From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sun Jul 03 2005 - 09:19:02 BST
Mark --
> ham:
> Frankly, I haven't read much of Chomsky, but it's enough to
> understand his position as a Leninist anarchist.
>
> msh:
> Ok, then you've read enough to conclude that he's a Leninist? Please
> provide quotes, with references, from Chomsky's thousands of
> interviews, lectures, essays, and books, in support of your position.
Please don't expect me to research Noam Chomsky just to answer your
challenges, Mark. For a professor of linguistics, the man has an inflated
opinion of his ability to analyze international affairs and a seeming
disinterest in the subject for which he is popularly known -- Philosophy.
Like many liberal writers whose entire career has been spent in academia,
Chomsky has a myopic view of entrepreneurship in the free market and a
decidedly leftist bent which, in his case, leans toward anarchy.
The following quotations are from material I'd collected for response to
your last posting. While I'll leave the political analysis to you, I think
they will suffice to illustrate my point.
Noam Chomsky on Rationality/Science
Z Papers Special Issue, 1995
"Several writers appear to regard Leninist-Stalinist tyranny as an
embodiment of science and rationality. Thus 'the belief in a universal
narrative grounded in truth has been undermined by the collapse of political
systems that were supposed to [have] produced the New Socialist Man and the
New Postcolonial Man.' And the 'state systems' that 'used positive
rationality for astoundingly destructive purposes'
were guided by 'socialist and capitalist ideologies'--a reference, it
appears, to radically anti-socialist (Leninist) and anti-capitalist
(state-capitalist) ideologies. Since 'scientific and technological progress
were the watchword of socialist and capitalist ideologies,' we see that
their error and perversity is deep, and we must abandon them, along with any
concern for freedom, justice, human rights, democracy, and other
'watchwords' of the secular priesthood who have perverted Enlightenment
ideals in the interests of the masters."
Noam Chomsky, 1970
"The ideas of libertarian socialism, in the sense described, have been
submerged in the industrial societies of the past half-century. The dominant
ideologies have been those of state socialism or state capitalism (of
increasingly militarized character in the United States, for reasons that
are not obscure). But there has been a rekindling of interest in the past
few years. The theses I quoted by Anton Pannekoek were taken from a recent
pamphlet of a radical French workers' group (Informations Correspondance
Ouvrière). The remarks by William Paul on revolutionary socialism are cited
in a paper by Walter Kendall given at the National Conference on Workers'
Control in Sheffield, England, in March 1969. The workers' control movement
has become a significant force in England in the past few years. It has
organized several conferences and has produced a substantial pamphlet
literature, and counts among its active adherents representatives of some of
the most important trade unions. The Amalgamated Engineering and
Foundryworkers' Union, for example, has adopted, as official policy, the
program of nationalization of basic industries under 'workers' control at
all levels.' On the Continent, there are similar developments. May 1968 of
course accelerated the growing interest in council communism and related
ideas in France and Germany, as it did in England.
"Given the highly conservative cast of our highly ideological society, it is
not too surprising that the United States has been relatively untouched by
these developments. But that too may change. The erosion of cold-war
mythology at least makes it possible to raise these questions in fairly
broad circles. If the present wave of repression can be beaten back, if the
left can overcome its more suicidal tendencies and build upon what has been
accomplished in the past decade, then the problem of how to organize
industrial society on truly democratic lines, with democratic control in the
workplace and in the community, should become a dominant intellectual issue
for those who are alive to the problems of contemporary society, and, as a
mass movement for libertarian socialism develops, speculation should proceed
to action."
Also this. (Despite your objection to my using "secondary opinions", this
is the informed assessment of a book reviewer who has studied Chomsky, knows
his history, and is well positioned to compare him with other academics in
his field. It also includes a direct NC quote.)
Kent Windschuttle on "The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky":
"Chomsky is the most prominent intellectual remnant of the New Left of the
1960s. In many ways he epitomized the New Left and its hatred of 'Amerika,'
a country he believed, through its policies both at home and abroad, had
descended into fascism. In his most famous book of the Sixties, American
Power and the New Mandarins, Chomsky said what America needed was 'a kind of
denazification.'
"Of all the major powers in the Sixties, according to Chomsky, America was
the most reprehensible. Its principles of liberal democracy were a sham. Its
democracy was a 'four-year dictatorship' and its economic commitment to free
markets was merely a disguise for corporate power. Its foreign policy was
positively evil. 'By any objective standard,' he wrote at the time, 'the
United States has become the most aggressive power in the world, the
greatest threat to peace, to national self-determination, and to
international cooperation.'"
msh:
> You're equating atheism with nihilism. You need a better dictionary.
> Besides, NC doesn't even refer to himself as an atheist. When
> asked, he says something like "Well, so far, no one has been able to
> explain to me what they mean by 'God.' So I don't even know what it
> is I'm supposed to believe in, or not believe in."
Yes, when it concerns philosophy, I do equate atheism with nihilism. I've
made this
connection before in a variety of ways. When one not only rejects the
concept of a primary source and the value of transcendency, but asserts --
as a philosopher -- that all such ideas are "irrational" and that he has
"nothing to propose" in their place, this is the expression of a nihilist.
> As for Fred Christie's putative book review, you could have saved a
> lot of time just by going to the MOQ archives and pasting any one of
> Platt's or Mel's unsupported Chomsky-bashing diatribes. They, and
> now you, admit to never having read Chomsky, though all of you are
> brimming with opinions regarding the value of his work.
Why should I want to do that? I'm as capable of sizing up a person's
persuasion as is Platt or Mel. If it talks like a snake and writes like a
snake, etc. Besides, I have enough research to do to support my own thesis
without having to gather fuel for other peoples' battles that aren't even
focused on philosophy.
Tell me Mark, what is there about this self-proclaimed "democratic socialist
libertarian" who wants to "de-nazify Amerika" that appeals so much to you?
Personally, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with him.
Regards,
Ham
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