----- Original Message ----- From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu>
Justin doesn't even think we're reading Chomsky correctly. However, if we go with the Dawson/Estabrook/Weiger interpretation, Chomsky's wrong for the sort of reasons Justin and I have already discussed. I'm not eager to rehash them yet again. What exactly do we "know now" that suggests Dawson et al. are on target?
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http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20041004/022861.html I never claimed that Nixon et al. were worried about the welfare of Chileans. I just claimed they _weren't_ worried that Allende's government would make them better off.
-- Luke
A perusal of the files on Chile and Latin America in conjunction with, say a critical reading of various "Foreign Affairs" essays from the period, alongside W.W. Rostow and Albert O. Hirschman's appropriation of Louis Hartz' notion that liberalism must eject all alternative pathways of socio-political development and the problems that created for liberalism itself ought to lay to rest your claim above.
Counterfactual talk is essential to political discourse. But that's beside the point. I'm not claiming that Chile would've been worse off under Allende. I'm claiming that Nixon and Kissinger _actually_ believed that Chile would've been worse off.
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No, their friends assets in Chile would have been devalued/expropriated in an effort to make Chileans better off. There's nothing like the fear of expropriation to get capitalists out of their chairs. We can't know if Allende's programs would have worked because.....well, you know why, at least partially.......
> Have fun w/your time machine in an attempt to get to the ex ante realm
> you'd need to justify your claims........
If I'd dropped my glass last night, it would've fallen to the floor. We don't need time machines to assess the truth-values of counterfactual statements. We're often unable to say what would've happened given different political circumstances because our understanding of how people and policies actually work is far from complete.
-- Luke
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Conflating counterfactual talk re natural and social kinds is not helpful. The example of Allende and the ascription of motives to N&K is not like you dropping your glass of beer. You haven't given any evidence in support of your claim re N&K and there are lots of dead bodies and memos/doctrines from the period in question to support NC's claim. The burden is *still* on you.......
Cheers,
Ian
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/SecretsLies_Chile_Chom.html