I am still working on this one. I don't think Brad De Long is correct in his claims that Chomsky was wrong to accept Helleiner's case on this. It is not a simple matter, but just by looking at the changes in reserve rates of European central banks, along with changes in savings rates, there is a big bit of evidence that Chomsky was correct. Plenty of other elites were also worrying about this, and De Long's championing of Kindleberger (a decent enough fellow, it seems) is a bit odd, especially since Kindleberger is a former State Department insider who has every reason to view the Marshall Plan with rose-colored lenses. De Long also slams Milward in ways that I find irrelevant and in that sort of slimy academic-insider "I've heard him say at a conference" way that I find so offensive, especially since I think Marcello De Cecco (who is a friend of Milward's, I believe) and Milward probably see eye-to-eye on this one (I haven't yet verified this, however).
In addition, Chomsky never claimed that the Marshall Plan did not "benefit[] the entire Population".
>> What specific criticisms of the left or third world tyrannies do you wish
>> he had made and would have been appropriate to make in his critical
>> studies, along with Edward Herman, of US foreign policy?\
>
>Mentioned above. In an ideal world I would like him to have done the same
>analysis of the Russian nomenclatura that he has done for the American
>intelligencia but we are dealing with one man. That he can do as much as he
>has is amazing.
You also overlook that an analysis of the Russian nomenclatura would be almost entirely useless for Americans, Chomsky's principle audience. He made it clear that he believed the Soviet Union to be a dungeon from top to bottom. Wasting time on detailing the corruption of Soviet intellectuals would do nothing for us, as we had no way to pressure them to change, as we do here in limited but important ways.
> .... Also Chomsky seems to
>have no economic theory at all which limits his analysis.
What do you mean by "no economic theory"? To claim that one must have one's own "theory" of how a process functions before one can fully comment on the process is absurd. If that standard were applied to anyone in the sciences --- social or otherwise --- before comment were accepted as broad enough, there would be complete silence.
Chomsky is very well read in economic matters, and though Michael Perelman claims to have heard Chomsky make a slight error on one occasion, I find his economic foundations to be quite solid.
Bill