No JDS Content: Noam Chomsky's views on Microsoft
Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Wed, 20 May 1998 12:46:03 -0700
A friend just passed this my way, and what with all the recent talk
about good ol' Noam I thought I'd pass it on, especially since it's
about such a hot topic right now.
Cheers,
Malcolm
---------------------------
>
>
> A CORPORATE WATCH INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY
>
>
>
>
> Corporate Watch's Anna Couey and Joshua Karliner caught up with Noam
> Chomsky
> by telephone at his home in the Boston area to ask him about Microsoft
> and
> Bill Gates. The following is a transcript of our far ranging
> conversation.
>
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> --
>
> CW: So our first question is, how significant do you see the recent
> skirmishes
> between the Department of Justice and Microsoft? Do you see it as an
> important
> turn of events?
>
> NC: There's some significance. We shouldn't exaggerate it. If there
are
> three
> major corporations controlling what is essentially public property and
a
> public creation, namely the Internet, telecommunications, and so on,
> that's
> not a whole lot better than one corporation controlling, but it's
maybe
> a
> minor difference. The question is to what extent parasites like
> Microsoft
> should be parasites off the public system, or should be granted any
> rights at
> all.
>
> CW: Give us a little bit of historical context. How does what's
> happening with
> Microsoft's growing power, and its role in society fit into the
history
> of
> U.S. Corporate power, the evolution of corporations?
>
> NC: Here's a brief history, a thumbnail sketch.
>
> There were corporations as far back as the 18th century, and beyond.
In
> the
> United States, corporations were public bodies. Basically, they were
> associations. A bunch of people could get together and say we want to
> build a
> bridge over this river, and could get a state charter which allowed
them
> to do
> that, precisely that and nothing more. The corporation had no rights
of
> individual persons. The model for the corporation back at the time of
> the
> framing of the Constitution was a municipality. Through the 19th
> century, that
> began to change.
>
> It's important to remember that the constitutional system was not
> designed in
> the first place to defend the rights of people. Rather, the rights of
> people
> had to be balanced, as Madison put it, against what he called "the
> rights of
> property." Well of course, property has no rights: my pen has no
rights.
> Maybe
> I have a right to it, but the pen has no rights. So, this is just a
code
> phrase for the rights of people with property. The constitutional
system
> was
> founded on the principle that the rights of people with property have
to
> be
> privileged; they have rights because they're people, but they also
have
> special rights because they have property. As Madison put it in the
> constitutional debates, the goal of government must be "to protect the
> minority of the opulent against the majority." That's the way the
system
> was
> set up.
>
> In the United States, around the turn of the century, through radical
> judicial
> activism, the courts changed crucially the concept of the corporation.
> They
> simply redefined them so as to grant not only privileges to property
> owners,
> but also to what legal historians call "collectivist legal entities."
> Corporations, in other words, were granted early in this century the
> rights of
> persons, in fact, immortal persons, and persons of immense power. And
> they
> were freed from the need to restrict themselves to the grants of state
> charters.
>
> That's a very big change. It's essentially establishing major private
> tyrannies, which are furthermore unaccountable, because they're
> protected by
> First Amendment rights, freedom from search and seizure and so on, so
> you
> can't figure out what they're doing.
>
> After the Second World War, it was well understood in the business
world
> that
> they were going to have to have state coordination, subsidy, and a
kind
> of
> socialization of costs and risks. The only question was how to do
that.
> The
> method that was hit upon pretty quickly was the "Pentagon system"
> (including
> the DOE, AEC, NASA). These publicly-subsidized systems have been the
> core of
> the dynamic sectors of the American economy ever since (much the same
is
> true
> of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, etc., relying on different public
> sources).
> And that certainly leads right to Microsoft.
>
> So how does Microsoft achieve its enormous profits? Well, Bill Gates
is
> pretty
> frank about it. He says they do it by "embracing and extending" the
> ideas of
> others. They're based on computers, for example. Computers were
created
> at
> public expense and public initiative. In the 1950s when they were
being
> developed, it was about 100% public expense. The same is true of the
> Internet.
> The ideas, the initiatives, the software, the hardware -- these were
> created
> for about 30 years at public initiative and expense, and it's just now
> being
> handed over to guys like Bill Gates.
>
> CW: What are the social and cultural impacts of allowing, not only a
> monopoly,
> but even if it's just a few large corporations, dominating something
as
> basic
> as human speech, communication with each other?
>
> NC: It's a form of tyranny. But, that's the whole point of
> corporatization --
> to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate,
> to
> limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the
> fundamental
> decisions that determine how the world is going to be run -- which
> includes
> production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign
> policy,
> everything -- are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the
> hands of
> highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to
> the
> public. And there are various modalities for doing this. One is to
have
> the
> communication system, the so-called information system, in the hands
of
> a
> network of, fewer or more doesn't matter that much, private tyrannies.
>
> Let's take the media in the United States. These are corporate media,
> overwhelmingly. Even the so-called public media are not very
different.
> They
> are just huge corporations that sell audiences to advertisers in other
> businesses. And they're supposed to constitute the communications
> system. It's
> not complicated to figure out what's going to come out of this. That
> includes
> also the entertainment industries, so-called, the various modalities
for
> diverting people from the public arena, and so on.
>
> And there are new things happening all the time. Like right at this
> minute,
> there's a dramatic example, that's the Multilateral Agreement on
> Investment
> (MAI), which is supposed to be signed this month, but they're not
going
> to
> make it. The negotiations have been going on in secret for about three
> years.
> It's essentially a huge corporate power play, trying to give
"investors"
> --
> that doesn't mean the guy working on the shop floor, it means the
board
> of
> directors of GE, of Merrill Lynch, and so on -- to give investors
> extraordinary rights. That's being done in secret because the people
> involved,
> which is the whole business community incidentally, know that the
public
> is
> going to hate it. So therefore the media are keeping it secret. And
it's
> an
> astonishing feat for three years to keep quiet about what everyone
knows
> to be
> a major set of decisions, which are going to lock countries into
certain
> arrangements. It'll prevent public policy. Now you can argue that it's
a
> good
> thing, a bad thing, you can argue what you like, but there's no doubt
> about
> how the public is going to react, and there's no doubt about the fact
> that the
> media, which have been well aware of this from the beginning have
> succeeded in
> virtually not mentioning it.
>
> CW: How would a company like Microsoft benefit from the MAI?
>
> NC: They could move capital freely. They could invest it where they
> like.
> There would be no restrictions on anything they do. A country, or a
> town, like
> say, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I live, where I work, could not
> impose
> conditions on consumer protection, environmental control, investment
and
> set-
> asides for minorities or women, you name it, that would be ruled out.
>
> Now exactly how far this would go depends on the disposition to
enforce
> it.
> These things are not determined by words. There's nothing in the
> Constitution,
> or the amendments to the Constitution, which allows private tyrannies
to
> have
> the right to personhood. It's just power, not the wording. What the
MAI
> would
> mean in practice depends on what the power relations are, like whether
> people
> object to it so strenuously they won't allow it to happen, maybe by
> riots, or
> whatever. So those are the terms that they're going to try to impose.
>
> A crucial element of this is what they call the ratchet effect; that
is
> existing legislation is to be allowed, but it has to be removed over
> time. It
> has to be rolled back, and no new legislation can be introduced
> conflicting
> with the rights of Microsoft to do anything they like in the
> international
> arena, or domestically. Well over time that's supposed to have a
ratchet
> effect, to turn the world over more and more in the hands of the major
> private
> tyrannies, like Microsoft, with their alliances and interactions.
>
> CW: Economist Brian Arthur argues that with the rapidly changing
nature
> of
> technology, no one will remain in a monopoly position for long, so
that
> monopoly power in the technology industries is different than what
we've
> historically seen, and is nothing to worry about.
>
> NC: But there never was monopoly power; or there very rarely was
> monopoly
> power. Take highly concentrated power systems, like the energy
> industries. But
> they're not strictly speaking monopolies. Shell and Exxon are
> competitors.
> This is a highly managed system of market administration, with
enormous
> state
> power entering in the interests of a small collection of private
> tyrannies.
>
> It's very rare to find a real monopoly. AT&T was a monopoly for a
time,
> that's
> why it could create things like the transistor, for example. It was a
> monopoly, so therefore they could charge high rates. But that's
> certainly
> unusual.
>
> CW: Do you think the whole monopoly issue is something to be concerned
> about?
>
> NC: These are oligopolies; they are small groups of highly
concentrated
> power
> systems which are integrated with one another. If one of them were to
> get
> total control of some system, other powers probably wouldn't allow it.
> In
> fact, that's what you're seeing.
>
> CW: So, you don't think Bill Gates is a latter-day John D.
Rockefeller?
>
> NC: John D. Rockefeller wasn't a monopolist. Standard Oil didn't run
the
> whole
> industry; they tried. But other power centers simply don't want to
allow
> that
> amount of power to one of them.
>
> CW: Then in fact, maybe there is a parallel there between Gates and
> Rockefeller, or not?
>
> NC: Think of the feudal system. You had kings and princes and bishops
> and
> lords and so on. They for the most part did not want power to be
totally
> concentrated, they didn't want total tyrants. They each had their
> fiefdoms
> they wanted to maintain in a system of highly concentrated power. They
> just
> wanted to make sure the population, the rabble so-called, wouldn't be
> part of
> it. It's for this reason the question of monopoly -- I don't want to
say
> it's
> not important -- but it's by no means the core of the issue.
>
> It is indeed unlikely that any pure monopoly could be sustained.
> Remember that
> this changing technology that they're talking about is overwhelmingly
> technology that's developed at public initiative and public expense.
> Like the
> Internet after all, 30 years of development by the public then handed
> over to
> private power. That's market capitalism.
>
> CW: How has that transfer from the public to the private sphere
changed
> the
> Internet?
>
> NC: As long as the Internet was under control of the Pentagon, it was
> free.
> People could use it freely [for] information sharing. That remained
true
> when
> it stayed within the state sector of the National Science Foundation.
>
> As late as about 1994, people like say, Bill Gates, had no interest in
> the
> Internet. He wouldn't even go to conferences about it, because he
didn't
> see a
> way to make a profit from it. Now it's being handed over to private
> corporations, and they tell you pretty much what they want to do. They
> want to
> take large parts of the Internet and cut it out of the public domain
> altogether, turn it into intranets, which are fenced off with
firewalls,
> and
> used simply for internal corporate operations.
>
> They want to control access, and that's a large part of Microsoft's
> efforts:
> control access in such a way that people who access the Internet will
be
> guided to things that *they* want, like home marketing service, or
> diversion,
> or something or other. If you really know exactly what you want to
find,
> and
> have enough information and energy, you may be able to find what you
> want. But
> they want to make that as difficult as possible. And that's perfectly
> natural.
> If you were on the board of directors of Microsoft, sure, that's what
> you'd
> try to do.
>
> Well, you know, these things don't *have* to happen. The public
> institution
> created a public entity which can be kept under public control. But
> that's
> going to mean a lot of hard work at every level, from Congress down to
> local
> organizations, unions, other citizens' groups which will struggle
> against it
> in all the usual ways.
>
> CW: What would it look like if it were under public control?
>
> NC: It would look like it did before, except much more accessible
> because more
> people would have access to it. And with no constraints. People could
> just use
> it freely. That has been done, as long as it was in the public domain.
> It
> wasn't perfect, but it had more or less the right kind of structure.
> That's
> what Microsoft and others want to destroy.
>
> CW: And when you say that, you're referring to the Internet as it was
15
> years
> ago.
>
> NC: We're specifically talking about the Internet. But more generally
> the
> media has for most of this century, and increasingly in recent years,
> been
> under corporate power. But that's not always been the case. It doesn't
> have to
> be the case. We don't have to go back very far to find differences. As
> recently as the 1950s, there were about 800 labor newspapers reaching
> 20-30
> million people a week, with a very different point of view. You go
back
> further, the community-based and labor-based and other media were
> basically on
> par with the corporate media early in this century. These are not laws
> of
> nature, they're just the results of high concentration of power
granted
> by the
> state through judicial activism and other private pressure, which can
be
> reversed and overcome.
>
> CW: So take the increasing concentration in the technology that we're
> looking
> at with Microsoft and some of these other companies, and compare it
with
> recent mergers in the defense, media, insurance, and banking
industries,
> and
> especially the context of globalization. Are we looking at a new stage
> in
> global capitalism, or is this just a continuation of business as
usual?
>
> NC: By gross measures, contemporary globalization is bringing the
world
> back
> to what it was about a century ago. In the early part of the century,
> under
> basically British domination and the gold standard, if you look at the
> amount
> of trade, and then the financial flow, and so on, relative to the size
> of the
> economy, we're pretty much returning to that now, after a decline
> between the
> two World Wars.
>
> Now there are some differences. For example, the speed of financial
> transactions has been much enhanced in the last 25 years through the
> so-called
> telecommunications revolution, which was a revolution largely within
the
> state
> sector. Most of the system was designed, developed, and maintained at
> public
> expense, then handed over to private profit.
>
> State actions also broke down the post-war international economic
> system, the
> Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. It was dismantled by Richard
> Nixon,
> with US and British initiative primarily. The system of regulation of
> capital
> flows was dismantled, and that, along with the state-initiated
> telecommunications revolution led to an enormous explosion of
> speculative
> capital flow, which is now well over a trillion dollars a day, and is
> mostly
> non-productive. If you go back to around 1970, international capital
> flows
> were about 90% related to the real economy, like trade and investment.
> By now,
> at most a few percent are related to the real economy. Most have to do
> with
> financial manipulations, speculations against currencies, things which
> are
> really destructive to the economy. And that is a change that wasn't
> true, not
> only wasn't true 100 years ago, it wasn't true 40 years ago. So there
> are
> changes. And you can see their effects.
>
> That's surely part of the reason for the fact that the recent period,
> the last
> 25 years, has been a period of unusually slow economic growth, of low
> productivity growth, of stagnation or decline of wages and incomes for
> probably two thirds of the population, even in a rich country like
this.
> And
> enormously high profits for a very small part of the population. And
> it's
> worse in the Third World.
>
> You can read in the New York Times, the lead article in the "Week in
> Review"
> yesterday, Sunday, April 12, that America is prospering and happy. And
> you
> look at the Americans they're talking about, it turns out it's not the
> roughly
> two thirds of the population whose incomes are stagnating or
declining,
> it's
> the people who own stock. So, ok, they're undoubtedly doing great,
> except that
> about 1% of households have about 50% of the stock, and it's roughly
the
> same
> with other assets. Most of the rest is owned by the top 10% of the
> population.
> So sure, America is happy, and America is prosperous, if America means
> what
> the New York Times means by it. They're the narrow set of elites that
> they
> speak for and to.
>
> CW: We are curious about this potential for many-to-many
communications,
> and
> the fact that software, as a way of doing things carries cultural
> values, and
> impacts language and perception. And what kind of impacts there are
> around
> having technology being developed by corporations such as Microsoft.
>
> NC: I don't think there's really any answer to that. It depends who's
> participating, who's active, who's influencing the direction of
things,
> and so
> on. If it's being influenced and controlled by the Disney Corporation
> and
> others it will reflect their interests. If there is largely public
> initiative,
> then it will reflect public interests.
>
> CW: So it gets back to the question of taking it back.
>
> NC: That's the question. Ultimately it's a question of whether
> democracy's
> going to be allowed to exist, and to what extent. And it's entirely
> natural
> that the business world, along with the state, which they largely
> dominate,
> would want to limit democracy. It threatens them. It always has been
> threatening. That's why we have a huge public relations industry
> dedicated to,
> as they put it, controlling the public mind.
>
> CW: What kinds of things can people do to try to expand and reclaim
> democracy
> and the public space from corporations?
>
> NC: Well, the first thing they have to do is find out what's happening
> to
> them. So if you have none of that information, you can't do much. For
> example,
> it's impossible to oppose, say, the Multilateral Agreement on
> Investment, if
> you don't know it exists. That's the point of the secrecy. You can't
> oppose
> the specific form of globalization that's taking place, unless you
> understand
> it. You'd have to not only read the headlines which say market
economy's
> triumphed, but you also have to read Alan Greenspan, the head of the
> Federal
> Reserve, when he's talking internally; when he says, look the health
of
> the
> economy depends on a wonderful achievement that we've brought about,
> namely
> "worker insecurity." That's his term. Worker insecurity--that is not
> knowing
> if you're going to have a job tomorrow. It is a great boon for the
> health of
> the economy because it keeps wages down. It's great: it keeps profits
up
> and
> wages down.
>
> Well, unless people know those things, they can't do much about them.
So
> the
> first thing that has to be done is to create for ourselves, for the
> population, systems of interchange, interaction, and so on. Like
> Corporate
> Watch, Public Citizen, other popular groupings, which provide to the
> public
> the kinds of information and understanding, that they won't otherwise
> have.
> After that they have to struggle against it, in lots of ways which are
> open to
> them. It can be done right through pressure on Congress, or
> demonstrations, or
> creation of alternative institutions. And it should aim, in my
opinion,
> not
> just at narrow questions, like preventing monopoly, but also at deeper
> questions, like why do private tyrannies have rights altogether?
>
> CW: What do you think about the potential of all the alternative media
> that's
> burgeoning on the Internet, given the current trends?
>
> NC: That's a matter for action, not for speculation. It's like asking
40
> years
> ago what's the likelihood that we'd have a minimal health care system
> like
> Medicare? These things happen if people struggle for them. The
business
> world,
> Microsoft, they're highly class conscious. They're basically vulgar
> marxists,
> who see themselves engaged in a bitter class struggle. Of course
they're
> always going to be at it. The question is whether they have that field
> to
> themselves. And the deeper question is whether they should be allowed
to
> participate; I don't think they should.
>