Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
Iy-they teach no lessons abom the values of our civilization and the principles
that guide its noble leaders; only "anti-Americans" and their ilk could be
so demented as to suggest that the consistent record of history might merit a
side glance, perhaps. Now there are new opportunities for our beneficence. We
can help the people released from Communist tyranny to reach, or at least
approach, the blessed state of Bengalis, Haitians, Brazilians, Guatemalans,
Filipinos, indigenous peoples everywhere, African slaves, and on, and on.
In late 1994, the New York Times ran a series of anicles on how our pupils
are doing. The one on East Germany opens by quoting a priest who was a
leader of the popular protests against the Communist regime. He describes his
growing concerns abom what is happening in his society: "brutal competition
and the lust for money are destroying our sense of community. Almost everyone
feels a level of fear or depression or insecurity," as they master the lessons
we provide to the backward peoples of the world. But their reaction carries no
lessons for us.?
The showcase that everyone is proud of is Poland, where "capitalism has
been kinder" than elsewhere, Jane Perlez repons under the headline "Fast and
Slow Lanes on the Capitalist Road": some Poles are getting the point, but others
are slow learners.8
Perlez gives examples of both types. The good student is the owner of a
small factory that is a "thriving example" of the best in modern capitalist 197
Poland. Thanks to interest-free government loans in this now-flourishing free
market society, her factory produces "glamorous beaded dresses" and "intricately
designed wedding gowns," sold mostly to rich Germans, but to wealthy
Poles as well. Meanwhile, [he World Bank reports, poverty has more than doubled
since the reforms were instituted while real wages dropped 30 percent,
and by the end of 1994 the Polish economy was expected to recover to 90 percent
of its pre-1989 gross domestic product. But "capitalism has been kinder":
hungry people can appreciate the "'signs of sudden consumption," admiring
the wedding gowns in the windows of elegant shops, the "foreign cars with
Pol ish license plates" roaring down the Warsaw-Berlin road, and the "nouveau
riche women with $1300 cellular telephones tucked in their pocketbooks."
"People have to be taught to understand they must fight fo r themselves and
can't rely on others," a job counselor in the Czech Republic explains.
Concerned about "the creation of an entrenched underclass," she is running a
training class to reach proper attitudes to people who had "egalitarian values
drilled into their minds" in the days when "the proud slogan used to be: 'J am
a miner, who else is better?'" The fast learners now know the answer to that
question: the ex-Nomenklatura, rich beyond their wildest dreams as they
become the agents of foreign enterprises, which naturally favor them because
of their skills and experience; the bankers set up in business through the "old
boy network"; the Polish women enjoying consumer delights; the government-