Profit Over People

What happens when a society decides that profit matters more than people? In Profit Over People, Noam Chomsky dissects the rise of neoliberalism—the political and economic ideology that promises freedom through markets while, in reality, concentrating power in the hands of a wealthy few. Chomsky argues that neoliberalism has redefined democracy and freedom into slogans that serve corporate power, producing a global system that exalts profit, privatization, and deregulation over human well-being, equality, and self-rule.

The Myth of the Free Market

At the heart of neoliberalism lies a seductive myth: that free markets and individual entrepreneurship naturally promote prosperity and liberty. Chomsky reveals this as an illusion maintained through sophisticated propaganda, from media institutions to academic ideology. In truth, he shows, what is called a “free market” is often a system of state-backed capitalism for the rich—a network of subsidies, trade protections, and bailout programs ensuring that corporations are shielded from risk while citizens bear the costs. Governments, Chomsky writes, do not retreat under neoliberalism; they are repurposed as servants of private power.

This inversion of values is not new. Citing Adam Smith’s observation that the architects of policy in eighteenth-century England were “merchants and manufacturers” who used the state to serve their own interests, Chomsky argues that neoliberalism represents the modern culmination of this same pattern: laws and global trade agreements written by and for corporate elites under the pretense of economic freedom.

From Democracy to Spectatorship

In theory, democracy grants citizens a voice in shaping collective life. In practice, neoliberalism has transformed democracy into a spectator sport. Chomsky echoes political theorists like Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays, who believed that the general public should be managed, not empowered. Through mass media control and political marketing, neoliberal societies manufacture what Chomsky calls “consent without consent” – the illusion that citizens freely choose policies designed by elites.

Low voter turnout, apathy toward public institutions, and corporate-driven political campaigns are not signs of democratic failure by accident; they are the desired outcomes of a system predicated on keeping the population disengaged. As Chomsky observes, “The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making power from the public arena to unaccountable institutions.” This is how neoliberalism undermines both political and cultural life, replacing communities with markets and citizens with consumers.

A Global System of Inequality

Chomsky places this critique in global context through case studies ranging from Latin America to Southeast Asia. He traces how the so-called “Washington Consensus”—a set of structural adjustment policies advocated by the IMF, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury—has forced poorer nations to liberalize trade, privatize assets, and eliminate social spending. These policies, presented as rational steps toward growth, in fact reproduce dependency and poverty: profits soar for international investors while local populations face dismantled public services and rising debt. The irony, Chomsky notes, is that every rich nation achieved its prosperity not through free markets but through protectionism, government planning, and public investment.

Resistance and Hope

Despite this grim portrait, Chomsky insists that people everywhere retain democratic potential. Movements like the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, union struggles, and grassroots activism demonstrate that ordinary citizens can defy “the logic of profit.” He argues that history’s major moral victories—civil rights, labor rights, the end of colonialism—came from organized resistance, not elite benevolence. For those asking whether alternatives exist, his answer is clear: freedom and democracy can only survive when people reclaim the power to shape their own lives, breaking the illusion that markets should dictate morality.

Chomsky opens his analysis by separating neoliberalism’s doctrine from its reality. While neoliberals invoke liberty and individualism, the actual system functions as a form of managed capitalism. The so-called “Washington Consensus”—dictated largely by U.S. policymakers and international financial institutions—promotes liberalization, privatization, and deregulation as universal recipes for prosperity. In practice, these policies are designed to benefit global corporations and investor elites.

The ‘De Facto World Government’

Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and later the World Trade Organization act as coordinating arms of a “de facto world government.” Their policies reflect the distribution of global power rather than democratic input. For example, post–World War II U.S. planners sought to prevent “radical nationalism” in Latin America—governments responsive to local needs—because such independence threatened the conditions for U.S. investment and resource extraction. Chomsky cites planners like George Kennan, who advised that Washington should avoid “idealistic slogans” about democracy and human rights and pursue “straight power concepts.”

Historical Continuities: From Empire to Market

The connections between neoliberalism and older forms of imperialism are clear. When British rulers in India imposed their “Permanent Settlement” in the 18th century, they justified it as a modernization plan. The result was famine and misery for peasants, but vast profits for British landlords—a pattern replicated centuries later in IMF reform programs. Whenever neoliberal reformers claim to spread “rational market discipline,” Chomsky suggests we ask who benefits. The answer is the same: elites in the power centers and local collaborators aligned with them.

He also illustrates how “really existing free market capitalism” has always violated its own principles. Every dominant economy achieved success through state intervention and protectionism, not laissez-faire. Japan’s 20th-century growth, South Korea’s strategic industrial planning, and the United States’ massive corporate subsidies (especially via the Pentagon system) all show that “free markets for thee, protection for me” has been the real rule of global trade.

The Triumph of Speculation

By the 1990s, 95 percent of global financial transactions were speculative—funds circulating purely for short-term profit rather than production or trade. These flows gave investors enormous leverage over governments, forcing them to prioritize “market confidence” over social welfare. The result, Chomsky writes, is a built-in system for enforcing austerity on the poor while protecting the wealthy from any meaningful risk. As capital mobility grows, democratic governments become hostages to investor preferences, completing the neoliberal circle where economics dictates politics.

The bottom line: neoliberal globalization is not a natural evolution of markets but a structured political order. It serves those who already hold power by converting social life into investment opportunity, rendering the majority spectator to their own dispossession.

How do you rule people who believe they are free? In modern democracies, Chomsky explains, coercion gives way to persuasion. Building on insights from his earlier work Manufacturing Consent (with Edward Herman), he explores how elites use media, education, and public relations to “regiment the public mind.”

Consent Without Consent

From the 18th-century British philosopher David Hume to modern communication theorists, rulers have understood that control of opinion is essential to governance. The challenge, says Chomsky, is to obtain “consent without consent”—to make people accept decisions contrary to their interests. Sociologist Edward Bernays, one of the founders of public relations, called this the “engineering of consent,” arguing that intelligent minorities must shape public opinion through systematic propaganda. Chomsky sees this as the essence of neoliberal democracy: elections without participation, debate without power.

The Business of Manipulation

The public relations industry, born during World War I, learned that propaganda could mobilize populations “in the name of democracy.” After the war, business leaders realized the same techniques could prevent worker organization and protect corporate authority at home. “Regimenting the public mind,” as they proudly described it, meant replacing citizens with consumers and public discourse with advertising. By the 1990s, this system had matured into a nearly self-sustaining control mechanism: media conglomerates manufactured narratives that equated the market with freedom and portrayed dissent as chaos or regression.

Democracy as Spectacle

Chomsky observes that low voter turnout and superficial campaign debates are not democratic deficiencies but deliberate features. Political participation is defined as choosing between nearly identical parties financed by the same corporations. Economic questions—the real levers of power—are systematically excluded from public discussion. Drawing on examples like Chile under Pinochet and U.S. electoral politics, Chomsky shows how formal democracy can coexist with severe inequality as long as citizens remain depoliticized.

For readers living within this “consent without consent” system, Chomsky’s message is unsettling but empowering: awareness is the first step toward reclaiming democracy. Once you see political apathy as a tool of governance rather than a natural condition, participation becomes an act of resistance.

Chomsky calls the neoliberal obsession with “free markets” a kind of religion—a passionate faith maintained by ignoring factual contradictions. Governments proclaim market discipline for the poor while practicing protectionism, subsidies, and bailouts for the rich. He illustrates this hypocrisy through case studies from the United States and Britain, the two nations most often held up as models of economic freedom during the Reagan–Thatcher era.

Free Market for Thee, Not for Me

During the Reagan years, “rugged individualism” meant record corporate subsidies and a massive swing toward protectionism. Chomsky notes that Reagan “granted more import relief to U.S. industry than all his predecessors combined.” The same pattern continued in “Thatcher’s Britain,” where austerity rhetoric masked state intervention favoring the wealthy. Amid rising child poverty and declining public health, these policies were celebrated as victories for market purity. Meanwhile, enormous public resources were funneled into military spending and corporate welfare—what Chomsky elsewhere calls “socialism for the rich.”

Redefining Global Values

Chomsky devotes significant attention to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a key instrument for exporting “American values.” He shows how the WTO enforces corporate rights under the guise of promoting fair competition. When powerful nations violate rules (for instance, U.S. sanctions against Cuba or tariffs on foreign goods), they dismiss international law as irrelevant. When weaker nations resist, they face economic retaliation. This selective application of free trade, Chomsky argues, reveals neoliberalism’s true purpose: to universalize a system that maximizes control by investors while sheltering them from democratic accountability.

In an era when media constantly celebrate globalization as “inevitable progress,” Chomsky reminds readers that nothing about the current order is inevitable. It is built on policies consciously designed to suppress labor, manipulate governments, and privilege multinational corporations. To defend democracy, citizens must demystify free-market rhetoric and ask who truly benefits from “opening” the world economy.

What does “market democracy” actually mean in a neoliberal world? For Chomsky, it means democracy only for those who can afford it. In the post–Cold War era, elites declared that history had ended in victory for capitalism and liberal democracy. Chomsky dismantles this triumphalist narrative by examining how “market democracy” functions as a façade for inequality and control.

Democracy for the Few

Behind celebrated transitions to democracy, especially in Latin America and postcolonial nations, Chomsky finds systems of power designed to protect economic elites. Thomas Carothers, a former U.S. State Department official, confirmed that Washington’s goal in the 1980s was to promote only “top-down forms of democracy” that avoided upsetting traditional hierarchies. Elections were tolerated as long as they produced compliant governments. When they did not, coups or economic pressure corrected the course. The pattern—from Guatemala in the 1950s to Haiti in the 1990s—shows that neoliberal “democracy” means stability for investors, not empowerment for citizens.

NAFTA and the Erosion of Citizenship

The North American Free Trade Agreement exemplifies “market democracy” in practice. Chomsky explains how NAFTA was passed over public opposition, with overwhelming support from corporate interests and media elites. While marketed as a job-creating pact, it primarily served to secure investor rights and weaken labor protections. Post-agreement, the United States saw stagnant wages; Mexico faced deepening inequality; and Canada lost regulatory sovereignty. Public debates excluded labor unions and civic organizations—the real constituents of democracy—demonstrating how neoliberal policymaking turns citizens into bystanders.

By contrasting this pattern with earlier economic systems that mixed markets with social responsibility, Chomsky’s analysis exposes how “market democracy” narrows political space. It invites participation in form while denying it in substance, proving that freedom without equality is an empty promise.

When the Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in Chiapas, Mexico, on January 1, 1994—the day NAFTA took effect—their cry announced more than a local rebellion. It was a global message against neoliberalism. Chomsky views the Zapatistas as symbols of resistance to an economic model that treats human beings as expendable inputs in pursuit of profit.

Globalization at Gunpoint

NAFTA’s “historic” promise of free trade brought corporate access, not human development. Rural Mexicans faced falling wages, lost land rights, and agricultural collapse as subsidized U.S. agribusiness flooded domestic markets. The Zapatistas declared NAFTA a “death sentence” for indigenous peoples, whose communities were already marginalized by centuries of exploitation. Armed with little more than words and symbolic resistance, they exposed a simple truth: the neoliberal world order produces prosperity for a few and despair for many.

Hope from the Margins

The Zapatista movement inspired global solidarity not because of its firepower but because of its imagination. Its spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, invited dialogue across borders, linking indigenous struggle with labor, environmental, and feminist movements worldwide. Chomsky interprets this as evidence that grassroots democracy can still challenge concentrated power. When people organize around shared values of dignity and justice, even small actions can destabilize massive systems of control.

For you, the lesson is direct: change begins not in parliaments or boardrooms but where people collectively refuse to accept the inevitability of injustice. The Zapatistas remind us that another world is possible—one built on cooperation, not competition.

Chomsky calls organized public resistance “the ultimate weapon.” For centuries, elites have tried to suppress it through fear or distraction, but modern communication technologies—from independent media to grassroots networks—have given ordinary people new tools to coordinate and resist.

Democracy vs. the Corporate State

Under neoliberalism, true democracy is incompatible with concentrated corporate power. Chomsky explains that the most effective way to limit democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to private institutions—corporations, trade tribunals, and unelected bureaucracies. Agreements like the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment), negotiated secretly by rich nations in the 1990s, exemplify this strategy. It would have allowed corporations to sue governments for policies that threatened “investor rights” while shielding corporations from accountability.

When the Hordes Rebel

What halted the MAI was not elite reform but global activism. Labor unions, environmentalists, and human rights groups—dismissed by the business press as “hordes of vigilantes”—exposed the treaty’s dangers and mobilized public outrage. The agreement collapsed under this pressure, showing that collective action can block even the most powerful alliances of state and capital. Chomsky calls this a modern example of how “the architects of power” depend on secrecy because exposure invites accountability.

For readers today, this triumph offers hope. Whether confronting corporate trade deals, climate injustice, or surveillance capitalism, Chomsky’s message remains consistent: when ordinary people organize around solidarity and truth, even immense systems of domination can be challenged. Democracy is not something granted from above—it is built, defended, and continually reimagined from below.