Noam Chomsky Blasts GOP For Waging War vs U.S. Workers

Noam Chomsky has criticized the GOP for worsening class inequality in the US, transforming itself into the exact opposite of the party of Abraham Lincoln that ended slavery as it has become an anti-democratic and proto-fascist organization that bludgeons workers and pampers billionaires.

Photo Insert: The GOP is worsening class inequality in the US.

In an interview with C.J. Polychroniou of Truthout, Chomsky, author of 150 books and institute professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT and laureate professor of linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona, stressed that “what is unfolding before our eyes is a kind of classical tragedy, the grim conclusion foreordained, the march toward it seemingly inexorable.

The origins are deep in the history of a society that has been free and bountiful for the privileged, awful for those who were in the way or cast aside.”

In his classic study, “The Fall of the House of Labor,” historian David Montgomery wrote that in the 1920s “corporate mastery of American life seemed secure.… Rationalization of business could then proceed with indispensable government support.” Inequality was soaring, along with corruption and greed.

The vibrant labor movement had been crushed by Woodrow Wilson’s Red Scare, after decades of violent repression.

“Modern America had been created over its workers’ protests,” Montgomery continued, “even though every step in its formation had been influenced by the activities, organizations, and proposals that had sprung from working class life.”

Chomsky said that In the late 19th century, it seemed possible that the Knights of Labor, with its demand that those who work in the mills should own them, might link up with the radical farmers movement, the Populists, who were seeking a “cooperative commonwealth” that would free farmers from the tyranny of northeastern bankers and market managers.

That could have led to a very different America. But it could not withstand state-corporate repression and violence. A few years after the fall of the house of labor came the Great Depression.

The labor movement revived and expanded, moving to large-scale industrial organization and militant actions.

Crucially, there was a sympathetic administration and a lively and often radical political environment. All of this laid the basis for the New Deal reforms that enormously improved American life and had repercussions on European social democracy.

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