Noam Chomsky: Human Nature and Social Arrangements

April 15, 1997
Democracy and Human Rights, University of Minnesota
Noam Chomsky on Democracy and Human Rights (1997)
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Noam Chomsky - Social Arrangements and Human Nature
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Transcript:
Q: Given your take on human nature and on human history, would you say that elitism is an inevitable part of human society, and thus social stratification?
Noam Chomsky: It's inevitable in the same sense that pathological murder is inevitable. I mean, if you have social arrangements in which pathological murderers happen to be privileged, they'll end up running the place, you know. You have social arrangements in which sort of nice people are privileged, they'll end up running the place. I mean, human nature has everything in it. Every one of us, you know, could be a torturer or he could be a saint, you know. Probably. Everybody's got the same capacities, more or less. I mean, maybe there are some differences, but not fantastic. And you see people shift easily from one to another. It depends on how the social institutions are set up. And, you know, most of human history is an effort to try to kind of, with the same parts of the... to reorganize social arrangements and social institutions so that the pathological tendencies of human character, which are doubtless there, get suppressed and the more constructive ones come into play. I mean, the same is true in a family, you know. You think a child in a family, that you can set up arrangements in which one child will become a torturer to the next younger child, you know. Anybody who's a parent knows that. Or you can set up arrangements in which they are supportive and helpful, and so on, you know. Both the same character.

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