Chomsky and Globalisation (Postmodern Encounters)

Noam Chomsky, the 'Einstein of modern linguistics', is equally well- known as an uncompromising political dissident and social critic. This book summarises Chomsky's recently published views on Globalization and the New world Order. His position is an unusual one. Where Global Free Trade is today widely celebrated as a way to universal prosperity, and a means of allowing the indebted Third World to solve its economic problems, Chomsky see things very differently. For him, Free Trade is not 'free' at all, since the rich powers ignore its rules and subsidise their big companies. Only the impoverished Third World countries are obliged to obey the rules. Many get further in debt, fall into hands of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, see their schools and hospitals closed and their economies restructured to suit Western investment. Thus, on the unequal scales of the global economy, the favoured élites of Western and especially American societies must inevitably, grow richer, while the rest of the world could revert to the conditions of Blake's 'Dark Satanic Mills'. This is a clear, well-argued exposition of Chomsky's libertarian views on global economic hegemony, a central issue of the postmodern condition.