I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Chomsky claims free markets are not applied to powerful nations, which use state intervention to protect private interests instead.
- In plain terms
- Rich countries use government help for their businesses while forcing poor countries to follow free market rules.
- What can you take from it?
- Economic freedom often benefits the powerful while restricting others.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Who benefits from state intervention?
- Is free market discipline real?
Another view
The term free market is complex and used differently across contexts.
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