The Text:<\/strong> An article that recently came out in Rolling Stone, titled \u201cGangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,\u201d by Matt Taibbi, asserts that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, such as those running HSBC. Taibbi says that there\u2019s \u201can arrestable class and an unarrestable class.\u201d What is your view on the current state of class war in the U.S.?<\/p>\nWell, there\u2019s always a class war going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run society, more so than others. The business classes are very class-conscious\u2014they\u2019re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t use the term \u201cworking class\u201d here because it\u2019s a taboo term. You\u2019re supposed to say \u201cmiddle class,\u201d because it helps diminish the understanding that there\u2019s a class war going on.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that there was a one-sided class war, and that\u2019s because the other side hadn\u2019t chosen to participate, so the union leadership had for years pursued a policy of making a compact with the corporations, in which their workers, say the autoworkers\u2014would get certain benefits like fairly decent wages, health benefits and so on. But it wouldn\u2019t engage the general class structure. In fact, that\u2019s one of the reasons why Canada has a national health program and the United States doesn\u2019t. The same unions on the other side of the border were calling for health care for everybody. Here they were calling for health care for themselves and they got it. Of course, it\u2019s a compact with corporations that the corporations can break anytime they want, and by the 1970s they were planning to break it and we\u2019ve seen what has happened since.<\/p>\n
This is just one part of a long and continuing class war against working people and the poor. It\u2019s a war that is conducted by a highly class-conscious business leadership, and it\u2019s one of the reasons for the unusual history of the U.S. labor movement. In the U.S., organized labor has been repeatedly and extensively crushed, and has endured a very violent history as compared with other countries.<\/p>\n
In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It\u2019s hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce. It became a huge movement that spread over major farming areas.<\/p>\n
The Farmers\u2019 Alliance did try to link up with the Knights of Labor, which would have been a major class-based organization if it had succeeded. But the Knights of Labor were crushed by violence, and the Farmers\u2019 Alliance was dismantled in other ways. As a result, one of the major popular democratic forces in American history was essentially dismantled. There are a lot of reasons for it, one of which was that the Civil War has never really ended. One effect of the Civil War was that the political parties that came out of it were sectarian parties, so the slogan was, \u201cYou vote where you shoot,\u201d and that remains the case.<\/p>\n
Take a look at the red states and the blue states in the last election: It\u2019s the Civil War. They\u2019ve changed party labels, but other than that, it\u2019s the same: sectarian parties that are not class-based because divisions are along different lines. There are a lot of reasons for it.<\/p>\n
The enormous benefits given to the very wealthy, the privileges for the very wealthy here, are way beyond those of other comparable societies and are part of the ongoing class war. Take a look at CEO salaries. CEOs are no more productive or brilliant here than they are in Europe, but the pay, bonuses, and enormous power they get here are out of sight. They\u2019re probably a drain on the economy, and they become even more powerful when they are able to gain control of policy decisions.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we have a sequester over the deficit and not over jobs, which is what really matters to the population. But it doesn\u2019t matter to the banks, so the heck with it. It also illustrates the consider- able shredding of the whole system of democracy. So, by now, they rank people by income level or wages roughly the same: The bottom 70 percent or so are virtually disenfranchised; they have almost no influence on policy, and as you move up the scale you get more influence. At the very top, you basically run the show.<\/p>\n
A good topic to research, if possible, would be \u201cwhy people don\u2019t vote.\u201d Nonvoting is very high, roughly 50 percent, even in presidential elections\u2014much higher in others. The attitudes of people who don\u2019t vote are studied. First of all, they mostly identify themselves as Democrats. And if you look at their attitudes, they are mostly Social Democratic. They want jobs, they want benefits, they want the government to be involved in social services and so on, but they don\u2019t vote, partly, I suppose, because of the impediments to voting. It\u2019s not a big secret. Republicans try really hard to prevent people from voting, because the more that people vote, the more trouble they are in. There are other reasons why people don\u2019t vote. I suspect, but don\u2019t know how to prove, that part of the reason people don\u2019t vote is they just know their votes don\u2019t make any difference, so why make the effort? So you end up with a kind of plutocracy in which the public opinion doesn\u2019t matter much. It is not unlike other countries in this respect, but more extreme. All along, it\u2019s more extreme. So yes, there is a constant class war going on.<\/p>\n
The case of labor is crucial, because it is the base of organization of any popular opposition to the rule of capital, and so it has to be dismantled. There\u2019s a tax on labor all the time. During the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually smashed by Wilson\u2019s Red Scare and other things. In the 1930s, it reconstituted and was the driving force of the New Deal, with the CIO organizing and so on. By the late 1930s, the business classes were organizing to try to react to this. They began, but couldn\u2019t do much during the war, because things were on hold, but immediately after the war it picked up with the Taft-Hartley Act and huge propaganda campaigns, which had massive effect. Over the years, the effort to undermine the unions and labor generally succeeded. By now, private-sector unionization is very low, partly because, since Reagan, government has pretty much told employers, \u201cYou know you can violate the laws, and we\u2019re not going to do anything about it.\u201d Under Clinton, NAFTA offered a method for employers to illegally undermine labor organizing by threatening to move enterprises to Mexico. A number of illegal operations by employers shot up at that time. What\u2019s left are private-sector unions, and they\u2019re under bipartisan attack.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve been protected somewhat because the federal laws did function for the public-sector unions, but now they\u2019re under bipartisan attack. When Obama declares a pay freeze for federal workers, that\u2019s actually a tax on federal workers. It comes to the same thing, and, of course, this is right at the time we say that we can\u2019t raise taxes on the very rich. Take the last tax agreement where the Republicans claimed, \u201cWe already gave up tax increases.\u201d Take a look at what happened. Raising the payroll tax, which is a tax on working people, is much more of a tax increase than raising taxes on the super-rich, but that passed quietly because we don\u2019t look at those things.<\/p>\n
The same is happening across the board. There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office\u2014anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal. I\u2019m old enough to remember the Great Depression, a time when the country was quite poor but there were still postal deliveries. Today, post offices, Social Security, and public schools all have to be dismantled because they are seen as being based on a principle that is regarded as extremely dangerous.<\/p>\n
If you care about other people, that\u2019s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That\u2019s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, but you don\u2019t care whether other people\u2019s kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, that\u2019s called \u201clibertarian\u201d for some wild reason. I mean, it\u2019s actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why unions had the slogan, \u201csolidarity,\u201d even though they may not have lived up to it. And that\u2019s what really counts: solidarity, mutual aid, care for one another and so on. And it\u2019s really important for power systems to undermine that ideologically, so huge efforts go into it. Even trying to stimulate consumerism is an effort to undermine it. Having a market society automatically carries with it an undermining of solidarity. For example, in the market system you have a choice: You can buy a Toyota or you can buy a Ford, but you can\u2019t buy a subway because that\u2019s not offered. Market systems don\u2019t offer common goods; they offer private consumption. If you want a subway, you\u2019re going to have to get together with other people and make a collective decision. Otherwise, it\u2019s simply not an option within the market system, and as democracy is increasingly undermined, it\u2019s less and less of an option within the public system. All of these things converge, and they\u2019re all part of general class war.<\/p>\n
Can you give some insight on how the labor movement could rebuild in the United States?<\/strong><\/p>\nWell, it\u2019s been done before. Each time labor has been attacked\u2014and as I said, in the 1920s the labor movement was practically destroyed\u2014popular efforts were able to reconstitute it. That can happen again. It\u2019s not going to be easy. There are institutional barriers, ideological barriers, cultural barriers. One big problem is that the white working class has been pretty much abandoned by the political system. The Democrats don\u2019t even try to organize them anymore. The Republicans claim to do it; they get most of the vote, but they do it on non-economic issues, on non-labor issues. They often try to mobilize them on the grounds of issues steeped in racism and sexism and so on, and here the liberal policies of the 1960s had a harmful effect because of some of the ways in which they were carried out. There are some pretty good studies of this. Take busing to integrate schools. In principle, it made some sense, if you wanted to try to overcome segregated schools. Obviously, it didn\u2019t work. Schools are probably more segregated now for all kinds of reasons, but the way it was originally done undermined class solidarity.<\/p>\n
For example, in Boston there was a program for integrating the schools through busing, but the way it worked was restricted to urban Boston, downtown Boston. So black kids were sent to the Irish neighborhoods and conversely, but the suburbs were left out. The suburbs are more affluent, professional and so on, so they were kind of out of it. Well, what happens when you send black kids into an Irish neighborhood? What happens when some Irish telephone linemen who have worked all their lives finally got enough money to buy small houses in a neighborhood where they want to send their kids to the local school and cheer for the local football team and have a community, and so on? All of a sudden, some of their kids are being sent out, and black kids are coming in. How do you think at least some of these guys will feel? At least some end up being racists. The suburbs are out of it, so they can cluck their tongues about how racist everyone is elsewhere, and that kind of pattern was carried out all over the country.<\/p>\n
The same has been true of women\u2019s rights. But when you have a working class that\u2019s under real pressure, you know, people are going to say that rights are being undermined, that jobs are being under- mined. Maybe the one thing that the white working man can hang onto is that he runs his home? Now that that\u2019s being taken away and nothing is being offered, he\u2019s not part of the program of advancing women\u2019s rights. That\u2019s fine for college professors, but it has a different effect in working-class areas. It doesn\u2019t have to be that way. It depends on how it\u2019s done, and it was done in a way that simply undermined natural solidarity. There are a lot of factors that play into it, but by this point it\u2019s going to be pretty hard to organize the working class on the grounds that should really concern them: common solidarity, common welfare.<\/p>\n
In some ways, it shouldn\u2019t be too hard, because these attitudes are really prized by most of the population. If you look at Tea Party members, the kind that say, \u201cGet the government off my back, I want a small government\u201d and so on, when their attitudes are studied, it turns out that they\u2019re mostly social democratic. You know, people are human after all. So yes, you want more money for health, for help, for people who need it and so on and so forth, but \u201cI don\u2019t want the government, get that off my back\u201d and related attitudes are tricky to overcome.<\/p>\n
Some polls are pretty amazing. There was one conducted in the South right before the presidential elections. Just Southern whites, I think, were asked about the economic plans of the two candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Southern whites said they preferred Romney\u2019s plan, but when asked about its particular components, they opposed every one. Well, that\u2019s the effect of good propaganda: getting people not to think in terms of their own interests, let alone the interest of communities and the class they\u2019re part of. Overcoming that takes a lot of work. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s impossible, but it\u2019s not going to happen easily.<\/p>\n
In a recent article about the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, you discuss Henry Vane, who was beheaded for drafting a petition that called the people\u2019s power \u201cthe original from whence all just power arises.\u201d Would you agree the coordinated repression of Occupy was like the beheading of Vane?<\/strong><\/p>\nOccupy hasn\u2019t been treated nicely, but we shouldn\u2019t exaggerate. Compared with the kind of repression that usually goes on, it wasn\u2019t that severe. Just ask people who were part of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, in the South, let\u2019s say. It was incomparably worse, as was just showing up at anti-war demonstrations where people were getting maced and beaten and so on. Activist groups get repressed. Power systems don\u2019t pat them on the head. Occupy was treated badly, but not off the spectrum\u2014in fact, in some ways not as bad as others. I wouldn\u2019t draw exaggerated comparisons. It\u2019s not like beheading somebody who says, \u201cLet\u2019s have popular power.\u201d<\/p>\n
How does the Charter of the Forest relate to environmental and indigenous resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline?<\/strong><\/p>\nA lot. The Charter of the Forest, which was half the Magna Carta, has more or less been forgotten. The forest didn\u2019t just mean the woods. It meant common property, the source of food, fuel. It was a common possession, so it was cared for. The forests were cultivated in common and kept functioning, because they were part of people\u2019s common possessions, their source of livelihood, and even a source of dignity. That slowly collapsed in England under the enclosure movements, the state efforts to shift to private ownership and control. In the United States it happened differently, but the privatization is similar. What you end up with is the widely held belief, now standard doctrine, that\u2019s called \u201cthe tragedy of the commons\u201d in Garrett Hardin\u2019s phrase. According to this view, if things are held in common and aren\u2019t privately owned, they\u2019re going to be destroyed. History shows the exact opposite: When things were held in common, they were preserved and maintained. But, according to the capitalist ethic, if things aren\u2019t privately owned, they\u2019re going to be ruined, and that\u2019s \u201cthe tragedy of the commons.\u201d So, therefore, you have to put everything under private control and take it away from the public, because the public is just going to destroy it.<\/p>\n
Now, how does that relate to the environmental problem? Very significantly: the commons are the environment. When they\u2019re a common possession\u2014not owned, but everybody holds them together in a community\u2014they\u2019re preserved, sustained and cultivated for the next generation. If they\u2019re privately owned, they\u2019re going to be destroyed for profit; that\u2019s what private owner- ship is, and that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening today.<\/p>\n
What you say about the indigenous population is very striking. There\u2019s a major problem that the whole species is facing. A likelihood of serious disaster may be not far off. We are approaching a kind of tipping point, where climate change becomes irreversible. It could be a couple of decades, maybe less, but the predictions are constantly being shown to be too conservative. It is a very serious danger; no sane person can doubt it. The whole species is facing a real threat for the first time in its history of serious disaster, and there are some people trying to do some- thing about it and there are others trying to make it worse. Who are they? Well, the ones who are trying to make it better are the pre-industrial societies, the pre-technological societies, the indigenous societies, the First Nations. All around the world, these are the communities that are trying to preserve the rights of nature.<\/p>\n
The rich societies, like the United States and Canada, are acting in ways to bring about disaster as quickly as possible. That\u2019s what it means, for example, when both political parties and the press talk enthusiastically about \u201ca century of energy independence.\u201d \u201cEnergy independence\u201d doesn\u2019t mean a damn thing, but put that aside. A century of \u201cenergy independence\u201d means that we make sure that every bit of Earth\u2019s fossil fuels comes out of the ground and we burn it. In societies that have large indigenous populations, like, for example, Ecuador, an oil producer, people are trying to get support for keeping the oil in the ground. They want funding so as to keep the oil where it ought to be. We, however, have to get everything out of the ground, including tar sands, then burn it, which makes things as bad as possible as quickly as possible. So you have this odd situation where the educated, \u201cadvanced\u201d civilized people are trying to cut everyone\u2019s throats as quickly as possible and the indigenous, less educated, poorer populations are trying to prevent the disaster. If somebody was watching this from Mars, they\u2019d think this species was insane.<\/p>\n
As far as a free, democracy-centered society, self-organization seems possible on small scales. Do you think it is possible on a larger scale and with human rights and quality of life as a standard, and if so, what community have you visited that seems closest to an example to what is possible?<\/strong><\/p>\nWell, there are a lot of things that are possible. I have visited some examples that are pretty large scale, in fact, very large scale. Take Spain, which is in a huge economic crisis. But one part of Spain is doing okay\u2014that\u2019s the Mondrag\u00f3n collective. It\u2019s a big conglomerate involving banks, industry, housing, all sorts of things. It\u2019s worker owned, not worker managed, so partial industrial democracy, but it exists in a capitalist economy, so it\u2019s doing all kinds of ugly things like exploiting foreign labor and so on. But economically and socially, it\u2019s flourishing as compared with the rest of the society and other societies. It is very large, and that can be done anywhere. It certainly can be done here. In fact, there are tentative explorations of contacts between the Mondrag\u00f3n and the United Steelworkers, one of the more progressive unions, to think about developing comparable structures here, and it\u2019s being done to an extent.<\/p>\n
The one person who has written very well about this is Gar Alperovitz, who is involved in organizing work around enterprises in parts of the old Rust Belt, which are pretty successful and could be spread just as a cooperative could be spread. There are really no limits to it other than willingness to participate, and that is, as always, the problem. If you\u2019re willing to adhere to the task and gauge yourself, there\u2019s no limit.<\/p>\n
Actually, there\u2019s a famous sort of paradox posed by David Hume centuries ago. Hume is one of the founders of classical liberalism. He\u2019s an important philosopher and a political philosopher. He said that if you take a look at societies around the world\u2014any of them\u2014power is in the hands of the governed, those who are being ruled. Hume asked, why don\u2019t they use that power and overthrow the masters and take control? He says, the answer has to be that, in all societies, the most brutal, the most free, the governed can be controlled by control of opinion. If you can control their attitudes and beliefs and separate them from one another and so on, then they won\u2019t rise up and overthrow you.<\/p>\n
That does require a qualification. In the more brutal and repressive societies, controlling opinion is less important, because you can beat people with a stick. But as societies become more free, it becomes more of a problem, and we see that historically. The societies that develop the most expansive propaganda systems are also the most free societies.<\/p>\n
The most extensive propaganda system in the world is the public relations industry, which developed in Britain and the United States. A century ago, dominant sectors recognized that enough freedom had been won by the population. They reasoned that it\u2019s hard to control people by force, so they had to do it by turning the attitudes and opinions of the population with propaganda and other devices of separation and marginalization, and so on. Western powers have become highly skilled in this.<\/p>\n
In the United States, the advertising and public relations industry is huge. Back in the more honest days, they called it propaganda. Now the term doesn\u2019t sound nice, so it\u2019s not used anymore, but it\u2019s basically a huge propaganda system which is designed very extensively for quite specific purposes.<\/p>\n
First of all, it has to undermine markets by trying to create irrational, uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. That\u2019s what advertising is about, the opposite of what a market is supposed to be, and anybody who turns on a television set can see that for themselves. It has to do with monopolization and product differentiation, all sorts of things, but the point is that you have to drive the population to irrational consumption, which does separate them from one another.<\/p>\n
As I said, consumption is individual, so it\u2019s not done as an act of solidarity\u2014so you don\u2019t have ads on television saying, \u201cLet\u2019s get together and build a mass transportation system.\u201d Who\u2019s going to fund that? The other thing they need to do is undermine democracy the same way, so they run campaigns, political campaigns mostly run by PR agents. It\u2019s very clear what they have to do. They have to create uninformed voters who will make irrational decisions, and that\u2019s what the campaigns are about. Billions of dollars go into it, and the idea is to shred democracy, restrict markets to service the rich, and make sure the power gets concentrated, that capital gets concentrated and the people are driven to irrational and self-destructive behavior. And it is self-destructive, often dramatically so. For example, one of the first achievements of the U.S. public relations system back in the 1920s was led, incidentally, by a figure honored by Wilson, Roosevelt and Kennedy\u2014liberal progressive Edward Bernays.<\/p>\n
His first great success was to induce women to smoke. In the 1920s, women didn\u2019t smoke. So here\u2019s this big population which was not buying cigarettes, so he paid young models to march down New York City\u2019s Fifth Avenue holding cigarettes. His message to women was, \u201cYou want to be cool like a model? You should smoke a cigarette.\u201d How many millions of corpses did that create? I\u2019d hate to calculate it. But it was considered an enormous success. The same is true of the murderous character of corporate propaganda with tobacco, asbestos, lead, chemicals, vinyl chloride, across the board. It is just shocking, but PR is a very honored profession, and it does control people and undermine their options of working together. And so that\u2019s Hume\u2019s paradox, but people don\u2019t have to submit to it. You can see through it and struggle against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Why America Hates Its Poor by Noam Chomsky in AlterNet. The Text: An article that recently came out in Rolling Stone, titled \u201cGangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,\u201d by Matt Taibbi, asserts that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, such as those running HSBC. Taibbi says that there\u2019s \u201can arrestable class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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