I’ve heard many respond, at Mises.org, that Noam Chomsky is a Marxist but never took anyone’s assumptions seriously, nor did I understood how deeply rooted he is to the statist agenda.
I’ve always been interested on his opinions. When I first read Manufacturing Consent and Hegemony or War it started me to question the motives of the media and government institutions. I find him to be a very intelligent individual and many of his conclusions, while avant-garde, require critical thinking. However, his assumptions in this video are horrifically dead wrong.
1.) He states that economic policies, since the 1970’s, have been of the Austrian Methodology, and it’s only now that policy makers are considering Keynesian economics. How could anyone come to this baffling conclusion? Haven’t we been priming the pump since the 1970’s.
2.) In addition, he doesn’t make the clear distinction between corporatism and capitalism. How can he not?
I guess you have to remember that in 99% of arguments left wingers have, their opponents are probably republicans and/or chicagoites. Neither party has a problem with the loaded corporatist definition of capitalism.
Its another reason to lean towards the voluntarist label… I just wish it had more teeth >
Chomsky, I read your book!! To paraphrase Patton. If he is saying Austrians where in power, I give a quote from Understanding Power where he would seem to contradict himself.
"Well in the 1984 elections there was still an issue. In the 1984 elections, the Republicans where the party of Keynesian growth-they said, ‘Let’s just keep spending and spending and spending, bigger and bigger deficits, and somehow that will lead to growth’-wheras the Democrats were the party of fiscal conservatism: they had this sad looking son of a minister[Mondale] saying, ‘No, no good; we can’t keep spending, we’re going to get in trouble, we’ve got to watch the money supply.’
'Okay, for anybody who gets amused at these things, the Republicans and the Democrats had shifted their traditional positions 180 degrees; historically the Democrats have been the party of Keynesian growth and the Republicans have been the party of fiscal conservatism. But they shifted totally-and what is interesting is, nobody even noticed this, I never even saw a single comment on it in the press"
Chomsky, Noam Understanding Power page 52
With that in mind, I don’t see how he arrived at the postition stated in the OP’s piece.
