Noam Chomsky on Neoliberalism

“And it’s gone on for the United States. We have measures of it. I’m sure you know that the Rand Corporation about a year ago came out with an estimate that about $50 trillion – That’s not pennies – $50 trillion had been transferred to the pockets of the top 1%, or to a fraction of them, mostly in the last 40 years of class war. Meanwhile, real wages have stagnated, and for mail workers, benefits have collapsed.”

“In the West, I think a large part of what’s happening, a very large part, is the bitter, savage, class war that’s been conducted for the last 40 years. It’s called neoliberalism. It even has rhetoric about markets and so on. But that’s widely misleading. It’s basically savage class war. And it was understood by the leaders. It starts with Reagan and Thatcher. Their first moves in office were to attack, undermine the labor movement, opening the door for the corporate sector to enter with illegal strike-breaking efforts, organization efforts tolerated by the criminal state. That made sense. If you’re going to carry out a bitter, savage class war, better eliminate all the means of defense.”

“It is tempting to cast the blame on Trump for the disastrous response to the crisis. But if we hope to avert future catastrophes, we must look beyond him. Trump came to office in a sick society, afflicted by 40 years of neoliberalism, with still deeper roots. [...] The neoliberal version of capitalism has been in force since Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, beginning shortly before. There should be no need to detail its grim consequences. Reagan's generosity to the super-rich is of direct relevance today as another bailout is in progress. Reagan quickly lifted the ban on tax havens and other devices to shift the tax burden to the public, and also authorized stock buybacks — a device to inflate stock values and enrich corporate management and the very wealthy (who own most of the stock) while undermining the productive capacity of the enterprise.”

“The scale of the plague is surprising, indeed shocking, but not its appearance. Nor the fact that the U.S. has the worst record in responding to the crisis. Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years. [...] But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporary socioeconomic order. Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe. The government could have stepped in, but that’s barred by reigning doctrine: "Government is the problem," Reagan told us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devoted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might be concerned with the common good. The years that followed injected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist order and the twisted form of markets it constructs.”

“The U.S.'s privatized for-profit health care system had long been an international scandal, with twice the per capita expenses of other developed societies and some of the worst outcomes. Neoliberal doctrine struck another blow, introducing business measures of efficiency: just-on-time service with no fat in the system. Any disruption and the system collapses. This is the world that Trump inherited, the target of his battering ram. [...] It seems that many Americans would prefer to spend more money as long as it doesn't go to taxes (incidentally killing tens of thousands of people annually). That’s a telling indication of the state of American democracy, as people experience it; and from another perspective, of the force of the doctrinal system crafted by business power and its intellectual servants. The neoliberal assault has intensified this pathological element of the national culture, but the roots go much deeper and are illustrated in many ways, a topic very much worth pursuing.”