Thursday, January 26th, 2006
INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY ON LABOR'S PLATFORM FOR THE AMERICAS AND THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM 2006
GPN (Tony Avirgan): Why is it important for workers throughout the Americas to unite and engage in joint political action?
Noam Chomsky: Is not just the Americas, but around the world. It's been the leading concern of workers' movements and social movements, since their origins in the 19th Century. That's why is included in every call that's made internationally or on the Internet.
From the point of view of the owners of capital it has been very useful to divide working people and have them fighting each other, instead of joining in solidarity. It's been one of the leading concepts of the workers' movement to have international solidarity. If you can pit Mexican workers against American workers, well, that's a great way to make profits. The same can be said for pitting workers in the south of U.S. against workers in the north of the U.S., instead of letting them get together and form unions and engage in common struggle and make gains.
GPN: Labor's Platform for the Americas is probably the first time in modern history that unions throughout the Americas had such a degree of unity. Do you think that this could be the basis for that kind of understanding among unions of the importance of unity?
Noam Chomsky: Not just the Labor Platform but also the World Social Forum. It's the first concrete step towards forming an International which has been the dream of the left since its modern origins. It should been mentioned, perhaps, that this current Labor Platform is a broader version of one that was developed and proposed in the early 1990s, in opposition to NAFTA. The labor movement, contrary to what is generally believed, had a very concrete and well developed position on NAFTA. It was kept out of the press and was not included in the agreement by the Clinton administration, in violation of internal law and US law. But the Labor Advisory Committee, representing the unions, presented a very detailed, careful and well thought-out position on NAFTA. It didn't come out against it, but it came out against that version, the executive version, and presented very clear alternatives which were kept out of the debate and never appeared in the press. The conclusions of the Labor Advisory Committee were pretty much the same as the conclusions of Congress's own Research Bureau, which were also kept out of the press, and kept out of the debate. They both concluded and assessed correctly that the executive version of NAFTA would lead to low growth and low wage economies in all three countries. And that's what happened.
The current Labor Platform proposals extend to the whole hemisphere. There is a remarkable degree of participation and that's very encouraging. And this has also been kept out of the discussion, and it is a task of people to break through that barrier.
GPN: These ideas seem to be gaining traction, at least in South America, where the Joint Parliamentary Commission of the Mercosur, which doesn't have any real power, adopted the Labor Platform and recommended that countries to follow its recommendations. What do you think?
Noam Chomsky: Yes, that's what's been happening throughout almost all of South America very dramatically from Venezuela to Argentina. And this is also something new. It presents a unified, popularly supported, tendency which is creating an alternative to the US dominated system of economic, social and military control of the Hemisphere. It's very hard for Washington to ignore that. And, if it's joined by a self-consciously aware North American population, that could really change the world as we know it.
GPN: And the reasons we think that such change is taking place in South America is that people are aware of the great economic polarization and inequality in the region. Actually the Americas have the highest degree of inequality of any region in the world. Do you think that's the driving force behind this political change?
Noam Chomsky: That's part of the driving force. The other part of the driving force is the Washington Consensus, the neoliberal policies that for the last 25 years have been one of the most dramatic disasters in economic history. It won't come as a surprise to anyone that has studied economic history since the industrial revolution, that it is very striking that where these neoliberal policies have been pursued, particularly in South America, there has been a rapid decline in virtually all macro-economic measures: rate of growth, rate of productivity, etc. And also a rise in inequality. The same can be said of the United States, where the measures have not been applied with the rigidity of Latin America, but they have, to some extent, been applied for the last 25 years. And this has been a bleak period in US economic history. For 25 years real wages have been in decline for the majority of the population. The United States is the richest country in the world and, as you would expect, 25 years ago had the highest wages and shortest working week of any industrialized country in the world. And now that's been reversed. Now it has the lowest wages and the longest working hours of any industrialized country in the world. Salaries have remained the same, but working hours have increased, and inequality has just soared.
Throughout the first phase of post World War II history, the 1950s trough the 1970s, we had rapid growth, but we had egalitarian growth. And it was growth of social welfare and it resulted in a rise of all the social indicators. And there was a healthy society. That changed in the period of 1970 to 1975. The social indicators began to decline and growth fell very sharply and inequality fell back to what it was in the 1920s. And for most of the working population, it is one of the worst periods in economic history. That's been mirrored throughout the world. In the regions where these policies have been pursued, there has been a very sharp decline in comparison to the previous 25 years. There has been growth and development in the international economy during that period, but the social benefits have been seen in regions where these neoliberal policies have been ignored. South East Asia has been a striking example. Now the World Bank and other institutions, have figures that try to obscure these facts by putting together things that are quite unrelated. They put together participation in trade, with adherence to the Washington Consensus. So, for example China undergoes very high growth by violating the principles of the Washington Consensus. They ignore the total picture by making the claim that China has a high growth rate and never mentioning that it's a result of violating the principles of Washington Consensus. But, if you look at the World Bank figures and take them apart, then what you find is that adhering to these neoliberal policies has been economically harmful, in a surprisingly consistent way. The truth is that violating the principles of the Washington Consensus has often been associated with very high rates of growth, but that is rarely mentioned. It is similar to the first 25 years after World War II, often referred to as the "golden age".
But that's only part of the story: these neoliberal measures, quiet apart from economic consequences, were virtually designed as an attack on democracy. There has been a dramatic decline throughout Latin America for support of democratic systems. Not that people don't want democracy, but support has fallen for the parliamentary systems as they exist. That's been a decline that has occurred parallel to the imposition of neoliberal polices. It was in the design of these policies, at every point, to undermine democracy. For example the imposition of financial liberalization is undermining democracy by taking away the capacity of governments to control things that will have an impact on the population. They took away governments' capacity to make public policy. Neoliberal policies create a virtual parliament of investors and landlords that is not democratic and is not under the control of the population in a democratic manner. Democracy existed before the neoliberal years, in the post-war period, because capital controls could be imposed by governments. And that was a way of exercising democracy. Capital controls were imposed not just as a way of controlling capital but also to give governments space to carry out the development programs that their populations wanted. That was a way to exercise democracy. Things have change in the last 25 years, and they have not changed in a democratic way. I should say that these are staples of economic theory and economic history. They are not obscure. They are in all of the economic text books.
The same can be said about privatization. There is no empirical evidence that privatization has any economic benefits. The evidence is just the opposite, especially with health care and social services. But privatizations do have the effect of taking decisions and control out of the public realm. It takes things out of democratic control and puts them in the control of unaccountable private entities. "Services" includes just about everything that people care about; health, resources, education and the environment, all the things that people care about. These are called "services". And then there is "trade in services", when you add on trade. This means transferring all the things in life into the hands of private enterprises. They are unaccountable and they are taking things out of the public arena. When that happens you can have a formal democracy, but there is nothing left with which to make decisions. The same runs true trough the rest of the neoliberal package. And it is all of these factors, along with the rising inequality, that is driving people to call for change.
GPN: Are there other things that need to be said on this?
Noam Chomsky: Just that there is rising protest, and that is very hopeful. The U.S. still has a long way to go, but the groundwork is being laid. To my great surprise a statement by me on just these topics was solicited by the people at Davos. And you can find it on their web site.
GPN: Well there are definitely cracks in the walls.
Noam Chomsky: Yes there are.
Read Labour's Platform for the Americas.
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