Noam Chomsky: A Brief History of Anarchism

[marmar]

from In These Times:



A Brief History of Anarchism
The struggle for the common good has a long past.

BY Noam Chomsky


Humans are social beings, and the kind of creature that a person becomes depends crucially on the social, cultural and institutional circumstances of his life.

We are therefore led to inquire into the social arrangements that are conducive to people's rights and welfare, and to fulfilling their just aspirations—in brief, the common good.

For perspective I'd like to invoke what seem to me virtual truisms. They relate to an interesting category of ethical principles: those that are not only universal, in that they are virtually always professed, but also doubly universal, in that at the same time they are almost universally rejected in practice.

These range from very general principles, such as the truism that we should apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others (if not harsher ones), to more specific doctrines, such as a dedication to promoting democracy and human rights, which is proclaimed almost universally, even by the worst monsters—though the actual record is grim, across the spectrum. ...........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16081/a_history_of_anarchism/

[Jefferson23]

1. snip*Much of the most respected work in academic political science compares public attitudes and

attitudes and government policy.

In “Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America,” the Princeton scholar Martin Gilens reveals that the majority of the U.S. population is effectively disenfranchised.

About 70 percent of the population, at the lower end of the wealth/income scale, has no influence on policy, Gilens concludes. Moving up the scale, influence slowly increases. At the very top are those who pretty much determine policy, by means that aren't obscure. The resulting system is not democracy but plutocracy.

K&R

[Luminous Animal]

2. Sometime in the 1930s, TPTB, labelled leftist actions

(Including property damage) as "anarchy". We've been wallowing in that ignorance ever since.

[NuclearDem]

3. K&R