from 'language and freedom'...

predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. it is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century. it is incapable of meeting human needs that can be expressed only in collective terms, and its concept of competitive man who seeks only to maximize wealth and power, who subjects himself to market relationships, to exploitation and external authority, is antihuman and intolerable in the deepest sense. an autocratic state is no acceptable substitute; nor can the militarized state capitalism evolving in the united states or the bureaucratized, centralized welfare state be accepted as the goal of human existence. the only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. but such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival. modern science and technology can relieve people of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. they may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.  //  chomsky