> But almost everything Chomsky writes runs against the "common sense"
> of Americans. The USG is violently imperialist on behalf of capital -
> the common sense is that the government means well, sometimes fucks
> up, and is often misunderstood or irrationally hated. The NY Times is
> a tool of power - the common sense is that it's subversive and "far
> left." Etc. And you can't fight that ingrained common sense through
> repeated factchecking. It's great for the base, but beyond that, you
> might as well be speaking Frisian.
I think that the gulf between the "common sense" of Americans and the often reasonable and queitly-arrived-at conclusions of Chomsky comes from the fact that we have failed to recognize that the Capitalist Revolution is only just ending.
Leftists see the "facts" and are so outraged that they want immediate socialist revolution without a program. Meanwhile, Americans are constantly bombarded by a business/political press spouting liberal-democratic propoganda from the "center-left", and a business/religion press that spouts hypocritical sermons and anarcho-capitalist, libertarian propoganda from the Right. The Left hates the Capitalist Revolution. The "center-left" believes in its potential. The Right wants to stop it at the point of maximum profit and power. The "common sense" o fthe American people is totally capitalist because they still see the tension between those who believe in the Capitalist Revolution and those who want to stop it in the interest of the powerful as the central political drama of their lives.Chomsky, in his quiet moments, actually praises the positive results of the Capitalist Revolution. Of course he is a product of the hegemon and he knows that the world is a freer place now than it was fifty years ago.
I think Chomsky's Anarchism is a clue. On the Left, our analysis still tends to lead us to either a No-Government or a Total-Government program, both of which are non-starters. Where is the Big-Government Left or the Small Government Left or even the Huge-But-Not-All-Powerful-Government Left?
We're Green, Indigenous, Feminist, Sustainable, Organic, Multi-Cultural, Anti-Racist, Anti-Imperialist, Radical and Revolutionary but we're not Socialist. At some level we simply don't believe that giving workers control over the means of production - legal ownership of their factories and finance - will solve any problems by itself. By failing to put worker control and ownership first, we are admitting that we are reformists in a continuing Capitalist Revolution.
I happen to think that what we're hearing in America is the sound of the Capitalist Revolution starting to hit the rocks, so I'm not that distressed. But I also think we have to get about creating a program.
boddi