JR'S Free Thought Pages
                                                                       No Gods  ~ No Masters    ~ No Bullshit

Noam Chomsky on Capitalist Illusions and Realities

By J L R Anarchoman, October 2024

Every state has been an instrument by which a privileged few have wielded power over the immense majority. And every church has been a loyal ally of the state in the subjugation of mankind. Governments throughout history have used religion both as a means of keeping men in ignorance and as a safety-valve for human misery and frustration – Mikhail Bakunin

Foreword

Noam Chomsky (b 1928 - ) is the greatest living American who sadly is likely unknown by most American citizens. This is primarily due to the fact that he is barred from appearing on any corporate media because of his incredibly broad knowledge base, remarkable memory, critical thinking skills, clarity of concepts, intellectual brilliance, telling the unvarnished truth about US imperialism and countless other crimes combined with an untarnished moral integrity. As George Orwell once said, “In an era of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In this sense, Chomsky, in addition to being an anarchist, is surely an anti-capitalist radical and insatiable inquirer. One of his intellectual heroes was also one of my own, the great mathematician, philosopher and anti-war activist Bertrand Russell, a man whose picture was on the wall of his MIT office.

Three of Chomsky’s many interests are democracy, education and his critiques of the US war machine and its brutal imperialism. Both of his parents were progressive Jewish intellectuals, teachers, revolutionaries and refugees from Russia during the reign of the Romanoff monarchy. They moved to the US and grew up in Philadelphia where his parents enrolled him in a John Dewey experimental school (Oak Lane) that was run by Temple University from the time he was two years old to the time he entered high school which he hated for its regimentation and didactic teaching methodology.

But he learned much outside the classroom from visiting the vibrant street activity where working class radicalism and critical thought prevailed and where he would often listen to speeches on street corners. At the age of 12 he wrote a paper defending the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) against the fascists led by General Francisco Franco.

There are hundreds of talks and interviews on the internet including you tube. A good web site featuring many of his writings and other interesting commentators on the great man can be found here:

https://chomsky.info/

Introduction

We ostensibly live in the era of the global free market. Or do we? In my view it is neither free nor a system of genuine markets which are manipulated by capitalists and con men of all stripes beyond belief. In fact I would argue that there is a symbiotic relationship between the capitalist state and its police and military that serves the interests of capitalists, our capitalist governments and organized crime. Although not as immoral, systemically corrupt, murderous and malevolently evil as the United States, Canada is no exception in its embrace of capitalism. One can simply read Bruce Livesey’s The Thieves of Bay Street if they have any illusions about Canada holding to any modicum of moral integrity.

Let’s face some ugly facts: planet earth and every living thing are in a pathetic mess; 8 billion humans, the only species not on the extinction list yet have managed to turn it into a trash can and has yet to create a genuine democracy and justice for all. This is an assertion that could have been just as valid 40-50 years ago when corruption in politics and within the monstrous Godzilla capitalism began to calcify and turn once again to fascism by co-opting, controlling and assimilating everything, even the so-called “Green Revolution” by wreaking havoc on every square millimetre of our only home. It might be a good time to watch once again the 1952 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still filmed during the midst of the stupid life threatening Cold War and McCarthyism communist witch hunts.  I’ve watched it many times and it has had a huge impact on me as a young insatiably curious kid. But delusional unthinking humans as usual ignored the profound message of the movie as Americans are portrayed as mindless cretins.

And although we’re informed by our corporate controlled media that the fabricated Cold War has apparently been over for almost 35 years now, but it has never really left us. Excepting the Second World War when Russians saved us from fascism at a loss of 27 million of their citizens, ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia hating and anti-communist hysteria have been have a national pastime. This was instigated and promoted by militarists and monarchists such as Winston Churchill and other calcified conservative reactionaries. It was continued unabated by the onslaught of propaganda and BS by politicians and their boot licking mafia capitalists, banks, psychopathic corporations and endless bullshit and lies by the ass kissing corporate media. One ought to ask why Canada sends weapons and billions of dollars to Ukraine and Gaza where genocide is taking place by Israel by the unhinged fascist leader Nutter Yahoo.

The debauched capitalist system is wreaking havoc not only on all living things such as our putrefied air, contaminated waterways and toxic soil as we are also faced with global heating and ecosystem collapse. In addition to the constant noise, we have managed to create unprecedented widespread economic disparities, grinding poverty, homelessness and malnutrition. Industrial agriculture, particularly livestock production has been an ongoing disaster, not just for the animals, pets and other domesticated animals as wildlife is slowly disappearing. Susan George, not the British bimbo actress, informed us of these impending calamities in several books back in the 1970s. She was, of course ignored and marginalized (not unlike Noam Chomsky) by our political and economic masters and their propaganda machines called the mass lame stream media.

And are weapons manufacturers so prosperous with their bloated Wall Street stock prices in the stratosphere? In fact Wall Street looks like the 1000 lb celebrities stomach that look as though it’s about to explode and spew out its vile bile of overvalued securities that includes the AI bubble. If you aspire to be a capitalist, narcissism, greed, love of money and profit, embrace of hierarchy and authoritarianism of the corporation, have no problem with global heating, ecosystems collapse, contamination of air, waterways and soils, species extinction and psychopathic dysfunction, plagued by cell phone addiction, anxiety and ADHD. As you climb the ladder to the top, you will likely quickly fatten your bank account and belly while becoming one of these sociopathic blood sucking assholes soon enough. But in the long run, to use J M Keynes expression, we are all dead. Keynes and the Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith are the only two honest and truthful economists I’ve read, both admitting that economics is unscientific and is 95% bullshit, no better than mysticism and theology. Galbraith is the owner of what is arguably the best quote on conservatism, the most intellectually, morally and politically bankrupt political ideology ever conceived in human history when he wrote: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Linguistic Professor Emeritus at MIT, greatest intellectual and most insightful and intelligent man on the planet (even at the age of 97) for the past 65 years and vociferous critic of American imperialism and their endless wars, Noam Chomsky surely knows why.

I offer one widely accepted version of how things stand in the world today, expressed as three propositions outlined by Chomsky in various books, talks and articles.

First, the contemporary world operates more and more on a free market, free trade agenda which emphasizes market forces of supply and demand and competition. State planning and state intervention in the economy are minimal and protectionism is frowned upon. The capitalist markets, as Chomsky would admit, are an ongoing fraud.

Second, economic models, state planning and Keynesian-style state intervention in the market have been discredited as being variously inefficient, inflationary, deficient productivity, unjust and tyrannical. After all, we’re informed by hyper capitalists that rolling back of the State’s activity leaves the way open for a purer form of deregulated market activity. The phoney free market model is the best way forward. Some dissidents such as the financier George Soros and the political theorist John Gray have rejected this second bogus proposition, arguing that because the free market is so manipulated, volatile, corrupt, chaotic and socially destructive, we badly need more “global governance”. However, even they accept that the contemporary world is in fact dominated by less and less regulated market activity. But as Mad Magazine’s Alfred E Newman declared, “What, me worry?” We’ll all be bailed out. The “too big to fail” bullshit worked on the masses before, why not again?

Third, since Keynesianism has apparently been discredited according to our current capitalist masters, it follows that military Keynesianism does not exist. Keynesianism has been redefined as state intervention in the interests of the people to stimulate and manage demand by such policies as government spending on public needs and projects; “military Keynesianism” did throw a few crumbs to the masses but 95% of the funding went to banks, tax breaks and public/private projects with emphasis on “private” such as the military weapons manufacturers. This means profits flowing to the private weapons manufacturers while the public picks up the collateral damage and external costs. In other words, it means spending on arms and the defence industry for purposes primarily of stimulating and managing the overall economy through a multiplier effect. Crudely, defence contractors buy steel, plastics and other common commodities which enable steel workers and plastics workers to buy cars and holidays (the BS part), which enables private capital to make huge profits … and so on. J.K. Galbraith puts it well:

All candid economists concede the role of military expenditures in sustaining the modern economy. Some have held that expenditures for civilian purposes would do as well. The transition would be rather easy … [But] there is the problem of magnitude. For the price of a smallish fleet of manned supersonic bombers, a modern mass transit system could be built in virtually every city large enough to have a serious bus line. What would be built then? - John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, BBC/Andre Deutsch, 1977, p.255)

The denial of military Keynesianism means that governments no longer invest massively in the arms and defence industry for the purposes of Keynesian-style economic stimulation and management. Rather, the booming arms industry is driven first by the fabricated need for security in a volatile world that some claim is actually more dangerous than during the relative stability of the Cold War balance of power era, and second by the profit motive. The Soviet Union was never a threat to NATO; deal with it. The world, we are informed, has a massive demand for arms; developed nations have the technical edge and know-how in supplying them; therefore it makes economic sense for developed nations to concentrate on exploiting their comparative advantage in such a lucrative export market.

Chomsky’s Version of Corporatist Capitalist Grand Larceny

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society – Peter Kropotkin

                                                      Noam Chomsky (third from the left), Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, Benjamin Spock and other March on The Pentagon 1967

Noam Chomsky challenges the truth of all these propositions. First, he holds that the story of a world of free markets is not only something of a myth, but for the most part indoctrination, propaganda and bullshit. It isn’t of course a complete fabrication; it is just that the reality of capitalism is far more clandestine and complex: a tangled mixture of so-called free trade, deceit, bribery, monopolization, planning, corporate welfare and protectionism. For instance, he points out that a vast amount of world trade is merely internal to the big banks and mega-corporations. Where planning is carried out, he does not just mean that big corporations have to plan their “investment” and production and sales campaigns if they are to avoid costly mistakes. He means that often research and development (R&D) costs are paid for by the government out of the public purse while the benefits and obscene profits eventually accrue to huge private equity monstrosities such as Black Rock and other parasitic private corporations (offloading costs and collateral damage to the financial edifice and natural environment onto the public) as part of what Chomsky calls the “public funding, private profit” syndrome which is offloading costs and environmental defilement onto the public. This all-too-common long standing capitalist modus operandi is “privatize profit and socialize costs”. One of countless examples of this scam is one to which he frequently mentions - development of the Internet which was a state-funded military project ironically touted and lauded by capitalists as an achievement of the superior efficiency of “entrepreneurial” efficiency and brilliance of the so-called ”free markets. Billionaires and silver spoon college dropout Bill Gates and Elon Musk from an obscenely wealthy South African family discovered nothing. Gates bought the DOS operating system from IBM that had given up on the idea of the PC and Musk (yeah that’s the dyslexic richest asshole on earth Leon Skum) bought the rights (with huge financial handouts and incentives from the US government) to the hideous looking EV Tesla.

Where protectionism is concerned, Chomsky never tires of pointing out with irony that there is some bitter truth in the free market rhetoric and gibberish: the poor and weak must sink or swim according to market forces; but the rich and powerful must be protected against the risks and chaos of the market by the corporatist nanny State. Welfare for the Rich (corporate welfare bums) take various forms: to cite one of the most criminal and hideous – the massive corporate bail-outs in 2007-09 (about $17 trillion in the US alone) and during 2020 when the pandemic hit (moral degenerate and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell only cared about saving the stock markets which of course was expected from a demented psychopathic bureaucrat), government-funded research schemes, tax cuts for the wealthy, government corporate welfare and tax rollbacks for big business, insider trading in stock buybacks (at one time illegal) and the criminal offshore tax havens for the rich, banks and big corporations that, although tax evasion and criminal, no politician will challenge. The fact than some of the largest banks on the planet were involved in criminal activities and huge risks on derivatives and other arcane financial time bombs did not matter to the bootlicking sycophants in government who provided the golden parachutes and exemptions from prosecution. Just recently Toronto Dominion Bank in Canada was caught money laundering which all banks carry out as a matter of policy. Nothing of course was done as the crime was swept under the secret carpet of countess swindles.

However, if Joe Lunch Bucket robbed a mafia bank because his family was starving, he’d be arrested and likely serve a long prison sentence; but not the banking thieves. This deeply hierarchical authoritarian capitalist system (referred to affectionately as “free enterprise” is neither “free” nor “enterprising”). It is a system so entrenched, corrupt, undemocratic, politically dysfunctional and depraved it cannot and never will be reformed. That’s been tried folks - and in a big way after the Great Depression - when the entire system should have been trashed as a massive failure to pretty much everyone, even for some of the rich scum bag robber barons. But by the late 1970s and 80s all the reforms that were implemented following the Great Depression (it took stock markets 30 years to recover) had been rescinded, unions were attacked and rendered benign and we now have a fascist police state corporatist oligarchy owning 99% of the wealth with total control over the neo-fascist political farce.

Notwithstanding the environmental degradation, a massive collapse is coming as entropy has set in and profit has become so difficult, financial scams are rampant and the only remaining avenue for money and extraction from below. Mind destroying ludicrous lotteries, gambling on pro sports and telephone swindles are widespread. This global theft by bandit banks, voracious hedge fund operators and other vultures and psychopathic corporations are what Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis refers to as not capitalism in the traditional sense of robber barons, the new Gilded Age and common thievery but what he calls Techno-Feudalism. As the late George Carlin explained, “they own you; they own everything”.

Chomsky argues that no one who understands the real ugly truth about capitalism really believes that the alleged free market and free trade are the best way forward. Is this the best we homo saps can do? Without knowing the source of the passage, more than half of Americans accept the dictum “To each according to his need and from each according to his ability” which is a pasage from Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto. This ugly truth about capitalism is particularly true in light of the embarrassing iterations of tax write-offs, get out of jail free cards and disgusting multi-trillion dollar bailouts for the banks and corporate oligarchy. Chomsky affirms that both government and business, whatever their official anti-Keynes deregulated free market bullshit tacitly accept the Keynesian truth that the State must intervene in the market to alleviate economic and social problems – for capitalists vultures only of course. If the corporatist nanny state did not intervene to save their sorry asses, the entire system would have collapsed in a dung heap many decades ago. Martin Luther King was spot on over 60 years ago when he described the capitalist system as “welfare for the rich and dog eat dog competition for the poor”. The entire edifice of the capitalist system of greed, corruption and theft is pathetic. In a national economy that claims to serve everyone (including the working poor, impoverished and homeless), there is need for a national government with the wherewithal to do this. It’s not going to happen with a global populace of unthinking cell phone zombies. Money is always scarce when it comes to health care, education and helping societies worst off, especially the destitute homeless, a dire scandalous situation which is an ongoing international disgrace. Money appears as if exploding out of a vacuum if the right people need it (we know who they are) for the latest tax write offs, imperialist racket called war, sending weapons and money to Israel or the Ukraine or bailing out the mafia banks and other corporate crooks.

However, in today’s global economy everything had changed by the 1980s and creeps such as Margaret “There is no society” Thatcher, Ronald “Brain Dead Iran Contra” Reagan and Brian “On the Take” Mulroney, a global political structure is required for a just society became impossible by the mid 1980s. It is commonly held by capitalists and their ass kissers in government that, since the global economy exceeds the control of any national or local government, it must be out of control. Not so, says Noam Chomsky; unelected international bodies like NAFTA, the WTO, WB and IMF actually represent what he calls “a de facto world government” who all too effectively plan and control the world economy for us – or more correctly not for us - but in the interests of the wealthy corporate oligarchs at the expense of the vast majority of struggling working poor wage slaves, the unemployed and homeless. So whereas conservative and liberal commentators like John Gray and George Soros argue about the need for “global governance”, Chomsky claims that we already have it. Of course neither Soros nor Gray, both really ossified conservatives, would never consider a revolution to overthrow capitalism which is the only option since reformism has not worked for more than two or three decades after WW II.

Third, Chomsky tells us that “military Keynesianism” is very much alive and well, since the Pentagon System – Chomsky’s name for the military-industrial complex (MIC) – constitutes a crucial internal dynamic to keep the economy churning out highly profitable weapons and military equipment. In a world dominated by one superpower, the morally bankrupt United States of America, a declining empire descending into fascism, there can be no genuine security or strategic reasons for massive spending on defence and arms. China is already eating their lunch economically. Further, the domestic and global demand for arms is largely a fabricated one, driven by big business and economics and taking full advantage of the built-in obsolescence factor to generate continual profits and economic plunder. Economics, as the great John Maynard Keynes explained makes astrologers and crystal ball readers look good and who can disagree? Much of what passes for capitalist economic dogma in the form of countless arcane mystical expressions such as “the invisible hand of the market” and “The Efficient Market Hypothesis” (EMH) is pure theological mumbo jumbo, not even remotely scientific - and incoherent to any Junior High School Student.

Critical Comparison

Chomsky has been rightly called the most important intellectual of the past 60 years and at the age of 97 continues this distinction in the world today. The man is the quintessence of moral rectitude and anyone who has read any of his hundreds of books, essays and listened to his inspiring talks cannot deny the ethical integrity, intellectual acuity, informed diligence and incredible originality of his analyses of the multiplicity of world problems, undemocratic power structures, endless stupidity, greed and corruption. As one might expect from someone whose early success and fame as professor at MIT with his groundbreaking research in linguistics, the use and abuse of language and his diligent efforts at conceptual clarity, logic and critical thinking skills are dominant themes in Chomsky’s analyses of world events and its power structures. Chomsky, a self-described anarchist (libertarian socialist/anarcho-syndicalism leanings) tries to expose the ways in which supposedly truthful accounts of events and claims are actually ideological fictions and code for concealing more unsavoury power dynamics, revelations and verities, which are often the polar opposite of the official version spoon fed to the masses via the schools, churches and mass corporate controlled media. His notion of ideology and false consciousness is not unlike that of Karl Marx: to see if what passes for truth is in realty a code or camouflage for vested interests; i.e., slave wages for workers but endless money and obscene profit for bankers and the corporate aristocracy.

We have already seen Chomsky at work in this way in the three aforementioned propositions: (1) With his ideological rhetoric of the so-called global free market lies a more complicated reality which in most ways negates the free market which is highly manipulated by derivatives, insider trading such as corporate stock buybacks and the analysts peddling securities for which he has a commission and conflict of interest. (2) Rather than being beyond anyone’s control, the global economy is all too well controlled by a de facto world government and the countless lobbyists (aka bribery boneheads) and insiders that call the shots. (3) Under the official ideological fiction about the need for upgrading security in a dangerous world is the spectre of military Keynesianism, powerful lobbying (aka bribery) and lucrative careers for the greed is good old boy fraternity Ivy League silver spoon Wall Street and Bay Street cadres. Further, the arms trade, rather than supplying an independently existing demand, to a large extent creates the demand which it supplies. As I write during October 2024, the stock markets, especially the DJIA, are bloated and overvalued beyond belief. Anyone who plays this sordid game (sadly the only one in town) should ponder on the obvious fact that every trade has a buyer (optimist) and seller (pessimist). Why should the optimist always be right? He’s not. The unpleasant truth is most big scores in the stock market are by short sellers. When Clinton rescinded the Glass Steagal Act, the door was wide open for deregulation, corruption and widespread plunder of the commons.

Let’s critically consider Chomsky’s first proposition – that the free market and the free trade agreements are a massive smoke screen, more a fable or myth than actual global policy. There are certain obvious ways in which he is correct in his numerous analyses of what is really going on. Oligopoly literally means authoritarian restricted competition and in many cases monopoly in an exploitive world of relatively few massive multinational corporations, competition will be more restricted than in the utopian theoretical market model of many much smaller competing companies. Further, the prohibitive risks and costs of entry into the stock market casino (like the online mania and gross stupidity waste of money and time of sports betting) restrict the putative competitive free market model even more. Again, the capitalist system and its rigged games are an oligopoly in the sense of restricted price competition and is one of the most rational and risk-free ways for big corporate insiders to play their squalid games risk free – and then there’s the golden parachutes and nauseating bailouts if they fuck up. Also, due to the enormous costs of some research and development (the infamous bullshit ridden R & D and fabricated balance sheets), cooperative joint ventures between competitors are not uncommon. Concerning free trade and protectionism, it seems there are again ways in which Chomsky’s analysis is spot on. While tariffs may be frowned upon, so-called non-tariff barrier’ (NTBs) have by no means disappeared. Also, a free trade agenda may itself constitute a kind of protectionism, since it aims to protect the interests of those with a competitive edge or comparative advantage against barriers.

Another of Chomsky’s contentions, associated with protectionism, is his claim that, in spite of the ideological rhetoric disparaging state intervention in the market, such intervention is the norm. Chomsky does not even necessarily disapprove of this, since he feels it is the only practical way to run complex modern economies under an immoral demented system such as capitalism. What he disapproves of is the way that the USA in particular tries to hide its interventions through the Pentagon System and through an official ideology of self-help and free markets. He also disapproves of the particular form of such interventions – frequently military and frequently geared to benefit the rich – no doubt feeling that interventions in such things as health, housing, education and welfare would be of greater social benefit, a no brainer.

Where I feel that Chomsky may have overstated his case, or is perhaps inconsistent in presenting it, is in his failure to highlight that in recent decades many state interventions have taken the form of enforcing a “free market” agenda. John Gray makes the interesting point in his False Dawn: the Delusions of Global Capitalism that, since it is the natural tendency of societies to curb the excesses of market forces for social reasons, it takes a particularly strong interventionist government to force through a pure free-market agenda – and that this is largely what happened in the Thatcher-Ray Gun era. In the 1930s and again in the 50s and 60s, the Keynesian orthodoxy promoted a policy of being somewhat more generous to labour at the expense of capital because it was felt that this was the only way to restore capitalism’s viability in the face of the Great Depression and the threats of Communist and Fascist alternatives (although capitalism thrived under fascist regimes). By the 1970s it was felt that all was not well, and in the 1980s there was the growing body of opinion that now the only way to restore capitalism’s viability was by being more generous to capital at the expense of labour. Hence many of the state interventionist policies instituted at that time, the consequences of which we are still living with and getting worse by the day, were specifically designed to unfetter market forces as the orthodoxy of neo-liberalism and “trickle down” bullshit insists.

Instead of Keynesian welfare for the poor to stimulate demand, Chomsky senses what we now have what in effect is far right wing neo-fascist welfare for the rich to stimulate supply – a whole mishmash of nefarious measures designed to stifle and impede labour not only by police and other harassment by private security goons - but rescinding union laws drafted by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. These draconian measures are implemented while at the same time laws drafted to deregulate and unshackle capital and financial predation while rescinding labour laws, all of which have become like a deadly disease for workers rights. Herr Trump anyone? Signed up with Skip the Dishes or Door Dash yet? This is the new “entrepreneurship of the self” - for the working stiff.

The overall conclusion concerning the first proposition seems to be rather paradoxical: the orthodox version is correct in claiming that the world has moved to more of a free market agenda in the sense of no impediments to profit in any manner however unethical and criminal while at the same time imposing ongoing embargos against other countries such as China. But Chomsky is correct in claiming that the move towards this dark and dirty agenda is inextricable from state intervention and welfare for the rich (the corporatist welfare state) and that more orthodox forms of state intervention continue unabated in various infamous scams such as “public private partnerships” (PPP) and in the surveillance state and Pentagon System whereby there are no limits on budgets and spending on drones to spy on people and weapons to maim or kill them if necessary.

The second proposition stated that market forces rule the world and that this was the best strategy, at least for the 1% who now control well over 95% of global wealth. Ironically this was many years ago conservative that philosophers such as John Gray and the self-described liberal financial con man George Soros, agreed that market forces ruled but argued that this may not have been the best strategy and that the global market needed more global oversight and control. Chomsky’s response was that market forces did not rule and that we already had a de facto world government.

The questions about free markets and state intervention have already been addressed by many radicals and anti-capitalists other than me. Perhaps the most interesting question about the second proposition is the real nature of the kamikaze global economy that is destroying the natural world and transforming the former so-called middle classes into wage slave poverty. Here, we can usefully distinguish four different interpretations.

The first is that the global economy is surely out of control in the sense that anything goes if a profit can be made. This seems to have become quite a popular view, conjuring up images of a blind chaotic Godzilla thrashing and bashing throughout the world wrecking havoc and threatening global financial crisis (such as during 2007-09 when the financial crooks were not only bailed out to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars in the US alone but no one was prosecuted for their financial criminality) and the great extinctions combined with ongoing calamities such as massive extinctions, ecosystem collapse, air, water and soil desecration in addition to record breaking economic inequality and stifling social injustice. There is surely  truth in these contentions but more grimly stated; what it amounts to is that the global economy exceeds the control of any one nation and so to some extent weakens the power of national governments to frame economic and social policies to protect its own  suffering citizens (this apparently is what real democracy is all about).

A second quite popular interpretation is what we might call the conspiracy version of the global economy and it is here to some extent that we can locate Chomsky. Yes, conspiracies do exist just like every war in human history (for firsthand experience from a decorated war hero read Major General Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket). Conspiracies are various and there many fabricated fantasies such as ongoing covid19 pandemic is a hoax and so are representative of some oddball odd anti-science know nothing conservatives like BC leader John Rustad). What they all have in common is the quite obvious claim that the global economy is run by or in the interests of an elite cadre of lizard aliens from another galaxy. But the fact that a wealthy elite oligarchy controls most of the global wealth and media while manipulating politicians is quite obviously factual and not a conspiracy has become a truism for any thinking individual. Yes it’s hard work, but some people don’t mind thinking, even using logic, scientific principles and critical thinking skills. As I write this in October 2024 with the bloated and gamed stock markets, to cite one example, we seem to be on the threshold of another global market collapse. Will we fall for the bailouts, criminal exemptions and accompanying bullshit once again?

For the those on the left such as anarchists, socialists, anti-fascists and eco-warriors of anti-capitalist protests the wealthy elite is largely composed of multinational corporations, international financiers, hedge fund managers dealing in arcane financial instruments, real estate hucksters developers from hell, multi-billion dollar investment fund parasites and their political flunkeys - those Chomsky, who is close to this view, calls the prosperous minority, likely the top one-tenth of 1% in the US for example who control more wealth than the 99%. For those on the far political right that includes hyper-conservatives, fascists and red neck bozos the conspiracy is conducted typically something like a global conspiracy of Jews or the nebulous New World Order. Finally and famously, in the case of off the wall kooks such as David Icke, the conspiracy is organized by blood-sucking alien lizards from another galaxy.

Chomsky’s own thoughtful and informed version of conspiracy fantasy (as mentioned real conspiracies of course do exist – such as every war throughout history) goes something like this: (1) Due to the complexity involved, all modern economies require a large amount of intervention by governing bodies for effective functioning. (2) A national economy requires a national governing body which at least has the advantage of being “democratically” elected and to some very limited extent responsive to popular pressure. (3) A global economy requires a global governing body; this is Chomsky’s de facto world government in the shape of institutions like the real existing WTO, WB, NAFTA, Federal Reserve Banks, and IMF that are totally void of what we call elected “democratic” control while run almost entirely by and for the ruling elite oligarchs. (4) As Chomsky has put it, this is a degree of ideological obfuscation and mystification whereby it is not simply that most people don’t know what’s going on (which is usually the case as most don’t even want to know) and in most cases don’t even know that they don’t know. Presumably for Chomsky, the popular chaotic out of control interpretation of the global economy is a useful ideological smokescreen for absolving the corporate autocrats, multi-millionaires (a million dollars these days is chump change) and nauseating billionaires from any and all responsibility to the commons.

A third interpretation returns us to the first out of control interpretation -with a strange twist. This is an argument, straight out of orthodox college economic textbooks and their dubious unscientific doctrines that the whole point about free markets is that they are self regulating according to some economics deity pie in the sky, obeying Adam Smith’s bullshit theology of the “invisible hand” of the market. (Huh?) On this view what we have is a self-regulating (despite the seemingly obvious fact that no man made idea is self regulating) global market and other arcane gibberish such as The Efficient Market Hypothesis” (EMH) and other vacuous meaningless economic gobbledygook you can listen to on any boring business news network such as the BNN (Bullshit News Network). No one is apparently controlling it, but this does not mean that it is out of control because it is controlling itself or by the economics sky daddy and his pie in the sky rules of the market (run that by me again). Has anyone taken a whiff of the bullshit in this paragraph? You can turn on the boring banalities of the TV program BNN for a few minutes and you’ll get a good whiff of the Bloomberg stench from aging senile talking heads from Wall and Bay Street. Do these brain dead geezers ever retire?

A fourth interpretation revisits this third interpretation with another twist. This is the view of commentators like John Gray that the primary purpose of institutions like the WTO is to control the global economy by enforcing a free market, free trade agenda on it. As Gray who by the way is a capitalist and a former acolyte of Maggie “The Bitch” Thatcher points out in his book False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, free markets don’t just happen on their own; they need deceitful manipulated controlling bodies and even larger doses of bullshit and obfuscation to enforce them. Gray unleashes his vitriol on these nefarious developments for at least two main reasons. First, he contends that alleged free markets are NOT self-regulating; self-regulation can all too easily turn into pandemonium and rendered out of control as they have done countless times such as The Great Depression, the 2007-09 debacle and during the covid-19 pandemic that not a single mainstream economist predicted. The precious few who were predicting collapse were portrayed as lunatics by the typical mainstream sycophant economist. Capitalism ought to have ended with either one of these total collapses of the system that had failed everyone except the creepy capitalist vultures who orchestrated the entire disasters. Second, even when free markets are functioning on rare occasion, the free market scheme does not work to maximize human welfare and was never intended to do so. Most trades are instigated by algorithms in any event, ostensibly taking the emotional factor out of the transactions – which of course is pure fantasy. Hence it stands in need of a different kind of global oversight, one that is more responsive to the various forms of unfairness and injustice, greed ridden manipulations, environmental degradation, pollution and social dysfunction caused by market mechanisms.

Capitalism is not only an intrinsically immoral socio-economic system it is leading us down the path to destruction of the natural environment and the impoverishment and misery of much of the world’s people in order to enrich an elite minority of at most the top 1%. An infinite growth model is inconsistent with a finite planet and is a death wish for all life forms which are in extinction mode, save for the 8 billion homo saps (about 6 million too many for sustainability; there were 2 billion a century ago). Can we make any sense out of this endless muddle of gibberish, mumbo jumbo and patent nonsense that passes for capitalist economics?

The global economy may be said to be out of control in the following two senses: it is out of elected, democratic control (a major point of Chomsky’s), and also, since by their very nature, self-regulating market mechanisms are volatile and imperfect (a point made by Gray, Soros and Chomsky), it forever threatens to be out of control. But any control mechanisms that did emerge from the Great Depression have been trashed, replaced by an amoral capitalist free for all anything goes deregulation and privatization and everything turned into a commodity, including we dazed and confused humans who are nothing but ADHD automatons hounded relentlessly by surveillance in every aspect of cyberspace. Hello Google, Hello Facebook, Twitter and dozens of other mind destroying “social media” and endless mindless marketing.

Chomsky’s version of conspiracy fantasy in terms of a de facto world government, represented by private institutions like the Federal Reserve, WB, WTO, etc, etc are as Gray insists, largely dominated by an unworkable and unjust free market agenda: its control consists largely of trying to free up important regulatory mechanisms on the global markets and the idiotic implementation of human contrived derivatives, algorithms  and other forms of mathematical mysticism that determine the vast majority of trading activity. This is a point which Chomsky perhaps understates in his efforts to show that things are not really as they seem or as the official ideology holds. But it is a point which can fit in well with his general understanding of things. Free markets are not ideologically neutral; they suit some of the most wealthy, greedy unscrupulous people – the elite powerful wealthy classes in the strongest position to take advantage of them – better than others who are the impoverished majority for whom the damage caused by market forces is ubiquitous and deadly, creating the scandals of homelessness and grinding poverty.

It would seem despite their conflicting political affiliations that, despite their huge differences in world view and political affiliation, it would seem there is no real serious disagreement between Chomsky and Gray on the question of global governance and strict regulations of markets. I suggested earlier that Chomsky’s rejoinder to those such as Gray and Soros who spoke of the need for more global government regulations was to more or less accuse them of being slow in realizing the dismal state of affairs in the capitalist markets (they are conservative – Gray was once a fan of Thatcher - and Soros a self-described “liberal” after all)  since we already had such a de facto world regulatory government following the Second World War. But what is meant by “liberal” in today’s postmodern world of deceit, obfuscation and epistemic and moral relativism?

Gray, contrary to his prior decades of Thatcher conservatism, seems to be claiming like Chomsky that we stand in need of a different kind of global governance – one from the bottom up and less destructive of any potential for the enigmatic “will of the people” genuine democracy, of community, sharing, stability, care for our worst off and human happiness and especially the natural environment which, without drastic intervention decades ago is going to kill all life on the planet. It’s too late folks! Thanks capitalism!

The third proposition revolves round the issue of military Keynesianism and the role of the horrors of the weapons industry in the global economy. According to the orthodox version, military Keynesianism no longer exists; after all the great intellect Keynes himself died in 1944. Instead, the imperatives dictating massive state investment in the arms and defence industry are the need to upgrade security in a putative dangerous world and giving state support to arms research and development as one of the developed world’s most lucrative export markets. These claims are far overstated as thousands of lobbyists (aka experts in bribery and influence peddling carrying brown envelopes of thousand dollar bills) descend on Washington like flies to a rotting corpse.

Chomsky, for his part, finds the need to upgrade security argument frankly ridiculous in a world dominated by one superpower and its NATO allies. This was the case during the Cold war as it is today with another Cold War emerging out of nowhere; although this dynamic is changing as China eats the US breakfast, lunch and dinner. If the US dollar loses its status of the international trade combined with the US Empire in steep decline morally, socially and economically will be finished as they are at the federal level alone, a stunning $37 trillion in debt. Chomsky therefore concludes that, beneath the rhetoric, the real agenda of the USA specifically is perhaps as follows: (1) The Pentagon System is used as a cover for the Keynesian-style process of stimulation and management of the economy through the defence and arms industry. (2) Government is influenced in this by non-stop lobbying and pressure from the military, larcenous banks and voracious psychopathic corporations who are just not interested in any possible peace dividend following the end of the Cold War which by the way has been recharged with the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine and the Israeli butchery in Gaza – and now Lebanon and Iran. But the stock markets still head north; after all war is profitable for a select few. Not those who young gullible men who are recruited, maimed and die in them however. (3) Of course government is happy to invest massively in one of its most lucrative export markets – war and death.

Chomsky, however, adds another twist to this story. The arms export industry will be still more lucrative if a built-in obsolescence factor encouraged foreign buyers to always want the latest model of missile, tank and jet fighter plane in order to keep up with the Joneses (or Wangs and Zhangs). This in itself merges beautifully with the insistence on continually upgrading domestic defence since one’s foreign buyers (who may also represent potential enemies) now constitute a greater threat since they are better armed. Thus the whole process is one largely of the arms and defence industry creating its own demand – both in terms of foreign exports and upgraded domestic security. How incredibly stupid is that?

Chomsky summed up this nauseating dynamic many years ago as follows:

The US share in arms sales to Third World countries has reached almost three-quarters. We must therefore provide them with even more advanced weaponry, so that we can tremble in proper fear. The sale of F-16 aircraft with taxpayer-subsidised loans allows the Air Force to pay Lockheed to upgrade the aircraft and to develop the F-22 to counter the threat they pose - Noam Chomsky, Powers and Prospects, Pluto Press, 1997, p.124).

If the expression insane merry-go-round and gross stupidity comes to mind we have to admit that from a strict economic point of view, it also makes a demented yet beautiful kind of sense: the arms industry represents a kind of perpetual cash-cow which due to its elements of built-in arms competition and obsolescence seems capable of being milked endlessly despite ending in death and destruction. By this line of thinking it can address: (1) real or imaginary security and strategic issues; (2) foster a lucrative export market with apparently endless potential and help it maintain its position as market leader; (3) be used to generate civilian spin-offs (as in the case of the Internet); (4) be used as a tool for stimulating and managing the economy; (5) be used to placate powerful business and military lobbies. The corporate oligarchs of course never miss an opportunity to display military and raw power at pro sporting events complete with the brain destroying patriotic flag waving, saluting, hands over the heart national anthem bullshit (Oh Canada our home ON native land) as the athletes look semi-comatose waiting to get on with the game. Apparently the NFL and other pro spots are paid for these disgusting spectacles by the US and Canadian military. The masters of mankind rarely miss an opportunity to indoctrinate and put power and authoritarianism on full display. But in the absence of any alternative cash-cow that can do all these things simultaneously, it would be a very un-pragmatic capitalist government that did not put the arms industry near the top of its agenda.

Even if it is conceded that Chomsky is too cavalier in dismissing the real security and strategic worries in today’s world, and that superpowers do not maintain their status by resting on their laurels, I think it has to be admitted that the security worries are being grossly inflated as an ideological cover for other agendas, such as subsidising the obscenely rich, responding to pressure groups, aiding export markets, stimulating the economy and generating civilian spin-offs in research and development. This would seem particularly true of the moronic President George W. Bush’s decision to proceed with the senseless “Son of Star Wars” defence programme and the lies he told to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan – an immensely expensive multi-billion dollar debacle that resulted in the deaths of millions and demolition of the country’s infrastructure. Why is this village idiot George W Bush and his dumb and dumber old man – and every other US war criminal president since Lincoln, not behind bars?

Chomsky is surely right, too, that the arms industry largely creates the demand which it supplies. He is also right in maintaining that the USA, in particular, is coy about admitting its state interventions in the market, to say nothing of countless military interventions and the 25 million people they have murdered since 1945 – two million in Korea and five million in Vietnam alone.

Conclusion: The world is FUBAR and we are PHUCKED!

                                                               For Home: