Noam Chomksy on Kosovo (FWD)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Mar 30 07:18:15 PST 1999


Apsken at aol.com wrote:


>Max Sawicky wrote,
>
>"(Of course, our "revolutionary defeatists" would have nothing but contempt
>for any pretension of international capitalist law. They have no business
>invoking Chomsky for support.)"

[...]


>I haven't seen Max protest when Doug Henwood gives thumbs up to his work, so
>the hypocrisy of his (Max's) latest attack on Marxists is evident.

Don't know if it's hypocrisy, but it's pretty hard to understand. Chomsky is too hostile to Marx for my taste, but that aside, I can't think of a U.S. political intellectual I admire more. But I can't imagine Chomsky being any more sympathetic to international *capitalist* law than any Marxist - in fact, given his anarchic preferences, he'd probably be more hostile to the idea philosophically than a lot of Marxists might be. And I can't imagine any reason why "revolutionary defeatists" (who, as far as I know, are mainly interested in defeating U.S. imperialism over the long term, though they might disagree on the details - what other defeatism are they guilty of, other than a justified discouragement about the prospects for revolution in 1999?) shouldn't turn to Chomsky for support; what other radical analyst has documented the crimes of the United States more effectively over the last 30 years than Chomsky?

Max seems to have a psychological need to cast himself as the sane guy surrounded by wackos. But face it, Max, most of your Beltway neighbors think your politics are pretty wacky too.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list