I just can't see any badmouthing of Chomsky. Here is a person who works tirelessly and with truly amazing prolificness (is this a word?), reads everything, knows about the politics of every place in the world and is radical besides. Don't you suppose he'd be right there on the barricades?
Also, in light of some other posts, looking back into what Marx or Lenin said about various issues now of great significance and discovering that they sometimes had what today would be considered unprogressive views can really be overdone. I may not be homophobic or sexist, but I'm no Karl Marx. And given the radical views and tremendous intellects of such persons, don't you suppose that they would have been in the forefront of just about every imaginable progressive struggle?
Michael Yates
Michael Cohen wrote:
>
> Chomsky more than any one I know has documented the
> attrocities and evil acts of the American Elite. Not terribly
> surprisingly on some details especially evils committed by
> so called leftists he is weak. Unfortunately, unlike Marx or Keynes his
>
> work doesn't have a serious class analysis nor has he seriously sketched
>
> any alternatives to the current mess at least to my knowelge.
> Because of his scholarship, which may be biased or mistaken or even
> immoral
> on occasion we know more about the intentions and the brutal acts
> committed by the
> American brand of imperialism than we otherwise would have known.
>
> It seems to me either attempting to lionize him or demonize him,
> or even to label his political position is almost entirely beside the
> point and
> mostly a waste of time. This is true also of most of the other notables
> discussed on
> this list. Its sort of like asking whether Kepler's law of
> planetary motion should be dropped or relabled as midieval, scholastic,
> theistic. because he believed this was an instantiation of the structure
> of heaven as revealed by God. Its hard enough to understand whats going
> on, to construct strategies
> to improve the situation, and hopefully to participate is serious
> social change than to
> waste ones time labeling, lionizing and demonizing and labeling
> individuals.
> --mike
> --
> Michael Cohen mike at cns.bu.edu
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