As much as I enjoy Chomsky's criticism of US media and US wars, he is after all an anarchist of types (or an amalgamation of anarchism and ultra-left-wing-Marxism - seems he calls it libertarian socialism). So one ought not be surprised by classical anarchist philosophy pervading everything he writes.
In some of the cited works above (Notes on Anarchism, Soviet Union vs Socialism), he lauds Anton Pannekoek, a ultra-left Communist (more accurately a follower of 'council communism') - who originally during the revolution allied with Lenin, Luxemburg and opposed WWI, but eventually opposed signing Treaty of Versaille as it was not 'revolutionary' enough, and later turned wholly against the revolution and Lenin ( http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/pannekoek.htm). Pannekoek was one of the targets Lenin had in mind when he wrote 'Left Wing Communism - an Infantile Disorder'.
Chomsky started following Pannekoek when he was only a teen - a long time now. Pannekoek eventually decried all political parties of the working class, believing the workers are not ready to rule themselves, and can only learn to do so through 'workers councils': "Many workers already realize that the rule of the Socialist or Communist party will be only the concealed form of the rule of the bourgeois class in which the exploitation and suppression of the working class remains." This is also classic Chomsky. And classic anarchism.
Strange character to cite repeatedly as an authority - Pannekoek also wrote decades later a poor and crude interpretation of Lenin's Materialism and Emperio-Criticism to try to prove Lenin a bourgeois social-democrat (!). Curiously, Chomsky finds not only Pannekoek a hero, but also William Paul (of UK CP) who he mislabels a 'libertarism Marxist' ( http://pentaside.org/article/chomsky-govt-in-the-future.html), misreading Paul's criticisms of Social Democracy as criticism of Leninism ( http://www.marxists.org/archive/paul-william/1917/state.pdf). Great mistake - Paul was an admirer and supporter of the USSR to the end and never a libertarian of any stripe. So I'm perplexed as to how Chomsky sees these two as complimentary.
Finally, Chomsky's other heroes are Bakunin and Marx (how's that for a contradiction - both Marx and Bakunin http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm).
Not satisfied choosing philosophers contradictory to each other, Chomsky chooses contradictory ideology, saying that under Soviet-type socialism,
"these conditions of authoritarian domination, the classical liberal ideals, which are expressed also by Marx and Bakunin and all true revolutionaries cannot be realised. Man will, in other words, not be free to enquire and create, to develop his own potentialities to their fullest, the worker will remain a fragment of a human being, degraded, a tool in the productive process directed from above."
Lenin (and Marx) were quite right recognizing the fundamental petty-bourgeois class outlook of this kind of philosophy: individualism, anti-union (except perhaps a perfect One Big Union), pristine intrinsic human nature (something Engels dashed 130 years ago in 'Origin of Family, Private Property and the State'), and above all, anarchism's opposition to any state power whatsoever. Nothing could serve small proprietary capital better than such a self-defeating philosophy.
Chomsky quotes Engels writing:
"The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state....But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune."
But Chomsky directly disagrees with Engels and Marx, saying:
'In contrast, the anarchists---most eloquently Bakunin---warned of the dangers of the "red bureaucracy,'' which would prove to be "the most vile and terrible lie that our century has created.'' The anarchosyndicalist Fernand Pelloutier asked: "Must even the transitory state to which we have to submit necessarily and fatally be a collectivist jail? Can't it consist in a free organization limited exclusively by the needs of production and consumption, all political institutions having disappeared?'''
I assume Chomsky would support laying down arms, disbanding the state and the Red army as the 15 imperialist nations invaded the Boshevik state in 1917. If he follows Bakunin, he certainly would decry the first proletarian state (or proletarian dictatorship) - the Paris Commune. Anarchists would advocate laying down arms and disbanding, presumably making the 'Semaine Sanglante' during the Commune's overthrow even more bloody than it was at 50,000 dead.
Chomsky's essentially an anarchist/libertarian who makes a religion of individualism. Good fact-checker. Poor ideologue, strategist or historian. And yet, one can't help but give such a valuable person his due who has earned in spades the eternal hatred of the Zionists and the New York Times. Certainly one of those historically contradictory characters.
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On May 1, 2011, at 9:14 PM, SA wrote:
>
> > On 5/1/2011 9:02 PM, Doug Henwood 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.
> >
> > This seems like an unhistorical way of looking at things. The claim is
> that socialism is to advanced industrial society what classical liberalism
> was to pre-industrial (or proto-industrial) society: i.e. an emancipatory
> project. What is the counter-argument? That you could have had socialism in
> a rural society emerging from feudalism? Or that the bourgeoisie contributed
> nothing in its day?
> >
> > I agree that many strands of anarchism are scurrilously individualistic,
> but I don't think Chomsky's really suffers from that flaw, or at least not
> that much.
>
> I'm just reacting to this excerpt, which is rather nonsensical.
>
> I'd just been watching a clip from the Chomsky-Foucault debate from, what,
> 1971? Chomsky went on about "intrinsic" human nature and notions of justice,
> which are deeply problematic. Foucault took him to task for having the
> presumption to know anything about an "intrinsic" human nature, for not
> noticing that those notions would be deeply contaminated by the society we
> live in, and how all our ideas of justice are deeply influence by class
> society. In other words, I pretty much agreed with everything F said.
>
> But C's position on liberalism sort of fits in with that. If individuals
> weren't "distorted" by society, they'd naturally tend towards truth and
> justice. Which is a very strange and shallow notion of the individual, isn't
> it?
>
> I don't see C arguing by analogy here - he said "the extension" of
> classical liberalism. In other words, remove the "distortions" and we'll
> blossom into freedom and self-realization. Which fits in perfectly with C's
> whole political project of fact-checking the bourgeois media. If it weren't
> for those lies, the truth could run free. Sure.
>
> Doug
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-- Peter Fay http://theclearview.wordpress.com