Written by: Jason Kerr
Noam Chomsky, an MIT linguistics and philosophy professor emeritus and prolific political critic of the United States, is arguably one of the most important living intellectuals. An anarcho-syndicalist vehemently opposed to almost any action the U.S. empire takes, one can imagine Chomsky (b. 1928) as the ultimate foil of Henry Kissinger (1923–2023). Despite his Jewish descent, he is also one of Israel’s loudest critics. One of Chomsky’s editors regards him as a “modern-day equivalent of an Old Testament prophet… without honor in his own land.” How the World Works, first published in 2010, purports to offer an accessible insight into some of Chomsky’s main ideas. The book accomplishes this by coalescing and paring down some of Chomsky’s speeches and interviews—largely from the 1990s—and splicing the four short “conversational” books that this method produced together into “one affordable volume.” Each book contained within this ~300-page compilation possesses a title page that boasts about how many copies the original sold and features a useful table of contents. The first portion, “What Uncle Sam Really Wants,” endeavors to describe the contradictory nature of U.S. foreign policy. Following this, the second section mostly discusses Chomsky’s distaste for neoliberalism and his exhortations for Americans to become more class-conscious. The author variously admonishes the injustices of the neoliberal world order and its institutions against people around the globe for the rest of the book.
One of the strengths of the book was its descriptions of American actions against states in Central and South America in the twentieth century. A number of citizens may have a vague notion about U.S. interventions in this region of the world, but Chomsky exposes all of the brutal details, while emphasizing the media’s role in concealing information. During the end of Carter’s presidency and the beginning of Reagan’s, people in El Salvador began peasant associations, unions, and other popular organizations that threatened the U.S.-backed dictatorial rule. The United States assisted the junta that ran the country in putting down the popular movements which ultimately resulted in mass violence that included the assassination of the Archbishop of El Salvador who had written to President Carter exhorting him to stop supporting a government with no regard for human rights, the murders and exiles of editors of independent newspapers, and the killing of civilians. Chomsky provides details about similarly violent U.S. opposition to leftist reformers in Nicaragua and the suspension of aid for the country once it strayed from American policy. The democratic government of Guatemala dared to oppose the interests of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita) and dabbled in “Communism,” so the CIA led a successful coup and silenced newspapers with the use of “security forces.” Chomsky further writes about the American invasion of Panama in 1989.
The professor emeritus makes more interesting points in his discussions about “the new global economy” and its worst aspects. He characterizes neoliberal globalization as harmful to the lower classes in both rich and developing countries. Productive jobs leave the United States and arrive in countries that repress unionization and allow for extremely low wages in brutal workplaces. Chomsky also compellingly argues that historically, “structures of government coalesce around… forms of power.” National states emerged with the advent of national economies, and now an international state forms along with capital’s ascent to global power. Such institutions and forums in cahoots with transnational corporations as the IMF, World Bank, G7, and various trade agreements constitute the new international government. Chomsky contends that “these structures raise decision making to the executive,” thereby removing the possibility for more democratic input for global issues. The author also intriguingly portrays corporations as “fascist structure[s]” wherein leaders at the top wield complete power over their organizations with little say granted to the masses of employees, which alarms Chomsky given the political prowess and control over daily life that businesses maintain.
How the World Works aims to introduce readers to the intellectual’s leftist perspective and accomplishes this fairly well but it has its weaknesses and strengths. The book contains clear main ideas, but the interesting interview-esque format creates room for Chomsky to opine on myriad topics and countries in brief or long passages—for example, How the World Works dedicates a page-and-a-half to Chomsky’s perception of spectator sports “hysteria” as a phenomenon that begets “jingoist and chauvinist attitudes.” Throughout, he also includes alarming examples of the United States intelligence apparatus employing ex-Nazis. The book feels a little bit outdated at times, at one point even claiming that no active leftist intelligentsia exists within the United States, while this now obviously proves false when examining academia today. Chomsky is also practically incapable of admitting the U.S. can do anything correctly at all, but he at least makes an attempt to justify his fervent contrarianism in good faith. He also dodges criticizing the Soviet Union much at all but—perhaps surprisingly—admits that its demise was a positive thing, even if in his view the dissolution was mostly a victory for socialists because the USSR gave them a bad name. To the author’s credit, he does more than just paint the entire world as gloomy; he tries to offer solutions, calls for some actions, and attempts to effect a positive outlook. Everyone should read literature of a wide range of political viewpoints, and Chomsky’s writing offers an interesting paradigm shift for the average American, even while notions similar to his become more popular among sects of conservatives open to isolationist and populist dispositions.