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During the great depression,
which I'm old enough to remember,

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there was...

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And most of my family were
unemployed working class...

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There wasn't... it was bad,

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much worse subjectively than today.

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But there was an expectation
that things were going to get better.

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There was a real sense of hopefulness.

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There isn't today.

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Inequality is really unprecedented.

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If you look at total inequality,

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it's like the worst periods
of American history.

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But if you refine it more closely,

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the inequality comes
from the extreme wealth

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in a tiny sector of the population,

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a fraction of one percent.

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There were periods like
the gilded age in the '20s

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and the roaring '90s and so on,

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when a situation developed
rather similar to this.

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Now, this period is extreme...

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Because if you look
at the wealth distribution,

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the inequality mostly comes
from super wealth.

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Literally, the top 1/10th of a percent
are just super wealthy.

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Not only is it extremely unjust in itself...

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Inequality has highly negative consequences
on the society as a whole...

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Because the very fact of inequality has
a corrosive, harmful effect on democracy.

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You open by talking about
the American dream.

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Part of the American dream
is class mobility.

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you're born poor, you work hard,
you get rich.

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It was possible for a worker
to get a decent job, buy a home...

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Get a car,
have his children go to school.

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It's all collapsed.

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Imagine yourself in an outside position,
looking from Mars.

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What do you see?

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In the United States,

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there are professed values
like democracy.

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In a democracy, public opinion is going
to have some influence on policy.

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And then, the government
carries out actions

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determined by the population.

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That's what democracy means.

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It's important to understand that
privileged and powerful sectors

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have never liked democracy...

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and for very good reasons.

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Democracy puts power into
the hands of the general population

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and takes it away from them.

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It's kind of a principle
of concentration of wealth and power.

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Concentration of wealth
yields concentration of power...

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Particularly so as the
cost of elections skyrockets,

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which kind of forces the political parties
into the pockets of major corporations.

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And this political power
quickly translates into legislation

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that increases the concentration of wealth.

51
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So fiscal policy, like tax policy...

52
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Deregulation...

53
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Rules of corporate governance
and a whole variety of measures...

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Political measures, designed to increase
the concentration of wealth and power,

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which, in turn,
yields more political power

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to do the same thing.

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And that's what we've been seeing.

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So we have this kind of
vicious cycle in progress.

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You know, actually, it is so traditional
that it was described by Adam Smith in 1776.

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You read the famous
"Wealth of Nations."

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He says in England,
the principal architects of policy

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are the people who own the society.

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In his day, merchants
and manufacturers.

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And they make sure
that their own interests

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are very well cared for,

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however grievous the impact
on the people of England or others.

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Now, it's not merchants
and manufacturers,

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it's financial institutions
and multinational corporations.

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The people who Adam Smith
called the "masters of mankind,"

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and they're following the vile maxim,

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"all for ourselves and
nothing for anyone else."

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They're just going to pursue policies
that benefit them and harm everyone else.

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And in the absence of a
general popular reaction,

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that's pretty much what you'd expect.

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Right through American history,
there's been an ongoing clash...

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Between pressure for more freedom
and democracy coming from below,

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and efforts at elite control and
domination coming from above.

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It goes back to the founding of the country.

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James Madison, the main framer,

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who was as much of a believer
in democracy

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as anybody in the world in that day,

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nevertheless felt that

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the United States system
should be designed,

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and indeed with his initiative
was designed,

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so that power should be
in the hands of the wealthy...

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Because the wealthy were
the more responsible set of men.

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And, therefore, the structure
of the formal constitutional system

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placed most power
in the hands of the senate.

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Remember, the senate
was not elected in those days.

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It was selected from the wealthy.

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Men, as Madison put it,

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"had sympathy for property owners
and their rights."

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If you read the debates
at the constitutional convention...

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Madison said, "the major concern
of the society has to be

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to protect the minority of the opulent
against the majority."

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And he had arguments.

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Suppose everyone had a vote freely.

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He said, "well, the majority of the poor
would get together

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and they would organize
to take away the property of the rich."

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And, he said, "that would obviously
be unjust, so you can't have that."

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So, therefore the constitutional system
has to be set up to prevent democracy.

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That's of some interest that
this debate has a hoary tradition.

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Goes back to the first major book
on political systems, Aristotle's "politics."

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He says, "of all of them,
the best is democracy,"

105
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but then he points out exactly
the flaw that Madison pointed out.

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If Athens were a democracy
for free men,

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the poor would get together
and take away the property of the rich.

108
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Well, same dilemma,
they had opposite solutions.

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Aristotle proposed what we would
nowadays call a welfare state.

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He said,
"try to reduce inequality."

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So, same problem, opposite solutions.

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One is reduce inequality,
you won't have this problem.

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The other is reduce democracy.

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If you look at the history
of the United States...

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It's a constant struggle
between these two tendencies.

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A democratizing tendency that's mostly coming
from the population, pressure from below

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and you get this constant battle going on,
periods of regression, periods of progress.

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The 1960s for example, were
a period of significant democratization.

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Sectors of the population
that were usually passive

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and apathetic became organized, active,
started pressing their demands.

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And they became more and more involved
in decision-making, activism and so on.

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It just changed consciousness
in a lot of ways.

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Minority rights

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If democracy means freedom,
why aren't our people free?

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If democracy means justice,
why don't we have justice?

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00:11:11,328 --> 00:11:15,597
If democracy means equality,
why don't we have equality?

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Women's rights

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This inhuman system
of exploitation will change,

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but only if we force it to change,
and force it together.

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Concern for the environment.

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A unique day in American history is ending,

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a day set aside for a nationwide
outpouring of mankind

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seeking its own survival.

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Opposition to aggression

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I say to those who criticize us
for the militancy of our dissent

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that if they are serious
about law and order,

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they should first provide it
for the Vietnamese people,

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for our own black people
and for our own poor people.

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Concern for other people.

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00:11:49,895 --> 00:11:51,864
One day we must ask the question,

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"why are there 40 million
poor people in America?"

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When you begin to ask that question,

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you're raising a question
about the economic system,

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about a broader distribution of wealth,

145
00:12:02,941 --> 00:12:07,378
the question of restructuring
the whole of American society.

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These are all civilizing effects...

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And that caused great fear.

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I hadn't anticipated the power...

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I should've, but I didn't anticipate
the power of the reaction

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to these civilizing effects of the '60s.

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00:12:40,940 --> 00:12:46,242
I did not anticipate the strength
of the reaction to it.

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The backlash.

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There has been an enormous
concentrated, coordinated...

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Business offensive beginning in the '70s

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to try to beat back the egalitarian efforts

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that went right through the Nixon years.

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You see it in many respects

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Over on the right, you see it in things
like the famous Powell memorandum...

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Sent to the chamber of commerce,
the major business lobby,

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00:13:25,144 --> 00:13:28,047
by later supreme court justice Powell...

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Warning them that business
is losing control over the society...

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And something has to be done
to counter these forces.

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Of course, he puts it
in terms of defense,

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"defending ourselves
against an outside power."

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00:13:49,363 --> 00:13:51,941
But if you look at it,
it's a call for business to use

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its control over resources

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to carry out a major offensive
to beat back this democratizing wave.

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00:14:08,346 --> 00:14:12,050
Over on the liberal side,
there's something exactly similar.

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00:14:12,150 --> 00:14:17,822
The first major report of
the trilateral commission

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is concerned with this.
It's called "the crisis of democracy."

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Trilateral commission
is liberal internationalists...

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00:14:26,228 --> 00:14:29,231
Their flavor is indicated
by the fact that

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they pretty much staffed
the Carter administration.

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They were also appalled by
the democratizing tendencies of the '60s,

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00:14:40,508 --> 00:14:43,811
and thought we have to react to it.

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They were concerned that there was
an "excess of democracy" developing.

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Previously passive and obedient
parts of the population,

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what are sometimes called,
"the special interests,"

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were beginning to organize and
try to enter the political arena,

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and they said, "that imposes
too much pressure on the state.

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It can't deal with all these pressures."

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So, therefore, they have to return
to passivity and become depoliticized.

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00:15:15,938 --> 00:15:18,807
They were particularly concerned with
what was happening to young people.

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"The young people are getting
too free and independent."

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None of us will begin any violence.

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If there's any violence,
it will be because of the police.

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00:15:27,314 --> 00:15:31,218
The way they put it, there's failure
on the part of the schools,

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the universities, the churches...

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The institutions responsible
for the "indoctrination of the young."

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Their phrase, not mine.

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If you look at their study,
there's one interest they never mention...

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Private business

193
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And that makes sense,

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they're not special interest,
they're the national interest,

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kind of by definition.

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So they're okay.

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00:15:55,573 --> 00:15:59,977
They're allowed to, you know,
have lobbyists, buy campaigns,

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00:16:00,077 --> 00:16:02,980
staff the executive,
make decisions, that's fine.

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00:16:03,080 --> 00:16:06,550
But it's the rest, the special interests,
the general population,

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who have to be subdued.

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00:16:15,656 --> 00:16:17,125
Well, that's the spectrum.

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00:16:17,225 --> 00:16:21,129
It's the kind of ideological
level of the backlash.

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00:16:21,229 --> 00:16:25,066
But the major backlash,
which was in parallel to this...

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00:16:25,166 --> 00:16:27,466
Was just redesigning the economy.

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00:16:41,680 --> 00:16:44,374
Since the 1970s, there's been a

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00:16:44,475 --> 00:16:48,487
concerted effort on the part
of the masters of mankind,

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00:16:48,587 --> 00:16:50,455
the owners of the society,

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00:16:50,555 --> 00:16:54,125
to shift the economy
in two crucial respects.

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00:16:54,225 --> 00:16:59,529
One, to increase the role
of financial institutions,

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00:16:59,629 --> 00:17:03,299
banks, investment firms, so on...

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00:17:03,399 --> 00:17:05,467
Insurance companies.

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00:17:05,567 --> 00:17:09,637
By 2007, right before the latest crash,

213
00:17:09,737 --> 00:17:13,438
they had literally 40% of corporate profits...

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00:17:16,375 --> 00:17:18,275
Far beyond anything in the past.

215
00:17:26,683 --> 00:17:30,321
Back in the 1950s,
as for many years before,

216
00:17:30,421 --> 00:17:34,124
the United States economy
was based largely on production.

217
00:17:34,224 --> 00:17:38,759
The United States was the great
manufacturing center of the world.

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00:17:45,332 --> 00:17:49,604
Financial institutions used to be
a relatively small part of the economy

219
00:17:49,704 --> 00:17:54,574
and their task was to distribute
unused assets like,

220
00:17:54,674 --> 00:17:58,277
say, bank savings to productive activity.

221
00:17:58,377 --> 00:18:01,146
The bank always has on hand
a reserve of money

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00:18:01,246 --> 00:18:03,648
received from the stockholders
and depositors.

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00:18:03,748 --> 00:18:06,183
On the basis of these cash reserves,

224
00:18:06,283 --> 00:18:07,919
a bank can create credit.

225
00:18:08,020 --> 00:18:11,321
So besides providing a safe place
for depositing money,

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00:18:11,421 --> 00:18:13,049
a bank serves a community

227
00:18:13,150 --> 00:18:16,359
by making additional credit
available for many purposes.

228
00:18:16,459 --> 00:18:19,995
For a manufacturer to meet his payroll
during slack selling periods,

229
00:18:20,095 --> 00:18:22,998
or a merchant to enlarge
and remodel his store,

230
00:18:23,098 --> 00:18:27,235
and for many other good reasons
why people are always needing more credit

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00:18:27,335 --> 00:18:29,670
than they have immediately available.

232
00:18:29,770 --> 00:18:32,531
That's a contribution to the economy.

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00:18:33,272 --> 00:18:35,241
Regulatory system was established.

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00:18:35,341 --> 00:18:37,443
Banks were regulated.

235
00:18:37,543 --> 00:18:40,179
Commercial and investment banks
were separated,

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00:18:40,279 --> 00:18:46,484
cut back their risky investment practices
that could harm private people.

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00:18:46,584 --> 00:18:49,450
There had been, remember,
no financial crashes

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00:18:49,551 --> 00:18:51,589
during the period of regulation.

239
00:18:51,689 --> 00:18:54,423
By the 1970s, that changed.

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00:19:03,632 --> 00:19:08,237
You started getting that huge increase
in the flows of speculative capital,

241
00:19:08,337 --> 00:19:10,539
just astronomically increase,

242
00:19:10,639 --> 00:19:13,141
enormous changes in the financial sector

243
00:19:13,241 --> 00:19:17,378
from traditional banks
to risky investments,

244
00:19:17,478 --> 00:19:22,282
complex financial instruments,
money manipulations and so on.

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00:19:22,382 --> 00:19:27,851
Increasingly, the business of the country
isn't production, at least not here.

246
00:19:29,587 --> 00:19:32,757
The primary business here is business.

247
00:19:32,857 --> 00:19:36,060
You can even see it
in the choice of directors.

248
00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:39,580
So, a director of a major
American corporation

249
00:19:39,681 --> 00:19:41,432
back in the '50s and '60s

250
00:19:41,532 --> 00:19:43,556
was very likely to be an engineer,

251
00:19:43,657 --> 00:19:46,370
somebody who graduated
from a place like MIT,

252
00:19:46,470 --> 00:19:48,438
maybe industrial management.

253
00:19:48,538 --> 00:19:52,675
More recently, the directorship
and the top managerial positions

254
00:19:52,775 --> 00:19:54,777
are people who came out
of business schools,

255
00:19:54,877 --> 00:19:58,378
learned the financial trickery
of various kinds, and so on.

256
00:20:00,214 --> 00:20:04,285
By the 1970s, say General Electric
could make more profit

257
00:20:04,385 --> 00:20:05,833
playing games with money

258
00:20:05,934 --> 00:20:08,987
than you could by producing
in the United States.

259
00:20:12,625 --> 00:20:14,761
You have to remember
that General Electric

260
00:20:14,861 --> 00:20:18,331
is substantially
a financial institution today.

261
00:20:18,431 --> 00:20:20,112
It makes half its profits

262
00:20:20,213 --> 00:20:23,536
just by moving money around
in complicated ways.

263
00:20:23,636 --> 00:20:26,190
And it's very unclear
that they're doing anything

264
00:20:26,291 --> 00:20:28,507
that's of value to the economy.

265
00:20:28,807 --> 00:20:30,636
So that's one phenomenon,

266
00:20:30,737 --> 00:20:32,975
that's called financialization
of the economy.

267
00:20:35,779 --> 00:20:38,839
Going along with that
is the off-shoring of production.

268
00:20:56,365 --> 00:20:59,168
The trade system was reconstructed

269
00:20:59,268 --> 00:21:02,771
with a very explicit design of putting

270
00:21:02,871 --> 00:21:05,313
working people in competition
with one another

271
00:21:05,414 --> 00:21:06,772
all over the world.

272
00:21:08,441 --> 00:21:09,946
And what it's led to

273
00:21:10,047 --> 00:21:13,513
is a reduction in the share of income

274
00:21:13,613 --> 00:21:15,683
on the part of working people.

275
00:21:16,883 --> 00:21:18,971
It's been particularly striking
in the United States,

276
00:21:19,072 --> 00:21:20,419
but it's happening worldwide.

277
00:21:20,519 --> 00:21:23,355
It means that an American worker
is in competition

278
00:21:23,455 --> 00:21:26,521
with the super-exploited worker in China.

279
00:21:29,358 --> 00:21:32,729
Meanwhile, highly paid
professionals are protected.

280
00:21:32,829 --> 00:21:36,057
They're not placed in competition
with the rest of the world.

281
00:21:36,158 --> 00:21:37,400
Far from it.

282
00:21:37,500 --> 00:21:40,469
And, of course,
the capital is free to move.

283
00:21:40,569 --> 00:21:43,247
Workers aren't free to move,
labor can't move,

284
00:21:43,348 --> 00:21:44,873
but capital can.

285
00:21:44,973 --> 00:21:48,643
Well, again, going back
to the classics like Adam Smith,

286
00:21:48,743 --> 00:21:52,213
as he pointed out,
free circulation of labor

287
00:21:52,313 --> 00:21:55,783
is the foundation of any
free trade system,

288
00:21:55,883 --> 00:21:58,652
but workers are pretty much stuck.

289
00:21:58,752 --> 00:22:01,521
The wealthy and the privileged
are protected,

290
00:22:01,621 --> 00:22:03,689
so you get obvious consequences.

291
00:22:03,789 --> 00:22:06,288
And they're recognized
and, in fact, praised.

292
00:22:09,659 --> 00:22:12,760
Policy is designed to increase insecurity.

293
00:22:13,895 --> 00:22:17,232
Alan Greenspan.
When he testified to congress,

294
00:22:17,332 --> 00:22:21,369
he explained his success
in running the economy

295
00:22:21,469 --> 00:22:26,640
as based on what he called,
"greater worker insecurity."

296
00:22:26,740 --> 00:22:29,599
"Atypical restraint on
compensation increases

297
00:22:29,700 --> 00:22:31,911
has been evident for a few years now,

298
00:22:32,011 --> 00:22:35,714
but as I outlined in some detail
in testimony last month,

299
00:22:35,914 --> 00:22:39,784
I believe that job insecurity
has played the dominant role."

300
00:22:39,884 --> 00:22:44,321
Keep workers insecure,
they're going to be under control.

301
00:22:44,421 --> 00:22:48,491
They are not going to ask for,
say, decent wages...

302
00:22:48,591 --> 00:22:50,793
Or decent working conditions...

303
00:22:50,893 --> 00:22:55,531
Or the opportunity of free
association, meaning unionize.

304
00:22:55,631 --> 00:22:58,422
Now, for the masters of mankind, that's fine.

305
00:22:58,523 --> 00:23:00,402
They make their profits.

306
00:23:00,502 --> 00:23:03,135
But for the population, it's devastating.

307
00:23:05,004 --> 00:23:09,042
Well, these two processes,
financialization and off-shoring

308
00:23:09,142 --> 00:23:13,379
are part of what lead
to the vicious cycle

309
00:23:13,479 --> 00:23:16,746
of concentration of wealth
and concentration of power.

310
00:23:25,655 --> 00:23:29,359
I'm Noam Chomsky
and I'm on the faculty at MIT,

311
00:23:29,459 --> 00:23:32,462
and I've been getting more
and more heavily involved in

312
00:23:32,562 --> 00:23:34,862
anti-war activities for the last few years.

313
00:23:41,602 --> 00:23:45,006
"Noam Chomsky has made
two international reputations.

314
00:23:45,106 --> 00:23:50,011
The widest is as one of the national leaders
of American resistance to the Vietnam war.

315
00:23:50,111 --> 00:23:52,813
The deepest is as a professor of linguistics,

316
00:23:52,913 --> 00:23:57,181
who, before he was 40 years old,
had transformed the nature of his subject."

317
00:23:59,784 --> 00:24:02,421
"You are identified with the new left,
whatever that is.

318
00:24:02,521 --> 00:24:05,487
You certainly have been an activist
as well as a writer."

319
00:24:08,190 --> 00:24:10,793
"Professor Noam Chomsky...

320
00:24:10,893 --> 00:24:16,898
is listed in anybody's catalog as among
the half-dozen top heroes of the new left.

321
00:24:16,998 --> 00:24:21,335
The standing he achieved
by adopting over the past two or three years

322
00:24:21,435 --> 00:24:23,704
a series of adamant positions

323
00:24:23,804 --> 00:24:29,374
rejecting at least American foreign policy,
at most America itself."

324
00:24:36,548 --> 00:24:40,620
Actually this notion "anti-American"
is quite an interesting one.

325
00:24:41,020 --> 00:24:43,656
It's actually a totalitarian notion.

326
00:24:43,756 --> 00:24:46,458
It isn't used in free societies.

327
00:24:46,558 --> 00:24:51,896
So, if someone in, say, Italy
is criticizing Berlusconi

328
00:24:51,996 --> 00:24:55,399
or the corruption of the Italian state
and so on,

329
00:24:55,500 --> 00:24:57,601
they're not called anti-Italian.

330
00:24:57,701 --> 00:25:01,771
In fact, if they were called anti-Italian,
people would collapse in laughter

331
00:25:01,871 --> 00:25:04,404
in the streets of Rome or Milan.

332
00:25:05,539 --> 00:25:08,576
In totalitarian states the notion's used,

333
00:25:08,676 --> 00:25:13,380
so in the old Soviet Union
dissidents were called anti-Soviet.

334
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:15,548
That was the worst condemnation.

335
00:25:15,648 --> 00:25:21,151
In the Brazilian military dictatorship,
they were called anti-Brazilian.

336
00:25:23,187 --> 00:25:26,091
Now, it's true that in just
about every society,

337
00:25:26,191 --> 00:25:29,828
the critics are maligned or mistreated...

338
00:25:29,928 --> 00:25:33,531
Different ways depending on
the nature of the society.

339
00:25:33,631 --> 00:25:37,665
Like in the Soviet union,
say Vaclav Havel would be imprisoned.

340
00:25:39,167 --> 00:25:43,005
In a U.S. dependency like El Salvador,
at the same time,

341
00:25:43,105 --> 00:25:45,714
his counterparts would have
their brains blown out

342
00:25:45,815 --> 00:25:49,043
by U.S.-run state terrorist forces.

343
00:25:49,143 --> 00:25:53,179
In other societies, they're just
condemned or vilified and so on.

344
00:25:53,279 --> 00:25:54,997
In the United States,

345
00:25:55,098 --> 00:25:58,517
one of the terms of abuse
is "anti-American."

346
00:25:58,617 --> 00:26:01,119
There's a couple of others,
like, you know, "Marxist."

347
00:26:01,219 --> 00:26:03,789
There's an array of terms of abuse.

348
00:26:04,589 --> 00:26:07,592
But in the United States,
you have a very high degree of freedom.

349
00:26:07,692 --> 00:26:11,195
So, if you're vilified by some commissars,
then who cares?

350
00:26:11,295 --> 00:26:13,530
You go on,
you do your work anyway.

351
00:26:13,630 --> 00:26:17,759
These concepts only arise
in a culture where,

352
00:26:17,860 --> 00:26:22,106
if you criticize state power,
and by state, I mean...

353
00:26:22,705 --> 00:26:26,175
more generally not just government
but state corporate power,

354
00:26:26,275 --> 00:26:28,499
if you criticize concentrated power,

355
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,111
you're against the society,
you are against the people.

356
00:26:31,211 --> 00:26:34,782
That's quite striking,
that it's used in the United States.

357
00:26:34,882 --> 00:26:38,152
In fact, as far as I know,
it's the only democratic society

358
00:26:38,252 --> 00:26:41,021
where the concept isn't just ridiculed.

359
00:26:41,121 --> 00:26:45,163
That's a sign of
elements of the elite culture,

360
00:26:45,264 --> 00:26:48,092
which are quite ugly.

361
00:27:29,233 --> 00:27:32,219
The American dream,
like many ideals,

362
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,205
was partly symbolic, but partly real.

363
00:27:35,305 --> 00:27:41,143
So in the 1950s and 60s, say,
there was the biggest growth period

364
00:27:41,243 --> 00:27:44,243
in American economic history.

365
00:27:47,347 --> 00:27:48,880
The golden age.

366
00:27:52,651 --> 00:27:55,155
It was pretty egalitarian growth,

367
00:27:55,255 --> 00:27:57,691
so the lowest fifth of the population

368
00:27:57,792 --> 00:28:00,790
was improving about as much
as the upper fifth.

369
00:28:02,325 --> 00:28:04,728
And there were some
welfare state measures,

370
00:28:04,828 --> 00:28:08,598
which improved life
for much of the population.

371
00:28:08,698 --> 00:28:13,169
It was, for example, possible
for a black worker

372
00:28:13,269 --> 00:28:16,305
to get a decent job in an auto plant,

373
00:28:16,805 --> 00:28:21,575
buy a home, get a car,
have his children go to school and so on.

374
00:28:21,675 --> 00:28:23,407
And the same across the board.

375
00:28:26,678 --> 00:28:31,317
When the U.S. was primarily
a manufacturing center,

376
00:28:31,417 --> 00:28:36,155
it had to be concerned
with its own consumers... here.

377
00:28:36,255 --> 00:28:41,070
Famously, Henry Ford raised
the salary of his workers

378
00:28:41,171 --> 00:28:43,259
so they'd be able to buy cars.

379
00:28:46,196 --> 00:28:50,701
When you're moving it to
an international "plutonomy,"

380
00:28:50,801 --> 00:28:52,869
as the banks like to call it...

381
00:28:52,969 --> 00:28:56,202
The small percentage
of the world's population

382
00:28:56,303 --> 00:28:58,841
that's gathering increasing wealth...

383
00:28:59,041 --> 00:29:02,778
What happens to American consumers
is much less a concern,

384
00:29:02,878 --> 00:29:05,880
because most of them aren't going
to be consuming your products anyway,

385
00:29:05,980 --> 00:29:08,082
at least not on a major basis.

386
00:29:08,182 --> 00:29:11,051
Your goals are,
profit in the next quarter,

387
00:29:11,151 --> 00:29:14,688
even if it's based on financial manipulations...

388
00:29:15,288 --> 00:29:16,989
High salary, high bonuses,

389
00:29:17,089 --> 00:29:19,324
produce overseas if you have to,

390
00:29:19,424 --> 00:29:24,795
and produce for the wealthy classes here
and their counterparts abroad.

391
00:29:24,895 --> 00:29:26,129
What about the rest?

392
00:29:26,229 --> 00:29:29,098
Well, there's a term coming
into use for them, too.

393
00:29:29,198 --> 00:29:31,867
They're called the "precariat"...

394
00:29:31,967 --> 00:29:34,369
Precarious proletariat...

395
00:29:34,469 --> 00:29:38,804
The working people of the world
who live increasingly precarious lives.

396
00:29:41,007 --> 00:29:43,808
And it's related to the attitude
toward the country altogether.

397
00:29:48,980 --> 00:29:53,085
During the period of great
growth of the economy...

398
00:29:53,185 --> 00:29:55,754
The '50s and the '60s,
but in fact, earlier...

399
00:29:55,854 --> 00:29:59,758
Taxes on the wealthy were far higher.

400
00:29:59,858 --> 00:30:02,260
Corporate taxes were much higher,

401
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:04,829
taxes on dividends were much higher...

402
00:30:04,929 --> 00:30:07,698
Simply taxes on wealth were much higher.

403
00:30:07,798 --> 00:30:10,634
The tax system has been redesigned,

404
00:30:10,734 --> 00:30:16,006
so that the taxes that are paid
by the very wealthy are reduced

405
00:30:16,106 --> 00:30:20,741
and, correspondingly, the tax burden
on the rest of the population's increased.

406
00:30:34,121 --> 00:30:37,725
Now the shift is towards trying to keep taxes

407
00:30:37,825 --> 00:30:40,227
just on wages and on consumption...

408
00:30:40,327 --> 00:30:44,495
Which everyone has to do, not, say,
on dividends, which only go to the rich.

409
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:50,367
The numbers are pretty striking.

410
00:30:59,176 --> 00:31:02,313
Now, there's a pretext...
Of course, there's always a pretext.

411
00:31:02,413 --> 00:31:04,062
The pretext in this case is,

412
00:31:04,163 --> 00:31:07,184
well, that increases investment
and increases jobs,

413
00:31:07,284 --> 00:31:09,286
but there isn't any evidence for that.

414
00:31:09,386 --> 00:31:10,838
If you want to increase investment,

415
00:31:10,939 --> 00:31:12,655
give money to the poor
and the working people.

416
00:31:12,755 --> 00:31:15,090
They have to keep alive,
so they spend their incomes.

417
00:31:15,190 --> 00:31:18,157
That stimulates productions,
stimulates investment,

418
00:31:18,258 --> 00:31:20,192
leads to job growth and so on.

419
00:31:22,962 --> 00:31:26,433
If you're an ideologist for the masters,
you have a different line.

420
00:31:26,533 --> 00:31:28,802
And in fact, right now,
it's almost absurd.

421
00:31:28,902 --> 00:31:32,973
Corporations have money
coming out of their pockets.

422
00:31:33,473 --> 00:31:36,259
So, in fact, General Electric,
are paying zero taxes,

423
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:37,910
and they have enormous profits.

424
00:31:38,010 --> 00:31:42,214
Let's them take the profit somewhere else,
or defer it, but not pay taxes,

425
00:31:42,314 --> 00:31:43,646
and this is common.

426
00:31:46,950 --> 00:31:51,255
The major American corporations
shifted the burden of sustaining the society

427
00:31:51,355 --> 00:31:53,355
onto the rest of the population.

428
00:32:16,912 --> 00:32:18,981
Solidarity is quite dangerous.

429
00:32:19,081 --> 00:32:22,351
From the point of view of the masters,
you're only supposed to care about yourself,

430
00:32:22,451 --> 00:32:24,186
not about other people.

431
00:32:24,286 --> 00:32:29,491
This is quite different from the people
they claim are their heroes like Adam Smith,

432
00:32:29,591 --> 00:32:34,128
who based his whole approach to the economy
on the principle that sympathy

433
00:32:34,228 --> 00:32:36,629
is a fundamental human trait.

434
00:32:36,730 --> 00:32:39,133
But that has to be driven out
of people's heads.

435
00:32:39,233 --> 00:32:40,774
You've got to be for yourself,

436
00:32:40,875 --> 00:32:43,837
follow the vile maxim,
"don't care about others,"

437
00:32:43,937 --> 00:32:46,306
which is okay for the rich and powerful,

438
00:32:46,406 --> 00:32:49,373
but is devastating for everyone else.

439
00:32:52,143 --> 00:32:55,438
It's taken a lot of effort to try to drive

440
00:32:55,539 --> 00:32:59,582
these basic human emotions
out of people's heads.

441
00:33:02,252 --> 00:33:05,956
And we see it today in policy formation.

442
00:33:06,056 --> 00:33:08,856
For example,
in the attack on social security.

443
00:33:11,159 --> 00:33:14,830
Social security is based on a principle.

444
00:33:14,930 --> 00:33:17,632
It's based on a principle of solidarity.

445
00:33:17,932 --> 00:33:20,331
Solidarity, caring for others.

446
00:33:22,967 --> 00:33:27,038
Social security means,
"I pay payroll taxes...

447
00:33:27,138 --> 00:33:32,210
So that the widow across town
can get something to live on."

448
00:33:32,610 --> 00:33:35,443
For much of the population,
that's what they survive on.

449
00:33:36,478 --> 00:33:38,481
It's of no use to the very rich,

450
00:33:38,581 --> 00:33:41,781
so therefore, there's
a concerted attempt to destroy it.

451
00:33:44,117 --> 00:33:46,120
One of the ways is defunding it.

452
00:33:46,220 --> 00:33:49,257
You want to destroy some system?
First defund it.

453
00:33:49,957 --> 00:33:51,028
Then, it won't work.

454
00:33:51,129 --> 00:33:53,093
People will be angry.
They'll want something else.

455
00:33:53,193 --> 00:33:57,861
It's a standard technique
for privatizing some system.

456
00:34:01,265 --> 00:34:04,235
We see it in the attack
on public schools.

457
00:34:04,335 --> 00:34:08,839
Public schools are based
on the principle of solidarity.

458
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,142
I no longer have children in school.
They're grown up...

459
00:34:12,242 --> 00:34:14,844
But the principle of solidarity says,

460
00:34:14,944 --> 00:34:20,081
"I happily pay taxes so that
the kid across the street can go to school."

461
00:34:20,181 --> 00:34:23,250
Now, that's normal human emotion.

462
00:34:23,350 --> 00:34:25,252
You have to drive that
out of people's heads.

463
00:34:25,352 --> 00:34:27,403
"I don't have kids in school.

464
00:34:27,504 --> 00:34:31,088
Why should I pay taxes?
Privatize it," so on.

465
00:34:34,292 --> 00:34:36,248
The public education system,

466
00:34:36,349 --> 00:34:39,298
all the way from kindergarten
to higher education,

467
00:34:39,398 --> 00:34:41,287
is under severe attack.

468
00:34:41,388 --> 00:34:44,733
That's one of the jewels
of American society.

469
00:34:54,409 --> 00:34:57,012
You go back to the golden age again...

470
00:34:57,112 --> 00:34:59,581
The great growth period
in the '50s and '60s.

471
00:34:59,681 --> 00:35:03,551
A lot of that is based
on free public education.

472
00:35:03,651 --> 00:35:07,588
One of the results of the second world war
was the GI bill of rights,

473
00:35:07,988 --> 00:35:09,848
which enabled veterans,

474
00:35:09,949 --> 00:35:12,792
and remember, that's a large part
of the population then,

475
00:35:12,892 --> 00:35:13,905
to go to college.

476
00:35:14,006 --> 00:35:15,494
They wouldn't have been able to, otherwise.

477
00:35:15,594 --> 00:35:17,229
They essentially got free education.

478
00:35:17,329 --> 00:35:19,564
"Where a community, state or nation...

479
00:35:19,664 --> 00:35:24,769
courageously invests a substantial share
of its resources in education,

480
00:35:24,869 --> 00:35:26,971
the investment invariably returned

481
00:35:27,072 --> 00:35:30,007
in better business and
a higher standard of living."

482
00:35:30,107 --> 00:35:35,176
U.S. was way in the lead in developing
extensive mass public education at every level.

483
00:35:37,212 --> 00:35:40,249
By now, in more than half the states,
most of the funding

484
00:35:40,349 --> 00:35:43,485
for the colleges comes from tuition,
not from the state.

485
00:35:43,585 --> 00:35:45,587
That's a radical change,

486
00:35:45,687 --> 00:35:48,256
and that's a terrible burden on students.

487
00:35:48,356 --> 00:35:50,324
It means that students,

488
00:35:50,425 --> 00:35:52,760
if they don't come from
very wealthy families,

489
00:35:52,860 --> 00:35:55,262
they're going to leave college
with big debts.

490
00:35:55,362 --> 00:35:57,731
And if you have a big debt,
you're trapped.

491
00:35:57,831 --> 00:36:01,534
I mean, maybe you wanted to become
a public interest lawyer,

492
00:36:01,634 --> 00:36:03,969
but you're going to have
to go into a corporate law firm

493
00:36:04,069 --> 00:36:05,536
to pay off those debts,

494
00:36:05,637 --> 00:36:07,138
and by the time
you're part of the culture,

495
00:36:07,238 --> 00:36:09,140
you know you're not going
to get out of it again.

496
00:36:09,240 --> 00:36:11,373
And that's true across the board.

497
00:36:14,577 --> 00:36:18,348
In the 1950s, it was a much
poorer society than it is today,

498
00:36:18,448 --> 00:36:24,487
but, nevertheless, could easily handle,
essentially free, mass higher education.

499
00:36:24,687 --> 00:36:29,422
Today, a much richer society claims
it doesn't have the resources for it.

500
00:36:31,358 --> 00:36:34,395
That's just what's going on
right before our eyes.

501
00:36:34,495 --> 00:36:39,432
That's the general attack
on principles that,

502
00:36:39,532 --> 00:36:42,668
I mean, not only are they humane,
they are the basis

503
00:36:42,768 --> 00:36:47,737
of the prosperity
and health of this society.

504
00:37:15,598 --> 00:37:18,068
If you look over the history of regulation,

505
00:37:18,168 --> 00:37:23,072
say, railroad regulation,
financial regulation and so on,

506
00:37:23,172 --> 00:37:25,874
you find that quite commonly

507
00:37:25,974 --> 00:37:32,446
it's either initiated by
the economic concentrations...

508
00:37:32,546 --> 00:37:35,783
that are being regulated,
or it's supported by them.

509
00:37:35,883 --> 00:37:39,052
And the reason is because
they know that,

510
00:37:39,152 --> 00:37:42,220
sooner or later, they can
take over the regulators.

511
00:37:46,158 --> 00:37:49,229
And it ends up with what's called
"regulatory capture."

512
00:37:50,229 --> 00:37:53,730
The business being regulated
is in fact running the regulators.

513
00:38:02,205 --> 00:38:06,642
Bank lobbyists are actually writing
the laws of financial regulation,

514
00:38:06,742 --> 00:38:08,777
it gets to that extreme.

515
00:38:08,877 --> 00:38:11,646
That's been happening
through history and, again,

516
00:38:11,746 --> 00:38:13,556
it's a pretty natural tendency

517
00:38:13,657 --> 00:38:16,314
when you just look
at the distribution of power.

518
00:38:20,619 --> 00:38:25,858
One of the things that expanded
enormously in the 1970s is lobbying,

519
00:38:25,958 --> 00:38:30,697
as the business world moved sharply
to try to control legislation.

520
00:38:31,797 --> 00:38:36,768
The business world was pretty upset
by the advances in public welfare in the '60s,

521
00:38:36,868 --> 00:38:39,270
in particular by Richard Nixon.

522
00:38:39,370 --> 00:38:42,940
It's not too well understood,
but he was the last New Deal president,

523
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:45,576
and they regarded that
as class treachery.

524
00:38:46,476 --> 00:38:51,047
In Nixon's administration,
you get the consumer safety legislation,

525
00:38:51,347 --> 00:38:54,383
safety and health regulations
in the workplace,

526
00:38:54,683 --> 00:38:57,883
the EPA, the environmental
protection agency.

527
00:38:58,885 --> 00:39:00,921
Business didn't like it, of course.

528
00:39:01,021 --> 00:39:03,823
They didn't like the high taxes.
They didn't like the regulation.

529
00:39:03,923 --> 00:39:07,260
And they began a coordinated effort
to try to overcome it.

530
00:39:07,860 --> 00:39:10,013
Lobbying sharply increased.

531
00:39:10,114 --> 00:39:13,462
Deregulation began with a real ferocity.

532
00:39:15,932 --> 00:39:18,669
There were no financial crashes
in the '50s and the '60s,

533
00:39:18,769 --> 00:39:23,304
because the regulatory apparatus
of the New Deal was still in place.

534
00:39:27,542 --> 00:39:29,141
As it began to be dismantled

535
00:39:29,242 --> 00:39:31,780
under business pressure
and political pressure,

536
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,814
you get more and more crashes.

537
00:39:43,890 --> 00:39:46,091
And it goes on right through the years.

538
00:39:47,460 --> 00:39:49,964
'70s it starts to begin.

539
00:39:50,564 --> 00:39:52,299
'80s really takes off.

540
00:39:52,399 --> 00:39:53,953
Congress was asked to approve

541
00:39:54,054 --> 00:39:56,135
federal loan guarantees
to the auto company

542
00:39:56,235 --> 00:39:58,670
of up to one and one half billion dollars.

543
00:39:58,770 --> 00:40:00,672
Now, all of this is quite safe

544
00:40:00,772 --> 00:40:03,475
as long as you know the government's
going to come to your rescue.

545
00:40:03,875 --> 00:40:07,245
So, take say, Reagan.
Instead of letting them pay the cost,

546
00:40:07,345 --> 00:40:10,548
Reagan bailed out the banks
like Continental Illinois,

547
00:40:10,648 --> 00:40:13,817
the biggest bailout
of American history at the time.

548
00:40:13,917 --> 00:40:17,453
Actually, he ended his term
with a huge financial crisis,

549
00:40:17,553 --> 00:40:18,696
the savings-and-loan crisis,

550
00:40:18,797 --> 00:40:20,655
and the government moved in
and bailed it out.

551
00:40:20,755 --> 00:40:22,355
"President Bush today signed

552
00:40:22,456 --> 00:40:25,795
the 300 billion-dollar
savings-and-loan bailout bill."

553
00:40:25,895 --> 00:40:29,399
In 1999, regulation was dismantled

554
00:40:29,499 --> 00:40:33,299
to separate commercial banks
from investment banks.

555
00:40:35,001 --> 00:40:37,905
Then comes the Bush and Obama bailout.

556
00:40:38,005 --> 00:40:40,674
"Bear Stearns is running
to the feds to stay afloat..."

557
00:40:40,774 --> 00:40:44,577
"President Bush today defended
the decision to bail out Citigroup..."

558
00:40:44,677 --> 00:40:49,348
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have asked
for a total of three billion dollars more...

559
00:40:49,448 --> 00:40:51,257
This bailout could get much bigger,

560
00:40:51,358 --> 00:40:54,157
signaling deepening troubles
for the U.S. economy."

561
00:40:57,888 --> 00:40:59,788
And they're building up the next one.

562
00:41:14,303 --> 00:41:20,375
Each time, the taxpayer is called on
to bail out those who created the crisis,

563
00:41:20,475 --> 00:41:24,313
increasingly the major financial institutions.

564
00:41:24,813 --> 00:41:27,048
In a capitalist economy,
you wouldn't do that.

565
00:41:27,148 --> 00:41:28,629
In a capitalist system,

566
00:41:28,730 --> 00:41:32,686
that would wipe out the investors
who made risky investments.

567
00:41:32,786 --> 00:41:35,989
But the rich and powerful,
they don't want a capitalist system.

568
00:41:36,089 --> 00:41:38,891
They want to be able to run
to the nanny state

569
00:41:38,991 --> 00:41:41,993
as soon as they're in trouble,
and get bailed out by the taxpayer.

570
00:41:42,093 --> 00:41:44,193
That's called "too big to fail."

571
00:41:45,695 --> 00:41:47,931
I mean, there are
Nobel laureates in economics

572
00:41:48,031 --> 00:41:51,234
who significantly disagree
with the course that we're following.

573
00:41:51,334 --> 00:41:54,370
People like Joe Stiglitz,
Paul Krugman and others,

574
00:41:54,470 --> 00:41:57,639
and none of them
were even approached.

575
00:41:57,739 --> 00:42:01,009
The people picked to fix the crisis
were those who created it,

576
00:42:01,109 --> 00:42:04,579
the Robert Rubin crowd,
the Goldman Sachs crowd.

577
00:42:04,679 --> 00:42:08,683
They created the crisis...
Are now more powerful than before.

578
00:42:09,083 --> 00:42:10,718
Is that accident?

579
00:42:10,818 --> 00:42:15,556
Well, not when you pick those people
to create an economic plan.

580
00:42:15,656 --> 00:42:17,716
I mean, what do you expect to happen?

581
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:25,664
Meanwhile, for the poor,
let market principles prevail.

582
00:42:25,764 --> 00:42:27,866
Don't expect any help
from the government.

583
00:42:27,966 --> 00:42:30,702
The government's the problem,
not the solution, and so on.

584
00:42:30,802 --> 00:42:33,104
That's, essentially, neo-liberalism.

585
00:42:33,204 --> 00:42:38,842
It has this dual character
which goes right back in economic history.

586
00:42:38,942 --> 00:42:41,010
One set of rules for the rich.

587
00:42:41,110 --> 00:42:43,170
Opposite set of rules for the poor.

588
00:42:45,779 --> 00:42:47,815
Nothing surprising about this.

589
00:42:47,915 --> 00:42:50,117
It's exactly the dynamics you expect.

590
00:42:50,217 --> 00:42:52,817
If the population allows it to proceed,

591
00:42:52,961 --> 00:42:54,697
it's just going to go on and on like this

592
00:42:54,797 --> 00:42:56,362
until the next crash,

593
00:42:56,463 --> 00:43:00,493
which is so much expected
that credit agencies,

594
00:43:00,593 --> 00:43:03,462
which kind of evaluate the status of firms,

595
00:43:03,562 --> 00:43:06,531
are now counting into their calculations

596
00:43:06,631 --> 00:43:11,802
the taxpayer bailout that they expect
to come after the next crash.

597
00:43:11,902 --> 00:43:15,380
Which means that the beneficiaries
of these credit ratings,

598
00:43:15,481 --> 00:43:16,973
like the big banks,

599
00:43:17,073 --> 00:43:19,096
they can borrow money more cheaply,

600
00:43:19,197 --> 00:43:21,544
they can push out smaller competitors,

601
00:43:21,644 --> 00:43:23,546
and you get more and more concentration.

602
00:43:23,646 --> 00:43:25,714
Everywhere you look,
policies are designed this way,

603
00:43:25,814 --> 00:43:29,584
which should come as absolutely
no surprise to anyone.

604
00:43:29,684 --> 00:43:33,472
That's what happens
when you put power into the hands

605
00:43:33,573 --> 00:43:36,156
of a narrow sector of wealth,

606
00:43:36,256 --> 00:43:39,265
which will is dedicated to
increasing power for itself

607
00:43:39,366 --> 00:43:40,625
just as you'd expect.

608
00:43:59,544 --> 00:44:04,116
Concentration of wealth
yields concentration of political power,

609
00:44:04,216 --> 00:44:09,521
particularly so as the
cost of elections skyrockets,

610
00:44:09,621 --> 00:44:15,090
which kind of forces the political parties
into the pockets of major corporations.

611
00:44:17,827 --> 00:44:22,532
The Citizens United,
this was January 2009, I guess,

612
00:44:22,632 --> 00:44:26,469
that's a very important decision,
Supreme Court decision,

613
00:44:26,569 --> 00:44:29,649
but it has a history
and you got to think about the history.

614
00:44:30,671 --> 00:44:34,075
The 14th amendment
has a provision that says,

615
00:44:34,175 --> 00:44:39,680
"no person's rights can be infringed
without due process of law."

616
00:44:39,780 --> 00:44:43,550
And the intent, clearly,
was to protect freed slaves.

617
00:44:43,650 --> 00:44:46,786
Says, "okay, they've got
the protection of the law."

618
00:44:46,886 --> 00:44:50,956
I don't think it's ever been used
for freed slaves, if ever, marginally.

619
00:44:51,056 --> 00:44:55,527
Almost immediately, it was used
for businesses, corporations.

620
00:44:55,627 --> 00:44:58,897
Their rights can't be infringed
without due process of law.

621
00:44:58,997 --> 00:45:02,665
So they gradually became
persons under the law.

622
00:45:08,304 --> 00:45:12,073
Corporations are
state-created legal fictions.

623
00:45:14,743 --> 00:45:16,312
Maybe they're good,
maybe they're bad,

624
00:45:16,412 --> 00:45:19,215
but to call them persons
is kind of outrageous.

625
00:45:19,315 --> 00:45:22,952
So they got personal rights
back about a century ago,

626
00:45:23,052 --> 00:45:25,352
and that extended
through the 20th century.

627
00:45:27,655 --> 00:45:31,490
They give corporations rights
way beyond what persons have.

628
00:45:31,992 --> 00:45:35,562
So if, say, General Motors
invests in Mexico,

629
00:45:35,662 --> 00:45:39,198
they get national rights,
the rights of a Mexican business.

630
00:45:39,298 --> 00:45:42,382
While the notion of person
was expanded

631
00:45:42,483 --> 00:45:44,301
to include corporations,

632
00:45:44,401 --> 00:45:46,303
it was also restricted.

633
00:45:46,403 --> 00:45:49,005
If you take the
14th amendment literally,

634
00:45:49,105 --> 00:45:53,115
then no undocumented alien
can be deprived of rights,

635
00:45:53,216 --> 00:45:54,974
if they're persons.

636
00:45:57,511 --> 00:45:59,619
Yet, undocumented aliens
who are living here,

637
00:45:59,720 --> 00:46:00,948
and building your buildings,

638
00:46:01,048 --> 00:46:04,014
cleaning your lawns, and so on,
they're not persons...

639
00:46:06,817 --> 00:46:12,123
But General Electric is a person,
an immortal super-powerful person.

640
00:46:12,223 --> 00:46:18,162
This perversion of the elementary morality,

641
00:46:18,262 --> 00:46:19,833
and the obvious meaning of the law,

642
00:46:19,934 --> 00:46:21,429
it's quite incredible.

643
00:46:23,332 --> 00:46:28,301
In the 1970s, the courts decided
that money is a form of speech.

644
00:46:30,437 --> 00:46:31,538
Buckley vs. Valeo.

645
00:46:31,639 --> 00:46:34,442
Then you go on through the years
to Citizens United,

646
00:46:34,542 --> 00:46:37,645
which says that,
the right of free speech of corporations,

647
00:46:37,745 --> 00:46:39,884
namely to spend as much
money as they want,

648
00:46:39,985 --> 00:46:41,513
that can't be curtailed.

649
00:46:44,852 --> 00:46:46,589
Take a look what that means...

650
00:46:46,689 --> 00:46:48,167
It means that corporations,

651
00:46:48,268 --> 00:46:50,824
which anyway have been
pretty much buying elections,

652
00:46:50,924 --> 00:46:53,927
are now free to do it
with virtually no constraint.

653
00:46:54,027 --> 00:46:58,662
That's a tremendous attack
on the residue of democracy.

654
00:47:02,834 --> 00:47:06,705
It's very interesting to read the rulings,
like justice Kennedy's swing vote.

655
00:47:06,805 --> 00:47:09,340
His ruling said,
"Well, look, after all,

656
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:12,855
CBS is given freedom of speech,
they're a corporation,

657
00:47:12,956 --> 00:47:14,411
why shouldn't General Electric

658
00:47:14,511 --> 00:47:16,671
be free to spend as much
money as they want?"

659
00:47:18,279 --> 00:47:21,216
I mean, it's true that CBS
is given freedom of speech,

660
00:47:21,316 --> 00:47:24,169
but they're supposed to be
performing a public service.

661
00:47:24,270 --> 00:47:25,386
That's why.

662
00:47:25,486 --> 00:47:27,087
That's what the press is supposed to be,

663
00:47:27,187 --> 00:47:29,189
and General Electric
is trying to make money

664
00:47:29,289 --> 00:47:31,870
for the chief executive
and some of the shareholders.

665
00:47:34,158 --> 00:47:38,263
It's an incredible decision,
and it puts the country in a position where

666
00:47:38,363 --> 00:47:43,868
business power is greatly extended
beyond what it always was.

667
00:47:43,968 --> 00:47:45,702
This is part of that vicious cycle.

668
00:47:45,802 --> 00:47:49,772
The supreme court justices
are put in by reactionary presidents,

669
00:47:49,872 --> 00:47:52,941
who get in there because
they're funded by business.

670
00:47:53,041 --> 00:47:54,507
It's the way the cycle works.

671
00:48:20,199 --> 00:48:24,837
There is one organized force
which traditionally, plenty of flaws,

672
00:48:24,937 --> 00:48:28,841
but with all its flaws,
it's been in the forefront of...

673
00:48:29,541 --> 00:48:33,211
efforts to improve the lives
of the general population.

674
00:48:33,311 --> 00:48:34,812
That's organized labor.

675
00:48:34,912 --> 00:48:37,247
It's also a barrier to corporate tyranny.

676
00:48:37,347 --> 00:48:40,529
So, it's the one barrier
to this vicious cycle

677
00:48:40,629 --> 00:48:44,051
going on, which does lead
to corporate tyranny.

678
00:48:53,427 --> 00:48:56,998
A major reason
for the concentrated,

679
00:48:57,298 --> 00:49:00,935
almost fanatic attack on unions,
on organized labor,

680
00:49:01,035 --> 00:49:03,268
is they are a democratizing force.

681
00:49:05,004 --> 00:49:08,541
They brought a barrier
that defends workers' rights,

682
00:49:08,641 --> 00:49:10,561
but also popular rights generally.

683
00:49:17,648 --> 00:49:21,754
And that interferes with
the prerogatives and power

684
00:49:21,854 --> 00:49:24,920
of those who own
and manage the society.

685
00:49:26,188 --> 00:49:29,358
I should say that anti-union

686
00:49:29,458 --> 00:49:33,562
sentiment in the United States
among elites is so strong

687
00:49:33,662 --> 00:49:37,098
that the fundamental
core of labor rights,

688
00:49:37,298 --> 00:49:41,068
the basic principle in the
international labor organization,

689
00:49:41,268 --> 00:49:44,104
is the right of free association,

690
00:49:44,204 --> 00:49:46,306
which would mean
the right to form unions.

691
00:49:46,406 --> 00:49:48,941
The U.S. has never ratified that.

692
00:49:49,041 --> 00:49:54,112
So I think the U.S. may be alone
among major societies in that respect.

693
00:49:54,612 --> 00:49:58,616
It's considered so far out
of the spectrum of American politics,

694
00:49:58,716 --> 00:50:00,748
it literally has never been considered.

695
00:50:03,086 --> 00:50:07,623
Remember, the U.S. has a long
and very violent labor history

696
00:50:07,723 --> 00:50:10,056
as compared with
comparable societies...

697
00:50:12,626 --> 00:50:15,196
But the labor movement
had been very strong.

698
00:50:15,296 --> 00:50:17,198
By the 1920s,

699
00:50:17,299 --> 00:50:20,390
in a period not unlike today,

700
00:50:20,491 --> 00:50:22,002
it was virtually crushed.

701
00:50:22,102 --> 00:50:26,707
"A truck drivers strike was climaxed
by severe riots with many casualties.

702
00:50:27,107 --> 00:50:29,926
Open warfare rages through
the streets of the city

703
00:50:30,026 --> 00:50:33,178
as 3,000 union pickets
battle 700 police.

704
00:50:33,278 --> 00:50:36,080
Guns, tear gas, clubs and fists
bring injuries

705
00:50:36,180 --> 00:50:39,214
to more than 80 persons
and caused the death of two."

706
00:50:44,119 --> 00:50:46,519
By the mid '30s,
it began to reconstruct.

707
00:50:49,586 --> 00:50:52,124
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he himself

708
00:50:52,224 --> 00:50:55,363
was rather sympathetic
to progressive legislation

709
00:50:55,463 --> 00:50:58,132
that would be in the benefit
of the general population,

710
00:50:58,232 --> 00:51:00,601
but he had to somehow
get it passed.

711
00:51:00,701 --> 00:51:06,406
So he informed labor leaders
and others, "force me to do it."

712
00:51:06,706 --> 00:51:10,779
What he meant is,
go out and demonstrate,

713
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:12,912
organize, protest,

714
00:51:13,012 --> 00:51:15,014
develop the labor movement.

715
00:51:15,314 --> 00:51:17,382
When the popular pressure is sufficient,

716
00:51:17,482 --> 00:51:19,750
I'll be able to put through
the legislation you want.

717
00:51:19,850 --> 00:51:24,921
"I am not for a return
to that definition of Liberty,

718
00:51:25,021 --> 00:51:28,958
under which for many years
a free people

719
00:51:29,058 --> 00:51:35,564
were being gradually regimented
into the service of a privileged few.

720
00:51:35,964 --> 00:51:40,435
I prefer that broader definition of Liberty."

721
00:51:41,135 --> 00:51:45,005
So, there was kind of a combination
of a sympathetic government,

722
00:51:45,105 --> 00:51:49,172
and by the mid-'30s,
very substantial popular activism.

723
00:51:50,474 --> 00:51:54,679
There were industrial actions.
There were sit-down strikes,

724
00:51:54,779 --> 00:51:58,816
which were very frightening
to ownership.

725
00:51:58,916 --> 00:52:00,292
You have to recognize,

726
00:52:00,393 --> 00:52:04,087
a sit-down strike is just
one step before saying,

727
00:52:04,187 --> 00:52:06,854
"we don't need bosses.
We can run this by ourselves."

728
00:52:13,694 --> 00:52:15,296
And business was appalled.

729
00:52:15,396 --> 00:52:18,766
You read the business press,
say, in the late '30s,

730
00:52:18,866 --> 00:52:23,270
they were talking about
the "hazard facing industrialists"

731
00:52:23,370 --> 00:52:26,706
and the "rising political power
of the masses,"

732
00:52:26,806 --> 00:52:28,374
which has to be repressed.

733
00:52:28,474 --> 00:52:31,276
Things were on hold
during the second world war,

734
00:52:31,376 --> 00:52:33,606
but immediately after
the second world war,

735
00:52:33,707 --> 00:52:36,199
the business offensive
began in force.

736
00:52:36,300 --> 00:52:38,182
The Taft-Hartley act.

737
00:52:38,482 --> 00:52:41,752
"The Taft-Hartley act
was written for only one purpose,

738
00:52:41,852 --> 00:52:47,324
to restore justice and equality
in labor-management relations."

739
00:52:47,724 --> 00:52:49,292
Then McCarthyism was used

740
00:52:49,393 --> 00:52:53,293
for massive corporate propaganda
offensives to attack union.

741
00:52:54,195 --> 00:52:56,464
It increased sharply
during the Reagan years.

742
00:52:56,564 --> 00:52:59,600
I mean, Reagan pretty much told
the business world,

743
00:52:59,700 --> 00:53:03,203
"If you want to illegally break
organizing efforts and strikes,

744
00:53:03,504 --> 00:53:04,571
go ahead."

745
00:53:04,671 --> 00:53:07,006
"They are in violation of the law,

746
00:53:07,106 --> 00:53:10,376
and if they do not report
for work within 48 hours,

747
00:53:10,476 --> 00:53:14,713
they have forfeited their jobs
and will be terminated."

748
00:53:14,813 --> 00:53:18,590
It continued in the '90s and, of course,
with George W. Bush,

749
00:53:18,691 --> 00:53:19,884
it went through the roof.

750
00:53:19,984 --> 00:53:25,254
By now, less than 7% of
private sector workers have unions.

751
00:53:30,626 --> 00:53:35,698
The effect is that the usual
counter-force to an offensive

752
00:53:35,798 --> 00:53:40,700
by our highly class-conscious
business class has dissolved.

753
00:53:43,904 --> 00:53:47,074
Now, if you're in a position of power,

754
00:53:47,174 --> 00:53:50,444
you want to maintain
class-consciousness for yourself,

755
00:53:50,544 --> 00:53:52,812
but eliminate it everywhere else.

756
00:53:52,912 --> 00:53:55,515
You go back to the 19th century,

757
00:53:55,615 --> 00:53:58,040
in the early days of
the industrial revolution

758
00:53:58,141 --> 00:53:59,351
in the United States,

759
00:53:59,451 --> 00:54:02,554
working people were
very conscious of this.

760
00:54:02,854 --> 00:54:06,524
They, in fact,
overwhelmingly regarded

761
00:54:06,624 --> 00:54:10,594
wage labor as not
very different from slavery,

762
00:54:10,694 --> 00:54:13,396
different only in that
it was temporary.

763
00:54:13,496 --> 00:54:15,208
In fact, it was such a popular idea

764
00:54:15,309 --> 00:54:17,530
that it was the slogan
of the Republican party.

765
00:54:18,532 --> 00:54:22,036
That was a very sharp
class-consciousness.

766
00:54:22,336 --> 00:54:24,771
In the interest of power and privilege,

767
00:54:24,871 --> 00:54:28,407
it's good to drive those ideas
out of people's heads.

768
00:54:28,507 --> 00:54:31,643
You don't want them to know
that they're an oppressed class.

769
00:54:31,743 --> 00:54:35,813
So, this is one of the few societies
in which you just don't talk about class.

770
00:54:36,013 --> 00:54:39,083
In fact, the notion of class
is very simple.

771
00:54:39,183 --> 00:54:41,318
Who gives the orders?
Who follows them?

772
00:54:41,418 --> 00:54:43,486
That basically defines class.

773
00:54:43,586 --> 00:54:47,254
It's more nuanced and complex,
but that's basically it.

774
00:55:05,639 --> 00:55:09,143
The public relations industry,
the advertising industry,

775
00:55:09,243 --> 00:55:11,378
which is dedicated
to creating consumers,

776
00:55:11,478 --> 00:55:14,748
it's a phenomena that developed
in the freest countries,

777
00:55:14,848 --> 00:55:19,486
in Britain and the United States,
and the reason is pretty clear.

778
00:55:19,586 --> 00:55:22,856
It became clear by, say, a century ago

779
00:55:22,956 --> 00:55:27,193
that it was not going to be so easy
to control the population by force.

780
00:55:27,293 --> 00:55:28,833
Too much freedom had been won.

781
00:55:30,227 --> 00:55:33,564
Labor organizing, parliamentary
labor parties in many countries,

782
00:55:33,664 --> 00:55:36,466
women starting to get
the franchise, and so on.

783
00:55:36,566 --> 00:55:38,768
So, you had to have other
means of controlling people.

784
00:55:38,868 --> 00:55:41,337
And it was understood and expressed

785
00:55:41,437 --> 00:55:47,475
that you have to control them
by control of beliefs and attitudes.

786
00:55:47,575 --> 00:55:51,612
Well, one of the best ways
to control people in terms of attitudes

787
00:55:51,712 --> 00:55:57,078
is what the great political economist
Thorstein Veblen called

788
00:55:57,179 --> 00:55:58,749
"fabricating consumers."

789
00:56:04,588 --> 00:56:07,125
If you can fabricate wants...

790
00:56:07,625 --> 00:56:12,863
Make obtaining things that are just about
within your reach the essence of life,

791
00:56:12,963 --> 00:56:16,330
they're going to be trapped
into becoming consumers.

792
00:56:18,700 --> 00:56:21,437
You read the business press
in say, 1920s,

793
00:56:21,537 --> 00:56:27,075
it talks about the need to direct people
to the superficial things of life,

794
00:56:27,175 --> 00:56:28,908
like "fashionable consumption"

795
00:56:29,009 --> 00:56:31,015
and that'll keep them out of our hair.

796
00:56:32,545 --> 00:56:36,650
You find this doctrine all through
progressive intellectual thought,

797
00:56:36,750 --> 00:56:38,218
like Walter Lippmann,

798
00:56:38,318 --> 00:56:41,538
the major progressive intellectual
of the 20th century.

799
00:56:43,688 --> 00:56:46,939
He wrote famous progressive
essays on democracy

800
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:49,327
in which his view was exactly that.

801
00:56:49,427 --> 00:56:51,796
"The public must be put in their place,"

802
00:56:51,896 --> 00:56:54,698
so that the responsible men
can make decisions

803
00:56:54,798 --> 00:56:57,798
without interference
from the "bewildered herd."

804
00:57:00,435 --> 00:57:02,471
They're to be spectators,
not participants.

805
00:57:02,571 --> 00:57:05,307
Then you get a properly
functioning democracy,

806
00:57:05,407 --> 00:57:07,457
straight back to Madison,

807
00:57:07,558 --> 00:57:10,712
and on to Powell's memorandum,
and so on.

808
00:57:10,812 --> 00:57:17,718
And the advertising industry
just exploded with this as its goal...

809
00:57:17,818 --> 00:57:19,350
Fabricating consumers.

810
00:57:25,157 --> 00:57:27,827
And it's done with great sophistication.

811
00:57:28,527 --> 00:57:30,629
"You don't see many
wild stallions anymore.

812
00:57:30,729 --> 00:57:35,397
He's one of the last of a wild
and very singular breed.

813
00:57:35,898 --> 00:57:38,835
Come to Marlboro country."

814
00:57:39,135 --> 00:57:41,668
The ideal is what you actually see today...

815
00:57:43,404 --> 00:57:47,809
Where, let's say, teenage girls,
if they have a free Saturday afternoon,

816
00:57:47,909 --> 00:57:50,311
will go walking in the shopping mall,

817
00:57:50,611 --> 00:57:53,177
not to the library or somewhere else.

818
00:57:53,912 --> 00:57:57,316
The idea is to try to control everyone,

819
00:57:57,616 --> 00:58:01,283
to turn the whole society
into the perfect system.

820
00:58:03,753 --> 00:58:08,792
Perfect system would be
a society based on a dyad, a pair.

821
00:58:08,892 --> 00:58:11,995
The pair is you
and your television set,

822
00:58:12,295 --> 00:58:14,397
or maybe now you and the Internet,

823
00:58:14,997 --> 00:58:19,701
in which that presents you with
what the proper life would be,

824
00:58:19,801 --> 00:58:21,803
what kind of gadgets
you should have.

825
00:58:21,903 --> 00:58:24,539
And you spend your time and effort
gaining those things,

826
00:58:24,639 --> 00:58:26,168
which you don't need,
and you don't want,

827
00:58:26,269 --> 00:58:27,799
and maybe you'll throw them away...

828
00:58:29,242 --> 00:58:32,209
But that's the measure of a decent life.

829
00:58:34,846 --> 00:58:38,617
What we see is in, say,
advertising on television,

830
00:58:38,717 --> 00:58:42,554
if you've ever taken an economics course,
you know that

831
00:58:42,654 --> 00:58:48,693
markets are supposed to be based on
"informed consumers making rational choices."

832
00:58:48,793 --> 00:58:52,496
Well, if we had a system
like that, a market system,

833
00:58:52,596 --> 00:58:57,133
then a television ad would
consist of, say, General Motors

834
00:58:57,233 --> 00:59:01,103
putting up information, saying,
"here's what we have for sale."

835
00:59:01,203 --> 00:59:03,805
That's not what an ad for a car is.

836
00:59:03,905 --> 00:59:08,407
And ad for a car is a football hero...
an actress...

837
00:59:08,507 --> 00:59:11,578
the car doing some crazy thing like,

838
00:59:11,678 --> 00:59:13,580
going up a mountain or something.

839
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:19,785
The point is to create uninformed consumers
who will make irrational choices.

840
00:59:19,885 --> 00:59:22,354
That's what advertising is all about,

841
00:59:22,554 --> 00:59:27,892
and when the same institution,
the PR system,

842
00:59:27,992 --> 00:59:30,458
runs elections,
they do it the same way.

843
00:59:36,331 --> 00:59:39,034
They want to create
an uninformed electorate,

844
00:59:39,134 --> 00:59:41,350
which will make irrational choices,

845
00:59:41,451 --> 00:59:43,505
often against their own interests,

846
00:59:43,605 --> 00:59:48,006
and we see it every time
one of these extravaganzas take place.

847
00:59:49,842 --> 00:59:51,845
Right after the election,

848
00:59:51,945 --> 00:59:56,983
president Obama won an award
from the advertising industry

849
00:59:57,083 --> 00:59:58,885
for the best marketing campaign.

850
00:59:58,985 --> 01:00:00,154
And, it wasn't reported here,

851
01:00:00,255 --> 01:00:02,254
but if you go to the
international business press,

852
01:00:02,454 --> 01:00:04,957
executives were euphoric.

853
01:00:05,057 --> 01:00:09,748
They said, "we've been selling candidates,
marketing candidates,

854
01:00:09,849 --> 01:00:11,696
like, you know, toothpaste

855
01:00:11,796 --> 01:00:12,903
ever since Reagan,

856
01:00:13,004 --> 01:00:15,699
and this is the greatest
achievement we have."

857
01:00:15,799 --> 01:00:18,835
I don't usually agree with Sarah Palin,

858
01:00:18,935 --> 01:00:24,606
but when she mocks the, what she calls
the "hopey-changey" stuff, she's right.

859
01:00:24,706 --> 01:00:27,588
First of all, Obama didn't
really promise anything.

860
01:00:27,789 --> 01:00:29,310
That's mostly illusion.

861
01:00:29,410 --> 01:00:32,579
You go back to the campaign rhetoric
and take a look at it.

862
01:00:32,679 --> 01:00:35,195
There's very little discussion
of policy issues,

863
01:00:35,296 --> 01:00:36,683
and for very good reason,

864
01:00:36,783 --> 01:00:42,021
because public opinion on policy
is sharply disconnected

865
01:00:42,121 --> 01:00:46,856
from what the two-party leadership
and their financial backers want.

866
01:00:48,193 --> 01:00:55,030
Policy, more and more, is focused on the
private interests that fund the campaigns...

867
01:00:56,165 --> 01:00:58,432
with the public being marginalized.

868
01:01:21,522 --> 01:01:26,027
One of the leading political scientists,
Martin Gilens, came out with a study

869
01:01:26,127 --> 01:01:29,063
of the relation between
public attitudes and public policy.

870
01:01:29,163 --> 01:01:32,906
What he shows is that
about 70% of the population

871
01:01:33,007 --> 01:01:35,702
has no way of influencing policy.

872
01:01:35,902 --> 01:01:38,435
They might as well be
in some other country...

873
01:01:39,537 --> 01:01:41,170
And the population knows it.

874
01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:50,211
What it's led to is a population that's
angry, frustrated, hates institutions.

875
01:01:51,813 --> 01:01:56,215
It's not acting constructively
to try to respond to this.

876
01:01:57,984 --> 01:02:00,821
There is popular mobilization and activism,

877
01:02:00,921 --> 01:02:03,587
but in very self-destructive directions.

878
01:02:04,789 --> 01:02:08,193
It's taking the form of unfocused anger,

879
01:02:08,293 --> 01:02:11,829
attacks on one another,
and on vulnerable targets.

880
01:02:11,929 --> 01:02:14,229
That's what happens in cases like this.

881
01:02:17,299 --> 01:02:21,604
It is corrosive of social relations,
but that's the point.

882
01:02:21,704 --> 01:02:25,908
The point is to make people
hate and fear each other,

883
01:02:26,008 --> 01:02:27,910
and look out only for themselves,

884
01:02:28,010 --> 01:02:30,210
and don't do anything for anyone else.

885
01:02:33,947 --> 01:02:38,619
One place you see it strikingly
is on April 15th.

886
01:02:38,719 --> 01:02:42,155
April 15th is kind of a measure,
the day you pay your taxes,

887
01:02:42,255 --> 01:02:45,158
of how democratic the society is.

888
01:02:45,258 --> 01:02:48,928
If a society is really democratic,

889
01:02:49,028 --> 01:02:52,031
April 15th would be a day of celebration.

890
01:02:52,131 --> 01:02:55,033
It's a day when
the population gets together,

891
01:02:55,233 --> 01:03:01,539
decides to fund the programs and activities
that they have formulated and agreed upon.

892
01:03:01,639 --> 01:03:03,048
What could be better than that?

893
01:03:03,149 --> 01:03:04,608
So, you should celebrate it.

894
01:03:04,708 --> 01:03:06,509
It's not the way it is
in the United States.

895
01:03:06,809 --> 01:03:08,811
It's a day of mourning.

896
01:03:08,911 --> 01:03:13,982
It's a day in which some alien power
that has nothing to do with you,

897
01:03:14,082 --> 01:03:16,985
is coming down to steal
your hard-earned money,

898
01:03:17,085 --> 01:03:19,945
and you do everything you can
to keep them from doing it.

899
01:03:21,054 --> 01:03:23,958
Well, that is a kind of a measure
of the extent to which,

900
01:03:24,058 --> 01:03:28,025
at least in popular consciousness,
democracy is actually functioning.

901
01:03:28,893 --> 01:03:30,926
Not a very attractive picture.

902
01:03:48,344 --> 01:03:52,115
The tendencies that we've been describing
within American society,

903
01:03:52,215 --> 01:03:56,853
unless they're reversed,
it's going to be an extremely ugly society.

904
01:03:56,953 --> 01:03:59,889
I mean, a society that's based on

905
01:03:59,989 --> 01:04:05,158
Adam Smith's vile maxim,
"all for myself, nothing for anyone else."

906
01:04:10,197 --> 01:04:14,102
A society in which normal
human instincts and emotion

907
01:04:14,202 --> 01:04:18,737
of sympathy, solidarity, mutual support,
in which they're, kind like, driven out...

908
01:04:22,208 --> 01:04:23,871
That's a society so ugly,

909
01:04:23,972 --> 01:04:25,845
I don't even know
who'd want to live in it.

910
01:04:25,945 --> 01:04:27,911
I wouldn't want my children to.

911
01:04:31,950 --> 01:04:37,022
If the society is based on
control by private wealth,

912
01:04:37,122 --> 01:04:41,156
it will reflect the values
that it, in fact, does reflect.

913
01:04:43,259 --> 01:04:45,856
The value that is greed,
and the desire...

914
01:04:45,957 --> 01:04:48,495
to maximize personal gain,
at the expense of others.

915
01:04:48,695 --> 01:04:53,327
Now, any society, maybe a small society
based on that principle is ugly,

916
01:04:53,428 --> 01:04:54,737
but it can survive.

917
01:04:54,837 --> 01:04:58,838
A global society based on that principle
is headed for massive destruction.

918
01:05:04,076 --> 01:05:07,694
I don't think we're smart enough...

919
01:05:07,795 --> 01:05:10,348
to design in any detail...

920
01:05:10,448 --> 01:05:14,585
what a perfectly just and free
society would be like.

921
01:05:14,685 --> 01:05:17,087
I think we can give some guidelines...

922
01:05:17,187 --> 01:05:22,590
and, more significant, we can ask
how we can progress in that direction.

923
01:05:26,862 --> 01:05:31,334
John Dewey, the leading social philosopher
in the late 20th century,

924
01:05:31,434 --> 01:05:34,770
he argued that until all institutions,

925
01:05:34,870 --> 01:05:38,807
production, commerce, media,

926
01:05:38,907 --> 01:05:42,977
unless they're all under
participatory democratic control,

927
01:05:43,077 --> 01:05:47,378
we will not have
a functioning democratic society.

928
01:05:48,847 --> 01:05:53,116
As he put it, "policy will be the shadow
cast by business over society."

929
01:05:57,288 --> 01:05:59,255
Well, it's essentially true.

930
01:06:10,166 --> 01:06:14,404
Where there are structures of
authority, domination and hierarchy,

931
01:06:14,504 --> 01:06:16,581
somebody gives the orders,
somebody takes them,

932
01:06:16,882 --> 01:06:19,342
they are not self-justifying.

933
01:06:19,442 --> 01:06:21,585
They have to justify themselves.

934
01:06:21,686 --> 01:06:24,010
They have a burden of proof to meet.

935
01:06:30,517 --> 01:06:34,722
Well, if you take a close look, usually
you find they can't justify themselves.

936
01:06:34,922 --> 01:06:37,555
If they can't, we ought
to be dismantling them.

937
01:06:38,924 --> 01:06:41,894
Trying to expand the domain
of freedom and justice

938
01:06:41,994 --> 01:06:45,964
by dismantling that form
of illegitimate authority.

939
01:06:46,064 --> 01:06:48,967
And, in fact,
progress over the years,

940
01:06:49,067 --> 01:06:52,120
what we all thankfully recognize as progress,

941
01:06:52,221 --> 01:06:53,404
has been just that.

942
01:06:53,504 --> 01:06:57,575
The way things change is because
lots of people are working all the time.

943
01:06:57,975 --> 01:07:00,684
They're working in their communities,
in their workplace,

944
01:07:00,785 --> 01:07:02,079
or wherever they happen to be,

945
01:07:02,179 --> 01:07:04,482
and they're building up the basis

946
01:07:04,582 --> 01:07:08,118
for popular movements,
which are going to make changes.

947
01:07:08,418 --> 01:07:11,151
That's the way everything
has ever happened in history.

948
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:14,990
Take, say, freedom of speech...

949
01:07:15,590 --> 01:07:18,593
One of the real achievements
of American society,

950
01:07:18,693 --> 01:07:20,335
it's first in the world in that.

951
01:07:20,436 --> 01:07:22,029
It's not in the bill of rights.

952
01:07:22,129 --> 01:07:24,398
It's not in the constitution.

953
01:07:24,498 --> 01:07:28,235
Freedom of speech issues
began to come to the supreme court

954
01:07:28,336 --> 01:07:30,234
in the early 20th century.

955
01:07:31,369 --> 01:07:34,606
The major contributions came in the 1960s.

956
01:07:34,706 --> 01:07:38,376
One of the leading ones was a case
involving the civil rights movement.

957
01:07:38,476 --> 01:07:41,445
Well, by then, you had
a mass popular movement,

958
01:07:41,545 --> 01:07:43,947
which was demanding rights,

959
01:07:44,347 --> 01:07:47,450
refusing to back down.
And in that context,

960
01:07:47,550 --> 01:07:49,158
the supreme court did establish

961
01:07:49,259 --> 01:07:51,520
a pretty high standard
of freedom of speech.

962
01:07:51,620 --> 01:07:53,823
Or take, say, women's rights.

963
01:07:54,323 --> 01:07:58,126
Women also began
identifying oppressive structures,

964
01:07:58,226 --> 01:08:02,530
refusing to accept them,
bringing other people to join with them.

965
01:08:02,630 --> 01:08:05,033
Well, that's how rights are won.

966
01:08:06,033 --> 01:08:10,537
To a non-trivial extent,
I've also spent a lot of my life in activism.

967
01:08:10,637 --> 01:08:13,515
That doesn't show up publicly, but, yeah...

968
01:08:13,616 --> 01:08:17,106
Actually, I'm not terribly good at it...
I'm not the greatest organizer...

969
01:08:17,306 --> 01:08:21,514
I think that we can see quite clearly
some very, very serious defects

970
01:08:21,614 --> 01:08:25,550
and flaws in our society,
our level of culture, our institutions,

971
01:08:25,650 --> 01:08:29,287
which are going to have to be corrected
by operating outside of the framework

972
01:08:29,387 --> 01:08:31,122
that is commonly accepted.

973
01:08:31,222 --> 01:08:34,342
I think we're going to have to find
new ways of political action.

974
01:08:36,726 --> 01:08:40,927
But the activists are the people
who have created the rights that we enjoy.

975
01:08:41,962 --> 01:08:44,165
They're not only carrying out...

976
01:08:44,265 --> 01:08:47,534
policies based on
information that they're receiving,

977
01:08:47,634 --> 01:08:49,802
but also contributing to the understanding.

978
01:08:49,902 --> 01:08:51,968
Remember, it's a reciprocal process.

979
01:08:53,038 --> 01:08:56,107
- ...then you have a great deal of...
- You try to do things. You learn.

980
01:08:56,207 --> 01:08:58,375
You learn about what the world is like,

981
01:08:58,475 --> 01:09:02,010
that feeds back to the understanding
of how to go on.

982
01:09:05,281 --> 01:09:07,284
There's huge opportunities.

983
01:09:07,384 --> 01:09:11,451
It is a very free society,
still the freest in the world.

984
01:09:12,686 --> 01:09:16,123
Government has very
limited capacity to coerce.

985
01:09:16,223 --> 01:09:20,294
Corporate business may try to coerce,
but they don't have the mechanisms.

986
01:09:20,694 --> 01:09:24,931
So, there's a lot that can be done
if people organize, struggle for their rights

987
01:09:25,031 --> 01:09:29,031
as they've done in the past,
and can win many victories.

988
01:09:41,076 --> 01:09:46,880
Well, my close friend for many years,
the late Howard Zinn...

989
01:09:49,116 --> 01:09:51,618
To put it in his words that,

990
01:09:51,718 --> 01:09:56,923
"what matters is the countless
small deeds of unknown people,

991
01:09:57,023 --> 01:10:02,092
who lay the basis for the significant events
that enter history."

992
01:10:04,261 --> 01:10:06,898
They're the ones
who've done things in the past.

993
01:10:06,998 --> 01:10:09,279
They're the ones
 who'll have to do it in the future.