to take a course he had no interest in uh he studied for the exam got an A couple weeks later forgot what the course was about that's teaching to test course plus one way of undermining the educational system the other way is Brute Force just defund it uh colleges don't have tenured professors use adjuncts who get paid practically nothing or graduate students cheap easily exploitable labor well the unionization efforts are an attempt to block that so what's the responsibility of intellectuals always the same find structures of power that are illegitimate undermine them in your scholarship and your activism work with others bring the messages as best you can to others help them come to understand it that's the responsibility of intellectuals the task changes as the institutions change thank you so much I've known Chomsky for that and for so directly addressing I know the uh the topic and the concerns that we are addressing here in Utopia 1313 I really appreciate it um I I wanna I wanna touch on I had originally uh suggested I would touch on the distinction between the better and the best uh which was something that I felt very much in our in our emails back and forth and uh before this seminar I I had a sense that you had some hesitation I I also saw it of course in the in the famous Chomsky Foucault debate uh some hesitations with Notions of the best of course and I as I hear you today and read you um I understand some of the hesitations very and and the mountain climbing uh a metaphor is of course Perfect Right the hill that looks as if you're gonna climb to the top of the mountain and then once you get there you just see that you're you've got another 2 000 meters to go because it was hidden by that mountain itself and I also heard at the beginning though that you were talking about being somewhat skeptical about knowing enough about what would work successfully so there are elements of in in part there are elements of the fact that our objectives change once we get there um uh also Notions of fallibility um also this idea that we can't be sure of what they're of of how we will act and think once we have uh broken the Fetters of oppression um so there are lots of elements that lead to humility um and I and I think that that's where your preference for Notions of the better um comes from uh epistemic humility in a way uh and the impossibility of really knowing and uh what will be out there uh in the future now in part I think that that is what we are trying to do here in a way not talking about totalizing Utopias but instead talking about concrete Utopias that are achievable or have been achieved and that at some point we'll have to overcome knowing that you know even if we were even as we have achieved this there's more to do um and and in a way I think your your presentation today Embraces that notion of concrete Utopias in a more limited sense of existing possibilities existing things that have been achieved that can give us inspiration to continue and to fight more for uh social transformation so I think at the end of the day um there's a lot of um uh consonants between your vision and the one that we are developing at least and presenting in this seminar um which led me in the last post I just sent you which just went up so you probably haven't had the chance to see it to actually ending up trying to trying to suggest that ultimately the common good is a form of a narco-syndicalism that includes both dismantling of unjustified forms of power and the Reconstruction of a society based on cooperation and here I think the the passage that you use twice in your Dewey lectures I think captures best uh Noam Chomsky so I'm going to read it and then ask you if I'm if I missed the Target or if I got it uh and it's his passage from Rudolph rocker right and he their reconstructive project which was quote an alliance of free groups of men and women based on Cooperative labor and a planned administration of things in the interests of the community um with that with that capture pretty well uh where you are and have been for some years in terms of these questions of social change yes captures it perfectly not just for some years but quite a few years since I was about 12 years old wandering up and down Fourth Avenue and the anarchist bookstores and the offices and Union Square and that's where I picked up Rudolph rocker got a lot of my political education from him and also from participants like the Spanish immigries who fled after the Franco takeover but yes that's exactly captures exactly what but has been a inspiring idea for me all of my life never gone away and I think it's the more I think about it the older I get the more appropriate it seems and I think the distinction you make between dismantling and cons and reconstructing is a very significant one these are two complementary tasks they should interact we should dismantle oppressive structures create Cooperative forward-looking ones at the same time to work two kinds of action that reinforce one another they're mutually supportive actions now we even learn about either each from performing the other from the act of constructing we learn more about which would be dismantled and how to do it thank you so much Jay you wanted to ask a question about on anarchism or does it uh yeah so we've got one question coming in from uh Nini pinoergia on zoom and so if we could highlight many um and welcome nanny to our space and then also uh I see Sonya hope so why don't we do why don't we do three and then uh and then back to you gnome if that's okay we'll do Nini and then Sonya and then hope okay all right nanny go for it and welcome thank you thanks for being here thank thank you thank you very much thank you Professor Chomsky it's it's a great it's a great pleasure to uh to see you've been greeting you ever since I was a graduate student in 1981. um and uh I I want I I was very touched by um everything that you said the way that you brought together the question of Education with a question of capitalism something of course that you have been thinking about and writing about and telling us about um all these years um I I wish I could share your optimism um but especially today which I feel is a really black day for Colombia because we got we just got a new president who was uh in the upper rungs of the IMF and the World Bank not an intellectual a person who was deeply involved in uh crushing the economies of Ireland Spain Greece Portugal and Italy during financial crisis in the in the 220 2012 right um in in on this day I am wondering how optimistic can we still be on what you have talked about and written about and you know Edward said has also written about not only the responsibility of the intellectual but also primarily as the university being the last utopian space right so so I am just wondering if if the precipitation of the collusion uh between Capital naked naked can ballistic capitalism uh in the in the um in in in governing in governance uh of the universities uh in the United States um is is not much faster than we might have thought or has not been arrested as a development uh by the um the movements the the social uh the social movements that have come um over the over the decades um thank you thank you so much great um and uh thanks for bringing Colombia back into the conversation we're going to take two more questions if that's okay with you gnome and then allow you to respond uh Sonia Anwar thank you very much um thank you Professor Chomsky this is truly an honor um same I've been reading your work um in Pakistan actually said right where I was born and raised um so a long distance reader and my question um focuses a little bit more on that skepticism that you had referred to earlier and I'm wondering if there's another layer to that epistemic humility and that is the skepticism in itself of power would you associate the temporal characteristics of Utopia the future the future itself being a source of power as an asset of the powerful um and I'm wondering where if there's a way to to distinguish the idea of the ideal and the better as future as a noun and future as a verb um and in that I'm specifically thinking about Reclamation efforts um that arise out of radical radical movements such as afrofuturism um or even Union building as we see it now um so is there is is that the distinction where the ideal is less about the ideal as a noun and more about the ideality which is always the part of pushing for the better and so is concretizing Utopia less about that calcified vision and more about this Perpetual Dynamic Utopia isania and um we're gonna have one more uh hope shinderman hi um thank you I first want to say thank you so much for coming and speaking to us it is truly a wonderful honor and experience and that I'm so happy to be a part of um so I have a question about Labor um and about life that cannot labor or labors in a way that differs from common conceptions and when I think of this I'm specifically thinking about disabled life which includes myself um and I was wondering then does labor not become an oppressive structure that separates the able from the disabled and how this kind of um separation can be resisted through human organization and human relations so I guess how can labor how can organizing forming coalitions unionizing Etc be used to Foster an understanding of life that includes those who currently aren't completely acknowledged as beings thank you so much uh hope um so those are uh three questions that kind of push in slightly different directions or at least um uh so uh do you want to go ahead gnome well these are very probing questions which raise many issues to start with they might say that the problems that have been raised take a particular form are often a stark form in the United States but they're much broader the mentioning the IMF spring set up it's uh take England the other the first of the two modern democracies first England and the United States in England the there has also been a serious attack on the University system the Tory government even went to the extent of arguing that uh departments should justify themselves by their ability to sell themselves on the market to the classics Department if it wants to support Ed Oxford wants to support itself should show that it is responsive to Market pressures one uh educational analyst Stephen colini wrote an article I think in the times that our supplement in which he said the Tory government is trying to turn first class universities into third class commercial Enterprises and it's also to some extent true in the United States the back in 19 I think 81 early days of the neoliberal assault uh an amendment was passed in Congress Birch by Amendment which gave universities the right to patent uh discoveries that were made in University Laboratories that's a move towards turning science and scholarship into the commercial Enterprises as a very cheapening effect on the universities on the community on the mentality of participants you become interested in making money not in making discoveries for the common good uh and it's one of many such effects of trying to turn people into atoms of production and consumption using looking for themselves not working for the general good that's been a common feature of the uh the neoliberal programs the IMF has in fact implemented them in ways which have been extremely destructive to many societies which have been forced to accept structural adjustment programs which undermined working conditions benefits uh popular organization left led to decades literally of under of stagnation and underdevelopment is very harmful effects I should say this is part of the austerity programs that were initiated at the end of the first world war in an effort to beat back popular activism organization uh efforts to create radical alternatives to capitalist oppression the very it's been going on for a century oh this book that I mentioned by Clara mate is a very good analysis and review of these programs up to the prison well that brings us to the Notions of I think the phrase that was used was Dynamic Utopia we're in a constant process of trying to discover what we're trying to achieve well taking steps towards building it and achieving it and that should as I said it's an interactive process I don't my own feeling is I do share the kind of skepticism that was mentioned I think there's an awful lot that we just don't know and understand about human beings about their capacities their cognitive capacities I think we've been learning more over time there's uh if you look over history the kinds of things that were accepted as normal and uh so obvious you don't even mention them not many years ago are now considered Unthinkable unspeakable not that many years let me go back to the 17th and 18th century and take a look at what's considered appropriate behavior with behaving towards people who violated Norms that questioned Authority and so on it's so unspeakable you can barely discuss it uh the uh but we don't have to go back to that far go back say to the 1960s before the mostly student inspired activism had a civilizing effect on the whole society back in it's worth looking back to see how much progress has been made and simply understanding and sense of sensibility the 1960s the United States still had anti-miscegenation laws which were so extreme that the Nazis refused to accept them uh any sodomy laws of course Federal law imposed segregation on public housing blocked afro-americans from entering into the large-skilled public housing projects that were developed in the 50s and the 60s big effect wealth in the United States for most people is property property is mostly what the home that you live in that meant that during the great development period of the 50s and 60s maybe for the first time a black man could get a decent job in the Auto industry couldn't couldn't buy a house couldn't get the basis for for Pro for economic progress and uh participation in the broader Community it's left a tremendous Legacy that was the 1950s in the 1950s women half the population we're still not considered persons they were considered property that's English common law the founders established the country that way a woman is property of her father properties handed over to the husband uh that was actually on the books until 1975. when for the first time the Supreme Court determined that women are peers have a guaranteed right to serve in federal trials which means they're no longer quasi persons well virtually very little in the way of anti-militarism opposition to aggression and violence took years years to try to develop a active movement against the Vietnam War one of the most horrible crimes since the second world war well a lot of that has changed it's plenty that's wrong and there's been a reaction the reaction has been to try to control and uh enforce better indoctrination of the Young by various means talked about them before it's constant struggle so and during the struggle there is progress or steps that have been made that give us a basis to build for a better future there are new and hard and harsh problems that arise along the way that struggle is never going to end as long as human society exists we will find after some victories we'll find new problems uh that's uh we can take we can respect those who have worked and struggled to create the progress that has been made and recognized that the best we can do is stand on their shoulders walk in their footprints see what we can achieve for the future thank you very much Professor Chomsky you've been very generous with your time and we are deeply grateful that you have participated um and presented both I and Jay and I'm extraordinarily thankful to Jay for organizing this um you want to say oh No Just Second That Emotion thank you so much um so first uh we all want to thank you for joining the seminar thank you very much my pleasure to be with you glad to know about what you're doing uh you have a room full of um people who have come to me saying oh I've been reading reading Noam Chomsky since I was a little kid and I just I can't believe he's going to be here so uh we are thrilled and deeply grateful uh and deeply grateful to you Jay and just want to tell everyone that we'll be meeting next on February 1st and we'll be discussing uh the new book concrete utopianism by Gary Wilder we'll have Fred moton here as well as Gary Wilder of course Nadia Abu al-hajj and kayama Glover talking about that new work I should say that uh Professor Chomsky you mentioned a few times Clara Matey's book uh the new her new book which is just appeared the capital order and um we've been in touch with Clara also and we're going to be bringing her in here and having a conversation about our new book as well so that's perfect uh perfect symbiosis thank you uh for that um and then after that on February 8th we're just going to go quickly we've got Cornell West coming in with uh Derica Purnell and Amna Akbar to talk about the role of law in Progressive politics so we hope you'll join us for those they come kind of back to back unusual usually you've got a little bit more separation but we've we've had a wonderful uh response so uh see thank you so much uh Noam Chomsky my pleasure thank you and thank you

Channel: Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought

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Id: R8nOyNRy3rI

Length: 72min 10sec (4330 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023