Fixing the System (2020)

Book Review from the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Internationalism or Extinction. By Noam Chomsky Routledge. 2020.

At the age of 91 Noam Chomsky is still writing, speaking and campaigning. This latest book, containing material both spoken and written between 2016-19, has as its theme the idea that society as currently constituted faces imminent extinction from the twin threats of nuclear war and climate change. The remedy he argues is ‘internationalism’, seen as people the world over ‘mobilising to force governments to meets this unprecedented challenge to civilization’s survival’.

His case against the profit system of capitalism is a powerful one. Capitalism is seen as ‘penetrating every part of society with the passions of self-interest and profit and breaking down community and the common good’ and as ‘an intertwined sociopathic system of money-making, militarism and environmental destruction now threatening the survival of all life itself’. To overcome this he calls in this book for a universalised movement of activism and resistance from below to force governments to take a different path and even to bring about ‘world government’ as conceived for example by Albert Einstein in 1945.

The focus therefore is upon people getting together to put pressure on their governments through campaigns of many different kinds since ‘systems of organized power… will not take appropriate action… unless they are compelled to do so by constant, dedicated popular mobilization and activism’. However, while being an advocate of single-issue campaigns, he also shows awareness that this has its limits and, sometimes at least, seems to recognise that the threats to humanity posed by the profit system cannot seriously be addressed until consciousness of the need to change society completely is widespread, with its success depending on ‘the steady hard work of developing consciousness and understanding’. He does not see that happening quickly, however, when, in the US for example, a significant proportion of the population are, in his words, ‘ either culturally traditional or pre-modern’ and, for example, either deny global warming or, even if they accept it, do not accept it is happening through human agency.

Two points are worth making here about the way Chomsky approaches his subject. First, despite the ‘internationalism’ in the book’s title, he puts overly strong emphasis on the US and its problems, almost as though this were the single important issue facing the world. Secondly, despite the book’s references to the need to develop understanding as a means of bringing about a radically changed society, the overall emphasis is on single issues with ‘grassroots’ movements such as Extinction Rebellion and Earth Strike mentioned favourably and the hope expressed that such movements can pursue ‘intersectionality and solidarity’ and can be ‘articulated and intertwined with the struggle against extinction’.

In all this, unfortunately, though there is much talk of the need for enhanced democracy, there is no mention anywhere of the democratic world society of free access without governments, without money and wages, without leaders and led, which, even if it may not be imminent, is the only way to effectively transcend capitalist society. While it is impossible not to admire Chomsky for the lifetime of support he has dedicated to ‘progressive’ causes and for his uncompromising opposition to the status quo, the fact is that capitalism provides an unending procession of immediate issues, and with each one a crop of ‘realists’ who argue that their own pressing problem must be tackled first.

It is true that Chomsky, in his lifelong activism, does at times appear to have seen beyond this. In Manufacturing Consent (1988), for example, he says: ‘Presupposing that there have to be states is like saying, what kind of feudal system should we have that would be the best one? What kind of slavery would be the best kind?’ Even more tantalising was his youthful statement that: ‘A democratic revolution would take place when it is supported by the great mass of the people, when they know what they are doing and they know why they are doing it and they know what they want to see come into existence… A revolution is something that great masses of people have to understand and be personally committed to’. Unfortunately there is none of that here and no indication that Chomsky sees that the causes he espouses, even if successful, would amount to any more than a rearrangement of the capitalist system rather than a new and fundamentally different kind of society to replace that system. In the end, attempts to adjust capitalism according to humane criteria are doomed to failure. Without a clear alternative to capitalism, opposition to the way it works and oppresses leads nowhere.

Howard Moss