Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Miscellaneous General
1

I’m a Ron Paul supporter and a friend recently hit me with this drivel from Chomsky. I’m somewhat new to the libertarian scene and still have a lot to learn. While I feel many of these points are straw man arguments or just plain misinterpretations/misrepresentations of what Ron Paul believes I don’t have the knowledge and sufficient experience with regards to libertarianism to respond properly. Thus, I am wondering how you guys would respond to Chomsky’s assertions here.

http://www.geekarmy.com/geekblog/politics/transcript-of-noam-chomsky-on-ron-paul/

Any opinions, advice, help in general would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Pete

non austrian / libertarian influences
2

Allow me to be the first to post here and say that I do believe that I was the one on Reddit who pointed you to here. This being said, give me a few moments to address the questions.

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This is really old, I feel like this has come up on here before.

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Before I’d like to go any further I’d like to state that I think that Chomsky is quite an intelligent person. He has better reasons for believing that which he believes than most people who have ever walked this earth. I also have a great deal of respect for his belief in the limited knowledge of humans and the need for polycentrism. He even admitted once that markets may not need to be dismantled (I don’t know how much you know about Chomsky’s position but he’s a socialist anarchist although with many aknowledgements) as the alternative could be even more negative. I believe that Chomsky’s blunder comes from the “Hierarchy bad” view of the egalitarian radical left, despite the fact that hierarchy is a natural thing (so is cancer) and isn’t necessarily negative. If one man is wiser than the rest of us and he understands the situation and has the best wishes for the enterprise at heart, then why not give him a greater deal of control over affairs?

Response time! I’ll try to keep this sort and concise.

“Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc.”

Why would he be forced to make such an agreement in a wealthy free market society? Real wages rise for everyone in a free market over time. Furthermore what kind of a society would allow this to happen if property rights were upheld? Why wouldn’t people who, in Chomsky’s view, are supposed to act sponteneously and with a good deal of mutual respect, not from some types of organizations which would help to prevent such arrangements? Why wouldn’t Mr. Chomsky himself work to help give this man money, or better yet a loan to go and get work experience? This would help him by giving him a higher paying job, and the rest of society would be aided as well by receiving his more productive services?

“Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago.”

It is nothing short of impossible that this is the case. If companies were treating their workers that poorly when they could afford not to then competators could have easily bid away the laborers to better working conditions. If such poor conditions were the correct cause then such ‘democratic solutions’ would result in mass unemployment because businesses could not afford to hire laborers. Furthermore why is the majority, or indeed even a significant minority, helpless if they don’t have government power?

“Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability?”

If they are such poor enterprises that they cannot survive without limited liability. What’s wrong with that? This means that currently they are unproductive and cause harm to other people.

“Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window”

That’s a fools argument Mr. Chomsky. That’s like saying that because we get rid of the department of education that there will be no more education. Everything you’re talking about preceeded government intervention, and to pretend that businesses have some advantage to treating their employees like crap is foolish. They would have to worry about having their employees bid away from them and bad performance by their employees. Many of today’s most sucessful enterprises have become sucessful because they treat employees well and give incentive to free thought (apple and google spring to mind) and to pin this all down on the government is foolishness. You’re the anarchist! Allow people to associate freely and see what conditions people are willing to work at and consumers are willing to support! Top down solutions aren’t the best idea.

"Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded — like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? "

First of all the collapse of R&D would not mean the end of the economy, at worst it would mean general stagnation, but most importantly the fact is that there are pleanty of profit incentives for people to invest in Research and Developement because they have a short monopoly advantage and a label behind what they do. An Ereader isn’t hard to make, and Amazon wasn’t the first on the market with it but it’s still a good example. It was the first really big Ereader campaign when the time was right, and indeed it was one of the first. Amazon is rolling in the grean right now from its Kindle because it was first on the market, had its name out there, and provided a good product. Why can the same not be done with most developement? Furthermore why can’t voluntary public institutions fund them? Who doesn’t want to help science thrive?

Also the computer and internet were fully developed by private use. If it were left up to ‘the public’ computers would probably still be a thing of big businesses and cash registers. The computer you can make an argument wouldn’t have been developed but for the government, because the first was a government machine, but the internet could have easily been made by private industry. Universities had been linking to each other for years through computers, there’s no reason why the government was needed to bring this on a wide scale.

"Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,….? "

Each one of those things can be provided publically. Toll roads exist under tax funded governments, private schools exist and public schools suck, trains and buses cost tolls, environmental regulation has been botched and abused by the government for centuries.

“Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window?”

The idea that private industry is unaccountable is foolish. At very least it’s accountable to the law and it can’t aggress or violate the property rights of others. However all private companies and institutions are accountable to the consumer. If a company is wasteful and provides a crappy product it’s at very least not going to make as much money as it could, more likely is it’s going out of business. If a voluntary institution doesn’t serve its constituents what’s going to happen to it? It’s going to lose them. Private industry is directly accountable to the law, it’s employees who can leave at any time, and the consumer. The government is accountable to the whims of politicians and vaguely the voting process which can be utterly bastardized through politics. Even when democracy works perfectly the fact is that people often act in a mindless heard without any actual coherent thought.

Democracy is a good slogan, but what does it actually mean? It means mob rule, no accountability for the voters for bad decisions, no direct influence, no incentive to be educated, and the ability to use force against other people.

"There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. "

Organized labor can put up pleanty of resistance to private corporations. If it can find other employees then this shows that there are those who could be better off if they just took the current conditions. You’re demanding higher conditions for some whilst others are all to willing to work at the wages they are currently scoffing at.

He is proposing a form of ultranationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc.

This is especially strange because I’ve heard Chomsky agree with Paul on foreign affairs before. Anyway, the idea that this is ultranationalism is foolish, and the underlined section could be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard him say. Paul has said so many times that the United States shouldn’t invade other areas just to manipulate the areas resources for its own advantage. I personally think that Paul would be more than happy to see war criminals be punished (although by the United States like the constitution allows for, another topic though) but guess what? That would be very unpopular. Extremely unpopular amongst the American public. In fact, I think the majority might not like it… BUT… BUT… DEMOCRACY!!!

" He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based — the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. "

Need is no excuse for trying to enslave other people. I also find it odd that as soon as people are given democratic force they are saints, but as soon as that is taken away they are selfish monsters.

Oh, and the social security system is broken, it’s unsustainable.

"There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion "

That’s really not an answer to the question in the first place, but I think that you’re version of libertarianism would end up pretty tyrannical and pretty poor.

That would have to be worked out by free communities,

Why not free individuals? Why should a supposed libertarian who supports individual rights oppose the individuals rights when it comes to economic affairs and property?

I hope that helps.

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"“Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window?”

Implying what? That governments as they currently exist are accountable to the public? What a croc. His whole career has centered on the fact that they are not especially in the United States. What a joke.

Edit: i think this is Chomsky being very conservatively reactionary here. For a man that prides himself on being liberal and forward thinking it’s quite telling.

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Brilliantly enlightening. Thank you mate!

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I don’t understand how someone like Chomsky can be so smart, yet so terribly wrong.

**

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What Chomksy misses (or more likely, ignores) is that value is subjective. This implies that the individuals entering into the contract see themselves benefitting in comparison to rejecting it. On part of the worker, Chomsky pretty much made the argument for us - if it were not for (in this particular scenario) General Electric, the worker would surely starve. Now, considering GE is undeniably giving the worker a means to survive, I’d say the worker is blessed by the corporation’s presence, and the corporation blessed by the worker. Seems like a pretty damn harmonious relationship to me.

Now, someone may object with the mere opinion that the working terms are emotionally revoking to the average person. Well, we then have to ask, who is the average person? A U.S. citizen, whose poor are incomparably wealthier than the vast majority invidivuals in the history of civilization? Or is it a mother starving in Africa wishing she had any employment opportunity, so as to feed her starving children? I think you get my point. Context must be applied to all situations. Economic progress was hardly a given throughout the most of human history. Furthermore, these situations only arise in the first place from a fundamental scarcity of goods, which can only be alleviated by greater production through captial investment.

As a note, Chomsky says this form of “slavery” (the kind of slavery where nature won’t yield us infinite goods, I guess) was conqurered by “democratic politics long ago.” It is up to him to prove this statement. If he means via wealth redistribution schemes, you can look up the statistics on your own to realize how impoverishing they actually are. From 1900 to 1965, the poverty rate decreased from 90% of the total population to about 10%. From 1965 until recently, welfare spending per person had quadrupled, and yet poverty has stagnated. In summary, these schemes do nothing to create economic growth (the enemy of poverty); in fact, they do the opposite.

Lastly, Chomsky utterly fails in his moral analysis. If he believes, as he seemed to indicate, that the worker is entitled to a wage (or other contract conditions) merely by his existence, the consequence of this thinking is nothing short of slavery (by its coherent definiton).

In Chomsky’s view, we are entitled to a “living wage” merely by existing. Of course, a living wage is not just a money income, but the goods that the money purchases. And of course, for goods to exist in such a way, someone must have produced them. Now, what is it called when one individual is entitled to the the product of another individual’s labor? Slavery. Little does Chomsky realize, no matter how poor the benefits our peers offer us, we are blessed by their presence, as if they didn’t exist, the most of us would certianly die. In the scenario discussed earlier, had the corporation not existed, the worker would have died. And yet the corporation, by giving the worker the opportunity to survive, is said to be enslaving her? Now that’s perverse.

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His comparison of “private tyrannies” to “state tyrannies” is laughable. One literally extorts you; the other’s existence is completely predicated on its ability to pursuade people to engage in trade with it (I’m shaking in fear).

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I agree. There can be a “private tyranny”, but state action, by definition, can qualify as tyranny. Once a “private” agency goes rogue, it starts acting like a state. This is the paradigm that should be used in this type of analysis, but leftists are hung up on the private/public or “capitalist/government” dichotomy.

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I’d love to see Keith Preston and Kevin Carson’s take on this. Kind of reactionary leftoid stuff I’d expect to see in the New York Times or Daily Kos, not a “radical” or “anarchist” like Chomsky. Anyhow;

I am not a left-libertarian/mutualist. Nonetheless, I gotta say; even by your standards, this stuff has got to be ten times more vulgar than anything George Reisman or the Adam Smith Institute has ever written. Anyone who endorses Hillary Clinton over Ron Paul is not a libertarian in any way, shape or form, be it left, right, center, third positionist, collectivist, individualist, syndicalist, etcetera.

In general: This is why I think alliances with syndicalists/the New Left/Occupiers et.al are a waste of time. They only hate the government because they think it’s the protector of private property and “white privilege”, and only hate the IMF/World Bank/other globalist groups because they think they are “neoliberals” who want to dismantle “democracy” (i.e. localist Progressive interventionism or outright communism ala Venezuela).

Do they criticize the cronyist American financial sector? Sure. So did the Soviets and Nazis. Much like the Soviets only criticized the banksters due to them being the “bourgeois” and the Nazis only criticized them due to being “der Juden”, these folks only hate corporatism because it offends their egalitarian value system. There’s no fundamental oppositon to the concept of compulsory wealth and income redistribution or government-business partnership, only that it’s done by and to the “wrong” people.

Chomsky’s hysterical spiel on Ron Paul’s foreign policy is especially hilarious. It’s like he wants to be seen as taking a totally different stand on the issue from the evul raysist right wing anti-democratic reactionary Ron Paul, and so throws out all that rhubarb about “ultranationalism”. Call me Glenn Beck, but I’ll take Ayn Rand or even Pat Buchanan any day of the week over a Mao/Pol Pot apologist who rambles on about “communal decisions”.

*Austrian economics "refuted" threads*
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Chomsky is a shill, he’s a disinfo agent … I assume his paycheck is signed in Langley, VA.

Here he confuses (unqualified) contractarianism with property rights.

As far as “private tyranny” goes, the dichotomy between “private” and “public” tyranny is a false one. There’s just tyranny and - except in the case of mob riots or lynches - it is always exercised by a single actor. Even an oligarchy must select someone to chair the board if it is truly acting as an organic unit.

Chomsky should stick to linguistics and leave the economics to economists. Parroting Paul Krugman’s opinion pieces is not economics.

The question is ill-formed because Ron Paul does not support “dismantling of the government” and he’s never said anything to that effect. To be specific, he supports a restriction of the powers of the Federal government to those enumerated in the Constitution. He advocates cession of all the powers which the Federal government has illegally seized back to the States, all 50 of which have democratic governments by which they can decide these issues on a state-by-state basis.

Again, he should leave the economics to the economists. He is correct that employers have asymmetrical power in the employer-employee relationship but this is exacerbated by regulations which are supposed to restrict the power of employers. He should read Bastiat’s essay That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen to understand the pervasive fact of unintended consequences that are the rule, not the exception, of government policy.

The proponent of “corrective” or “preventive” regulations might argue that government doesn’t get it all that as bad as we claim. In fact, government policies accomplish mostly what they intend to accomplish with minor deviations. But this proves too much. If it is true that government policy generally accomplishes exactly what it sets out to accomplish then we can only conclude that government policy is not what politicians say it is but is, in fact, quite different. Does the fact that Pruitt-Igoe was government policy mean that government is waging a subversive war on the black community? Does the fact that the 9/11 attacks were - by the government’s own admission - blowback for prior US foreign policy in the Middle East stretching back almost to the end of WWII mean that the US government is intentionally picking pick a fight with the entire Muslim world, especially in light of the massive escalation of those policies since 9/11 (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Arab Spring, etc)? I could go on and on with this.

But we don’t need the UN to prosecute US war criminals (e.g. GW Bush)… we just need to stop arming and voting the power to those criminals in the first place.

And how can Ron Paul be both an ultra-nationalist and be trying to dismantle the national government at the same time?? This whole “interview” is disjointed and confused, at best.

Clayton -

Chomsky’s claim that the claim that Social Security is broken is false is false. I mean, come on. How ridiculous can you get? Social Security was supposed to be paid by the same people who would later collect. This changed (quite quickly) into a system where today’s workers pay directly today’s retirees. This seems to be what Chomsky believes that the Social Security program was originally intended to be, but that is simply factually incorrect. If that is the system that Chomsky espouses, then he needs to explain how the act of taking money from Peter and giving it to (retired) Paul (because retired Paul once had his money taken and given to then-retired Pierre) is preferable to having just allowed Paul and Peter to respectively prepare for their own retirement in their own way. Back in the day, many people just moved in with one of their children when they retired, a practice still common in many parts of the developing world. I’m not sure what the big crime would be if we had a little more family bonding on an economic basis.

The idea of “people running around freely with assault rifles” is funny because I doubt that Chomsky is a consistent opponent of private gun ownership. Surely, bodyguard services, contract protection services (e.g. private diplomatic security companies) and armored transport are all examples of private gun owners which I doubt Chomsky would favor restricting. So what’s the defining difference? Licensing, etc. is not the difference. The difference is that these are institutions who are run by “responsible” and “serious” people such as CEOs and boards of directors, they are not just “rabble” who are, as he says, “running around freely with assault rifles.”

I’m willing to forgive the elitism in this view for the sake of argument if only Chomsky would be honest and admit that that’s what this is really about and argue his position on the basis of practical concerns, perhaps that a corporation with a large capitalization can be held materially liable for crimes committed by one of its armed agents, etc. But since he wants to pretend to hold the populist high ground, he has to be disingenuous about it.

Chomsky is a socialist, not a libertarian. It is impossible to say that socialism and libertarianism are compatible unless you shift the definition of human nature.

He waffles on this because he’s a hardcore communist, just read anything he’s written on politics. He’s only cast as a “libertarian” and “anti-government” because he’s anti-US government because “it’s capitalist” (LOL!)

The fact is that Chomsky sees no role whatsoever for private property rights. As he says, it would be worked out by “free communities”… which is, I suspect, a euphemism for Soviet committees.

Clayton -

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Long rips Chomsky a new one here::

http://praxeology.net/aotp.htm#2

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Chomsky is always making that ridiculous point, that much R&D is funded by the Pentagon ergo the free market fails, QED.

On the “WITHOUT THE STATE WE WOULDN’T HAVE INTERNETZ HURR” line, see this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbR4cjA-Few

Basically, the internet’s time had already arrived when the market developed the integrated circuit. Plenty of businesses have also developed private LANs. The only real contribution the government made was ARPANET, which used the TCP/IP protocol we’re still stuck with that provides no way to price packets, leading to a ‘tragedy of open access’ scenario: the overuse and abuse of the internet we see today.

On the myth of science as a public good, see Terrence Kealey:

As well, Chomsky praises Pentagon funding when it’s actually been responsible for subsidizing an extraordinary amount of waste, price-gouging, and, most ironically, the huge, tyrannical corporate structures which hedespises so much. On this, see Seymour Melman’s work on the cost-plus contract and Kevin Carson’s excellent study “The Great Domain of Cost-Plus”.

Lol. The way “democratic politics” “overcomes” such “savage” contracts is simply by making them illegal, as if you could make a harsh reality go away by ignoring it. Apparently, it’s better for someone to starve than to suffer the indignity of being rid of starvation in a manner Chomsky disapproves of. No one should be allowed to make decisions on their own without Chomsky’s personal moral approval. I’m not sure what kind of worker wants such “rights.”

Honestly, all you have to do to rebut Chomsky is recall what happened when the US passed the Child Labour Deterrence Act in 1993, banning the import of Bangladeshi textiles made with child labour. Did these children suddenly go on to become doctors and engineers, as they would in left-wing fantasy land? Let’s take a look:

Lord praise democratic politics!

Deconstructing the basic research objection - see here
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Here my summary of Mr. Paul’s positions:

  • He values property rights, and contracts between people (defended by law enforcement and courts).

Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea.

Horray! Beginning with the completely out-of-the-blue contrived scenario. As an anarchist, he should know better than this.

What he’s doing is taking the system and initializing it with a scenario that is allowed within the system but not one that is probable.

Take this example:

Constitutional democracy is evil. Why? Well, in constitutional democracy if you get 75% of the people to vote to enslave the other 25% (I am discussing Constitutional amendments), then you suddenly have a 25% slave population. Now, do we really believe that this is a valid critique of democracy? No. Why? Because this is not likely to happen.

Take a contrived scenario now designed to critique libertarianism:

Walmart owns all the world’s resources and decides to not sell us any food any more and we starve and die. The scenario could technically happen under a libertarian society. Now, would it? Of course not.

What is the inherent flaw behind this argument? The market is a process. Unless you have dictatorial powers, you can’t actually create this omnipotent Walmart out of the blue. It has to come out of voluntary interactions in the market. If Walmart is about to turn evil, then the market would not let it become a monopoly. If it actually does, then the entire world population is therefore retarded (no, literally) and would do no better in any system whatsoever.

Contrived scenarios thus fail because we can set starting conditions for them that are ridiculous and would never happen.

Apply this principle to his example - the evil utility company.

Let’s break it down.

  1. Apparently there is no charity for this man to keep him from starvation. That includes charity from people like Chomsky himself, who would apparently stop caring for the poor.

  2. Apparently there are no other jobs for him to take to prevent him from starving

  3. He has no stores of food

  4. He has no land to grow food himself

  5. Utility companies randomly like to torture desperate people who have literally no other option left to them

  6. The company takes explicit care to make the life of this specific man miserable (they create special conditions for him separate from those of others, thus needing additional office space to replicate the disgusting working conditions of some evil factory).

  7. If, instead, all men are treated badly, then I really fail to see how this factory is still operational. Now, they in fact may be still treated “badly” according to what we think, but the alternative for them was worse (as was the case for the late 19th century US).

  8. This company is a monopoly which can afford to not care about the welfare of any of its workers

  9. This monopoly arose out of pure markets, somehow subjugating the entire human population at once under its iron rule

Do you see why this scenario is stupid? This would never happen. In the one out of infinity cases in which it does happen, no system whatsoever is immune. At all.

I can shell out contrived anarcho-communist scenarios all day at Chomsky, if he likes. Alternatively, he could stop making straw men and committing gigantic fallacies.

More to come!

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Wheylous, you’re right. This reminds me of Tibor Machan’s appearance on Firing Line, when he was pit against Buckley’s annoying court sophist Ernest Van Den Haag:

Apparently things would have been swell for middle age serfs if only they’d had a welfare state! Obviously the children “shouldn’t” starve; they would starve only as a result of the pointless assumptions of the question, which could have been put in an altered form to anyone of any political stripe.

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  • He wants to take away the unfair advantage corporations have (via the dismantling of big government)

“Dismantling of big government” sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded — like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,….? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise.

As a libertarian, I do not support state-created LLC. This protection could be created in the free market through voluntary contracts, but new forms of businesses might also arise.

The only safety regulations that should be allowed to remain are those that protect individuals from direct physical property damage (including the self) by others. It is a historical mistake to think that government was the actor who improved working conditions for the common man. There was a progressive shift towards safer environments. It is also a mistake to think that somehow during the late 19th century people were forced to work in factories. Since they chose to do this, then it was the better option available to them. The ages before industrialization weren’t some romantic past where all farmers were happy and then Carnegie et al came in and enslaved everyone. No, those were hard times that were greatly ameliorated by the industrial revolution.

Basic R&D is typically state funded, yes. So was food production in the USSR. His point? Simply because it’s funded by the state doesn’t mean it can’t be funded by anyone else.

Eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation - all straw men. Let me rip them apart:

  1. Roads: we do not “eliminate roads.” Libertarians understand better than anyone that destruction of wealth cannot lead to more wealth. The roads do not magically vanish in a libertarian society. This would violate the law of conservation of energy. Instead, the roads are owned by companies, communities, and individuals. Additionally, there are easements which at allow free movement over some land that has been used (while unowned) for travel.

  2. School - The idea that only the state can provide schools is one fiercely pushed by statists. Check out this article to help to challenge some ideas about private education:

https://www.mises.org/daily/1425/media.aspx?action=author&ID=369

Furthermore, despite all the schooling we get today, people are still largely uneducated. How come? Gosh, well, if they treat all kids like pieces of an assembly line, then they’re gonna get an assembly-line product: of average quality and with interchangeable parts. Why does everyone need to learn advanced biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, art history, European history, etc? The current educational system believes that all knowledge is valuable to everyone and must be had by everyone, while this is not true.

  1. Public transportation - You mean this?
  1. Environmental regulation - actually, enforcing property rights might just do more for the environment than any regulation the government would make.

Ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability - well, last time I checked the laws of supply and demand did a decent job of not creating private tyrannies. The burden of proof is on him, really.

No accountability to the general public - Oh, you mean like the Fed or the bureaucracy?

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Chomsky should stick to linguistics and leave the economics to economists. Parroting Paul Krugman’s opinion pieces is not economics.

Goddammit Clayton! I was actually planning on saying this at the end of my responses! I work in the field of linguistics, so I felt like I could have connected my real world experience to a theoretical conversation, but no, you had to go and ruin it for me! Frickin capitalist.

18

Friends! Romans! Misesians!

I feel that after all that has been said that we can safely say that Mr. Chomsky’s statements are, for lack of a better word, “Wrong”.

Rationality has been served!

… That is all…

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Very nice Tunk and Wheylous.

20

From http://www.lewrockwell.com/wall/wall26.html

"“Chomsky has published a large number of books dealing with world events and American foreign policy, since his first collection of political essays, American Power and the New Mandarins, came out in 19691. In this book he rightly and tellingly criticized the ostensibly value-neutral approach of the managers of the United States’ war on Vietnam and their apologists, pointing out that all statements of action under declaredly objective and neutral intent are in fact a power-serving and often cynical defense of the status quo and of a particular, dominant ideology.”

“What those coalitions of ‘investors’ (the gangs of power-seekers) and their sycophants dislike, more than anything, is for their intentions and their propaganda to be shown up for what they are: and in my opinion Chomsky’s primary skill lies in doing just that, in the psychological work of analyzing and unmasking underlying structures and processes.”

"In his academic work in linguistics, Chomsky developed the conviction of innate human potential and creativity into an extensive theory. In place of earlier, empirically-based theories, he developed and consolidated the idea — more philosophical than linguistic — that there are intrinsic (even biological) qualities of mind which enable us to generate rules of grammar and use of language without having first had to learn them all.

In so doing, Chomsky countered the mechanistic conception that we start out like a completely blank sheet of paper on which environmental factors — instructors, social engineers, culture — work their influences and totally shape the resulting human being. This was forcefully put in his essay entitled ‘Psychology and Ideology,'2 a rightly celebrated demolition of then highly influential behaviorist arguments of B. F. Skinner, whose best-known work was, notoriously, entitled Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972)."

------------------------------------ What I’ve always thought

James Ostrowski has made the best overall critique of the utopian nature of Chomsky’s ideas in his January 2003 article entitled “Chomsky’s Economics.” He writes:

“Economics requires study and systematic thinking about the implications of action, choice, and ownership in a world of scarcity. It is a science that delineates the limits of how far the human mind can wander when thinking about what society can and should be. This is one reason that intellectuals, even great ones, take such pains to avoid studying economics, and instead latch on to fantasies like socialism and syndicalism.”

“He also quotes Chomsky as once having said, “There are supposed to be laws of economics. I can’t understand them.” This pinpoints a seemingly willful ignorance when it comes to economic matters. I do not find this surprising in the context of Chomsky’s intellectual interests but, as the passage of time has demonstrated, it of course limits the application of his ideas to the real world, and to bringing about any substantive changes to that world.”

“First, a brief explanation. The description ‘libertarian’ is claimed by both ‘left-libertarians’ and ‘right-libertarians.’ Left-libertarians and left-anarchists, including Chomsky, see libertarian socialism (or non-aggressive, non-violent anarchism) as the true legacy of classical liberalism, while anarcho-capitalists and libertarians of the right, because of their focus on economics, tend to see ‘libertarian socialism’ as a contradiction in terms: for them, libertarian is diametrically opposed to collectivist, and socialism is by definition collectivist. Part of the problem lies in what left and right define as ‘socialism.’ However, it is sufficient to understand that the tussles between left and right over the legitimate use of the words ‘libertarian’ and ‘socialist’ tend to generate misunderstandings and to confuse the issues. In fact, there is much common ground between left- and right-libertarianism, principally the opposition to state power and to war.”

“Chomsky has acknowledged this in the past: “I find myself in substantial agreement with people who consider themselves anarcho-capitalists on a whole range of issues; and for some years, was able to write only in their journals. And I also admire their commitment to rationality — which is rare….” ~ Noam Chomsky, in an interview entitled “Noam Chomsky on Anarchism,” December 1996”

“In the same excerpt, however, Chomsky goes on to say, “…I do not think they see the consequences of the doctrines they espouse, or their profound moral failings.” Here he is referring to the alleged inability of anarcho-capitalists to admit that concentrations of private power (as found, for example, in large American and multinational corporations) can be as bad or worse than the coercive power of the state. As far as Chomsky is concerned, this is the additional and vital humanistic element in his preferred, leftist form of anarchism, as opposed to right-anarchism or anarcho-capitalism.”

"The problem with this approach, as critics have pointed out, is that it produces seemingly arbitrary support for coercive or aggressive state action, in situations where state action is deemed the lesser of two evils. Chomsky believes that in such situations the state can and should act as a restraining influence so as to check “the ravages of an unconstrained corporate-capitalist system,” a typical expression which he used in a recent interview. It is for this reason that he has been called ‘the coercive anarchist.’

Joe Peacott writes in “Chomsky’s Statism”: “Chomsky bases his support for the federal government on his contention that private power wielded by corporations is much more dangerous to people than state action, and that government can, and should, protect its defenseless citizens against the depredations of the capitalists. While the power of private corporations in the United States is truly awesome and oppressive, this power exists because these businesses are supported by the state, a point that Chomsky concedes.”

“One can see why Julian Sanchez begins his article “Two Cheers for Chomskyism” with the words, “Libertarians are not supposed to like Noam Chomsky.” Chomsky rather unthinkingly dismisses the (right-)libertarian vision laid out in, for example, Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty as “a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it, … a world built on hatred,” something “not even worth talking about … a special American aberration, it’s not really serious.” And yet, as Sanchez points out, he is “a hell of a lot closer to [right-]libertarians than he or his groupies dare admit.” Is this not because the ultimate objection is not to capital itself, but to the corporatism under which some capitalists cozy up to the state, contriving monopolies, subsidies, and other distortions of the true free market, while others simply take possession of the apparatus and offensive capability of the state to rig the markets in their favor? The end-result of all this is that all one can say about Chomsky’s form of politics with any certainty is that he is more often anti-state than not. This is hardly satisfactory for anyone looking for a clear and positive political stance, or a straw man to knock down, but is comprehensible when you realize that Chomsky would probably much rather not adopt any particular political stance, and I suspect does not much care whether he is judged an anarchist or not, or whether he understands the laws of economics: his ultimate interest is in process and structure. Empirical facts are of course important to him, but like any true polemicist, he is selective in his choice of those facts. That he is still criticized for this is indicative of the extent to which the belief in desirability of objective neutrality and balance in socio-political analysis still prevails. Chomsky implicitly condemns this idea in all his work: for him, supposed objectivity and balance mask underlying ideologies of dominance and discrimination.”