[Peace-discuss] Occupy the Future

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

Occupy the Future

By Noam Chomsky

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 Chomsky

Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/occupy-future-1320246767 
. All rights are reserved.
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