Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians

[BridgeTheGap]

Michael S. Wilson: You are, among many other things, a self-described anarchist — an anarcho-syndicalist, specifically. Most people think of anarchists as disenfranchised punks throwing rocks at store windows, or masked men tossing ball-shaped bombs at fat industrialists. Is this an accurate view? What is anarchy to you?

Noam Chomsky: Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times. Anarcho-syndicalism is a particular variety of anarchism which was concerned primarily, though not solely, but primarily with control over work, over the work place, over production. It took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, [that] they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and … democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society. And then, you know, ideas are worked out about how exactly that should manifest itself, but I think that is the core of anarcho-syndicalist thinking. I mean it’s not at all the general image that you described — people running around the streets, you know, breaking store windows — but [anarcho-syndicalism] is a conception of a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-anarchism-i-believe-and-whats-wrong-libertarians?akid=10498.260941.9E4uVq&rd=1&src=newsletter846979&t=5

[marmar]

1. Automatic Chomsky k/r

[lhooq]

2. anarchism as reclaiming self-autonomy

Anarchism is also a reclaiming of self-autonomy, self-responsibility, and ultimately self-dignity from the corporations, church, state, or other paternalistic entities that claim to know what is right for you.

Does anyone remember The Whole Earth Catalog in its many iterations from 1968 to 1981? Those books showed the way for small groups of people to build new societies, whether by going "back to the land" or by setting up their own "free" schools for their children. Another classic from this era was Our Bodies, Ourselves, that famous self-help book by and for women, its first edition predating the 1972 Roe v. Wade decision. Here then are examples, I believe, of what Chomsky means when in the above snippet he says

a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none.

[bemildred]

3. Indeed. nt

[yurbud]

4. I'd like to here the conservative Democratic response to this

I know progressives essentially agree, but those at the other end of the political spectrum probably don't.

[BridgeTheGap]

5. No, they probably don't agree. But they also don't want to be made

to look like Republicans either! They're walking a fine line.

[struggle4progress]

6. When at his best, Chomsky over many years has demonstrated an extraordinarily useful technique:

it combines a healthy paranoia about the actual meanings of public utterances with close attention to tidbits of largely-ignored news-stories to analyze political culture and current events in terms of the material interests of institutions, such as large corporations

His 1985 "Intervention in Vietnam and Central America: Parallels and Differences" was a clear exposition of the thesis that the public language used to justify America's foreign interventions can be profitably understood as a series of code-words that disguise the actual material interests behind the interventions: written before the collapse of the USSR, it shed a bright light on the widespread fright-cry of that era ("They're communists!&quot by suggesting we might understand such accusations as mystifications of a rather different claim ("They want local control of their natural resources, and that could limit our ability to exploit them!&quot

Activists can profitably use Chomsky's analytical method, if it is coupled with concrete goals and if they insist (as Chomsky often has) on rooting their analysis in facts. But it will always be a serious mistake simply to adopt any such ideological view without careful attention to factual details. Chomsky himself sits far outside the political mainstream in the US, and anyone who expounds views like his can expect to be pushed quickly to the sidelines, unless the exposition is organized around readily-stated facts that are obviously relevant to whatever issue is under discussion. Perhaps that is why Chomsky himself has produced no viable political movement that has any chance of exercising political power

[limpyhobbler]

7. This was probably like one of the coolest things I have ever read in my life thank you! nt