Chomsky

• July 24, 2022
• 2815 words
• 15 min

Notes on Noam Chomsky's speeches and interviews, with my own paraphrasing of main points. I'll add to this from time to time.

If you prefer to read rather than listen:

• The Noam Chomsky Website
• The Anarchist Library
• Where to Start with Noam Chomsky – His Best Books

It doesn't matter too much what order you consume Chomsky's work, because he's been so incredibly consistent over many decades.

General comment: The Q&A sessions following speeches are absolutely worth the time to listen. Even with frustratingly incoherent questions Chomsky produces detailed well-structured answers.

Noam Chomsky on Democracy, 1988

youtube – 8mins – Excerpted from an interview with Bill Moyers (transcript).

• Ratification is a very weak form of democracy.
• Capitalist democracy considers popular participation in politics to be a problem, the "crisis of democracy". "Manufacture of consent" reduces people to passive consumers of politics.
• Corporations have highly concentrated power over decision-making in economic life.
• We should not be forced to rent ourselves to the people who own the country, we should play a role in determining what those institutions do.
• Unless we move towards true democracy, human society probably won't survive.
• Likelihood of nuclear conflict, destruction of a fragile environment.
• Our global society is based on greed as the highest human value.
• We need a mode of social organisation that reflects values other than greed.
• Care and concern for others and the environment are part of human nature, suppressed in a system designed to maximise personal gain.
• Democracy could bring about expression of human needs and values that tend to be suppressed under institutions of private power and profit.
• Can only be done through engagement with others in solidarity, free association.
• Voluntary organisation, eliminating structures of hierarchy and domination, becoming the means by which we govern ourselves, control our lives.

Noam Chomsky – The Essentials

youtube | podcast – 2h39m

A compilation of excerpts from many recordings. The video description contains a detailed topic index.

A Critique of Madisonian Democracy, 1997

youtube | podcast – 1h35m – Speech at Tufts University.

America's democratic institutions were designed from the beginning to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."

• 3:31 Cold War deceitfully contrived security threats to subsidise high-tech industry.
• 5:07 Samuel Huntington: "We may have to sell intervention and other military action by creating the misimpression that it's the Soviet Union that we're fighting." Policies unchanged by the end of the Cold War, just continue under other pretexts.
• 6:24 No real Conservative tradition in the US.
• 9:01 Madison: "In England at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure, and agrarian law would soon take place." Government must be designed to ward off the unjustice that would come from a functioning democracy. "... to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
• 11:59 Madison was "most especially concerned for the propertied minorities among the people."
• 14:43 "Rights of property" obscures the right to own proerty, which infringes on other people's rights.
• 16:49 "The symptoms of a leveling spirit" give warning of the future danger of democracy.
• 18:48 "Those without property or the hope of acquiring it cannot be expected to sympathise sufficiently with its rights to be the safe depository of power over them."
• 21:45 Madison was pre-capitalist, and anti-capitalist in spirit.
• 23:24 Capitalist ideology rejected the view that people have a right to live. Economics "proved" that people have no rights save what they can acquire in the market. "You only hurt the poor by trying to help them."
• 24:34 Free movement of labor is fundamental to free markets. That principle is overlooked as economics is used as a weapon of oppression. Comparitive advantage assumes labor is mobile, capital is immobile. Today the reverse is true.

Interview Used in Documentary "Manufacturing Consent", 1990

youtube – 1h01m

• The Propaganda Model

Democracy and the Media, 1994

youtube | podcast – 2h35m – Speech at University of Maryland.

• 5:23 The more a government tortures its citizens, the more likely it is to receive US aid. e.g. Columbia, narcotics trafficking. Where US influence is least, progress towards democracy is greatest. The US sponsors democracy as long as it turns out the way we want, with US in control.

• 1:14:00 – Atomise and isolate people, suppress emotions of concern for others.

• 1:27:00 – East Timor.

Neoliberalism and the Global Order, 1997

youtube | podcast – 1h09m – Speech at Yale.

"Free markets" vs protectionism, state intervention and violence. Discipline and responsibility for the poor, but a powerful state for the rich and privileged. High-tech industry was created and is sustained by massive state intervention.

• 6:25 Terminology in the US is almost the opposite of traditional usage.
• 9:08 Minimizing the State. Concentration of control over communications, finance, food.
• 15:04 US violating free trade agreement, strangling Cuba.
• 16:20 US condemned by World Court for terrorism against Nicaragua.
• 18:59 Mexican ambassador re Cuba "40 million Mexicans would die laughing."
• 23:03 Telecommunications industry was created by State intervention. DARPA, Pentagon. Computers, internet, handed over to corporations. Satellites, fibre optics, semiconductors.
• 26:28 Working America is worse off in mid-90's than the late-70's.
• 30:09 McDonnell Douglas, Grumman, Hughes Aircraft as examples of "free market success". Cost and risk are socialised, profit is privatised.
• 32:46 Depression was overcome by WWII, State-controlled economy. Consensus after the war that without government stimulus economy would return to depression. High-tech industry cannot survive in unsubsidised free-market economy. Debated social spending vs military spending. Military spending is a direct gift to corporations, no democratising effect. Easy to sell – say "security" not "subsidy". 1948 beginning of the Cold War.
• 38:33 Computers – 100% public funding in 1950s. SAGE Air Defense System developed basic hardware and software for computers. Once viable, one leading figure left and founded DEC. Later, Star Wars (SDI) subsidised next-gen computers, lasers. Same story for R&D in aeronautical, machine tools, containers, biotech, energy.
• 41:49 Reagan admin doubled protections for US business.
• 44:58 Redistribution of income to the rich, structurally similar to third-world countries. Superfluous population is criminalised and jailed.
• 46:45 Business press: Spectacular profits.
• 50:37 "What to do with all that cash?" Meanwhile, poverty and child starvation. Reduce the capital gains tax to free up funds for investment.
• 52:45 In 1700s India was centre of industrial world. Europe developed, along with US and Japan free of European control. Taiwan and Korea developed under Japanese control. Britain de-industrialised and impoverished India, after learning steel tech from India. Violation of market principles a major factor.
• 57:37 Cotton made cheap and available in the US by extermination of the Indigenous population and by bringing in slaves. Britain refused to allow development in India and Egypt.
• 1:00:51 Britain and the US show the same patterns – Markets are great if we're going to win, otherwise call the game off. Market discipline is good for you, but I need the protection of the nanny state. Discipline and responsibility for the poor, but a powerful state for the rich and privileged.
• 1:03:44 Gingrich voted for protections for the rich, and his county receives highest federal subsidies, corporate welfare dependence. All 100 of the Fortune 100 benefitted from state policy, 20 were saved by state intervention.
• 1:07:05 Minimising the state maximises private power, which designs policy.
• 1:08:08 These issues should be discussed in the public arena, not something the public is deceived into supporting with rhetoric about the wisdom of the market, minimising the state, responsibility etc.

Government in the Future, 1970

youtube | podcast – 56m – Speech in NYC.

• Clasical Liberalism
• Libertarian Socialism / Left Marxism / Anarchism
• State Socialism
• State Capitalism

Anarchism – Peter Jay Interview, 1976

podcast – 50min

Necessary Illusions – Thought Control in Democratic Societies, 1988

youtube | podcast – 4h03m – 1988 Massey Lectures.

• Propaganda Model

Interview with Canadian Journalists, 1988

youtube – 57min – Recorded subsequent to the Massey Lectures.

Per a youtube comment: "For anyone seeking context for this, 1988 was the year Chomsky and Herman published their seminal work Manufacturing Consent, the central thesis of which is known as the Propaganda Model and it is now considered the most important and influential text on the subject of mass media pro-status quo propaganda. Any journalism course worth its salt teaches the Propaganda Model to its students as one of the fundamentals of media analysis."

Global Discontents

Interviews with David Barsamian 2013-2016.

Part 1, 3h13m – podcast

Part 2, 3h46m – podcast

• NSA and Silicon Valley

The Chomsky Sessions, 2010

Z Communications interviews with Michael Albert.

Part 1 – Responsibilities of Intellectuals – youtube | podcast – 56min

Part 2 – Science, Religion and Human Nature – youtube | podcast – 1h07m

Part 3 – Education and Economics – youtube | podcast – 56min

Part 4 – The Political System – youtube | podcast – 47min

Part 5 – International Relations – youtube | podcast – 53min

Q&A – History, Anarchism and Society, 1997

podcast – 38min – Interview with media.

Q&A – Vancouver, 1996

Q&A with labor activists in Vancouver.

Part 1 – podcast – 27min

Part 2 – podcast – 26min

Part 3 – podcast – 33min

On Anarchism, 2013

youtube – 1h11m – Speech at MIT.

The Responsibility of Intellectuals, 1997

youtube – 1h45m – Speech at St. Paul, Minnesota on April 14, 1997

• 3:48 "Intellectual" is a problematic concept.
• 5:55 "Speak truth to power" is misguided. Instead, work with the powerless.
• 11:53 Lessons from looking at official enemies, e.g. Soviets, 1918 to 1989.
• 13:49 Commissars versus dissidents.
• 14:36 Doctrine held that Soviet tyrrany was democratic and socialist. The claim to be democratic was rightly ridiculed. The claim to be socialist was seized upon. Socialist elements were crushed by 1918.
• 19:31 Within the Soviet system, commissars were praised as responsible intellectuals, standing up for values, upholding morals; admired and privileged. Dissidents were condemned and punished.
• 20:31 Biblical "prophets" were the intellectuals of the day.
• 23:36 Eugene Debs, leader of US labour movement, crushed by violence in 1920s. Debs spoke out against Woodrow Wilson's war, he was jailed.
• 27:42 The liberal intellectuals - John Dewey, The New Republic - created support for the war in 1916. "Peace Without Victory" because victory without peace.
• 30:35 US intellectuals were targetted by British Ministry of Information propaganda to draw US into the war.
• 33:08 Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays - war propaganda to PR industry. Hitler was impressed and vowed to have a better propaganda machine next time. lippmann wrote "progressive essays on democracy" in 1920s. Dean of American journalism. Bernays led new PR industry, wrote "Propaganda", manual of the industry. "Regiment minds as efficiently as armies regiment bodies." Campaign to get women to smoke. Support for CIA in Guatemala.
• 40:47 Fred Hampton murdered by FBI in 1969, Cointelpro. Compare Watergate vs Cointelpro, political assassination. Watergate attacked the powerful. Cointelpro attacked the voiceless.
• 43:45 Trilateral Commission, "Crisis of Democracy". Value-oriented intellectuals are the bad guys, power prefers technocratic policy-oriented intellectuals.
• 47:01 Similar story in Britain, Bertrand Russell was jailed. Sidney Hook lied about Vietnam, Russell told the truth. Hook was honoured, Russell punished. Resembles lies under Stalinism.
• 50:02 Assassination of Archbishop Romero, El Salvador 1980, and of six Jesuit intellectuals, 1989.
• 58:35 Nicaragua was a haven for exiled dissidents much like Paris in the 1930s for intellectuals fleeing Stalinism and the Nazis. US media supported La Prensa while it supported attacks on El Salvador.
• 1:01:04 The pattern throughout history, US and Soviet Union are typical. Czech dissident Václav Havel was lauded after declaring US the defender of freedom, though he surely knew US was responsible for killing dissidents in El Salvador a few weeks earlier.
• 1:05:48 Winston Churchill in a secret paper to cabinet, 1914: "We are not a young people, with an innocent record, and a scanty inheritance. We have engrossed to ourselves an altogether disproportionate share of the wealth and traffic of the world. We have got all we want in territory, and our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us." So we therefore have to resort to such doctrines as special warfare, which consists of murderously eliminating every endeavor of popular organisations to defend their most fundamental human rights.
• 1:23:05 The elite know, there's no point telling them. It's the way the institutions work, and if a CEO doesn't increase profit and market share, they'll be replaced.

Terms of Political Discourse

As Chomsky explains, every term of politcal discourse has two meanings: the dictionary meaning, and the meaning that is actually used, i.e. the doctrinally correct meaning that is used to advance power ends.

• "Terrorism"
  • Dictionary meaning: (per the Army manual) The use or threat of force to advance political ends.
  • Doctrinal meaning: The use or threat of force to advance political ends is terrorism when it is carried out by others, not when it is carried out by the United States or its client states. In those cases it is called "retaliation" or "defence of freedom".
• "Democracy"
  • Dictionary meaning: A society is democratic to the extent that the population has some meaningful way of participating in managing their own affairs.
  • Doctrinal meaning: A system in which decisions are made by sectors of the business community and related elites. The public are to be only “spectators of action,” not “participants,” as leading democratic theorists (in this case, Walter Lippmann) have explained. They are permitted to ratify the decisions of their betters and to lend their support to one or another of them, but not to interfere with matters – like public policy – that are none of their business.