"One can, of course, take the position that we don’t care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don’t pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That’s exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.
I’ve yet to read or listen to anything by Chomsky that makes any sense at all. I’m more curious as to why threads continue to pop up about him on this forum. Did this guy really have that much influence some time ago? I honestly only heard of him until recently.
An anarchist not minding the state, when the state does something to support it’s views.
Ex: the state would enforce certain property rights (self ownership, land, business, etc) via a state court, which is something that most left anarchists would not recognize as legit and consider it aggression; however many right anarchists may be fine to utilize the state courts in cases involved in protecting property.
In this case a left anarchist is against something that undermines property rights (which he considers illegitiment) and for a more equal distrabution of the means of production (legit to him)
I’m not saying he’s not batty, it’s just he sees property rights enforced by the state as an act of aggression that causes poverty.
I guess that makes sense. But in my mind, they would cease to be an anarchist and be more of a minarchist like me. The right anarchist, I mean. Left anarchists I don’t understand at all.
This kind of doublethink is only possible when terms are not strictly defined, if you ask me.
Chompsky is a douchebag. That’s it. Even his much-vaunted “hierarchy” in computer science is a bunch of BS (my field is CS)… I just don’t understand why he commands any respect with anyone.
He would be more on target, if not for the fact that he and Howard Zinn are probably the only academic anarchists. Most anarchists are the IWW types who are into decentralization and direct action. That’s how they understand the better tomorrow, not through theorizing and being privileged. Privileged academics are living it up in the status quo and cheerleading for the state. Not being anarchists or some kind of purist.
I think he doesn’t want anarchist expropriation and revolutionary chaos to occur before he dies, is what I think. He probably has second thoughts about how he would function or what he’d have to do in a stateless society. Versus the comfort of his current living.
I somehow doubt that, if there was some “anarchist revolution” I think he would easily capitalize on his celeb, and be a “founding father” of sorts. My 2 cents on that
Tell me what you think of this fantastic documentary. His anti-war, and anti-media views against the state are brilliant. Chomsky could have been the best Anarchist next to Murray Rothbard if he hasn’t economically illiterate.
If he had any interest in living in his own social design, he could simulate it more or less right now by not stashing away millions, perhaps even “live in a log cabin in Montana”.