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AlterNet / By Noam Chomsky 58 COMMENTS
Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy: If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, theMovement Here and Around the WorldMust Grow
In a speech to Occupy Boston, the linguist and icon hailed the"unprecedented" first weeks of OWS. He cautioned protesters tobuild and educate first, strike later.
It's a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an
Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret
that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way,
something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement
that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the
groundwork. It would
have been the
fulfillment of a dream
for him to be here with
you.
The Occupy
movement really is an
exciting development.
In fact, it's spectacular.
It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the
bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events
can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead -- because victories don't
come quickly-- this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American
history.
The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an
unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the
country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the
general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development --
even in dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectation that it's going to
go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.
I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years,
by the mid-1930s, although the situation was
objectively much harsher than it is today, the
spirit was quite different. There was a sense
that we're going to get out of it, even among
unemployed people. It'll get better. There wasa militant labor movement organizing, CIO was
organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very
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frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the
time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running
it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular
pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we're going to get out of it.
It’s quite different now. Now there’s kind of a pervasive sense of hopeless, or, I
think, despair. I think it’s quite new in American history and it has an objective
basis. In the 1930s unemployed “working people” could anticipate realistically that
the jobs are going to come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today -- andthe unemployment level in manufacturing today is approximately like the
Depression -- if current tendencies persist, then those jobs aren’t going to come
back. The change took place in the '70s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of
the underlying reasons, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Bernard,
who has done a lot of work on it, is a falling rate of profit. That, with other factors,
led to major changes in the
economy -- a reversal of the
700 years of progress
towards industrialization
and development. We
turned to a process of
deindustrialization and de-development. Of course,
manufacturing production
continued, but overseas (it’s
very profitable, but no good
for the workforce). Along
with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise,
producing things people need, to financial manipulation. Financialization of the
economy really took off at that time.
Before the '70s, banks were banks. They did what banks are supposed to do in a
capitalist economy: take unused funds, like, say, your bank account, and transfer
them to some potentially useful purpose, like buying a home or sending your kidto college. There were no financial crises. It was a period of enormous growth; the
largest period of growth in American history, or maybe in economic history. It was
sustained growth in the '50s and '60s and it was egalitarian. So the lowest
percentile did as well as the highest percentile. A lot of people moved into
reasonable lifestyles -- what’s called here “middle class” (working class is what it’s
called in other countries).
58 COMMENTS
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