Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian

by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

This collection of interviews offers Chomsky's views on himself and on such political issues as deficit spending, how free markets destroy competition, and why "family values" crusades destroy family life

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Sociology, History, Philosophy, Government

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reexamining the Japanese Bombing of Pearl Harbor: When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and Manila, “they bombed military bases in colonies that had been stolen from their inhabitants. To bomb military bases in colonies that had been stolen from their original inhabitants is a crime, but it’s pretty low of the scale.” Compare that to US aggression, say for example the “Firebombing of Tokyo” where the US Strategic Bombing Survey points out after the war that “more people were killed during that bombing in a six-hour period than ever in human history.” It was a defenseless wooden city and the US “used napalm to block the river so people couldn’t get to it. People did try to jump in ponds, but then they just burned to death because the ponds were boiling. Death total 80,000 to 200,000. After the firebombing. there were “two or three buildings standing, and rest is just flat.” That’s why the US didn’t later use the atomic bomb on Tokyo; it would have been just “piling rubble on rubble and bodies on bodies”. The Japanese and US were negotiating one week before Pearl Harbor. Japan wanted its own version of the Monroe Doctrine; the US exerts it power over others while pretending is actions are for that area’s benefit, why couldn’t Japan do the same? Japan couldn’t successfully do trade and get resources because Britain had raised tariffs so high that Japan’s response became “If you block trade, we’ll just have to use force the same way you guys do.” Noam thinks there is good reason to believe the US timing of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was because it didn’t want Russian troops march in to help save the day and thus get a financial slice of the East Asia pie. Racial Alert: Note during WWII that “no German-Americans were interned.”

US in bed with fascism before World War II: Then the second biggest recipient of US investment then (after Britain) was Germany. Hitler was seen as a moderate and a good partner until 1937. “Lord Halifax went to Germany in 1937 or 1938 and told Hitler how much the British admired him.” The US and Britain were both very pro-Mussolini and Italy got increased oil from the US AFTER Italy invaded Ethiopia. Meanwhile Texaco was selling oil to fascist Franco in Spain. During WWII: “The first thing the US and Britain did as they started liberating the continent was restoring the fascist structures, very openly.” So much for the liberal fantasy that WWII was fought against fascism.

Vietnam: There was meticulous planning of bombing in North Vietnam because what would happen if the US bombed a Chinese railway or hit a Russian ship (which they did). But zero planning needed for bombing South Vietnam except say that Nike slogan, “Just do it.” As Noam says, “But for massacring people in South Vietnam, nothing. “We were ‘defending’ South Vietnam, namely the country we were destroying.”

On the Republican obsession with wanting a small government: The US government has one glaring defect: “It’s potentially influenceable by the population” - Our government is potentially democratic; you can’t have citizens be thinking our government can EVER be used as an instrument of public power (shades of David Hume). You can’t have fellow good citizens empowered and taking over local governments, forming grassroots organizations or getting people to join unions. In contrast to this US influenceable government are private tyrannies: businesses like GE. “These things are just tyrannical, totalitarian systems.” “Corporations are just as totalitarian as Bolshevism and fascism. They come out of the same intellectual roots.” People are taught to: Hate the government which you can change, and reap what will be left; nothing but the whim of corporations seeking only profits – now unanswerable to the people and to communities. Corporations must be put under government control as they once were. Corporations used to have a public interest function, like for building a bridge; if it wasn’t weren’t serving a public function, it would lose its charter.

Noam on CIA and NATO: “As far as I am aware, overwhelmingly the CIA does what it is told by the White House.” “Its role is to provide plausible denial for the White House”. “When it’s a CIA operation, that means it’s a White House operation. It’s not the CIA. They don’t do things on their own.” “NATO means the US. It’s a cover for the US. The US only wants to move in when the game is over, and it can pick up the pieces.” US military doctrine requires that “US forces never be put under any threat at all. If someone looks at them the wrong way, we call out the helicopter gunships.” “Massive force if anyone gets in our way.” “In Somalia, it led to disaster.”

Noam on Israel: “The problem of the Native Americans was resolved. They are not around anymore. So, the problem was resolved. The Israel-Palestine problem may be resolved in the same fashion.” No country gets more money annually from the US than Israel, the support “is off the scale.” Israel is a rich state, yes, “thanks largely to foreign aid.” “Israel has been a mercenary state” see how they helped with slaughters in Guatemala.

The today’s Right isn’t trying to attack just the poor, “it’s an attack on three-quarters of the population.” It’s an attempt to “roll back everything connected with the social contract that had been won by working people and poor people over a century of struggle.” In the third world, maybe you’d send out the death squads; in the US you lock them in urban slums, which are like urban concentration camps; if that doesn’t work, “just throw them in jail”.

When Indonesia was slaughtering 500,000 citizens (which the Times called admiringly a ‘staggering mass slaughter’) it was called a “paradise” for investors.” That PKI slaughter in Indonesia happened for a reason: The PKI would have won the next election, so it instead there was western sanctioned murder and “democracy had to be destroyed.”

“Emerson once said something about how we are educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don’t educate them, what we call ‘education’, they’re going to take control – ‘they’ being what Alexander Hamilton called the ‘great beast’ namely the people.” On big cash available for sports stadiums but not to help poverty: “It’s kind of like the gladiatorial contests in Rome. The idea is to try to get the great beast to pay attention to something else and not what we powerful and privileged people are doing to them.”

Mini Noam Pearls: “In Tasmania they (the aboriginals) were simply totally exterminated. In Australia they were driven inland, which means desert.” “The last liberal president in the US was Richard Nixon. Ever since then it’s been, starting with Carter, an attack on social programs…” “Gambling is a tax on the poor. It’s poor people who go to the racetrack, just like poor people buy lottery tickets.” Try to find cases of genuine humanitarian intervention aside from the stated propaganda …it’s slim pickings. “Fiscal austerity means fiscal austerity for the poor, not for the rich.” Note “there is no fiscal austerity for the Fortune 500.” “Part of the reason for that profit growth is precisely federal subsidy.” Today, Maryland is banking on biotechnology subsidies, while Virginia banking on electronics and high-tech subsidies. The engorging race is on at the overflowing Pentagon trough.

“They are not yet going after Medicare, because the rich people get Medicare. But they went after Medicaid, which goes to poor people.” Today’s libertarians are “advocating some of the most totalitarian systems that humans have ever suffered under.” Ricardo thought capital wouldn’t be moving around to get the cheapest price – his thinking was pre-capitalist. With capitalism “you are not supposed to care about anything except maximizing your own wealth.” Through capitalism we lost those Enlightenment values of sympathy, solidarity and benevolent care. US capitalism’s actions say: “You should not have human feelings” and “Capitalism for you, but protection for me”.

The reason the Industrial Revolution was so successful in Britain and the US? Cheap Cotton. What made it so cheap? “Extermination of the native population and bringing in slaves. That’s a rather serious government intervention in the market, more than a slight market distortion.” But that doesn’t count to today’s economic historian. Why not?

Propaganda in the US is fed by the whole public relations industry and the whole entertainment industry. “You have to isolate people and atomize them and separate them and make them hate and fear one another and create illusions about where power is.” “People focus their anger and fear on the government, the one part of the whole system of power they CAN influence, and don’t see the real systems of power, the hand that’s over it, the triviality stated by John Dewey that ‘Politics is the shadow on society cast by big business’.” Another terrific book by Noam; This is an old book of his, but as you can see, still really useful.

[Eric G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a quick read with a surprising amount of personal information about Chomsky if that interests you.
Class Warfare, like most other volumes that contains interview material between Chomsky and Barsamian is void of clarifying examples, given context information, or historical accounts.
It would not be recommended for the reader just discovering Chomsky. It would be more toward the reader already familiar with Chomsky's philosophy (if one can call it that). Other than this, these interviews concentrate heavily the rapidly expanding class war that is being escalated. The toxic topic of statist and protectionist economic measures geared to sending profit towards the private/corporate institutions while socializing the costs is thoroughly fleshed out. This is helpful, as it is usually a topic alluded to in most of his work but rarely elucidated.

[Arlen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Chomsky's arguments are exceptionally lucid and meticulously supported. His point of view is most definitely outside the box, with indebatable credentials.

He ends every talk and lecture with the admonition not to believe him, but rather to go out and find out for ourselves.

I'm extremely grateful for the help in considering the state of things from a truly alternative perspective, along with the inspiration to draw my own conclusions.

For those who've never read Mr. Chomsky, nor heard him speak, I cannot urge you strongly enough to treat yourself to a discussion of his.

The work is probably not a good choice for readers below 10th grade, but that's only because the history and and references he cites may require research in order to know to what he's referring. There's nothing objectionable in language or content regarding violence or sexuality. It's always intellectually challenging material.

[Leo Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, Noam Chomsky looks at things using a truly scientific eye. I love the way that he reveals our history in a way that still, twenty five years after my initial exposure to it, seems entirely fresh and new.

In Class Warfare , Chomsky focuses on how the Right, generally beginning with Reagan, has used propaganda to make insensitivity towards the poor seem acceptable. And a really in-depth look at how we really have instituted a "Nanny-State" for the super-wealthy. And how the government's propaganda machine has not only disassembled our safety net, but demonized unions, which tend to be the best bet against abuse by the ownership class.

Impeccably documented. Compelling in his argument. And measured. So, instead of playing like a conspiracy theory, Chomsky's thesis seems pretty much unassailable.

Recommended to anyone who is interested in reading the thoughts of a true intellectual. Because Chomsky will annoy both Democrats and Republicans. Because he sees things in a way that at first seems skewed. But when you begin paying attention, you realize that he is, in essence, spot-on.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interviews here were conducted in 1996 and the book was published in 1997. NC perceptively details the post-9/11 corporate takeover of US government and the dismantling of democracy in America. This almost reads like science fiction. Must read.

[Yann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Encore un qui aime la vérité.

[Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chomsky is thought-provoking, as usual. This wasn't a light read but I think I'm a bit smarter for having read it.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of the seemingly endless series of books that consist of interviews of Chomsky by David Barsamian. This one was published in the mid-1990s and is focused on the issues of that time, including the ongoing meaning of the 1994 elections, the changing landscape of world trade, the fighting in the Balkans, and many other topics which are touched on for a period of a few pages.

One thing that is different from the other similar volumes is that Class Warfare contains a fair amount of personal information from Chomsky about how he manages his affairs and the division between his life as a linguist, political critic, and personal life. I've read a huge stack of Chomsky over the years and I don't believe I've ever come across anything he's said or written that reflects on his life in such a way, so that was a new and interesting angle.

But a lot of this is a retread of other books and talks of the time, so don't come expecting too much that's really new. If the intent of these interview books from Barsamian was to popularize Chomsky's thought, I am really not sure to what extent they could be said to be successful. It's still not easy reading, and there's little or no context given to the reader, so if you don't know what Chomsky is referring to, the work of figuring it out is all on you.

These criticisms aside, I always enjoy returning to Chomsky and this one was a particularly provocative title and cover design, so as to better scandalize the people on the subway or public park who see you reading it.

[Wendy Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat repetitive but good insights, as expected

[Chris Lutz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noam Chomsky has a way of speaking about politics that's very plain and clear and direct which stands in stark contrast to the vast majority of political wordsmiths and which does him a great amount of good here, while occasionally leaving a few things to be desired.

[Public Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic. Always fantastic. Just about every time you turn the page you read some startling new insight into our political economy. Chomsky is fount of brilliant analysis. May the well never run dry.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per usual, Chomsky's insights are very much worth reading, while Barsamian largely falls flat as an interviewer - mostly failing to ask good questions, or follow-up where appropriate.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Class Warfare' is a collection of interviews of Noam Chomsky (almost entirely concerned with his politics) conducted by David Barsamian from 1994 to 1995. It is very much of its time and is of limited value as a result. Milan Rai's 'Chomsky's Politics' (1995) is far more useful.

Chomsky's analyses are often very much to the point if sometimes his omelette is a bit over-egged but we are left, as usual, with the same problem that he always leaves us with - 'OK, so you understand how things work, how do we change it?'

And, as usual, his answers remain weak - constant propagandising and encouragement to community 'organisation' without any real understanding of a human condition that makes anarcho-communitarian bottom-up operations not merely unlikely but often potentially self-defeating.

He refers to the lack of urban liberal interest in the Decatur workers' strikes and seems puzzled. The room will be packed for a speech on Palestine or American foreign policy but bread and butter issues among their own working class leaves left-liberals cold. They are merely playing at politics.

American liberals (and Chomsky is just the most extreme example of one) in general are people who want to keep talking and thinking but collapse in confusion at the moment something needs the slow, patient business of persuasion and direct action through organised politics.

Chomsky, to his credit, has a very strong sense of class conflict (hence the title of the book) but seems to have a problem in defining it in any terms that would enable action. There are moments when he seems puzzled at his own cult only to inquire (strangely given his intellect) no further.

The problem is that the romantic assumption here is of intellectual equality and a sort of essentialism about the humans who create our conditions of existence. If only consciousness was raised in enough people, and these people organised, all would be well, he implies.

We are left depressed with his correct analysis and then risk wasting our life on trying to change things as accumulations of impotent individuals who have seen the light. This is classic 'Judeo-Christian' thinking that simply creates the bases for new types of elite oppression.

Most people are interests first and idealists second. The effort has to be made to ensure that a majority in a democracy understands that the existing structures are not in their interest and then creates plausible and basically honest vehicles capable of over-turning those structures.

The tragedy is that a billionaire like Donald Trump has done more in that direction for all the wrong reasons than either the US Democrat Party or its global look-alikes such as the British Labour Party. It is Trump who is exposing the falsity of the system's structures and the Left that buttresses them.

Understandably rational individuals, which include some of our very poorest, look askance at radical abstract intellectualism and ask, perfectly legitimately, how will things end up for them in a world of youthful, marginal and elderly activists and enthusiasts were they to obtain power.

Still, the analyses of late liberal capitalism, socialism for corporations, the disturbing power of military-industrial complexes, the manufacturing of consent, the propagandising to maintain the power of the few through 'trickle-down' and so much more are largely unarguable.

Chomsky is right about how our world works, specifically the world of our first truly hegemonic (at least until very recently) power, and the embedding of injustice and exploitation within that world. It is true that consciousness-raising serves its purpose.

But the world will not be changed very much by 'movements'. The power elites are extremely skilled at appropriating the watered down ideas of such a movements and cherry-picking their more ambitious and vain activists for high office. Corporate Greenery is just the most obvious today.

What actually changes things is the acquisition and deployment of power through infiltration and subversion and that too has its dangers. In the end, there is probably no substitute for the independent harrying democratic populist political party or the underground resistance movement.

Chomsky's world is the world of earnest university men, troubled individuals and excitable single issue activists in subornable NGOs. The world of actual change is deliberate defiance of existing corporate structures and elites through long term political organisation and system infiltration.

[Ayush Pandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read Chomsky's writings before, and consumed his interviews and lectures, but reading his interviews is a pretty different experience. It is a much more active engagement, and in it, I find a little bit of disappointment, because although these interviews are more than 20 years old, so much of the same rhetoric and so many of the same complaints echo today. It could be called foresight or it could be called societal degeneration, but I also think it rings with another complaint I've felt about Chomsky's social theses, which is that his claims and paradigm as a whole are unfalsifiable -- though you can argue and disagree about the facts of any individual points, such as the impacts of trade policies on local and global development, or mainstream media conglomerization and alternative media, or big versus small business incentives -- the whole can always be made to fit any period or politics. While Chomsky's written scholarship is much more careful often about the danger of dogma, I think it's just as important to be careful in interviews and speaking engagements, since that's where his media mythos has been cultivated, and he's much less careful there. The key lesson of modern digital media has been that propaganda is a 2 way street, and that people are as happy to construct a reality that infuriates or harms them as they are to make one that pleases or pacifies them, and that's something I still don't know if I have a good account of.

[Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tome is a series of interviews David Barsamian and Noam Chomsky conducted from 1995 to early 1996, right after the so-called Republican revolution, in the midst of the Clinton administration and during several struggles over class and standard of living. Caterpillar workers were on strike in Decatur, IL, and Newt Gingrich was flexing his muscles trying to direct entitlements to the rich and away from the middle class and poor. The interviews are easy to read and fuel for the fire, if anyone is interested in stoking outrage over today’s problems and struggles.

I think I’m drawn to Chomsky’s writings and lectures from the 90s for a variety of reasons, some personal and some historiographical. On the personal: What was I doing, for example, when Clinton was conducting his collaboration with the republicans to slash social spending? Probably cheering him on.

What was I doing when Gingrich was railing against entitlements and government spending, over bogus concerns about the debt, fomenting a revolution that’s still plaguing us today? Watching MTV.

And what was I doing when the Reaganites, firmly ensconced in power, were yelling about children not needing food, but instead lessons on work? I’d rather not speculate.

On the historiography reasons, however, I’m on firmer ground. A few days ago, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, on his party cutting aid to families when holding the debt ceiling hostage, had this to say:

”We might have a child that has no job, no dependents but sitting on the couch, we’re going to encourage that person to get a job and have to go to work, which gives them worth and value.”

When Chomsky sneers at politicians thinking they were promoting family values by driving children to work, in 1995 no less, I flashed on this sound byte. Yes, it’s real.

Then there’s Senator Ted Cruz, railing against Democrats adding $4 trillion to the debt, all the while ignoring the $4.7 trillion Trump added, before any coronavirus aid entered the picture. Chomsky has a lot to say about politicians using the debt as a boogeyman, all the while giving tax breaks and slashing social spending to enrich themselves. Again, thirty years ago, he said this. Little if anything has changed.

Yet Chomsky also notes that people continue to fight, to pick themselves up and get to the business, day after day, of trying to change things. That’s all we can do. This book reminds us how it’s done, and that we should be doing it.

[Connor Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am aligned very closely with nearly all of Chomsky’s politics, and it’s sad that even 30 years after these interviews, nearly everything that is mentioned is still relevant - at least in the U.S. There have been nearly no changes in a positive direction, only closer to what his assessment was of “rollback” and continuing inequality. It was quite ironic timing for me reading this and the mention of the Carter admin in this book being quite topical.

[Abhijith R · Rating 5 out of 5]

As amazing, detailed and deep as any of his works.

[Sigurjón Guðjónsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chomsky is always solid, but some parts seem dated.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of interviews. While I kindly disagree with some of Chomsky's views on Reagan, he kind of predicted 20 years in advance what Donald Trump will do in America.

[lea]

un poco bastante ñe

[Else Sørensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

[clàudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

“lo primero que hay que hacer para introduir cualquier tipo de cambio es reconocer las formas de opresión vigentes”

[Theo Tracol · Rating 4 out of 5]

un peu long mais le format itw est top ça permet d’aborder plein de sujets. Très americano-centré, un peu daté mais Chomsky c’est très fort

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compilations d'entretiens.

N'apportera pas grand chose à ceux qui se sont déjà farcis La Fabrication du Consentement dans son intégralité. Pour les autres, ça peut être un genre d'introduction à cet auteur controversé.

[Shishir · Rating 3 out of 5]

anti corporation and greed - outdated
The increasing global corporate power and the weakening of democracy

De-humanize the enemy – depraved, Islamophobia, color, race, religion great instruments to play the Us and Them game.
Take the high road, “There can be no higher task in life”
Camel and Scorpion story – “Well its my nature”
Justifying what you do. Intellectualize it if you have to.

[Carrie]

"Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundred of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn them into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be."

[Rye · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Our philosophy is to rob everything as much as possible and forget about tomorrow...You don't care what happens down the road and you don't care what happens to anybody else. It makes perfect sense. If it destroys the world, well, it's not my problem."

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book, interviews Noam Chomsky on the rich and the poor.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated, but may still offer some good stuff given the subject matter. The rich are winning and their efforts and tactic never stop or change much.

[Siv30 · Rating 4 out of 5]

סדרת ראיונות עם שדר מהרדיו האלטרנטיבי. סידרה שבעיקר מתעמקת בנושאים כלכליים, כמו גם בשימושים לינגוויסטיים במונחים ליצירת תפיסות שישרתו את ההון וירחיבו את הפערים הכלכליים בציבור הרחב.