In 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inaugurated its famous Doomsday Clock. You know, how close the minute hand was to midnight? And it started seven minutes to midnight. By 1953 it had moved to two minutes to midnight. That was the year when the United States and Soviet Union exploded hydrogen bombs. But it turns out we now understand that at the end of the Second World War the world also entered into a new geological epoch. Itās called the Anthropocene, the epoch in which humans have a severe, in fact maybe disastrous impact on the environment. It moved again in 2015, again in 2016. Immediately after the Trump election late January this year, the clock was moved again to two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest itās been since ā53.
So thereās the two existential threats that weāve createdāwhich might in the case of nuclear war maybe wipe us out; in the case of environmental catastrophe, create a severe impactāand then some.
A third thing happened. Beginning around the ā70s, human intelligence dedicated itself to eliminating, or at least weakening, the main barrier against these threats. Itās called neoliberalism. There was a transition at that time from the period of what some people call āregimented capitalism,ā the ā50s and ā60s, the great growth period, egalitarian growth, a lot of advances in social justice and so onā
CL: Social democracyā¦
NC: Social democracy, yeah. Thatās sometimes called āthe golden age of modern capitalism.ā That changed in the ā70s with the onset of the neoliberal era that weāve been living in since. And if you ask yourself what this era is, its crucial principle is undermining mechanisms of social solidarity and mutual support and popular engagement in determining policy.
Itās not called that. What itās called is āfreedom,ā but āfreedomā means a subordination to the decisions of concentrated, unaccountable, private power. Thatās what it means. The institutions of governanceāor other kinds of association that could allow people to participate in decision makingāthose are systematically weakened. Margaret Thatcher said it rather nicely in her aphorism about āthere is no society, only individuals.ā
She was actually, unconsciously no doubt, paraphrasing Marx, who in his condemnation of the repression in France said, āThe repression is turning society into a sack of potatoes, just individuals, an amorphous mass canāt act together.ā That was a condemnation. For Thatcher, itās an idealāand thatās neoliberalism. We destroy or at least undermine the governing mechanisms by which people at least in principle can participate to the extent that societyās democratic. So weaken them, undermine unions, other forms of association, leave a sack of potatoes and meanwhile transfer decisions to unaccountable private power all in the rhetoric of freedom.
Well, what does that do? The one barrier to the threat of destruction is an engaged public, an informed, engaged public acting together to develop means to confront the threat and respond to it. Thatās been systematically weakened, consciously. I mean, back to the 1970s weāve probably talked about this. There was a lot of elite discussion across the spectrum about the danger of too much democracy and the need to have what was called more āmoderationā in democracy, for people to become more passive and apathetic and not to disturb things too much, and thatās what the neoliberal programs do. So put it all together and what do you have? A perfect storm.
CL: What everybody notices is all the headline things, including Brexit and Donald Trump and Hindu nationalism and nationalism everywhere and Le Pen all kicking in more or less together and suggesting some real world phenomenon.
NC: itās very clear, and it was predictable. You didnāt know exactly when, but when you impose socioeconomic policies that lead to stagnation or decline for the majority of the population, undermine democracy, remove decision-making out of popular hands, youāre going to get anger, discontent, fear take all kinds of forms. And thatās the phenomenon thatās misleadingly called āpopulism.ā
CL: I donāt know what you think of Pankaj Mishra, but I enjoy his book Age of Anger, and he begins with an anonymous letter to a newspaper from somebody who says, āWe should admit that we are not only horrified but baffled. Nothing since the triumph of Vandals in Rome and North Africa has seemed so suddenly incomprehensible and difficult to reverse.ā
NC: Well, thatās the fault of the information system, because itās very comprehensible and very obvious and very simple. Take, say the United States, which actually suffered less from these policies than many other countries. Take the year 2007, a crucial year right before the crash.
What was the wondrous economy that was then being praised? It was one in which the wages, the real wages of American workers, were actually lower than they were in 1979 when the neoliberal period began. Thatās historically unprecedented except for trauma or war or something like that. Here is a long period in which real wages had literally declined, while there was some wealth created but in very few pockets. It was also a period in which new institutions developed, financial institutions. You go back to the ā50s and ā60s, a so-called Golden Age, banks were connected to the real economy. That was their function. There were also no crashes because there were New Deal regulations.
Starting in the early ā70s there was a sharp change. First of all, financial institutions exploded in scale. By 2007 they actually had 40 percent of corporate profits. Furthermore, they werenāt connected to the real economy anymore.
In Europe the way democracy is undermined is very direct. Decisions are placed in the hands of an unelected troika: the European Commission, which is unelected; the IMF, of course unelected; and the European Central Bank. They make the decisions. So people are very angry, theyāre losing control of their lives. The economic policies are mostly harming them, and the result is anger, disillusion, and so on.
We just saw it two weeks ago in the last French election. The two candidates were both outside the establishment. Centrist political parties have collapsed. We saw it in the American election last November. There were two candidates who mobilized the base: one of them a billionaire hated by the establishment, the Republican candidate who won the nominationābut notice that once heās in power itās the old establishment thatās running things. You can rail against Goldman Sachs on the campaign trail, but you make sure that they run the economy once youāre in.
CL: So, the question is, at a moment when people are almost readyā¦ when theyāre ready to act and almost ready to recognize that this game is not working, this social system, do we have the endowment as a species to act on it, to move into that zone of puzzlement and then action?
NC: I think the fate of the species depends on it because, remember, itās not just inequality, stagnation. Itās terminal disaster. We have constructed a perfect storm. That should be the screaming headlines every day. Since the Second World War, we have created two means of destruction. Since the neoliberal era, we have dismantled the way of handling them. Thatās our pincers. Thatās what we face, and if that problem isnāt solved, weāre done with.
CL: I want to go back Pankaj Mishra and the Age of Anger for a momentā
NC: Itās not the Age of Anger. Itās the Age of Resentment against socioeconomic policies which have harmed the majority of the population for a generation and have consciously and in principle undermined democratic participation. Why shouldnāt there be anger?
CL: Pankaj Mishra calls itāitās a Nietzschean wordāāressentiment,ā meaning this kind of explosive rage. But he says, āItās the defining feature of a world where the modern promise of equality collides with massive disparities of power, education, status andā
NC: Which was designed that way, which was designed that way. Go back to the 1970s. Across the spectrum, elite spectrum, there was deep concern about the activism of the ā60s. Itās called the ātime of troubles.ā It civilized the country, which is dangerous. What happened is that large parts of the populationāwhich had been passive, apathetic, obedientātried to enter the political arena in one or another way to press their interests and concerns. Theyāre called āspecial interests.ā That means minorities, young people, old people, farmers, workers, women. In other words, the population. The population are special interests, and their task is to just watch quietly. And that was explicit.
Two documents came out right in the mid-ā70s, which are quite important. They came from opposite ends of the political spectrum, both influential, and both reached the same conclusions. One of them, at the left end, was by the Trilateral Commissionāliberal internationalists, three major industrial countries, basically the Carter administration, thatās where they come from. That is the more interesting one [The Crisis of Democracy, a Trilateral Commission report]. The American rapporteur Samuel Huntington of Harvard, he looked back with nostalgia to the days when, as he put it, Truman was able to run the country with the cooperation of a few Wall Street lawyers and executives. Then everything was fine. Democracy was perfect.
But in the ā60s they all agreed it became problematic because the special interests started trying to get into the act, and that causes too much pressure and the state canāt handle that.
CL: I remember that book well.
NC: We have to have more moderation in democracy.
CL: Not only that, he turned Al Smithās line around. Al Smith said, āThe cure for democracy is more democracy.ā He said, āNo, the cure for this democracy is less democracy.ā
NC: It wasnāt him. It was the liberal establishment. He was speaking for them. This is a consensus view of the liberal internationalists and the three industrial democracies. Theyāin their consensusāthey concluded that a major problem is what they called, their words, āthe institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young.ā The schools, the universities, churches, theyāre not doing their job. Theyāre not indoctrinating the young properly. The young have to be returned to passivity and obedience, and then democracy will be fine. Thatās the left end.
Now what do you have at the right end? A very influential document, the Powell Memorandum, came out at the same time. Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer, later Supreme Court justice, he produced a confidential memorandum for the US Chamber of Commerce, which has been extremely influential. It more or less set off the modern so-called āconservative movement.ā The rhetoric is kind of crazy. We donāt go through it, but the basic picture is that this rampaging left has taken over everything. We have to use the resources that we have to beat back this rampaging New Left which is undermining freedom and democracy.
Connected with this was something else. As a result of the activism of the ā60s and the militancy of labor, there was a falling rate of profit. Thatās not acceptable. So we have to reverse the falling rate of profit, we have to undermine democratic participation, what comes? Neoliberalism, which has exactly those effects.
Listen to the full conversation with Noam Chomsky on Radio Open Source.
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