This entry can also be introduced
as Chomsky on Capitalism in his own words and with my own comments. I
hope the intended humor of this description is not lost on the reader. Needless
to say, this entry was written a long time ago, and it is posted today for its
reader’s edification.
***
The collection of Chomsky’s
“capitalism” quotes starts with his stab at the meaning of this and other such
terms, where I wholeheartedly share his biting skepticism. In fact, my
entire argumentative edifice over the nature of capitalism, as well as
regarding its future, rests on the opportunistic character of its “definitions,”
as its ardent fans are stacking the denotative deck with connotative
pro-capitalist suggestions (such as, for instance, associating free
enterprise with personal freedom), while its detractors are employing
their own demagoguery (such as for instance infusing the old word usury,
which has a neutral meaning in the Bible, see Luke 19:23) with its
current highly negative meaning of loan-sharking.
But enough of me now. Here is
Chomsky:
“To
begin with, I think terms like “capitalism” and “socialism” have been so
evacuated of any substantive meaning that I don’t even like to use them.
There’s nothing remotely like capitalism in existence.”
However, capitalism as-such is
not entirely a chimera: To the extent there ever was,
it had disappeared by the 1920’s or 1930’s. (He probably refers to the
FDR social reforms in the wake of the Great Depression, that somehow elevated
the United States from its poor-unfriendly backwardness more or less to
the level of the contemporary European sensibilities.)
So, considering that capitalism as-such
has not existed for nearly a century, are we going to obliterate the word
itself, and use a different one instead? I don’t think so. Rejecting the usage
of the word capitalism in daily modern discourse leads to the
marginalization of the purist, and Chomsky realizes that:
“But
we’ll use the term “capitalism,” since that (referring to its suggested
meaning as ‘free market’) is more or less its
present meaning.”
Now comes a curious mini-lecture
on the recent history of “capitalism,” centering on its catastrophic 1980
crisis:
“Well,
what happened in the last ten-fifteen years is that capitalism underwent an
enormous, murderously destructive catastrophe. There was a serious
international crisis around 1980. Of the three major sectors of state
capitalism, the German-led European community, the Japan-based sector, and the
U.S.-based sector, the German- and Japan-based sectors pulled out of the
decline, but without regaining their previous rate of growth. The United States
also pulled out, but in a very distorted fashion, with huge borrowing and very
extensive state intervention.... The rest of the world did not pull out,
especially, in the Third World. There was a very serious crisis, amounting to a
catastrophe in Africa, parts of Asia within the Western system, and Latin
America. That’s what is called the crisis of the South, and it is a catastrophe
of capitalism.”
What follows now is Chomsky’s
take on the latter-day problems of the Soviet Union, leading to its collapse,
on which matter a separate discussion could be had, but I keep his quotation
rolling on, for the sake of his thought’s continuity.
Now in
the Second World of the Soviet Union’s dominance there was also economic
collapse, a stagnation of the command economy system, which has even less to do
with socialism than our system has to do with capitalism. This was combined
with nationalist pressures for independence and social pressures attacking the
tyrannical system, which, by the early 1980’s, turned into the crisis that has
now become the collapse of the Soviet Union.
All this
had little to do with Western policy, but primarily with internal problems, and
also with the general crisis of debt to the West. And there was a crisis of
Soviet production, though again not as severe as in the Third World. It is a
victory for the West in the Cold War, but that outcome was never seriously in
doubt, if you look at the relative economic and other forces.
It should be seriously argued
whether the collapse of the Soviet Union was a victory for the West or a blow
of historical proportions to its international stability and security. However,
I am not criticizing Chomsky in this instance, as the point that he is making
is made in passing, and, apparently, in a very limited sense. Moreover, the
next sentence brings in a perspective, which is, perhaps, sufficient to draw
certain negative implications from the “victory” in question: “The victory of the West in the Cold War is combined with (!!!) both this enormous
catastrophe of capitalism, and with the move toward one kind or another of
state-interventionist forms. As an example, the Reagan-Bush administrations are
the most protectionist since World War II, doubling the percentage of imports
subject to various forms of restriction.”
To be continued…
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