I was reading some Noam recently. He thinks Marx made some important contributions in re: capitalism, but that dialectics, POMO (and a lot of the humanities in academia, for that matter) are balderdash. There's a grumpy old man cast to some of that criticism.
Everyone here knows he's an anarchist, so there is no Stalinist/Leninist issue as far as he is concerned. What really sets the teeth of Berube and DeLong on edge is when Chomsky's critique of U.S. foreign policy, which in and of itself is often not too-too different from theirs, blurs (in their minds, at least) into softness on dictators deemed unfriendly by U.S. policy. It seems to me a relatively secondary matter to be such a source of friction.
mbs
Amazing, isn't it? Berube's not a bad sort otherwise, and I don't know why he has to do this. But it seems like denouncing Chomsky is a way to be taken "seriously" by the mainstream - even when he cites impeccable sources (as on Yugo), and the denouncers can do nothing but say "Lies!" Or if not taken seriously, at least to differentiate yourself from the allegedly loony left, despite the fact that the relentlessly logical and informed Chomsky is about as un-loony as you can get.
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