Message from discussion
noam chomsky's political aims
Path: news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail
From: russilwv...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.noam-chomsky
Subject: Re: noam chomsky's political aims
Date: 27 Sep 2003 09:06:16 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com/
Lines: 153
Message-ID: <afe9ed76.0309270806.27d6432e@posting.google.com>
References: <T8Hbb.4810556$mA4.677932@news.easynews.com> <Fsocb.4932625$cI2.700332@news.easynews.com> <tOpcb.575$Ys.94934071@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com> <lMqcb.4938568$cI2.701472@news.easynews.com> <8Yqcb.598$WF.127947890@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com> <Hzscb.4942900$cI2.702096@news.easynews.com> <Zgtcb.9233$3X2.2504@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com> <b2Ecb.4973451$mA4.701778@news.easynews.com> <aRFcb.788$Wo2.165839094@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com> <766db.170958$Ji7.1730563@news.easynews.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.84.227.216
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1064678783 11412 127.0.0.1 (27 Sep 2003 16:06:23 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Sep 2003 16:06:23 GMT
big_in_japan <jwkim2954RaEaMaOa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I mean direct references to articles, books, etc.
Probably the best analysis of Chomsky's writings on the Khmer Rouge is
Bruce Sharp's "Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodia
Controversy."
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm
Also see "The Chorus and the Cassandra: A Response."
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/hitchens.htm
I thought GM's original response to your question was quite reasonable.
Chomsky is a radical anarchist. His ideal society would resemble the
Spanish anarchist movement of the 1930s; for a vivid description, see
George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia", recounting Orwell's experience
of the Spanish civil war. Bruce Sterling's "Distraction" includes
an entertaining portrayal of a futuristic anarchist society.
For a good interview with Chomsky on what an anarchist society might
look like, see his 1976 interview with Peter Jay:
http://monkeyfist.com/ChomskyArchive/interviews/anarcho1_html
The truly odd thing about Chomsky's politics, which GM brought up,
is that in practice, Chomsky seems to have believed that Communism
in China and Vietnam resembled the Spanish anarchist movement! He
compares them in his essay "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship"
(1968), reprinted in *The Chomsky Reader*:
The circumstances of Spain in the 1930s are not duplicated elsewhere
in the underdeveloped world today, to be sure. Nevertheless, the
limited information that we have about popular movements in Asia,
specifically, suggests certain similar features that deserve much
more serious and sympathetic study than they have so far received.[10]
[10] It is interesting that Douglas Pike's very hostile account of
the National Liberation Front, cited earlier, emphasizes the popular
and voluntary element in its striking organizational successes.
What he describes, whether accurately or not one cannot tell,
is a structure of interlocking self-help organizations, loosely
coordinated and developed through persuasion rather than force --
in certain respects, of a character that would have appealed to
anarchist thinkers. Those who speak so freely of the "authoritarian
Vietcong" may be correct, but they have presented little evidence to
support their judgment. Of course, it must be understood that Pike
regards the element of voluntary mass participation in self-help
associations as the most dangerous and insidious feature of the NLF
organizational structure.
Also relevant is the history of collectivization in China, which,
as compared with the Soviet Union, shows a much higher reliance on
persuasion and mutual aid than on force and terror, and appears to
have been much more successful. See Thomas P. Bernstein,
"Leadership and Mass Mobilization in the Soviet and Chinese
Collectivization Campaigns fo 1929-30 and 1955-56: A Comparison,"
*China Quarterly*, no. 31 (July-September 1967), pp. 1-47, for some
interesting and suggestive comments and analysis.
The scale of the Chinese Revolution is so great and reports in depth
are so fragmentary that it would no doubt be foolhardy to attempt a
general evaluation. Still, all the reports I have been able to study
suggest that insofar as real successes were achieved in the several
stages of land reform, mutual aid, collectivization, and formation
of communes, they were traceable in large part to the complex
interaction of the Communist party cadres and the gradually evolving
peasant associations, a relation which seems to stray far from the
Leninist model of organization. This is particularly evident in
William Hinton's magnificent study *Fanshen* (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1966), which is unparalleled, to my knowledge, as an
analysis of a moment of profound revolutionary change. What seems
to me particularly striking in his account of the early stages of
revolution in one Chinese village is not only the extent to which
party cadres submitted themselves to popular control, but also, and
more significant, the ways in which exercise of control over steps
of the revolutionary process was a factor in developing the
consciousness and insight of those who took part in the revolution,
not only from a political and social point of view, but also with
respect to the human relationships that were created. It is
interesting, in this connection, to note the strong populist
element in early Chinese Marxism. For some very illuminating
illustrations about this general matter, see Maurice Meisner,
*Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism* (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1967).
I am not suggesting that the anarchist revolution in Spain -- with
its background of more than thirty years of education and struggle --
is being relived in Asia, but rather that the spontaneous and
voluntary elements in popular mass movements have probably been
seriously misunderstood because of the instinctive antipathy
toward such phenomena among intellectuals, and more recently,
because of the insistence on interpreting them in terms of Cold War
mythology.
["Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship", 1968]
Chomsky on the Chinese occupation of Tibet:
In brief, Stevenson argues that China is "very aggressive," as shown
by events in Tibet, India, Malaya, and Thailand. The issue is
important, and let us therefore be quite clear about it. China's
actions in Tibet, whatever one may think of them, are no proof of
aggressive expansionism, unless one wants to say the same of Indian
suppression of tribal rebellions, for example. Tibet has been
recognized internationally as a region of China. This status has been
accepted by India as well as Communist and Nationalist China, and to
my knowledge, has never been officially questioned by the United
States. Although it is of no relevance to the issue, I should also add
that it is a bit too simple to say that "China did indeed take over a
country that did not want to be taken over." This is by no means the
general view of Western scholarship. For example, Ginsburgs and Mathos
comment that "the March 1959 uprising did not, by and large, involve
any considerable number of lower-class Tibetans, but involved
essentially the propertied groups and the traditionally rebellious and
foraging Khamba tribes opposed to any outside public authority
(including sometimes that of the Dalai Lama)" (Pacific Affairs,
September, 1959). But whatever the complexities of the situation may
be, it does not substantiate the charge of boundless Chinese
expansionism.
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12104]
A speech given by Chomsky while visiting North Vietnam in 1970:
http://no-treason.com/Starr/3.html
Given what we know about the reality of life under Communism in
China and Vietnam, Chomsky's views seems remarkably romantic. (In
Chomsky's defense, it *was* the 1960s, and such illusions were
widespread. Paul Berman's "A Tale of Two Utopias" provides a
sympathetic description of the political currents of the time.)
GM also provided the following interesting quote:
Well, first of all, there are, I think, very different strains of
Leninism. I mean, there's the Lenin of 1917, the Lenin of the "April
Theses" and State and Revolution. And then there's the Lenin who took
power and acted in ways that are unrecognizable as far as I can see
when compared with, say, the doctrines of State and Revolution"
(Interview with Black Rose, in C.P. Otero, ed., Language and Politics,
1988).
I think this points to the fatal flaw in anarchist political philosophy:
it fails to recognize that dismantling existing power structures leads
to the construction of new power structures, which are often much more
oppressive than those which preceded them. There's a great difference
between revolution in theory and revolution in practice, exemplified
in this case by Lenin.
I hope that's enough references for you. Besides those mentioned above,
I'd recommend reading Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" for an
excellent discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy,
particularly when compared to (a) a revolutionary state (France) and
(b) an aristocracy (Britain).
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
|
