Noam Chomsky is seen by many as one of the more prominent anarchists in the United States although there has been times in the last several years he has come out publicly in favor of strengthening the federal government. He has argued that there is no contradiction between this stance and his advocacy of a stateless future. Chomsky bases his support for the federal government on his contention that private power wielded by corporations is much more dangerous to people than state action, and that government can, and should, protect its defenseless citizens against the depredations of the capitalists. While the power of private corporations in the united states is truly awesome and oppressive, this power exists because these businesses are supported by the state, a point that Chomsky concedes, and admits government regulatory mechanisms are very weak, and mostly controlled by the corporations anyway.
Socialists have generally opposed the state for precisely this reason: that it protects the interests of the wealthy exploiters. But, because of working people's movements, the state has instituted some social welfare programs and instituted some regulation of private business to ameliorate the conditions of those most harmed by state-supported capitalism. These and other alleged public services are the aspects of government power that Chomsky supports and would see expanded. Yet the capitalist state is a package. The welfare state is also the warfare state. People can participate in government, but it is not under their popular influence. Chomsky argues that the state is the only form of illegitimate power in which people have a real chance to participate and here the World Socialist Movement can concur.
Chomsky on "Democracy Now"
"So it’s no great secret that the U.S. electoral system is mainly public relations extravaganzas. They keep away from issues. It’s sort of a marketing affair, and the people who run it are the advertisers. And they had their national convention right after the 2008 election, and it revealed that they understood perfectly what was going on. They gave Obama the award for the best marketing campaign of the year. And if you go to the business press, they were reporting how executives were really excited. I mean, we have this new model as to how to, you know, delude people, enacted in the—we used to use the Reagan model, now we can use the Obama model for our delusional systems that we construct, which is pretty much what the PR industry is about. So, that captured it properly.
I mean, he’s—there are a couple of things that he did that are, I think—he had a couple good appointments to the NLRB, National Labor Relations Board. There are a few actions here and there that, you know, you can kind of clap.
Labor—there was a huge effort by the labor movement to get him into office. The first thing he did was kick them in the face, the no card check. In fact, what happened with the health program was quite interesting, because, you know, of course, there was a very important senatorial election in—must have been January 2010, after Senator Kennedy died—in Massachusetts, liberal state. And what was at stake was not just Kennedy’s position, but the filibuster-proof majority, which was quite critical. Well, the Democrats lost that election, which was pretty dramatic. And if—that was carefully analyzed. One of the main—there was, first of all, a ton of money pouring in to support the Republican candidate, who was a kind of a vacuum. I don’t know if you followed it. "I’m Scott Brown. Here’s my truck." You know, that was the campaign. But what was quite interesting was the—and in the suburbs, more or less affluent suburbs, voting was pretty high. In the downtown areas, the urban areas, where the working class and poor people live, voting was quite low. And what was quite interesting was the union vote, which was analyzed. Union members, the majority of them, voted against—well, for the Republican, meaning against Obama. Why? That was investigated, too. They were furious. They had worked really hard to put Obama into office. He broke all his promises to them.
But furthermore, the health plan—one of the promises was there would be some kind of national healthcare. And he could have—I think he could have achieved that. For example, support for the public option was about three to two, I think. If he made any effort, he could have gotten it through. But not only did he not put that through, but the one thing that he insisted on was cutting back what were called "Cadillac health plans," that actually should be called "Chevrolet health plans." And those are the health plans that union workers had fought for, for years. You look at the history of the American labor movement, it’s kind of abandoned all sorts of things all along the way—you know, the rights of workers in the workplace, all kinds of things. But it insisted—it did make one gain: it made a compact with management, a contract that they’d get good benefits—all benefits for themselves, not for the country. Of course, a compact like that lasts only as long as business decides to keep it. I mean, give it up, it’s over. But they did have reasonable health plans for themselves. Those are the Cadillac health plans. So the one thing Obama wanted to do was to kill the health plans that they had sacrificed for and fought for for 50 years, giving up plenty of other things in the struggle. And they were pretty angry about it, and understandably.
And I think if you look at other constituencies, it’s approximately the same. Take, say, environmental issues. I mean, you know, his attitude toward the tar sands and the fracking, the XL pipeline, is characteristic. So, in his State of the Union address, last State of the Union address, he emphasized the fact that we’re in a great position. We have maybe a hundred years of energy independence ahead of us using these methods, which are going to destroy the environment. So, who knows what things will be like in a hundred years? Maybe unlivable. But that’s—but it sounded nice. "I’ll put off the decision for a couple months and just have the southern part of the pipeline built, not the part that crosses the border." That’ll come next, when you’re not looking. But it’s been that way on issue after issue.
And that’s not the only case, after all. I mean, the part—you’re looking at Obama’s programs, the part that really did surprise me—and I don’t, frankly, understand it—is his attack on civil liberties, which is extreme. He’s gone beyond Bush. Some of the worst cases aren’t even discussed, like one—I think one of the worst cases is the Supreme Court case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which was initiated by the Obama administration, brought to the court by the administration, argued for the government by Elena Kagan, you know, his latest Supreme Court appointee. And if you look at the decision, it was kind of welcomed by the—even the right-wing justices didn’t accept all of it, but they accepted part of it. The crucial—at issue was whether this group, Humanitarian Law Project, was criminally liable for giving material support to a terrorist group. The material support in question was legal advice to the PKK, a Turkish group, giving them legal advice. That was material support. You read the wording, you and I, many people we know, are liable under this. If we’ve met people who the government calls or claims are terrorists—they don’t have to give any reason for it, they just say, "You’re a terrorist," like Mandela, for example—if you meet with them and you talk to them and you advise them, in fact, if you advise them to carry out nonviolent tactics, you’re giving material support under the Obama interpretation of "material support." Material support used to mean giving them arms or something, but it was extended by this to your speech to them. That’s a very wide-ranging and ominous stand.
And it was—I should add, on the side, that the whole concept of on the terrorist list or being accused of a terrorist is something that should not be tolerated in a free society. I mean, you know, Mandela is a good example. If the government says you’re a terrorist, that ends it. No recourse, no argument needed, no justification. They can put anybody they like on the terrorist list. The idea that they decide who’s a terrorist is a granting to state power something we’ve never had in a free society. So, not only is that—should that be intolerable—and that’s, of course, not Obama, it goes way back—but extending the notion of material support to discussions with them or advice to them, I mean, that’s—it should be beyond discussion. It’s barely discussed.
There are others that are pretty bad, too, like the attack on whistleblowers. As I’m sure you know, more whistleblowers have been under attack by this administration than all of American history put together. This is an attempt to strengthen executive power and executive privilege, keeping secret from the population. And if it was—and there’s another case. I mean, it’s not his initiative, but [inaudible]. But all of these extensions of state power and violations of civil rights are significant. But we should bear in mind that we’re a lot freer than people here have been in the past, and certainly a lot freer than other countries. So, it’s bad, but we shouldn’t exaggerate. There’s plenty of opportunities to do things"
In another interview, Chomsky explains
"Barack Obama has not been a good president. On a host of issues, he has been a bad president...Frankly, I didn’t expect much from Obama, so I wasn’t actually disillusioned. When he came into office at the height of the financial crisis, the first thing he needed to do, was put together an economic team. Who did he pick? He picked the people who created the crisis. There are Nobel laureates in economics who had different approaches. But he picked what they called the Rubin Boys, people like Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, bankers and so on. The people who essentially created the crisis. There was an article in the business press, Bloomberg News, which reviewed that. They concluded that these people shouldn´t be on the economic team, half of them should be getting subpoenas. So he was paying off the people who put him into office...Most of his campaign funding concentrated in the financial institutions, which preferred him to McCain. And there were people who understood it. So shirtly after he was elected, the advertising industry awarded him the prize for the best marketing campaign of the year... The United States healthcare systems is a total disaster. If the United States had a healthcare system like any other industrial society, there wouldn’t be any deficit. In fact, it would end up being a surplus. And the reason is not obscure. A largely privatized, mostly unregulated healthcare system which is extremely inefficient and very costly. Well, the Obama reforms are slightly better than what existed, but nothing like would should exist. In fact, even the idea of allowing a public option, to make a choice to pick a public healthcare, even that he refused to pursue.... Some of his supporters argue that it was the best that could be done, given the political circumstances. But that’s by no means obvious. The president has a lot of power, for example, he can appeal to the population. The population was very strong in favor, almost two to one. So okay, appeal to the population. That’s the way Roosevelt got the New Deal legislation through."
No comments:
Post a Comment