Chomsky: Business Elites Are Waging a Brutal Class War in America
Chomsky: Business Elites Are Waging a Brutal Class War in America
By Noam Chomsky
November 21, 2013
Zuccotti Park Press
The business classes are constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition.
(This is an excerpt from the just released 2nd edition of Noam Chomskys OCCUPY: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, edited by Greg Ruggiero and published by Zuccotti Park Press. Chris Steele interviews Chomsky.)
An article that recently came out inRolling Stone, titled Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail, by Matt Taibbi, asserts that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, such as those running HSBC. Taibbi says that theres an arrestable class and an unarrestable class. What is your view on the current state of class war in the U.S.?
Well, theres always a class war going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run society, more so than others. The business classes are very class-conscioustheyre constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.
We dont use the term working class here because its a taboo term. Youre supposed to say middle class, because it helps diminish the understanding that theres a class war going on.
Its true that there was a one-sided class war, and thats because the other side hadnt chosen to participate, so the union leadership had for years pursued a policy of making a compact with the corporations, in which their workers, say the autoworkerswould get certain benefits like fairly decent wages, health benefits and so on. But it wouldnt engage the general class structure. In fact, thats one of the reasons why Canada has a national health program and the United States doesnt. The same unions on the other side of the border were calling for health care for everybody. Here they were calling for health care for themselves and they got it. Of course, its a compact with corporations that the corporations can break anytime they want, and by the 1970s they were planning to break it and weve seen what has happened since.
This is just one part of a long and continuing class war against working people and the poor. Its a war that is conducted by a highly class-conscious business leadership, and its one of the reasons for the unusual history of the U.S. labor movement. In the U.S., organized labor has been repeatedly and extensively crushed, and has endured a very violent history as compared with other countries.
More:
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20131123180344705
Teamster Jeff
(1,598 posts)RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)Once again Chomsky gets it, and gives it to those of us who choose to listen.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)4dsc
(5,787 posts)and the working class gets the shaft.
mother earth
(6,002 posts)here is a charade.