>
>Does this mean that Chomsky is sympathetic to the conservative argument?
>Wouldn't that be to concede too much to The Individual as the basic atom of
>society? It's not far from that to "there no such thing as society, only
>individuals and their families," is it? What's wrong with undermining
>market principles? Isn't there something positive to the emergence of the
>corporation as a planning unit? Or is Chomsky taking a libertarian position
>here, and dismissing the Marxian reading of the corporation as partly
>progressive?
>
>Doug
In Profit over People, published in 1999, Chomsky writes the following: "...the leading principles of classical liberalism receive their natural modern expression not in the neoliberal religion but in the independent movements of working people and the ideas and practices of the libertarian socialist movements, at times articulated also by such major figures of the twentieth-century throught as Bertrand Russell and John Dewey." (p. 40)
Chomsky considers himself writing in the tradition of the 18th century classical liberals, onto which he has added a patina of 19th century anarchism, to give it a "radical" flair.
Chomsky hasn't carried his political economic and class analysis beyond Adam Smith. He barely gets beyond the Physiocrats, since he tends toward the view that economic value is founded on agricultural production based on "democratic" communes. He explicitly says the post-Smith political economy of Ricardo together with neo-Hegelian political theory leads through Marx to Lenin to Bolshevism which he lumps together with fascism and corporate tyranny.
The following is a summary of his hobby horse from the same publication: "The assaults on democracy [read libertarianism, i.e., a cleaned up anarchism] and markets are furthermore related. Their roots lie in the power of corporate entities that are increasingly interlinked and reliant on powerful states, and largely unaccountable to the public." Hence, Chomsky's chase after accountablity and public forums, etc. conservative utopian socialism tending toward reactionary insofar as it promotes agricultureal communes as the basis of social reproduction.
It would be interesting to see how closely Chomky's views follow those of the anti-corporate, back to the Schwarzwald views of the left wing of the NSDAP before the "night of the long knives."
Chomsky is an opponent of Marx's argument for the "dictatorship of the proletariat", writing that "Bakunin had predicted long before," that Leninist doctrine, which is derived from Marx, as Lenin shows in detail in his State and Revolution.
It should be remembered that Chomsky attended an experimental high school run by Emory University and based on the education "reforms" of John Dewey. He has never left the fold.
Chomsky is not even anti-capitalist. He extols the indivdiualism of its classical liberal period against its present collectivist corporate form. He just wants to clean up its present form, make it more "accountable", so that it can continue as an economic aspect of his future society. He hasn't a clue that the historical role of capitalism is to develop the productive forces of society--regardless of the human consequences. When it has stopped developing those forces, it's historical role if finished, and it's time for the gravediggers to step in.
grs
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