[Peace-discuss] Chomsky remarks

[Morton K. Brussel]

Interesting comments by Chomsky on what it would take to change US  
policies/politics. Aside from what I believe arguable concerning  
recommendations vis a vis Albert and Hahnel and their utopian views,  
I think his conclusions hold water, but he doesn't quite spell them  
out: What is really needed is a revolution, but aside from disaster  
to effect same, there seems to be no viable force to produce such a  
revolution on the foreseeable horizon.

Anyway, here are the remarks:

Chomsky on Progressive Strategy
by Wolfgang Brauner
Noam Chomsky is one of the key figures on the American and global  
left. He is said to be one of the most widely quoted intellectuals in  
the world. In 2005, readers of AlterNet voted him MVP (Most Valuable  
Progressive). And he remains very close to many activists.

For all these reasons, we were very excited when we finally had the  
opportunity in late May to interview Chomsky for 25 minutes about his  
thinking on progressive grand strategy for building political power  
on the American left. More specifically, and in keeping with the main  
interest of our Progressive Strategy Studies Project, we asked him  
whether he finds it useful to think about how to build power in  
strategic terms.

Glancing at the list of individuals and organizations that we  
included in our first report, “Finding Strategy: A Survey of  
Contemporary Contributions to Progressive Strategy,” he noted that  
there was more “extensive and far-reaching” thinking on progressive  
strategy than what was reflected in our report.

Throughout the interview, he mainly referred to the work of Gar  
Alperovitz, Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, and Joel Rogers (the  
latter is included in our report), on how to democratize the economy  
and the workplace through worker self-management, cooperatives, etc.  
In particular, he referred to Alperovitz’ latest book, America Beyond  
Capitalism: Reclaiming our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy  
(2004), and a number of books by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel on  
participatory economics and broader sociopolitical issues. Chomsky  
considers their work to be very important, particularly for activists.

He started out by emphasizing that the US is “a one-party state with  
two wings, Democrat and Republican,” and claimed that both were “way  
to the right of the majority of Americans” on many crucial issues.  
According to Chomsky, social scientists like C. Wright Mills, Thomas  
Ferguson, and Bill Domhoff (who also is included in our report) are  
pretty much right: Corporations dominate the power structure and  
hence US politics. In the US this is even more so the case than in  
other countries because of the much more brutal suppression of labor.  
Quoting Dewey, Chomsky noted that in the absence of economic  
democracy, “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.”

Since the state, having become so thoroughly co-opted by corporate  
interests, is part of the problem, it is difficult to significantly  
change it from within through elections or public policy reforms.  
While short-term, pragmatic change remains possible and desirable,  
systemic change would require a transformation of power relations  
within society through a democratization of economic decision-making.

Criticizing the recent health care reform in Massachusetts as overly  
complicated precisely because it has to respond to too many corporate  
interests, Chomsky noted that, even though a large majority of the  
population favors straightforward changes, the US can’t even achieve  
a real health care reform. While pragmatic change is better than  
nothing, it pales in comparison to the kind of change a country like  
Bolivia has been able to achieve, “something the US and other Western  
societies can only dream of.”

Serious progress towards a truly functioning democracy requires  
democratizing the economy. Traditionally, labor has been the main  
agent of change, but today it is, as Chomsky put it, “smashed,” and  
struggles to survive. Who can fill the huge gap that labor has left  
behind? Chomsky admits that other actors, such as churches and  
universities, are weak, if not marginal, though there has been  
impressive growth of popular movements, many of them quite new and  
promising. They offer considerable promise and opportunity for those  
willing to keep working hard at “building the cells of a future  
society.”

Wolfgang Brauner is the Project Manager and Principal Researcher of  
the Progressive Strategy Studies Project at the Commonwealth  
Institute in Cambridge, Mass. (http://www.comw.org/pssp/index.html).  
You can reach him at wbrauner at comw.org. The report, “Finding  
Strategy: A Survey of Contemporary Contributions to Progressive  
Strategy,” can be found here: http://www.comw.org/pssp/fulltext/ 
0611psspreport1.pdf.
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