Editorials & Other Articles

Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts) Wed Sep 23, 2015, 07:30 AM Sep 2015

History Doesn’t Go In a Straight Line Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and the potential for ordinary people to make radical change.

Throughout his illustrious career, one of Noam Chomsky’s chief preoccupations has been questioning — and urging us to question — the assumptions and norms that govern our society.

Following a talk on power, ideology, and US foreign policy last weekend at the New School in New York City, freelance Italian journalist Tommaso Segantini sat down with the eighty-six-year-old to discuss some of the same themes, including how they relate to processes of social change.

For radicals, progress requires puncturing the bubble of inevitability: austerity, for instance, “is a policy decision undertaken by the designers for their own purposes.” It is not implemented, Chomsky says, “because of any economic laws.” American capitalism also benefits from ideological obfuscation: despite its association with free markets, capitalism is shot through with subsidies for some of the most powerful private actors. This bubble needs popping too.

In addition to discussing the prospects for radical change, Chomsky comments on the eurozone crisis, whether Syriza could’ve avoided submitting to Greece’s creditors, and the significance of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.

And he remains soberly optimistic. “Over time there’s a kind of a general trajectory towards a more just society, with regressions and reversals of course.”........................more

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/noam-chomsky-bernie-sanders-greece-tsipras-grexit-austerity-neoliberalism-protest/

4 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

History Doesn’t Go In a Straight Line Noam Chomsky (Original Post) Ichingcarpenter Sep 2015 OP

It's the Massachusetts influence, incl. Theodore Parker merrily Sep 2015 #1

A good read - and it really is up to us, as to how we wish to rule ourselves. canoeist52 Sep 2015 #2

K & R. Good dicussion and Chomsky wisely comments on important institutions appalachiablue Sep 2015 #3

Cripes. Parenti's 82. Zinn's dead. Wolin's 93. Scheer is 79. Doctor_J Sep 2015 #4

merrily

(45,251 posts)

1. It's the Massachusetts influence, incl. Theodore Parker

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Original post)

Wed Sep 23, 2015, 07:50 AM

Sep 2015

In a speech delivered in 1850, Parker used the phrase, "A democracy — of all the people, by all the people, for all the people;"[56] which later influenced the wording of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. (Parker himself might have developed his phrase from John Wycliffe's prologue to the first English translation of the Bible.)[57][58]

Parker predicted the inevitable success of the abolitionist cause this way:

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."[59]

A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased these words to great effect in his famous "Where Do We Go From Here?" speech of August 1967 to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, when he said, "The arc of the Moral Universe Is long, but It bends toward Justice".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker

canoeist52

(2,282 posts)

2. A good read - and it really is up to us, as to how we wish to rule ourselves.

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Original post)

Wed Sep 23, 2015, 08:33 AM

Sep 2015

But I think he's wrong about Bernie's chances. The power of the internet changes everything.

appalachiablue

(41,146 posts)

3. K & R. Good dicussion and Chomsky wisely comments on important institutions

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Original post)

Wed Sep 23, 2015, 09:55 AM

Sep 2015

Last edited Wed Sep 23, 2015, 10:28 AM - Edit history (1)

like labor that have declined dramatically while the church and religion have become more powerful in the US. On political and social movements many have been successful in 50 years like Civil Rights and women but now some organized efforts are disadvantaged by a lack of institutional memory. To become more effective, formations like OWS and others may ally with similar groups advocating progressive change. This is already happening in many places in the last 10 years.
In Europe and the US rising political movements and candidates on the left face the enormous challenge of a global neoliberal capitalism system, the power of the financial and banking sectors and other reactionary elements, a reality that Chomsky emphasizes correctly. To strengthen democracy for the people and to address threats of climate change we have a lot of work to do. And we better become unified, organized and get started now. What other choice do we have.

Doctor_J

(36,392 posts)

4. Cripes. Parenti's 82. Zinn's dead. Wolin's 93. Scheer is 79.

Reply to Ichingcarpenter (Original post)

Wed Sep 23, 2015, 02:03 PM

Sep 2015

Who's going to write anything worth reading 10 years from now?

Reply to this discussion