by You Nuo and Zhang Zhouxiang
BEIJING, Aug. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- Almost two years into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, where is global capitalism heading? "A lot of people have asked me what I think about it," says Noam Chomsky. "Frankly, I don't have an answer." But one crisis will follow another if the existing economic system, in which predatory financial institutions gobble up more than 40 percent of the total profits, is not dismantled.
Chomsky is all of 82 years; a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist and prolific writer rolled into one. He was in Beijing to deliver a lecture on "Contour of world order: Changes and continuities" at Peking University, after which he shared his views on global issues with China Daily.
The economic crisis needs time to subside, and the search for its remedies could be overshadowed by two other crises threatening the world: nuclear proliferation and climate change. It is not possible for just a few intellectuals to tide over the crises, says the author of the famous essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". It needs the involvement of the greater body of the world population.
Known for his research in and radical criticism of capitalism, Chomsky says the collapse of the Bretton Woods system was the beginning of a change that led to the financialization of the economy. Large financial institutions were allowed to make profit greedily and create bubbles all over the world.
The change gave birth to "free market religion", or the belief in neo-liberal "market efficiency". This blind faith swept across the Western world, and made governments lose control of their economies. The result: "the regulatory system that had been established in the US in the 1930s, which was quite successful, was slowly dismantled under ideological pressure". That was the beginning of financial institutions' control over the economy.
