Occupy - Noam Chomsky

 OCCUPY - NOAM CHOMSKY

When Piers Morgan recently interviewed Noam Chomsky, to everyone's surprise Morgan actually allowed Chomsky to talk without interrupting him constantly or trying to challenge Chomsky's answers. It's unclear what drove Morgan's change of interviewing technique but it would have been a pretty unedifying sight had he tried to get one over on Chomsky or tried to come out intellectually triumphant over a 91-year old man. In the end, however, because he was allowed to talk rather than to try and reduce ideas into 30-second soundbites, Chomsky wiped the floor with Morgan, practically turning Morgan's worldview upside down and leaving him with a somewhat glazed look in his eye like some computer having blown a fuse and left on a 'does not compute, does not compute' loop.

Actually, it may not have been Morgan's intention (for only he would truly know) but rather than trying to claim the crown for being the first ever interviewer to bring Chomsky down on an ideological or intellectual level, Morgan came across as being the person trying to bag the 'prize' of being responsible for the last ever interview with Chomsky before he croaks it. In that sense, it was still unedifying though unwittingly in approaching a Chomsky interview from this angle it was what allowed Chomsky to so demolish the questions. By accident rather than design we sometimes have much to thank Morgan for, it would seem. Then again, on second thoughts - fuck him.

Occupy is another one of those books composed of interviews with Noam Chomsky and transcripts of speeches he has delivered, this time in regard to the Occupy movement. It's presumed that everyone is aware of what the Occupy movement was and if anyone isn't then it's yet more evidence of how well managed the mainstream narrative is, and how well developed are the mechanisms of propaganda. What may not be so well known is what became of Occupy? What happened to it? Where did everyone go?

Social movements swell and ebb like waves crashing upon or even gently lapping at the shore, and the Occupy movement was an example of both. It was always a very broad church under whose roof gathered a very disparate number of people of various political temperaments. The common denominator was an awareness of the inequality in the world where the wealthiest 1 percent influence and near-control the lives of the other 99 percent. Not that this statistic was any great revelation at all, it was just that Occupy managed to push it onto the agenda and bring it to the fore so as to become almost a standard framework of discussion. People already knew it but for the first time in years rather than an Ayn Rand-type ideology being the prevalent spirit of the age as promoted by politics, business and mainstream media, Occupy simply said that another world was possible.

Similar to the Sixties mantra of 'All we are saying is 'give peace a chance'', Occupy said that it was okay to care for one another. Subsequently, rather than the wealth of the world being mainlined straight to just one percent of the population, Occupy called for a change and that a more egalitarian society be built where the wealth of the world is more evenly distributed. It was never exactly a radical request that was being made but more a natural one, more a normal way of life already being lived by most people yet usurped and kept at a distance from the levers of power by the one percent and all those who worked to aid and abet them in keeping things just as they are.

So what happened? Well, the tactic of 'occupation' as a means of throwing a spanner in the works was easily quashed by the police merely wading in with truncheons and pepper spray and evicting the occupiers from the space they had taken over be it on Wall Street, in Zuccotti Park or indeed outside of St Paul's Cathedral. As a tactic, on the physical level it failed but on a metaphysical level it succeeded in sending out a message to not only the one percent to let them be aware that the pitchforks are coming but to the 99 percent to let them know they are not alone. That to those even with the smallest of niggling doubts about whether it's fair that children starve while the rich live lives of luxury beyond the dreams of Solomon - that they weren't wrong in having that doubt.

Ultimately, those actively involved with Occupy fell back into the woodwork and went back to whence they came but importantly though no longer holding a presence on the streets they would still hold a presence in their communities and in their work places and this was where, according to Chomsky, the real work for change is made: in the building of communities and in the creation of change from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

To the well-known Karl Marx quote where the great bearded one said 'the task is not just to understand the world, but to change it', Chomsky adds that 'if you want to change the world in a constructive direction, you better try to understand it first. And understanding it doesn't mean just listening to a talk or reading a book, although that's helpful sometimes. It means learning. And you learn through participation. You learn from others.'

It's important, then, to understand how the world got to where it is today in regard to the terrible inequality and the 99 percent equation. According to Chomsky, it mostly started in the 1970s and the falling rate of profit in manufacturing, causing major changes in the economy. Manufacturing shifted to overseas, which became very profitable once again though not so for the work force. The economy shifted from productive enterprise to financial manipulation leading to a concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. Subsequently, this concentration of wealth led to concentration of political power that yielded legislation such as tax changes, rules of corporate governance and deregulation that simply increased and accelerated the cycle.

And so there you have it. In a nutshell. As advised by one of the foremost intellectuals in the world today: it's corporate business and financial institutions that rule this fucked world with the profit motive being the main driving force. There is no real party political solution to it either, as all political Parties are committed to maintaining the machine as the machine is their paymaster. In America in particular where election campaigns are absolutely dependent on corporate funding, with the better the funding the better the chance of electoral success.

So where does that leave you? Where does that leave me? Where does that leave us? Well, have you ever wondered why there are so many dickheads around spouting constant Right-wing rhetoric to the point of high comedy? Droning on like an audio version of Daily Mail and Telegraph newspaper editorials? Colonised to the point of obsession with such notions as anything to the left of Right-wing conservatism being 'woke'? This is where the ideas of Antonio Gramsci come into play where Gramsci talks about cultural hegemony being established by systems of power.

'I like Gramsci,' Chomsky says at one point in the book 'He's an important person'. And I concur. If voting for a change in how the world is run isn't an option, if those protesting are simply moved out of the way for being a nuisance, and if revolution isn't on the horizon, then all that is left (beyond mass rioting on an unprecedented scale) is a battle for hearts and minds. You can see this happening now in the form of so-called 'culture wars' though it's far more pervasive than just issues of gender and race, it's all to do with acceptance of the depicted normality and how palatable that normality can be made and how unpalatable can any alternative be made?

The world is up for grabs now even more so than ever. Though we're made to feel powerless when it comes to anything beyond what brand we choose to buy in a shop, nowadays more than ever people have the power to redeem the work of the one percent and all those in their employ, and to wrestle the world from them.

People have the power. Power to the people.

John Serpico