 Well Professor Chomsky, thank you so much for joining me. I know you're swamped with interview requests all the time so on behalf of Labor Notes just thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Glad to. So I wanted to start out with getting your thoughts generally on the unprecedented moment we're in. We're obviously in the midst of both a global pandemic and a global recession and right now millions of people in the United States have found themselves both unemployed and uninsured while our healthcare system is overloaded and lacking anything close to the number of hospital beds and ventilators and personal protective equipment that we need. And I know we could spend the whole half hour you know on this question alone but kind of in brief strokes I'm wondering if you could just outline for us how to understand the current moment we're in and the political choices that led us here. Well first of all we should recognize that unless we get to the roots of this pandemic it's going to recur probably in worse form simply because of the manipulations of the capital system which are trying to create circumstances in which will be worse for their benefit. We can see that in the stimulus bill and many other things. Now second because of the global warming which is going on and puts all of this into the shadow when we will recover from this at severe cost we're not going to recover from the ongoing melting of the polar ice sheets and if you want to understand how contemporary capital is looking at this take a look at Trump's budget. It's true that this is a pathological extreme of the normal capitalist system so maybe it's not fair to use it as an example but that's what we're living with. So on February 10th while the epidemic was raging going to get worse Trump came out with his budget proposals. What were they? First point continue the defunding of health-related elements of the government. Throughout his term he'd been cutting back on funding of anything that doesn't benefit private power and private wealth and corporate power so all the health-related parts of the government had been increasingly defunded. The kill programs all sorts of things. February 10th let's continue with that so further defunding of the center of disease control and other health related parts of the government but there were also compensating increases in the budget for the fossil fuel industry more subsidies to the fossil fuel industry so let's try not only to kill as many people as possible now but let's try to destroy all of society. It's basically what the words mean of course more funding for the military and for his famous wall but these two things stand out very brightly as an indication of the criminality that is first of all endemic but is highlighted in the sociopathic White House brings it out radically but of course Trump can't be blamed for all of this it goes back and we better think about it. After the SARS epidemic in 2003 also coronavirus was well understood by scientists that other recurrences of one or another coronavirus are going to come probably more serious. Well understanding is not enough someone has to pick up the ball and run with it now there are two possibilities one is the drug companies but they follow normal capitalist logic you do what makes profit tomorrow you don't worry about the fact that in a couple of years everything's going to collapse that's not your problem so the drug companies essentially did nothing there were things that could be done I mean there was plenty of information circulating scientists knew what to do there could have been preparations somebody's got to pay for it not the drug companies well in a rational world even a capitalist world prior to Ronald Reagan the government could have stepped in and done it okay that's pretty much the way polio was eradicated very much the government initiated and funded program when Jonah Salk discovered the vaccine he insisted that there be no no patents it's he said it's got to be public just like the Sun that's still capitalism but it's regimented capitalism that was ended by a stroke by Ronald Reagan government's the problem it's not it's not the solution let's legalize tax havens let's legalize stock buybacks costing tens of trillions of dollars to the public and pure robbery and of course let's keep funding the parts of the government let's continue government is the solution when the private sector is in problem in trouble that's understood but if it's just the public need something government's not the answer so going back to 2003 government couldn't step in actually it did to a slight extent step in and it's very revealing to see what happened Obama after the Ebola crisis recognized that there are problems we have to do something that one of them did several things one of them was to try to contract for ventilators ventilators are the big bottleneck in the system right now that's what's forcing nurses to decide who to kill tomorrow there aren't enough of them but Obama administration did contract for the development of high quality low-cost ventilators the company was quickly bought off by a bigger one which sidelined the project it was competing with their own expensive ventilators and then turned to the government and said they want to get out of the contract it's not profitable enough okay that's savage capitalism not just capitalism but neoliberal capitalism gets worse in January and February of this year this year when US intelligence services were pounding at the door of the White House saying hey there's a real crisis do something couldn't do it but the Trump administration was doing something namely it was exporting ventilators to China and other countries to improve the trade balance that went on into March now the same manufacturers and shipping companies that were sending them out are bringing them back double profit this is what we're living with you know I mean can easily go on so if you look back over the whole thing at the basis is a colossal market figure markets simply don't work they can work for selling shoes sometimes but if anything significant happens it's none of their business you have to operate as Milton Friedman and others pointed out just by greed you do things for your own welfare wealth nothing else that's a built-in disaster we've had so many examples I don't have to review it so at the beginning is a market failure then comes the extra hammer blow of savage capitalism neoliberalism which we've been suffering from of the world for 40 years goes beyond ventilators hospitals in the United States have to be run on a business model so no spare capacity it doesn't work even in normal times and plenty of people including me can testify on that in the best hospitals but it kind of works however if anything goes wrong you're sunk tough luck maybe that's okay for automobile manufacturing doesn't work for healthcare our healthcare system all together is international scandal but the business model of course puts it just makes it a built-in disaster so there's that and some of the other things that went on are just too surreal to discuss like there was the that was called the the US did have a USAID had a program very successful program detecting viruses that are in animal populations wild populations that are getting into closer contact with humans because of habitat destruction and global warming so they were identifying thousands of potential disease viruses working in china as well trump disbanded he'd been defunding it but he disbanded it with exquisite timing in october just when the thing was breaking out now you go on and on this is the picture you get a bunch of sadistic sociopaths in the white house uh intensifying deep market failures that go much further back and now intensifying it further the rich are not waiting to see how to build the next world they're working on it right now making sure it comes out the right way further subsidies to fossil fuels destroy dpa regulations that might save people but harm profits going on right in front of our eyes and the question is will there be counterforces if not before we we move on to the discussion maybe a popular movements and how to fight back in this uh in the discussion of market failures they seem to be combining as well with the legacy of institutional racism in the united states and we see this playing out in the disproportionate impact that the coronavirus is having in black communities in your view how should we understand this we have a we can understand it by going back four centuries to when the first slaves were brought i don't want to have to run through the whole history but the the most vicious system of slavery and human history is the basis large part of the basis for us prosperity cotton was the oil of the 1918 to 19th century and you had to have cheap cotton now you don't get that by uh following the rules they teach you in the economics department you get it by vicious brutal slavery okay that's laid the basis for uh manufacturing textile manufacturing uh finance financing all this commerce retail obviously that went on through much of the 19th century well finally slavery was formally ended for about 10 years reconstruction period and then there was an agreement with the south that uh they could go on exactly the way they were before so you get what one of the best books on the topic called slavery by another name measures taken to essentially criminalize the black population so the guy standing on the black guy standing on a street corner and fine him for pregnancy can't pay the fine okay go to a chain game and result was this is the great manufacturing revolution of the late 19th century early 20th century largely built on it was called it wasn't called slavery uh ownership of the popular of the black population by the state it's much better than slavery if you have slaves you have to keep them alive uh if you put them in prison the pop the government has to keep them alive you just get them when you need them and there's no question of uh lack of discipline or protest or anything like that this went on almost until the second world war at that point there were jobs people had to work you know but then comes new forms of imposed slavery so well into the late 1960s uh federal housing was required segregation there was a lot of public supported housing going on in the 50s the Levittowns and so on but for whites no blacks you know liberal senators voted for this hated it but voted for it because there was no other way to get any public housing uh passed southern democrats would kill it you know uh the united states had adding miscegenation laws so severe that the nazis refused to accept them into the 60s you know then it takes other forms uh the supreme court uh just essentially did what the government did back at the end of reconstruction told the southern states you can do whatever you like it eliminated the voting rights thing uh we've just seen this a couple of days ago in Wisconsin incredible if you want to see democracy simply crushed take a look at what happened two days ago in Wisconsin uh the governor sensibly wanted democratic governor wanted to delay the primary and extend absentee voting i mean nothing could make perfect or perfect sense the republican there is a republican dominated legislature that had a small minority of votes but gerrymandering gave him the largest number of seats under republican legislature uh so there was a session they called a session i don't think the republicans even bothered to show up the majority leader simply called the session then closed it then considered the governor's proposal supported by the supreme court uh this is designed to ensure that poor minority voters people who can't get to the polls easily mostly democrats they won't vote uh the rich the traditional of the ones who had a little of this they voted so as a way it's an open way not even concealed to try to ensure that no matter what the public wants the most reactionary policies will be maintained in balton and permanently mitch mcconnell is the evil genius behind this he's been doing it beautifully uh make sure that the judiciary is stuffed with young mostly unqualified ultra reactionary justices that ensures that whatever the country wants in the future they'll be able to kill it just like the robert's court majority is able to do it now republicans know that there are minority party there's no way to get votes on their actual programs that's why they have to appeal to so-called cultural issues gun rights abortion and so on not their actual policies which are stiff the pocket fill the pockets of the rich that's the actual policy trump is a genius at this have to admire him and with one hand he says i'm your savior i'm working for the poor working guy the other hand he's stabbing him in the back it's pretty impressive you know it's uh it's most certainly the most successful con man in american history be ever uh i presume it'll explode sometime but so far it's maintaining itself and uh so you take a look at this they're trying very hard to dismantle whatever elements of democracy they are there are models elsewhere uh or bond in hungary doing the same thing one of their big friends in fact it's kind of interesting if you try to identify it's pretty hard to identify a coherent geopolitical strategy from the chaos in the white house but there is one that comes out with considerable clarity uh form a international of the most reactionary states of the world and let that be the basis for u.s power so uh cc in egypt the worst tires in egypt's history of the family dictators in saudi arabia in particular mbs the biggest killer uh israel which is going way to the right and is now at the center of it the former tacit relationship between israel and the arab states are now becoming perfectly open the modi and india what he's doing is simply unspeakable he gave four hours notice for a total lockdown most of the population in india is informal workers they don't have anywhere to go this is that they can't stay home there's no home so they're trekking on the highways maybe a thousand miles to some village somewhere dying on the way what's this gonna be impossible to imagine what this is going to do but since they're mostly poor many of them are muslims who care i mean so he's a major part of the uh of this reactionary international nice guys like orban and hungary are delightful they love them salvini and idly one of the worst gangsters around in the western hemisphere the main representative is bolson aro in brazil who's vying with trump to see who can be the worst criminal in the world you know trump easily can be because of u.s power but you look at the policies not much different and that's harming not just brazil but the whole world my current predictions and scientific journals are that in about 15 years the amazon will shift from being a net carbon carbon sink to a net carbon co2 emitter that's a disaster all the result of extended gifts by bolson aro to the mining industry is the agribusiness of his friends so there are guys trying to create the next world they're working hard they always do they're relentless constant class war never stops and if they're allowed to win we're toast and along that lines um you've said it's really valuable to read the business press because they're often very frank about what they think of the world and what they're doing what their plans and schemes are from our viewpoint we're seeing a lot of rank and file activity in the united states right now strikes are taking place in many locations workers are organizing in response to the coronavirus and and being encouraged to work in unsafe conditions are the employers talking about that and what are they worried about it oh boy how are they in fact the uh as you know every january uh the guys who modestly call themselves the masters of the universe gather in davos switzerland to go skiing talk about how wonderful they are and so on and so forth this january meeting was very interesting very interesting uh they see that the peasants are coming with a pitchforks and they're worried about it so there's a shift we you look at the theme of the meeting it's yeah we did bad things in the past we now understand it we're now opening a new year and capitalism is a new year in which we aren't just concerned with you know the stockholders but with the workers and the population and we're such good guys so humanists that you can entrust your your faith to us we'll make sure everything's fine that was pretty interesting to see what happened there were two main speakers this should be played in every classroom in the country two main speakers trump of course gave the keynote speech gretta thunberg gave the other speech the contrast was fantastic the first speech is this raving buffoon you know screaming about how great he is and all kind of you can't even count up the number of the lies second speech is a 17 year old girl quietly giving a factual accurate description of what's happening in the world and looking these guys in the face and saying you're destroying our lives and of course everyone politely collapsed nice little girl you know go back to school the reaction to trump was particularly interesting they don't like him his vulgarity and crudity is interfering with the image they're trying to project of dedicated humanists but they love him they gave him rounding upstanding applause you couldn't stop cheering because they understand something this guy no matter how vulgar he is knows very well whose pockets to fill and how to fill them so he can be a buffoon will tolerate his antics as long as he continues with the policies that count that's the davos man they didn't bother pointing out that there's we've heard this tune before back in the 1950s it was called the soulful corporation corporations have become soulful now they're just overflowing with kindness for working people and everyone else so it's a new year well we've had some time to see how soulful they were and this will continue so either we can be taken in by the con and let it go or you can fight back and create a different world there's very good opportunities for the strikes that you mentioned protests all over the world there's community self-help groups forming neighborhoods poor neighborhoods or people helping each other trying to do something for the elderly who cooped up some of them are astounding so go to brazil where it's the president is just a monstrosity for him the whole thing is just a cold the brazilians are immune to viruses we're special people you know so on and so forth the government's doing nothing some of the governors are you know but not the federal government the worst of this is going to be in the as everywhere in the slums you know the impoverished areas the indigenous areas the worst slums like the favelas and rio the idea of washing your hands every couple hours is a little difficult when you don't have water or separating yourself when you're crammed into one room but there is a group that came and tried to impose some reasonable standards as well as possible under these horrible conditions who the crime gangs that have been terrorizing the favelas they're so powerful the police are afraid to go in they organized to try to deal with the health crisis it tells you something just like the nurses on the front line there are human resources there and they can come to the fore in some of the most unexpected places you're not not from the corporate sector not from the wealthy not from the soulful corporations certainly not from governments particularly pathological ones like this others are doing better but from popular action that's the hope sanders when he gave his withdrawal speech emphasizes said the campaign may be ending the move that isn't now it's up to especially his young supporters to put some meaning to that that can be done no matter what happens trump's reelected it's a utter tragedy biden's elected won't be wonderful but either way you've got to do what's possible and it's not out of reach so do you think most people are going to emerge from their homes after the quarantine is over with their political opinions changed or intact we'll see it's certainly a time for reflection about the kinds of things we were just talking about why are we in this situation i mean what we were just talking about is not profound it's on the surface it's not quantum physics think about it a little it's obvious so maybe people will do it or maybe they'll stay mesmerized by the con man in office i mean i get letters from people you know poor working people who say you goddamn liberals are bringing all the immigrants to steal their jobs and i trump is saving us you know okay maybe it's possible to break through to them it's not easy these guys are tuned to fox news all day that's the echo chamber in fact there's a very interesting if you're looking at it from outer space and you're not suffering from it you think what's going on this maniac in the white house comes out and says whatever he says uh the opposite the next day it's repeated with fervor in the fox echo chamber says the opposite the next day same thing meanwhile he's looking at fox news every morning to figure out what to say it's a source of news and information uh the world is in the hand and then you get the intelligent guys like mike Pompeo who says god sent your uh trump to earth to save israel from iran that's a sensible guy i mean you know it's some ironic joke being played let's say there is a god maybe if so he decided that he made a bad mistake on the sixth day and he's enough i'm gonna end it with humor uh just watch these people destroy themselves that's what it looks like i'm afraid i've gotta go off the next one okay um well i last question then uh is there the chance that the united states could build up a culture of solidarity and um a labor politics coming out of this like the uk did after world war two that could lead to something like the nhs like recognizing all of these market failures recognizing the inefficiencies and the complications that are created when you're competing rather than coordinating resources is it possible for the united states to to move direction i've done it before i mean i i live through the depression that's why this long white beard but in the 1920s the labor movement was totally crushed take a look at david montgomery great labor history one of his great books is the fall of the house of labor he's talking about the 20s was crushed by the liberal wilson administration red scare and all the rest uh in the 30s began to revive ceo organizing sit down strikes great threat to management sit down strike workers are sitting there next thing that's going to come to their heads is we don't need the bosses we can run this place ourselves and then you're done it's a very fragile system well that led to reactions there happened to be a sympathetic administration which is critical very good labor historian eric lumas has studied case after case of this and he points out that moments of positive change have almost always been led by an active labor movement and the only times they succeeded with and there was a relatively sympathetic administration at least a tolerant one well we don't happen to have that now but actually if biden came in but it's not going to be great could be pushed you know if the labor movement revives the sanders movement which is very significant he's achieved great successes as that can take off uh it could be uh we once again could get out of the capitalist prices as was done in the 30s i mean the new deal didn't end the depression the war with massive state directed production but nevertheless it was much better than today old enough to remember it my family extended family were mostly first generation working people mostly unemployed living in under poverty that which was the working class today but it was helpful that wasn't there weren't deaths of despair it wasn't you know feeling the world's coming to an end the mood was somehow we'll get out of this together working together some of them were in the communist party some were in the labor unions but like i had a couple of aunts who were unemployed seamstresses but they were in ilgu which gave them a life a cultural life meetings week in the country you know theater activities that were being carried out you can do something we're together we'll get out of that could be revised well thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it okay good to talk about you all right take care