Noam Chomsky
Well,
our economic system “works,” it just works in the interests of the
masters, and I’d like to see one that works in the interests of the
general population. And that will only happen when they are the
“principal architects” of policy, to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase. I mean,
as long as power is narrowly concentrated, whether in the economic or
the political system, you know who’s going to benefit from the
policies-you don’t have to be a genius to figure that out. That’s why
democracy would be a good thing for the general public.
But of
course, achieving real democracy will require that the whole system of
corporate capitalism be completely dismantled-because it’s radically
anti-democratic. And that can’t be done by a stroke of the pen, you
know: you have to build up alternative popular institutions, which could
allow control over society’s investment decisions to be moved into the
hands of working people and communities. That’s a long job, it requires
building up an entire cultural and institutional basis for the changes,
it’s not something that’s just going to happen on its own. There are
people who have written about what such a system might look like-kind of
a “participatory economy,” it’s sometimes called.
But sure, that’s the way to go, I think.
Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky