By Noam Chomsky, Nation of Change, November 3, 2011
Delivering a Howard
Zinn lecture is a bittersweet experience for me. I regret that he’s not here to
take part in and invigorate a movement that would have been the dream of his
life. Indeed, he laid a lot of the groundwork for it.
If the bonds and
associations being established in these remarkable events can be sustained
through a long, hard period ahead – victories don’t come quickly – the Occupy
protests could mark a significant moment in American history.
I’ve never seen
anything quite like the Occupy movement in scale and character, here and
worldwide. The Occupy outposts are trying to create cooperative communities
that just might be the basis for the kinds of lasting organizations necessary
to overcome the barriers ahead and the backlash that’s already coming.
That the Occupy
movement is unprecedented seems appropriate because this is an unprecedented
era, not just at this moment but since the 1970s.
The 1970s marked a
turning point for the United States. Since the country began, it had been a
developing society, not always in very pretty ways, but with general progress
toward industrialization and wealth.
Even in dark times,
the expectation was that the progress would continue. I’m just old enough to
remember the Great Depression. By the mid-1930s, even though the situation was
objectively much harsher than today, the spirit was quite different.
A militant labor
movement was organizing – the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and
others – and workers were staging sit-down strikes, just one step from taking
over the factories and running them themselves.
Under popular
pressure, New Deal legislation was passed. The prevailing sense was that we
would get out of the hard times.
Now there’s a sense
of hopelessness, sometimes despair. This is quite new in our history. During
the 1930s, working people could anticipate that the jobs would come back.
Today, if you’re a worker in manufacturing, with unemployment practically at
Depression levels, you know that those jobs may be gone forever if current
policies persist.
That change in the
American outlook has evolved since the 1970s. In a reversal, several centuries
of industrialization turned to de-industrialization. Of course manufacturing
continued, but overseas – very profitable, though harmful to the workforce.
The economy shifted
to financialization. Financial institutions expanded enormously. A vicious
cycle between finance and politics accelerated. Increasingly, wealth
concentrated in the financial sector. Politicians, faced with the rising cost
of campaigns, were driven ever deeper into the pockets of wealthy backers.
And the politicians
rewarded them with policies favorable to Wall Street: deregulation, tax
changes, relaxation of rules of corporate governance, which intensified the
vicious cycle. Collapse was inevitable. In 2008, the government once again came
to the rescue of Wall Street firms presumably too big to fail, with leaders too
big to jail.
Today, for the
one-tenth of 1 percent of the population who benefited most from these decades
of greed and deceit, everything is fine.
In 2005, Citigroup
– which, by the way, has repeatedly been saved by government bailouts – saw the
wealthy as a growth opportunity.
The bank released a
brochure for investors that urged them to put their money into something called
the Plutonomy Index, which identified stocks in companies that cater to the
luxury market.
“The world is
dividing into two blocs – the plutonomy and the rest,” Citigroup summarized.
“The U.S., U.K. and Canada are the key plutonomies – economies powered by the
wealthy.”
As for the
non-rich, they’re sometimes called the precariat – people who live a precarious
existence at the periphery of society. The “periphery,” however, has become a
substantial proportion of the population in the U.S. and elsewhere.
So we have the
plutonomy and the precariat: the 1 percent and the 99 percent, as Occupy sees
it – not literal numbers, but the right picture.
The historic
reversal in people’s confidence about the future is a reflection of tendencies
that could become irreversible. The Occupy protests are the first major popular
reaction that could change the dynamic.
I’ve kept to
domestic issues. But two dangerous developments in the international arena
overshadow everything else.
For the first time
in human history, there are real threats to the survival of the human species.
Since 1945 we have had nuclear weapons, and it seems a miracle we have survived
them. But policies of the Obama administration and its allies are encouraging
escalation.
The other threat,
of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world
is taking at least halting steps to do something about it. The United States is
taking steps backward. A propaganda system, openly acknowledged by the business
community, declares that climate change is all a liberal hoax: Why pay
attention to these scientists?
If this
intransigence continues in the richest, most powerful country in the world, the
catastrophe won’t be averted.
Something must be
done in a disciplined, sustained way, and soon. It won’t be easy to proceed.
There will be hardships and failures – it’s inevitable. But unless the process
that’s taking place here and elsewhere in the country and around the world
continues to grow and becomes a major force in society and politics, the
chances for a decent future are bleak.
You can’t achieve
significant initiatives without a large, active, popular base. It’s necessary
to get out into the country and help people understand what the Occupy movement
is about – what they themselves can do, and what the consequences are of not
doing anything.
Organizing such a
base involves education and activism. Education doesn’t mean telling people
what to believe – it means learning from them and with them.
Karl Marx said,
“The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.” A variant to
keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you’d better try to
understand it. That doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though
that’s helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others.
You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. We all have to gain the
understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas.
The most exciting
aspect of the Occupy movement is the construction of the linkages that are
taking place all over. If they can be sustained and expanded, Occupy can lead
to dedicated efforts to set society on a more humane course.
©
2011 Noam ChomskyDistributed by The New York Times Syndicate.
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