A Quote by Noam Chomsky

They [unions] used straight Marxist rhetoric [in 1930s] - just the values were changed. — © Noam Chomsky
They [unions] used straight Marxist rhetoric [in 1930s] - just the values were changed.
When the New Deal programs were passed in the mid 1930s, millions of workers were joining unions, striking, and occupying factories to fight for a better life. It was this radical labor movement that forced the establishment to make concessions.
One good reason for the popularity of "reductionism" among the philosophical outposts of the Western Establishment is that it can be, and is, used as a device for trying to take the wind, so to speak, out of the sails of Marxism. . . . In essence reductionism is a kind of anti-Marxist caricature of Marxist determinism. It is what anti-Marxists pretend that Marxist determinism is.
CREATIVITY first of all aims to achieve a REVOLUTION OF VALUES THROUGH RELIGION, therefore it completely and categorically rejects the Judeo-Christian-democratic-Marxist-liberal-feminist values of today and supplants them with new and basic values of which RACE IS THE FOUNDATION.
One question is: Who is the working class today, and how has it changed? Where are we in that? I don't have a knee-jerk kind of 1930s thing about we must build the unions and that's the way to the future. I'm writing this book right now called Pallin' Around, and the subtitle is: "Talking to the Tea Party." And frankly I find talking to the Tea Party exhilarating, I love it.
I spent part of my college years in a Marxist commune. I was not a Marxist. I wasn't even pretending to be one. I was a Marxist-in-law.
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
It's strange because even in the vaudeville days, ventriloquists were never the main attraction. They were the guys brought out to stand in front of the curtain while sets were being changed. Ventriloquism wasn't even celebrated as an art until Edgar Bergen came along in the 1930s.
People keep saying I've changed. I used to be confrontational. But I'm - I haven't changed. It was - it's just that circumstances have changed.
You're used to seeing values listed on waiting-room walls. Communication, integrity, excellence, and respect. Those were actually Enron's values.
These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. The values that have inspired other dissidents under communist domination. They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.
Speaking as a human being, not as a businessman - the unions are great. The unions are great for the working people because they protect you, but I didn't see them that way as a young man. First of all, the papers would connect them with thee communists - labor unions were communists.
You know, when I was in college, there was a big debate: Do unions raise wages? Well, with regard to industrial unions, there were arguments back and forth -- international competition. It is now clear, I think, that whether or not you think unions raised wages 50 years ago, the absence of unions and their weakness that is inflicted by anti-union public policy depresses wages. The fact is that people who are not represented, in the service industries in particular, are the victims of policies which depress their wages.
Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.
Things have changed in Latin America now. We mostly have democratic governments in Latin America, so the position of the writer has changed. It is not as Neruda used to say, that a Latin American writer walks around with the body of his people on his back. Now, we have citizens, we have public means of expression, political parties, congress, unions. So, the writer's position has changed, we now consider ourselves to be citizens - not spokespeople for everybody - but citizens that participate in the political and social process of the country.
I used to get my hair dyed at a place called Big Hair. It cost $15. They just used straight bleach, so my hair was the color of white lined paper, and my eyebrows looked like they were done with a thick black marker.
As I, as a worker, came to know them, the aims of German trade unions were political, and there were a number of various trade unions with varied political views.
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