A professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, Noam Chomsky has contributed to a veritable revolution in linguistics theory. Chomsky's writings have played an important role in American social change movements, providing information often unavailable from conventional sources. David Finkel recently spoke by telephone with Chomsky at his home outside of Boston. There's nothing remotely like capitalism in existence. To the extent there ever was, it had disappeared by the 1920s or '30s.
Every industrial society is one form or another of state capitalism.
Well, what happened in the last 10-15 years is that capitalism underwent an enormous, murderously destructive catastrophe. There was a serious international crisis around 1980. The rest of the world didn't pull out, especially in the Third World. There was a very serious crisis, amounting to catastrophe, in Africa, parts of Asia within the Western system and Latin America. That's what's called the crisis of the South, and it's a catastrophe of capitalism.