quoted Brad Mayer
>>Not surprising, as all the leading lights of the US left - Chomsky,
>>Nader and of course Vidal, are "Old Republicans": The want to restore
>>the US to the virtues of the Old Republic, corrupted by the National
>>Security State, etc.
>
Doug Replied
>
> Yeah, those were the good old days, when only propertied white guys could vote!
You know this is a fair critcism against Vidal and Nader. They are essentially (IMO) Red Tories - humane thoughtful conservatives (which of course in the U.S. political spectrum does pass for far left).
BuT I don't see how you can make that argument about Chomsky. Whatever his flaws, he has no illusions about the possibility of a humane capitalism. (Thouhg like any thoughtful USAian he acknowledges that there are less brutal forms of capitalism possilbe than that currently existing in the USA).
The nearests I've ever heard him come to anything of ths sort is a formal acknowledgement (for the sake of conceding a moot point) that U.S. capitalism is nothing like what right-liberatarians describe as a free-enterprise system. But he always follows it by pointing out that such a system is most likely impossible , and that if it were possible, a stateless capitalism would likely be more brutal that what we have now.
Vidal in contrast has occasionally expressed wistful a vision of the U.S. as a demilartized mercantile social democracy. Nader I think envisions an America of small capitalists, and small stockholders, with a very limited social democracy consisting mainly of a single payer health system.
The reason these different views can coexist is that they all oppose actually existing capitalism.