Chomsky on Anarchism (sidenote; education)

[Bill Haywood]

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Jesus, go away. Everyone here is well equipped at doing google searches and can realise for themselves that Chosmy did not support the Cambodian genocide- or deny it.

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I just used google, and yes, he did.

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Don't be lazy. Specify the quotes. You'll find he's very skeptical of EARLY reports about the extent of KR killings, but never does he support the Maoist agrarian version of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1944, plenty of people couldn't believe reports on the Holocaust, but that did not make them Nazi supporters.

It's truly amazing how such an utterly baseless lie has become standard wisdom.

[Case Closed]

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The difference between Chomsky and anarcho-capitalists is that he makes the toweringly obvious observation that private power can be a source of tyranny, just like public.

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I don't think that anyone debates this. But the one part about AC as far as I know is that there will always be the possibility of a competing tyrannical body that would mess the other one up.

[ConstantineX]

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A philosophical belief that power must always be forced to justify hierarchy, and limited when it cannot. So methods of production, distribution, ownership, are all up for negotiation. Unlike Leninists or libertarians, he says "I don't think there are formulas that can be applied."

The difference between Chomsky and anarcho-capitalists is that he makes the toweringly obvious observation that private power can be a source of tyranny, just like public.

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Who limits this power? If there are rules to the game, like "power must always be justified", you should be able to clearly explain how those rules are enforced - just foreshadow or sketch the institutions that do so. All you are doing is picking a space in an infinite field, you can have an infinite subset of different possibilities if you wish.

I think many ACists & libertarians make a HUGE mistake when they assert that anarchy by itself spontaneously self organizes to bring fruits of civilization. Yes, even within libertarianism and ACism there are institutions that enforce the "rules" of the society, which generally are entailed in concepts of natural rights. ACists assert that autonomous private institutions in competition can enforce those rules. It isn't proven. But there is a definite difference between it and communism, which tries to enforce rules of egalitarianism and communal ownership of the "means of production", which is simply that communism has empirically failed in all the manifestations it's been tried in.

[bluesbassman]

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Are there property rights in the sort of anarchism that Chomsky describes?

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Nope. In fact, individual rights aren't recognized at all, and you would be just a drone in the Borg.

The closest example of the practical manifestation of Chomsky's political "philosophy" is the former Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the late 1970's -- which Chomsky, not surprisingly, supported.

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Individual rights are at the essence of Chosmsky's phillosophy.

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Only if you define "rights" in the collectivist, Arbeit macht frei sort of way.


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Again you are confused with the authorianism of state socialism to which Chomsky rejects.

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I'm not "confused" at all. Yes, Chomsky and his comrades package their political propaganda using a different flavor of rhetoric than that of state socialism, but it's a road which leads to the same place. It's a difference of style, not substance.

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Jesus, go away. Everyone here is well equipped at doing google searches and can realise for themselves that Chosmy did not support the Cambodian genocide- or deny it.

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I don't see how this article by Chomsky can be interpreted to be anything other than tacitly supporting the Khmer Rouge and explicitly denying the genocide.

Distortions at Fourth Hand

[Borodog]

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Borodog wrote:

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productivity would completely crash without private ownership.... if you started with a completely, totally equal division of property, in the first minute of socialism inequalities would immediately arise.... To maintain "equality" would require ongoing massive violence....
Not to mention, who makes the decisions about what to produce? Who bears the risks if the wrong things are made?

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You misunderstand him thoroughly. Chomsky is not so arrogant as to imagine the details of how an anarchist society would work. In fact, in the interview he refused to be drawn into discussing the specifics of an ideal society, because he appreciates that grandiose schemes of human engineering are empty, naive, fantasies. To burden him with the failings of planned economies is pure straw man.

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The classic tactic of Marx. Since the Utopian Socialists had been utterly destroyed, Marx came along and claimed that any attempt to say what the inevitable socialist society would look like or how it would work, or any attempts to debunk it, were summarily "unscientific", because there were "inevitable laws of history" that would inexorably bring socialism about, regardless of how it actually worked. Hence, all the socialists should just focus their efforts on attacking capitalism, rather than describing socialism. Brilliant rhetorical tactic, and it worked beautifully.

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He gave a very, very, modest definition of anarchism:

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an expression of the idea that the burden of proof is always on those who argue that authority and domination are necessary

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Hey, I agree with this completely. Unfortunately, it isn't a definition of anarchism.

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Further,

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it is not a movement with an ideology. It is a tendency in the history of human thought and action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, and hierarchic structures.... and if their legitimacy [cannot be justified] to work to undermine them and expand the scope of freedom.

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That's all it is to him. A philosophical belief that power must always be forced to justify hierarchy, and limited when it cannot. So methods of production, distribution, ownership, are all up for negotiation. Unlike Leninists or libertarians, he says "I don't think there are formulas that can be applied."

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"Up for negotiation"? They aren't up for negotiation. Economics is a science, and the implications of various doctrines, like the absence of the private ownership of the factors of production, the absence of freedom of exchange and contract, the absence of money, etc., all these things can be investigated, and their real world implications understood. Abolishing any of these things, the underpinnings of capitalism, would have disastrous real world effects on the productivity of society that would cause mass death and a return to the Stone Age. You can *have* anarchosocialism. It *works*. It's just that it only works for very small groups of people at a Stone Age level of sophistication.

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The difference between Chomsky and anarcho-capitalists is that he makes the toweringly obvious observation that private power can be a source of tyranny, just like public.

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No, the difference between Chomsky and anarcho-capitalists is that he has bizarre definitions of things like "coercion" and "tyranny." According to Chomsky, me owning my home is somehow "coercive" and "tyrannical".

[Bill Haywood]

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Serious question:

Would locks/fences be illegal in this type of society?

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You are missing the point. Chomsky refuses to provide such a detailed imagining, cuz things are complicated and can't be predicted. He insists anarchism is a vague, philosophical tendency, never so coherent as to be called a system or a plan.

I'm sure you can find other self-described anarchists that would have a ready answer, but not Chomsky.

If you got him drunk enough to take the bait, he would say there would have to be really good reasons for a particular locked fence, otherwise, people should take it down. There would be no general rule about locks or fences, because that would be ludicrous.

Chomsky would not say, "under anarchism, there would be no locks," because anarchism is not a thing to be under. It's like asking, "will there be locks under rationalism?"

[NeBlis]

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Serious question:

Would locks/fences be illegal in this type of society?

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You are missing the point. Chomsky refuses to provide such a detailed imagining, cuz things are complicated and can't be predicted. He insists anarchism is a vague, philosophical tendency, never so coherent as to be called a system or a plan.

I'm sure you can find other self-described anarchists that would have a ready answer, but not Chomsky.

If you got him drunk enough to take the bait, he would say there would have to be really good reasons for a particular locked fence, otherwise, people should take it down. There would be no general rule about locks or fences, because that would be ludicrous.

Chomsky would not say, "under anarchism, there would be no locks," because anarchism is not a thing to be under. It's like asking, "will there be locks under rationalism?"

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What you are saying makes sense in my understanding of Chomsky, but it doesn't make it less idiotic. He repeatedly advocates an anarchy where there are basically no rules or property at all. And like you say, even simple things like a lock an a gate in Chomskyland are evil or useless. This is of course childishly naive and wholly unworkable.

While it is true that no one can know all things that would happen under a given theoretical system. We can of course postulate based on what we know of human nature, economics, and logic. The AC or Libertarian argument against central planning and for complete equality makes sense and follows from a logical beginning.Chomsky on the other hand proceeds from fuzzy logic at best and covers it over with elegant prose. To advocate a society with no respect for property or person is far beyond the bounds of reason and logic bordering on insanity.

Chomskyland as he describes it could work, but it would need to take place in some alternate universe where most of what we know of human nature does not exist.

[Bill Haywood]

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I don't see how this article by Chomsky can be interpreted to be anything other than tacitly supporting the Khmer Rouge and explicitly denying the genocide.

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So provide some quotes to prove it. Or by "tacitly," do you mean that you get to reinterpret everything he says?

Here's a quote from the conclusion about reports of atrocities by the Khmer Rouge:

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We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available

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This was 1977, for chrisakes. The "evidence available" was still trickling out, and as he showed, some was fake. He took the proper position of any skeptic: how do we know which reports are accurate when many have been fabricated?

[Bill Haywood]

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He repeatedly advocates an anarchy where there are basically no rules or property at all.

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Example?

And the lock business. Jesus, he was drunk on pretend beer, in a conversation that never occurred. Do you have any better evidence of his views?

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According to Chomsky, me owning my home is somehow "coercive" and "tyrannical".

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He doesn't say that.

[NeBlis]

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He repeatedly advocates an anarchy where there are basically no rules or property at all.

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Example?

And the lock business. Jesus, he was drunk on pretend beer, in a conversation that never occurred. Do you have any better evidence of his views?



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Yes I would recommend you read his work for evidence of this view. I assumed from your "drunken convo" example that you were already completely familiar with his brand of dumbassery.