Saturday, November 06, 2010

chomsky on capitalism


Love or loathe him , Noam Chomsky can always make pertinent points about contemporary society.

He writes ,
"Yet it can be said that the corporate high rollers have a valid defense against charges of “greed” and disregard for the health of the society. Their task is to maximize profit and market share; in fact, that’s their legal obligation. If they don’t fulfill that mandate, they’ll be replaced by someone who will. They also ignore systemic risk: the likelihood that their transactions will harm the economy generally. Such “externalities” are not their concern—not because they are bad people, but for institutional reasons..."

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

How similar Chomsky's criticism is to the SPGB's

ople determined to harm others and exploit the world” but it remains true that their “ideal” is, and has to be, maximising profits, base or otherwise.


"The personal views and motivations of business leaders are not relevant to the way the capitalist system works. Business leaders are cogs in the economic mechanism of the accumulation of capital out of profits derived from the surplus value produced by the class of wage and salary workers. They have to pursue a policy of maximising profits, even if this might “harm others and exploit the world”, as this is what has to be done for their particular company – in fact, for any company – to stay in the competitive struggle for profits. If they didn’t do it, somebody else would be found who would."
June 2006 Socialist Standard