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发表时间：2006-02-26
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Noam Chomsky interviewed by Danilo Mandic
Danilo Mandic: Could I please get your views on the recent World Social
Forum that was held a few months ago in Porto Allegre, Brazil. Over
150,000 people from 135 countries participated, an unprecedented number;
and they covered a wide range of issues including economic equality,
labor rights, war, and global corporate power. What has the social
justice movement done since the first forum five years ago?
Noam Chomsky: The forum itself is a place for people to get together and
discuss and plan many activities from all over. For example, if you take
the first (the year 2000) Social Forum - which was more western
hemisphere oriented then the other ones which have been much broader -
one of the things that came from it was a massive popular program to try
to block or alter the so-called Free Trade Agreement of the Americas,
which is not free and is not about trade and was certainly not an
agreement, at least if people matter. And that lead to local activities
in many countries and to very large-scale demonstrations at the
hemispheric summit in Quebec in April 2001, which were sufficient to
derail the efforts to ram through a NAFTA-style program in the
hemisphere. Since then it has just continued. By now there are regional
social forums all over the world. There are local social forums. For
example, there is a Boston Social Forum, which is just in the Boston
area, that is one of many (I don't know how many) local forums that have
spun off of the central one. Now they are concerned with issues that are
of concern - in the United States, it's always going to be of global
concern too because of U.S. power - but also just plain and simple, you
know, serious jobs for justice programs locally, anti-corporate programs
locally, and so on. Now those happen in the regions where people are
involved. The concerns of people who are there, they integrate with the
international, regional (larger regional), international meetings and,
as you say, at the World Social Forum itself. There's a very wide range
of discussion - it didn't have to be at the last one but earlier ones -
typically quite serious discussion by activists and engaged people from
many different walks of life and parts of the world, on issues of
general concern. Out of them come some general programmatic ideas, some
ideas about actions, which are then implemented by people in their own
manner - you can't have a global program without local adaptation.
DM: A lot of eminent scholars are fond of using the phrase
"anti-globalization movement." What do you think of that label?
NC: As I've said repeatedly, including at the World Social forum, it's
just plain propaganda. I mean "globalization" used in a neutral sense
just means "international integration." The World Social Forum in fact
is a perfect example of globalization at the level of people. I mean you
have people from India, Africa, Brazil, Latin America, North America,
Europe, just about everywhere, from every walk of life, who have
somewhat common concerns and interests. That's globalization. In fact,
globalization itself has been the guiding vision of the workers'
movements on the left since their origins in the 19th century. That's
why every labor union is called an International even though they are
not international. That's the aspiration, and that's how the several
Internationals were formed, true internationals. In fact the World
Social Forum is probably the first time there has been any development
grassroots-up that merits the term "international." There is just no way
for these movements to be anti-globalization. They are perfect instances
of globalization. The term has come to be used in recent years as a kind
of a technical term which doesn't refer to globalization, but refers to
a very specific form of international economic integration ...
DM: Right.
NC: ... namely based on the priority given to investor rights, not
rights of people. So rights of investors, lenders, corporations, banks,
financial institutions and so on, within a general neo-liberal
framework, roughly the so-called Washington Consensus. That's a
particular doctrinal position, which has come to be called
"globalization" because the people who have that position have control
of concentrated wealth and power, so they can therefore impose their
terms on much discourse. It's kind of like saying that in the old Soviet
Union "democracy" meant the so-called People's Democracies. You know,
Czechoslovakia and Hungary. They had the power to use the term
"democracy" for those gross distortions of democracy. And the people who
pretty much own the world have enough power to distort the term
"globalization" to their highly specific and extremely doctrinary
position. But the people who are opposed to their version of
globalization aren't opposed to globalization. They're just calling for
other modes of globalization that prioritize rights of people, future
generations, the environment, etc., more than the rights of those with
concentrated wealth and power. The same is true of all of the agreements
(so-called, not really agreements, but treaties that are instituted
within that framework). Take say NAFTA - striking example - the North
American Free Trade Agreement. I mean, the one phrase in that that is
correct is "North American." It does indeed have to do with three North
American countries, counting Mexico as North American. Now beyond that,
every statement is false. It's not about free trade. It's highly
protectionist. It's certainly not, in many respects, an agreement. The
population in Canada and the United States, the majority is opposed and
probably in Mexico too, but we don't have good polls from Mexico. There
were alternative proposals. This was the executive version of the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which did have a very powerful elite
consensus behind it. So the corporate world was in favor; the media were
virtually 100% in favor. Now the population was mostly opposed, and
there were alternatives proposed. So for example there's a treaty in the
United States which requires that labor be consulted seriously on any
international economic agreement that affects workers, which this
obviously did. Well, the labor movement wasn't even notified. I mean
there is a Labor Advisory Council which is responsible for such things.
I think they were notified, given the text about 24 hours before it was
signed. It was Clinton that really, really loathed democracy and
freedom. That didn't get reported. Nevertheless, the Labor Advisory
Council even with that limited time was able to put forward a proposal,
a very constructive detailed proposal, for a North American Free Trade
Agreement, but one that was redesigned so instead of being directed to
low wage, low growth, high profit futures (as they correctly described
this one) it would be directed towards a high growth, high wage, more
egalitarian form of international integration. And that was presented.
Actually it turns out that their proposal was very similar to that
proposed about the same time by Congress's own Research Bureau and
Office of Technology Assessment, which also said they were opposed to
this version of the agreement, but they suggested a different version,
very much with a similar critique to that of the labor movement and
similar constructive proposals. None of that was ever reported. I mean
to this day, nobody knows about it, more than ten years later. It's just
suppressed. I mean there was discussion of the labor movement. They were
denounced. Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, who is about as far to
the left as you can get, condemned the labor movement for its brutal,
harsh, nationalistic tactics, on and on. He had a clue what the labor
movement position was, and it was anything but. But it simply could not
be reported. As far as I am aware, to this day it hasn't been reported.
Well it's kind of like globalization. There was no opposition to a North
American economic agreement, but there was opposition to this one, and
there were constructive alternatives but they never entered political
discussion and debate. I mean the media did enjoy Ross Perot because
they could make fun of him, you know, talk about sucking sounds, make
jokes, and so on and so forth. But the serious proposals that came
straight out of popular movements, like the labor movement and even
Congress's Research Bureau, they were off the agenda. And it's pretty
much the same with regard to globalization, which is sort of like the
use of the word democracy in the old Soviet Union. For other purposes,
but similar mechanisms.
DM: On that note, let me turn briefly to Iraq if you don't mind.
NC: Sure.
DM: Democracy is another term that mainstream eminent scholars are found
of using when it comes to Iraq. The by-now-famous Lancet report counted
about 100,000 excess deaths in Iraq as a result of the Anglo-American
invasion. The Iraqi oil industry is becoming increasingly privatized
into Western corporate hands, and the Iraqi elections are being hailed
as proof of the success of the American endeavor. What do the elections
mean for Iraq?
NC: Actually I agree that the elections were a success ... of opposition
to the United States. What is being suppressed - except for Middle East
specialists, who know about it perfectly well and are writing about it,
or people who in fact have read the newspapers in the last couple of
years - what's being suppressed is the fact that the United States had
to be brought kicking and screaming into accepting elections. The U.S. |
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