[lbo-talk] Growing moderatism in academia

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Jul 7 09:43:43 PDT 2008


On Jul 7, 2008, at 12:19 PM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> Chomsky is in principle an an anarchist, not a Gramscian, also he's
> a real down-home 'Murican guy from Philly in a lot of ways, for
> real, not a put on.

Except for his being Jewish, and the left milieu he grew up in. He talks about his political roots at:

<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#080207>.

And for his extremely high-powered intellectual contributions. If someone who's made a huge name for himself in linguistics and an equally huge, if unscholarly, name for himself in politics isn't an intellectual, I don't know who is.


> I know from what you have told me that you are intimately familiar
> with the attitude. It's totally sick-making. I have no great belief
> in the wisdom of the masses, if growing up in the South didn't cure
> me of any such belief then being a trial lawyer did, but I do agree
> with Chomsky that I'd rather be ruled by the first hundred names
> out of the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. (Another
> one of his anti-intellectual remarks.)

Wasn't it William Buckley who said that?


> A qualification. When you or Gramsci says we are all capable of
> intellectual activity, that doesn't mean in the same way, as you
> know and I knwo you didn't mean to suggest that we are all equally
> qualified to analyse economic statiutics or analyze Hegel.

No. There are differences in tastes and endowments, as the economists would say. Still, things could be a lot more egalitarian than they are now.

Doug



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