People :
Author : Noam Chomsky
Text :
The interviews in this volume present the views of the world’s leading public intellectual on the consequences of capitalist globalization, and much more, as recorded in conversations with the undersigned over the course of the last four years—from late 2013 to early 2017, to be exact—and originally published in Truthout.
Noam Chomsky has been “America’s moral conscience” for more than half a century (even if he remains unknown to the majority of Americans) as well as the world’s most recognized public intellectual, consistently speaking out against US aggression and defending the rights of the weak and the oppressed throughout the world from the time of the Vietnam War to the present. His analyzes are always grounded in indisputable facts and are also guided by deeply held moral considerations about freedom, democracy, human rights, and human decency.
Chomsky’s voice remains almost singularly a beacon of hope and optimism in these dark times—an age of unparalleled economic inequality, growing authoritarianism, and social Darwinism, with a left that has turned its back on the class struggle.
For quite some time now, there have been clear and strong indications across the entire political and socioeconomic spectrum in advanced Western societies that the contradictions of capitalist globalization and the neoliberal policies associated with them threaten to unleash powerful forces with the capacity to produce not only highly destructive outcomes for growth and prosperity, justice, and social peace, but also concomitant consequences for democracy, the environment, and human civilization on the whole.
Still, according to Chomsky, despair is not an option. No matter how horrendous the current world situation appears to be, resistance to oppression and exploitation has never been a fruitless undertaking, even in darker times than our own. Indeed, the Trump “counterrevolution” in the United States has already brought to the surface a plethora of social forces determined to stand up to the aspiring autocrat, and the future of resistance in the world’s most powerful country appears more promising than in many other parts of the advanced industrialized world.
In this context, the interviews assembled here are, we believe, of critical import. These were originally commissioned and edited by Maya Schenwar, Alana Yu-lan Price, and Leslie Thatcher for publication as stand-alone articles in Truthout. Our hope in anthologizing them is that they will assist to introduce the views and ideas of Noam Chomsky to a new generation of readers, while maintaining faith among the rest in the human ability to provide tenacious resistance to the forces of political darkness and ultimately change the course of history for the better.
—C. J. Polychroniou, March 2017
From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.
Chronology :
January 03, 2021 : Introduction -- Added.
January 16, 2022 : Introduction -- Updated.
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