I was actually listening Noam Chomsky on YouTube this morning in the car (Roderick Long’s videos were not loading).
He claims he is a socialist libertarian, and that the meaning of “libertarian” in US has been corrupted.
I think this is the flow of these people’s logic:
- Libertarian means pro-freedom.
- You can’t have freedom under free markets, because look: you have corporatist structure (detrimnetal to liberty) in the US, where (as everyone knows) there are free markets.
- If you don’t regulate free markets, people who have money will buy the government’s favors.
- So, we need to impose freedom from above, through totalitarian means.
So, since we tend to be slaves when we are a little free, we need to be a little bit slaves in order to be fully free. It’s rather like a parent whose kids detest him because he hits them from time to time – except he attributes it the fact that he gives them too much freedom. “I am too nice,” he sighs dramatically, “and that’s why my kids are not grateful.”
There is a common gap of logic in all socialists’ reasoning. It’s like a logical equivalent of linguistic swallowing of the last syllable. For example, Chomsky’s views:
In his 1973 book For Reasons of State, Chomsky argues that instead of a capitalist system in which people are “wage slaves” or an authoritarian system in which decisions are made by a centralized committee, a society could function with no paid labor. He argues that a nation’s populace should be free to pursue jobs of their choosing. People will be free to do as they like, and the work they voluntarily choose will be both “rewarding in itself” and “socially useful.” Society would be run under a system of peaceful anarchism, with no state or other authoritarian institutions. Work that was fundamentally distasteful to all, if any existed, would be distributed equally among everyone
The question is, of course: distributed by whom? And what if some refuse to perform it? And what if some share fruits of their labor with others to perform it for them? Etc., etc.
It’s always the same story with totalitarian idealists. Lenin: “We will allow peasants to congregate into collective farms”. Martin Luter: “If only we stop oppressing Jews, they will convert to Christianity by themselves.” That’s the first step. The second step is that the people politely say: “no, thanks”. Third step is that the enlightened idealist is outraged and decides to impose his charity on the people by force and violence.
Here is another example:
Unlike many anarchists, Steinberg believed that it is possible and necessary to form a political party whose task would be the destruction of the state from within. He also noted, like some contemporary anarchists, that even an established syndicalist federation would not be completely free of elements or “crystals” of organized power. According to Steinberg, even a relatively free and stateless social system has to acknowledge the existence of some reminiscent government-like structures within itself, in order to decentralize or dismantle them and further “anarchize” the society. Steinberg viewed anarchism as an underlying principle, spirit, and drive of revolutionary socialism, rather than as a concrete political program with an ultimate goal. Therefore, he refrained from equating his syndicalist ideas with “anarchism”, because such an equation, in his view, would have compromised the very subtle and perpetual nature of anarchist principles.
So, basically, in order for everyone to be free and equal, some need to be a little “more free”, so that the wise few keep the society “truly free”.