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11/2/11 8:15Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy: If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, the Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow | | AlterNet

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AlterNet / By Noam Chomsky 58 COMMENTS

Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy: If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, theMovement Here and Around the WorldMust Grow

In a speech to Occupy Boston, the linguist and icon hailed the"unprecedented" first weeks of OWS. He cautioned protesters tobuild and educate first, strike later.

It's a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an

Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret

that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way,

something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement

that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the

groundwork. It would

have been the

fulfillment of a dream

for him to be here with

you.

The Occupy

movement really is an

exciting development.

In fact, it's spectacular.

It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the

bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events

can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead -- because victories don't

come quickly-- this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American

history.

The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an

unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the

country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the

general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development --

even in dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectation that it's going to

go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years,

by the mid-1930s, although the situation was

objectively much harsher than it is today, the

spirit was quite different. There was a sense

that we're going to get out of it, even among

unemployed people. It'll get better. There wasa militant labor movement organizing, CIO was

organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very

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frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the

time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running

it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular

pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we're going to get out of it.

It’s quite different now. Now there’s kind of a pervasive sense of hopeless, or, I

think, despair. I think it’s quite new in American history and it has an objective

basis. In the 1930s unemployed “working people” could anticipate realistically that

the jobs are going to come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today -- andthe unemployment level in manufacturing today is approximately like the

Depression -- if current tendencies persist, then those jobs aren’t going to come

back. The change took place in the '70s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of

the underlying reasons, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Bernard,

who has done a lot of work on it, is a falling rate of profit. That, with other factors,

led to major changes in the

economy -- a reversal of the

700 years of progress

towards industrialization

and development. We

turned to a process of

deindustrialization and de-development. Of course,

manufacturing production

continued, but overseas (it’s

very profitable, but no good

for the workforce). Along

with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise,

producing things people need, to financial manipulation. Financialization of the

economy really took off at that time.

Before the '70s, banks were banks. They did what banks are supposed to do in a

capitalist economy: take unused funds, like, say, your bank account, and transfer

them to some potentially useful purpose, like buying a home or sending your kidto college. There were no financial crises. It was a period of enormous growth; the

largest period of growth in American history, or maybe in economic history. It was

sustained growth in the '50s and '60s and it was egalitarian. So the lowest

percentile did as well as the highest percentile. A lot of people moved into

reasonable lifestyles -- what’s called here “middle class” (working class is what it’s

called in other countries).

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