[lbo-talk] The Soviet Union Versus Socialism - Noam Chomsky

Tayssir John Gabbour tjg at pentaside.org
Mon May 2 06:58:14 PDT 2011


On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> On May 1, 2011, at 8:56 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Cf. his lecture from 40 years ago, "Government in the Future" (Seven Stories Press 2005):
>>
>> "I think that the libertarian socialist concepts - and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from left-wing Marxism through anarchism - are fundamentally correct and that they are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."
>
> Classical liberalism? Really? You like this, Carl? This only confirms my worst suspicions about anarchists - they're individualists of a fundamentally conventional sort.
> [...]
> I'm just reacting to this excerpt, which is rather nonsensical.

Maybe Chomsky's full context would alter your opinion (http://pentaside.org/article/chomsky-govt-in-the-future.html):

"Classical liberalism asserts as its major idea an opposition to all

but the most restricted and minimal forms of state intervention in

personal or social life. Well this conclusion is quite familiar,

however the reasoning that leads to it is less familiar and, I

think, a good deal more important than the conclusion itself."

...

"Though he expresses a classical liberal doctrine, Humboldt is no

primitive individualist, in the style of for example Rousseau. So

Rousseau extols the savage who lives within himself, but Humboldt's

vision is entirely different. He sums up his remarks as follows, he

says "the whole tenor of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this

essay might fairly be reduced to this: that while they would break

all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many

new social bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to

develop than the one who is fettered." and he in fact looks

forwards to a community of free association, without coercion by

the state or other authoritarian institutions, in which free men

can create and inquire, achieve the highest development of their

powers. In fact, far ahead of his time, he presents an anarchist

vision that is appropriate, perhaps, to the next stage of

industrial society. We can perhaps look forward to a day, when

these various strands will be brought together within the framework

of libertarian socialism, a social form that barely exists today,

though its elements can perhaps be perceived, for example in the

guarantee of individual rights, that has achieved so far its

fullest realization (though still tragically flawed in the western

democracies), or in the Israeli kibbutzim, or in the experiments

with workers' councils in Yugoslavia, or in the effort to awaken

popular consciousness and to create a new involvement in the social

process, which is a fundamental element in the third world

revolutions, coexisting uneasily with indefensible authoritarian

practice."

So he's rejecting the well-known conclusions of classical liberalism, but extending classical liberalism's lesser-known reasoning. (At least Humboldt's form of it.)

As for anarchists in general being conventional hyper-individualists... I agree many are. (There isn't exactly a big barrier to entry if you decide to call yourself an anarchist one day.) But if you do a search for "anarchist forum", the first hit is anarchistblackcat.org, which is a very sane, excellently-run forum full of anarchist-communists. There are anarchists, and then there are anarchists.

All the best, Tj



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list