"What really suprised me though was their stance on why Chomsky keeps clinging to this half-baked spandrelist hypothesis. They basically concluded that it came down to a deep conflict with his particular anarchist view of humanity, a conviction that 'lies at the root of Chomsky’s belief system: a conception of human nature that spans his disparate writings in linguistics and in *politics*.
“'This view of human nature may be the hidden variable that accounts for Chomsky’s otherwise disparate beliefs. In the political arena, Chomsky’s “anarcho-syndicalism” assumes that humans are equipped with a spontaneous tendency to cooperate and to engage in productive, creative work for its own sake…. In the linguistic arena, Chomsky posits a system for productive, creative generation of an infinite number of sentences, a system which allows for the expression of thought for its own sake but is not designed for (and not even particularly good at) the practical function of communication.”
I find the idea that Chomsky's linguistic theories are passed through political and ideological filters to be very unconvincing. Many years back, looking for an excuse to write Chomsky, I was reading Robert M. Cutler's work on Bakunin (http://www.robertcutler.org/bakunin/basic/intro.html), an anarchist that Chomsky often cites approvingly. Lo and behold, therein I found passages by Bakunin on linguistic theory, of all things. Seizing the opportunity, I wrote Chomsky for his take on the matter. Basically, Chomsky adamantly disagreed with what Bakunin had to say about language (I can't recall what Bakunin's point was, but Chomsky thought it was hogwash). I don't think Chomsky would follow some linguistic line because it's "what anarchists are supposed to think" or because he needs a theory to be a certain way so he can reconcile, Lysenko-like, scientific data with "his anarcho-syndicalism" the way Pinker and the unfortunately-named Jackendoff suggest.
Furthermore, about language not being designed for "and not even particularly good at" communication -- it may or may not be relevant, but Chomsky did mention how often we have to pause to search for the right words to express what we mean/feel, and often we'll say something, realize our words didn't capture our feelings accurately, and so we'll re-state what we said, but in terms we think are more consonant with our intent.
-B.