Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order

This man in brilliant, love the writing style. Even for a new be like me in this topic, this book was an easy and entraining read. I was not expecting to be laughing while reading. Profit over people is eye opening, and extremely well written. I highly suggest it.

Dear readers,
hello and this is my ffirst of Chomsky's books which I have read.

I find the material interesting and provocative. Unfortunately their are numerous spelling errors and citations are not well handled - admittedly Chomsky alerts us to this early on in the book.

I will certainly read other books written by him.

Happy reading,

John Barnes,
Bangkok, Thailand

Of course I highly value this author's perspective, and integrate his ideas into my course lectures, but as a college instructor, I was irritated at the number of typographical errors that appeared about every 5th page. I felt as though I needed a red pen handy when I was reading it.

I am Japanese living in Japan, and read this great work.
Everyone who has more than a little interest in economics or politics should read this Chomsky's great book.
Hope more and more people read his books and world to change into better place.

Noam Chomsky is a very intelligent man. Whether or not you agree with his political views, you must respect him. He actually stands for something, so much so, that he was willing to risk his academic career for it.

This book is a collection of articles by Chomsky discussing various injustices committed by the champions of Neoliberalism. Unfortunately for the reader, that is all it is. Don't get me wrong, I share Chomsky's penchant for idealism, however I also do realize that we live in this place called REALITY. Complaining about the moral grievances caused by the latest governing global order is fine so long as you provide alternatives. That is not found in this book.

What's more, it is clear from reading the book that Chomsky takes a very black and white approach towards ethics. That is fine when you are an academic or activist. However, I would venture it works a little differently when you have a barrage of screaming constituents whom you are tasked with appeasing. Then, you choose to bomb Iraq for the sake of stabilizing oil so that the Miller's can stumble over to the nearest Chevron and tank their Explorer without so much as breaking a sweat. Heck, they'll probably have enough saved afterward to wine and dine at the nearest Outback. The system only exists, when people like them believe it does. This is what we call democracy in this country.

Society is nothing more than a function of its mean constituent and progressing that forward takes A LOT of time and effort. Effort from the right to provide liberty and the left to provide equality, for you cannot have real progress without either. Chomsky can denounce Neoliberalism, but in doing so he would also denounce all of the progress it has provided. We live in one of the most peaceful times in human history, our purchasing power has increased like seven fold over the last few hundred years, and we statistically can expect to live longer than our previous ancestors. What's more, for the first time ever, world hunger seems like a solvable issue. There have obviously been some miscues over the last few decades. Americans have a reason to be unhappy. And whether Neoliberalism as a belief system has legs, has yet to be seen. We are venturing into uncharted territory here. But to denounce it entirely is foolish.

In the end, I think the intent of this book is mainly to "stir the pot" a little bit. Get the reader to step a little outside their comfort zone and realize that not everything is candy and cupcakes. It is a call for collective action for justice, for those that feel it is missing. A pamphlet calling for change, if you will. The book however, did not really alter my views on anything. It did not provide me with anything I did not already know, beyond some factual tid-bits, and for that reason I must give it three stars.

I was hoping that this book consisted of critical factual sociocultural data, but instead it consisted of a pseudo scientific social "analysis," (the "washington consensus" and the "Japanese Miracle"?). It was difficult to read through given the errors in historical content and the spotty wording when addressing very well known and highly studied global events.

This book is not worth the money or time.

Neoliberal initiatives in the U.S. are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic and parasitic government that can never do good even if well-intended, which it rarely is. These claims are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling social welfare programs. The free market is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services, as well as a service for the poor, the environment, and everybody else. The results have been an unstable global economy and unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy. Defenders claim the spoils of the good life invariably spread to the broad mass of the population.

Neoliberal Milton Friedman contends that any government that pursues anti-market policies is being antidemocratic, because profit-making is the essence of democracy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to protecting private property and enforcing contracts. Resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces. Thus, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society.

Large corporations in America have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and they do exactly that. The richest one-quarter of 1% of Americans make 80% of all individual political contributions and corporations outspend labor by a margin of 10:1. Neoliberalism produces consumers instead of citizens, shopping malls instead of communities.

As Washington prepared to overthrow Guatemala's first democratic government in 1954, a State Department official warned that Guatemala had 'become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. It's agrarian reform and broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors.'

In 1971, 90% of international financial transactions were related to the real economy, and 10% were speculative. By 1995 about 95% of vastly greater sums were speculative, and about 80% with round trips of a week or less.

The only study of the topic that Chomsky is aware of concluded that 'Pentagon expenditures amount to a subsidy of 30% of the market price of oil.'

Japan's programs of economic development post-WWII rejected U.S. advisers' neoliberal doctrines, instead choosing an industrial policy that assigned a predominant role to the state. Market mechanisms were gradually introduced by the state and industrial-financial conglomerates as prospects for commercial success increased. With virtually no resource base, Japan nonetheless became the world's biggest manufacturing economy by the 1990s and the world's leading source of foreign investment, as well as accounting for half the world's net savings and financing U.S. deficits. The same happened in Japan's former colonies - eg. Taiwan, South Korea, and then China. Meanwhile, U.S. officials advertised Taiwan as a private enterprise success story.

The subsequent Asian crisis in 1997 was seen by Nobel-winning Stiglitz as possibly the result of departing from their former strategies to more closely track the Washington Consensus. During the same time period, Latin American nations were much less successful, with the exception of Chile - with nationalized its copper firms. Britain's initial successes (iron and steel, textiles) in the Industrial Revolution were kept out of the U.S. by high tariffs - fortunately, India's colonial status prevented it from closing off that market to Britain. Eventually England shut itself off from Japanese steel imports, but forbade India from doing so. Same vs. Egypt.

Marshall Plan aid was tied to purchase of U.S. agricultural products, part of the reason the U.S. share in world grain trade increased from less than 10% prior to WWII to more than half by 1950, while Argentine exports fell two-thirds. This also undercut Columbia's wheat growing, setting the foundation for its subsequent growth of the drug industry. Kenya's textile industry collapsed in 1994 when the Clinton administration imposed a quota, barring its following the path to development followed by every industrial country. The rationale - Washington's demand that they make more progress in 'sealing in free-market reforms.'

Reagan, while extolling the glories of the market to the poor presided over the greatest swing towards protectionism since the 1930s, per Foreign Affairs.

Adam Smith's praise of division of labor is well known, but not his denunciation of its effects which turn working people into objects 'as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to be' - something that must be prevented 'in every improved and civilized society' by government action to overcome the destructive force of the 'invisible hand.'

More than 80% of the public think government is 'run for the benefit of the few and the special interests, not the people,' up from about 50% in prior years. And by almost 20:1, the public believes corporations 'should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities.'

Today, the U.S. exports its free-market values through trade agreements.

Here comes another fascinating compilation of clarifications courtesy of Noam Chomsky. Focusing on the topic of Neoliberalism and the modern yarns fabricated to promote it, Chomsky tirelessly demonstrates how countries demanding trade 'liberalization' today, underwent (and still do) 150 years of protectionism. How same countries deploy artificial barriers and legitimize their tariffs via a compliant business and media elite.
The book discusses the dejected citizenry, the dangers this poses to real democracy and how governments methodically accentuate this trend.
Chomsky exhorts the reader to participate in democracy as the only way to rescue it and details how America has been derailed into a kind of oligopoly of corporations due to the population's ignorance and non-participation.
As is often the case with Chomsky, moments of unintended hilarity are not in short supply either. One example sites how what is accepted and given wisdom in America regarding Cuba, would have "forty million Mexicans will die laughing" according to one Mexican diplomat.
The book does suggest ways for people to improve themselves, yet falls short on detail and lucidity.
As a post script and for the sake of readers trapped in the pits (geographic and mental) let it be known that Noam Chomsky refuses royalty for his books. Having placed his work in trust, he hopes that, in this way, his work will be made available more cheaply to readers.

Has some devestating, well-argued and well-documented arguments against free market capitalism, and the level of violence, imperialism, poverty and exploitation that runs with this. Also good in articulating some of the grounds for confidence in challenging this, rather than merely casting doomsday scenarios. However, suffers from the classic structural problem of being a collection of shorter articles joined into one book, which causes a lot of redundnacy and a focus that's over-focused at points.

Since Noam Chomsky is ignored by the mainstream media, the best way to communicate with the public is by writing such books. And he is excellent in doing so.
The book deals with the neoliberal order, since its predominance from and during the Reagan-Thatcher era.
The book informs the public the following:
a) Corporate control over the Government and the media.
b) The Governement control over its population by spreading falsified notions about democracy, capitalism and freedom.
c) The author informs and reasons out that capitalism and democracy don't work hand-in-hand. Infact one is an anti-thesis to another.
This book is for creating awareness among the public.

Everyone else has praised his work already so I'll just add this...

Too much of anything is bad for you. Unfettered capitalism is one of them. Neoliberalism is fed to us as a "freedom" but it enslaves us to a consumer culture. And it is works such as this that reels me in

PLATO BELIEVED IN PHILOSOPHER KINGS , THE WISE FEW RULING THE FOOLISH MANY, IMAGINE KING ALBERT AND KING NOAM TAKING CHARGE OF THIS DESPERATELY EVIL PLACE, AS THEY PUT TRUTH AND SIMPLE KINDNESS ABOVE ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS. LEST I SOUND SEXIST LET'S MAKE AMY GOODMAN THE QUEEN.

Chomsky's Profit Over People is an insighful and at times shocking analysis of the true motives and practices of multinational corporations and the governement economic policies they operate within. Chomsky spares no time in hammering his message against the concentration of power in the hands of the few through the use of several detailed case studies. As a student of economics and finance at Oklahoma State University, this book caused me to step back and question the very foundation of Smith's free market theory which has comprised my studies thus far. As a reader, I became disgusted by the prospect of private interests having the ability to manipulate the world economy, government policy, and the subposively "free" press to serve their own greed-driven interests while watching the masses suffer.

Although this book succeeded tremendously in causing me to question my own assumptions and encouraged me to stand for a change, it left me wondering how to go about doing so. I feel the book could be strengthened tremendously if Chomsky had included a true conclusion in which he provides a means for change to compliment his call to arms.

This is an excellent book. It provides the reader with a very good understanding of what goes on when business and governments meet behind closed doors. Furthermore he explains the current state of affairs whereby trade regulations negotiated behind closed doors between governments and corporate establishments undermine democracy and give unprecedented leverage to big business. Such regulations are being rubber stamped by elected representatives in parliamentary democracies. Chomsky has a message of hope for all those who are willing to fight to change the status quo.

Chomsky's "Profit over People" is a careful and thought provoking (not to mention exhaustive) examination of the ultimate goals of the world of private business: profit, power, and the maintance of the status quo and the class system at any cost. If that cost is to be paid in human lives and soles, (as in East Timor and elsewhere); so be it. Of particular interest in this work by Chomsky are the sections in which he examines the recent changes from 'real' business, viz., business linked to production etc., to modern 'speculative' business, i.e, gamblers buying and selling foreign currencies etc., and the effect this has had (and will continue to have) on a global economy obsessed with nothing but profit, profit, and more profit.
Do yourself a favour and read this book. Forget Clancy, Archer, etc. That's released on to the market simply to distract the peasants of society (i.e. non-millionaires). Read instead Chomsky, Herman, Orwell, Wells, Said, Huxley, et al. Gain an insight into how much harm we, as citizens of democratic societies, are inflicting on the Third World. In addition, ponder on why you have not seen this (or any other) book by Chomsky reviewed in the main stream press. If Professor Chomsky's observations and views are as easy to dismiss as his critics would have us believe, why don't they?

Despite its leaden prose, "Profit Over People" succeeds in giving a stark picture of how our government's economic policy (especially with regard to "free trade" agreements) is crafted to suit the interests of the profiteers, no matter how much it may hurt the general population. This book is, in the typical Chomsky style, exceedingly well documented.
There has been tons of balderdash written about Chomsky by persons who rarely let Chomsky or his supporters respond to it. If you're serious about finding out its truthfullness, read Chomsky at first hand. I would suggest easier to read books like "Dettering Democracy" or even "World Orders Old And New."

My first problem with this book is the poor editing. When there are typos in every chapter, it's hard for me to focus on the content because I'm wondering why a big-pimpin' academic from MIT, and a linguist, doesn't have better editorial staff. Second, I didn't realize this was a collection of previously published articles. That isn't a problem, in and of itself, but the book doesn't flow. Yeah, I said "flow." The writing is disjointed and the chapters seem to repeat certain information, and then bring up other information without a logical segue. He bounces the reader around in history from Reagan to the American Revolution, and then to Clinton, and back to Wilson. It's frustrating because half the time I have no idea where he is speaking from. Honestly, I think Noam Chomsky is smoking a lot of pot when he's writing. I'm not judging. But as a sober, reasonably literate person, I find it hard to follow his line of reasoning.
Also, my buddy Noam spends way too much time quoting other people. Most of the book is comprised of what so-and-so said about such-and-such. Quotes are great, but they're not meant to compose the breadth of the book. Noam-dog needs to spend a little more time summarizing this shizzle, and getting to the point. The good news is, it shows the subject is well-researched. But you don't just drop an acronym in the middle of a paragraph and then walk away like you're too badass to explain yourself. Or maybe you do at MIT. I wouldn't know, I went to SF State. If I busted out a fancy acronym my professors made me explain it, for fear I was using low-brow internet jargon. This is a great book if you want to spend the majority of your time on Wikipedia trying to figure out what the hell is going on. But since I do most of my reading at my s***ty, minimum wage, gas station job, internet access is kind of a no-go. The unfortunate thing is, the subject material is too pertinent to be so hard to decipher. I know I'm going to irritate a bunch of snobs when I say this, but if you can't explain s*** simply, then maybe you don't understand it that well.... or even worse, maybe you don't have time to write a book, so you just republish stuff you've already written without any context.

Short published articles by Noam, usually as South American pamphlets or leftist newspaper articles. Easy to read and to the point, quicker to get though than the comprehensive Understanding Power. A good short Chomsky to introduce his most important concepts. A good first Chomsky too see if you want more.

I love Chomsky but most people aren't familiar with the term "neoliberalism" and its "Free Market" connotation...it sounds as if he is attacking Liberals to the uninformed. I'm sure those the majority of those who are wise enough to read his works will know the difference but I worry his terminology will turn people away as it is a bit outmoded and misleading in my opinion...

In this polemic Chomsky attacks `neo-liberalism' in international political economy. To that effect, he damns every supranational economic organisation and agreement that he can think of (the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, NAFTA, MAI etc.), charging them with being the agents or instruments of US multinational corporations intent on pillaging the Third World, despoiling the environment, and various other sins. The book is not so much an argument as an expostulation; and it is undermined at almost every turn by extravagant rhetoric and weak reasoning.
International political economy is - like all economics - a discipline about trade-offs and the assessment of costs and benefits. There are various criticisms that can plausibly be levelled at all of the bodies or treaties that Chomsky fulminates against, but it is important in formulating them to have a mind to what these institutions or agreements are designed for. To put mildly, the targets Chomsky denounces are not the same thing and do not pursue the same ends. It serves no purpose and does violence to critical inquiry merely to denounce them all as agents of US big business and of free-market fanaticism. The IMF, for example - a prime villain in Chomsky's account - has received much criticism from the school of free market economists that Chomsky believes it represents. These economists (see, for example, Money and the Nation State, edited by Kevin Dowd & Richard Timberlake, and published by the libertarian Independent Institute in 1998) charge the IMF with creating `moral hazard' in international lending, and wish to see the institution abolished. A different view, which I hold, is that the IMF performs a valuable service in allowing troubled economies a breathing space to sort out their difficulties, as was clearly the case with the `tequila crisis' in Mexico in 1994-5, and in fact ought to be more active in its prescriptions than it has been - consider the case of Argentina's ruinous currency peg, which the IMF was highly sceptical of and ought to have stood out against. There is room for discussion and disagreement about how far the IMF should loosen conditionality for its loans (and I am something of a dove in this respect), but these are inevitable debates about how to make effective a necessary and valuable part of the global economy.
Similarly, the World Trade Organisation has nothing whatever to do with free-market fundamentalism or US big business: it is neither more nor less than a commercial court that tries to eliminate discrimination on grounds of nationality. It is a thoroughly progressive institution whose effectiveness is greatly in the interests of the developing world, as evidenced by its first major ruling when it upheld Venezuela's complaint against a US levy on foreign petroleum producers. The World Bank, which under its current management - much to my regret - has veered very far from the cause of globalisation, went to immense lengths to support Third World socialist projects (such as the `ujaama' projects of President Nyerere's Tanzania), with extremely bad results for the impoverished peoples of the countries concerned.
To subsume these differing institutions, aims and approaches into a catch-all damnation of the machinations of big business is neither a profound nor a reliable guide to the modern global economy. Quite how Chomsky reaches his conclusions is of some interest, however, for it indicates quite a lot about the economic reasoning of the anti-globalisation movement. In short, Chomsky just hasn't acquainted himself with the normative arguments and positive findings of those he attacks; this is just not good enough in a book that aims to scrutinise the global economic order, for economics is a rigorously technical and empirical discipline, and not a matter of opinion. I give just two instances if the book's deficiencies in this respect, but they could be multiplied at great length.
Chomsky attacks the advocates of NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Agreement, for supposedly claiming the it would create jobs. In this, Chomsky has just not understood the point - a very fundamental one - about trade. The basic Ricardian argument for trade does not depend on its effect on aggregate employment (which is virtually unaffected by trade: what matters in the short run is the level of aggregate demand, and in the long run is the so-called NAIRU, or Non-Accelerating-Inflation Rate of Unemployment); trade raises not employment but living standards. The chronic poverty that has afflicted Third World nations like Tanzania under a policy of 'self-reliance' demonstrates the point.
My second instance of the weakness of this book's treatment of economics is Chomsky's throwaway reference to William Greider's anti-globalisation polemic One World, Ready or Not. The Greider thesis that Chomsky has latched on to is that there is excess supply in the global economy owing to workers' not receiving enough to buy the goods capitalism produces. This claim is absolutely untenable in theory and in practice: wages are not set abstractly, but are pinned to the marginal product of labour. To put it simply, an additional dollar of output must represent an additional dollar of income to someone. The only way the `excess supply' nostrum could hold is if you claim that the additional dollar of income goes to someone with a higher marginal propensity to save - and that conclusion requires a study of the facts. This book doesn't trouble with the facts, which are that savings rates in most industrial economies have been falling for years, while in the developing countries they have been growing less quickly than investment demand.
Enough already. Chomsky is not an international economist, and his book is depressingly short on empirical research and economic logic. Indeed the book is almost a logical fallacy itself, for it exemplifies the anthropomorphic fallacy that one may attribute personality - in this case a wicked and grasping avarice - to an abstraction, namely the `capitalist system'. At any rate, it is a poor book that does nothing to enhance its author's reputation in his chosen personal interest - far from his specialist field - of politics and economics.

This book is a compilation of articles from the late 1990s and as such now seems a little dated. In addition the individual articles although containing little kernels of brilliance are often incoherent as a whole and lack attention to detail. What about the post-millenium world?

Chomsky is doing us a disservice by perpetuating false ideas that make it difficult to understand what is really going on. The lines are not where Chomsky draws them.

To clear up the confusion and get a sounder feel for the forces at play, there are books such as Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty or Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable (also at mises.org)