3 Noam Chomsky Quotes on Institutions

Noam Chomsky quotes on institutions

9. The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

16. The World Bank is not the IMF. It is considerably more responsive to popular forces, and has a mixed history. A great deal of what it has done has been awful. Some is quite constructive. There has been a shift in policy in recent years towards poverty reduction, support for popular initiatives, etc., I think a response to very powerful popular currents around the world. In some cases I know of personally it has gone well beyond rhetoric. To what extent this is true is another matter. [...] Many of its projects are highly meritorious. Just to mention one example, where I happened to have some personal contact, there is a fine project in Colombia, directed by a very courageous priest who has been a leader in human rights activities for years, to try to carve out a 'zone of peace' in a huge area, about the size of El Salvador -- that is, an area in which towns and villages refuse to participate with any of the terrorist groups -- the military, paramilitary, the guerrillas -- and ask to be left alone by them and pursue their own social and economic projects in peace. That takes plenty of courage in Colombia. It has had some success. It relies heavily on World Bank grants. Do we want that terminated? Do we have some suggestion as to how to replace it?

176. No less insidious is the cry for 'revolution,' at a time when not even the germs of new institutions exist, let alone the moral and political consciousness that could lead to a basic modification of social life. If there will be a 'revolution' in America today, it will no doubt be a move towards some variety of fascism. We must guard against the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that would have had Karl Marx burn down the British Museum because it was merely part of a repressive society. It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better social order. One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression.