Noam Chomsky on The Ezra Klein Show | April 23 2021

Noam Chomsky on human nature, anarchism, Joe Biden, China, automation, the limits of class, the advertising industry, libertarianism, the degrowth movement, nuclear war, technological innovators, why he's a "conservative" on social change.

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How do you introduce Noam Chomsky? Perhaps you start here: In 1979, The New York Times called him “arguably the most important intellectual alive today.” More than 40 years later, Chomsky, at 92, is still putting his dent in the world — writing books, giving interviews, changing minds.

There are different sides to Chomsky. He’s a world-renowned linguist who revolutionized his field. He’s a political theorist who’s been a sharp critic of American foreign policy for decades. He’s an anarchist who believes in a radically different way of ordering society. He’s a pragmatist who pushed leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and has described himself as having a “rather conservative attitude towards social change.” He is, very much, himself.

The problem in planning a conversation with Chomsky is how to get at all these different sides. So this one covers a lot of ground. We discuss:

Why Chomsky is an anarchist, and how he defines anarchism
How his work on language informs his idea of what human beings want
The role of advertising in capitalism
Whether we should understand job contracts as the free market at work or a form of constant coercion
How Chomsky’s ideal vision of society differs from Nordic social democracy
How Chomsky’s class-based theory of politics holds up in an era where college-educated suburbanites are moving left on economics
Chomsky’s view of the climate crisis and why he thinks the “degrowth” movement is misguided
Whether job automation could actually be a good thing for human flourishing
Chomsky’s views on US-China policy, and why he doesn’t think China is a major geopolitical threat
The likelihood of nuclear war in the next decade
And much more.

References:

On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin

“Why the Amazon Workers Never Stood a Chance” by Erik Loomis

“Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018” by Carter C. Price and Kathryn A. Edwards

“This is What Minimum Wage Would Be If It Kept Pace with Productivity” by Dean Baker

“There is no Plan B for dealing with the climate crisis” by Raymond Pierrehumbert

Book recommendations:

The Last of the Just by Andre Schwarz-Bart

All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten

Selected essays by Ahad Ha'am

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Roge Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; edited by Jeff Geld.

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