noam chomsky's political aims
big_in_japan
have been exposed mainly to his criticisms. What is his view of the ideal
government? Someone mentioned to me that he was anarchist, but that doesn't
seem right.
What does he propose we can do about problems we have now? Would he condone
overthrowing the government by force?
Is there any hope of getting the government back to serving the people?
GM_Flash
Chomsky calls himself an anarchist and a libertarian socialist, but
his political ideology can be ambiguous. He has sympathized strongly
with violent revolutionary movements like the Viet Cong and Khmer
Rouge in the past. Although he says he rejects Leninist practice, he
endorses Lenin's April Theses and State and Revolution, which call for
the rejection of parlamentiary democracy and the dictatorship of the
proletariat:
"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).
State and Revolution explicitly states the need to restrict civil
liberties and "crush" opponents, which leads me to believe the kind of
"libertarianism" Chomsky favors is an odd one.
He also favors increasing state power to stop what he calls "private
tyrannies":
"In the long term I think the centralized political power ought to be
eliminated and dissolved and turned down ultimately to the local
level, finally, with federalism and associations and so on... On the
other hand, right now I'd like to strengthen the Federal Government...
to maintain the one form of illegitimate power that happens to be
somewhat responsive to the public and which the public can indeed
influence" (Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian, p 122).
His justification for the contradiction between his advocacy of
statism here and his putative belief in anarchist associations is that
the people as a whole have some form of control over public monopolies
through government, whereas corporations are supposedly unaccountable
except to the market and their shareholders. He refers to this
doublethink as "goals and visions." See Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics.
I honestly don't see Chomsky condoning violent revolution in the US
today, although he did say in a speech in Hanoi in 1970:
"I believe that in the United States there will be some day a social
revolution that will be of great significance to us and to all of
mankind, and if this hope is to be proven correct, it will be in large
part because the people of Vietnam have shown us the way."
The history of the intervening years seems to undermine Chomsky's
hopes here.
I don't see Chomsky's vision of an ideal society as being workable or
relevant to today's world. Chomsky's main appeal comes from his
critiques of the United States and its actions around the globe- a
somewhat comprehensive overview along with links to different
responses to Chomsky's critiques can be found, e.g., on Russil Wvong's
website:
Josh Dougherty
> have been exposed mainly to his criticisms. What is his view of the ideal
> government?
His "ideal government" would be none I think. Chomsky is sometimes
criticized for pointing out everything that's wrong with our current
government and institutions but not presenting a vision of a clear
alternative.
This recording of a speech from 1970 may help answer some of your
questions.
"Government in the Future":
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=1715
> Someone mentioned to me that he was anarchist, but that doesn't
> seem right.
Chomsky considers himself a Libertarian Socialist, or Anarchist, but
most of the time he's discussing the realities of currently existing
states and institutions, not anarchism.
He discusses anarchism at length in this interview:
"Anarchy: Co-operation Without Restraint"
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=2969
> What does he propose we can do about problems we have now?
This question tends to come up in the Q&A period of at all his
appearances. Usually his answers are pretty vague. He usually says
to get together with others and continue and expand community
organizing and activism...etc. etc.
I think this is related to why he doesn't offer a clear or complete
"vision" about what the future ideal will look like. He believes that
the culmination of all the organizing and activism, if it's
successful, will develop in natural and complex ways and produce the
alternative itself, and he doesn't think he can predict with any
certainty what exactly all the aspects of that final product will look
like.
> Would he condone overthrowing the government by force?
I think that would depend on the circumstances. In some cases
probably yes, in others probably not.
> Is there any hope of getting the government back to serving the people?
Anything's possible.
Josh
Jeff Smithpeters
The sympathy for the Khmer Rouge bit has been discredited thoroughly by
current Right-winger Christopher Hitchens in an essay he wrote before
his recent conversion called The Chorus and Cassandra. You can find it
easily via google.
dizzy
It's nice to see a post here that actually expresses an interest in
Chomsky's ideas. By way of supplementing Josh's answer and letting
Chomsky speak for himself, below are some recent comments regarding
' ideal ' aims and techniques for getting there.
++
From Original Minds: conversations with CBC Radio's Eleanor Wachtel.
Harpercollins 2003, 365-6.
Wachtel.: You've occasionally been chided for not coming up with
enough positive alternatives, for not coming up with some
revolutionary strategy to get at the root of the problem. How do you
respond to that. Is that part of your job?
Chomsky: " Sure. First of all, I don't think that anybody, certainly
not me, is smart enough to plan in any detail a perfect society or
even to show in detail how a society based on more humane commitments
and concern for human values would function. I think we can say a lot
about what it would be like, but we can't spell it out in great
detail.
Furthermore, what it would be like is, I think, reasonably well
understood and has been, in some ways, for centuries. We would like to
see a society in which we overcome coercive institutions. Absolutist,
unaccountable institutions should not be tolerated. In our time, that
means primarily the financial and corporate centres that are basically
totalitarian in character and now transnational in scale. It also
means the state powers -- and now larger-than-state powers -- that
respond to their interests.
And the same is true for structures of authority and domination down
to the level of the family. Those should be combatted and overcome. We
whould work for democratic control in communities, in workplaces over
investment decisions, eliminating hierarchic relations and relations
of dominance among people and states and ethnic groups. All of that's
understandable. I think you can go on to describe in greater detail
how freer and more democratic structures might function, but the real
answers will come by experience and testing. You couldn't spell out in
detail in the mid-eighteenth century how a parliamentary democracy
might work. You had to dry it. The general ideas could be there, but
you had to try them and explore them and experiment with them. And the
same is true of the expansion of freedom and democracy and justice
today. As for revolutionary strategy, I've never heard of one. When I
look over history, the only strategy I see is trying to educate
yourself to help others become educated, to learn from others, to
organize and, to the extent that organization proceeds, to take action
to try to relieve injustice and to extend freedom. Now, that action
can take many diferent forms. So just in my own life, I've been
involved in things ranging from direct resistance, to giving talks or
taking part in meetings. There are no further secrets, as far as I'm
aware. The problem is one of dedicating onelself, to the extent you
can, at least -- nobody is a saint -- to the tasks that have to be
undertaken. And, you know, we can see what they are."
++
As for Chomsky's take on Anarchism, perhaps the expression
'libertarian socialist' evokes a more accurate image of his position.
Chomsky on this - http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con2.html
"The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that
power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be
legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that
some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can't
prove it, then it should be dismantled."
++
And finally, What Is to Be Done?
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con5.html
"What is your advice for people who have the same concerns, who
identify with the tradition that you come out of, and who want to be
active in opposing these policies? What is it they need to be doing
that would be productive?"
"The same as the factory girls in the Lowell textile plant 150 years
ago: they joined with others.... "
zztop8970-
> This, needless to point out, is the way those to his Right view him.
> The sympathy for the Khmer Rouge bit has been discredited thoroughly by
> current Right-winger Christopher Hitchens in an essay he wrote before
> his recent conversion called The Chorus and Cassandra. You can find it
> easily via google.
To call you an uncritical reader, easily duped by Hitchens' polemics
would be putting it mildly.
Try reading http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/hitchens.htm
Guilherme
yay this argument again!
-gr
James A. Donald
On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 18:39:58 -0500, Jeff Smithpeters
> This, needless to point out, is the way those to his Right
> view him. The sympathy for the Khmer Rouge bit has been
> discredited thoroughly by current Right-winger Christopher
> Hitchens in an essay he wrote before his recent conversion
> called The Chorus and Cassandra. You can find it easily via
> google.
Hitchens defense consists of not mentioning the accusations and
pretending they were never made, rather than rebutting them,
much like Chomsky's defense of the Khmer Rouge, an approach
that implicitly concedes the accusations to be true, and that
there is no rebuttal.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
sglyj9bIE3AIQqO46/gZoT61pq4EZpXt7i4zkS3w
4GPx75qoytIluFtqHZJHOgBOER9fiZj9ylJOQ9GYw
GM_Flash
All right; then why did you?
> is the way those to his Right view him.
Even if this weren't an obvious attempt at an ad hominem fallacy (via
poisoning the well), I fail to see how it is relevant, since the vast
majority of people would find themselves to Chomsky's "Right."
> The sympathy for the Khmer Rouge bit has been discredited thoroughly by
> current Right-winger Christopher Hitchens in an essay he wrote before
> his recent conversion called The Chorus and Cassandra. You can find it
> easily via google.
I agree that Hitchens' essay is one of the more eloquent defenses of
Chomsky's genocide denial. That said, it hardly absolves Chomsky, as
many people seem to believe. Hitchens often takes great joy in
defending the indefensible, using sophistry and sleight of hand to do
so; his defense of Chomsky is no exception. Bruce Sharp has written a
cogent response to it, which can be found here:
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/hitchens.htm
See also the essay linked therein (Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam
Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy) for a longer discussion of
Chomsky and his Khmer Rouge apologetics.
big_in_japan
"GM_Flash" <flash...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b3fac8be.03092...@posting.google.com...
> Jeff Smithpeters <jsmithpet...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:<MOLbb.11338$AH4.2019@lakeread06>...
> > This, needless to point out,
>
> All right; then why did you?
>
> > is the way those to his Right view him.
>
> Even if this weren't an obvious attempt at an ad hominem fallacy (via
> poisoning the well), I fail to see how it is relevant, since the vast
> majority of people would find themselves to Chomsky's "Right."
>
> > The sympathy for the Khmer Rouge bit has been discredited thoroughly by
> > current Right-winger Christopher Hitchens in an essay he wrote before
> > his recent conversion called The Chorus and Cassandra. You can find it
> > easily via google.
>
> I agree that Hitchens' essay is one of the more eloquent defenses of
> Chomsky's genocide denial. That said, it hardly absolves Chomsky, as
> many people seem to believe. Hitchens often takes great joy in
> defending the indefensible, using sophistry and sleight of hand to do
> so; his defense of Chomsky is no exception. Bruce Sharp has written a
> cogent response to it, which can be found here:
>
> http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/hitchens.htm
>
> See also the essay linked therein (Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam
> Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy) for a longer discussion of
> Chomsky and his Khmer Rouge apologetics.
>
I guess that's what you get for coming to the defense of freedom of speech.
These guys never quit.
Josh Dougherty
news:Pine.GSO.4.58.03...@unagi.cis.upenn.edu...
the Khmer Rouge form letters started appearing.
Josh
zztop8970
In what way , exactly, can Chomsky's denial of the KR attrociites be
construed as "coming to the defense of freedom of speech"?
big_in_japan
"zztop8970" <no...@tospeakof.com> wrote in message
news:tOpcb.575$Ys.94...@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
How does my saying that a racist has a right to his opinions mean that I am
racist myself?
>
>
>
zztop8970
It does not, and you will not that I did not call you a racist. Now, kindly
answer the question you were asked:
In what way , exactly, can Chomsky's denial of the KR attrocities be
Josh Dougherty
I think you're perhaps thinking of the "Faurisson Affair" thing. That's the
other dead horse that gets beaten here every few weeks.
Right now they're talking about the Genocide-denying, Pol Pot-loving
Chomsky, not the Nazi-sympathizing, Holocaust-denying, self-hating Jew
Chomsky. You have to keep these two campaigns straight.
Josh
GM_Flash
Sorry- I forgot for a second that this is alt.fawn.noam-chomsky
big_in_japan
References?
>
>
>
zztop8970
James A. Donald
On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 21:59:01 GMT, "big_in_japan"
> I guess that's what you get for coming to the defense of
> freedom of speech. These guys never quit.
Chomsky only defends the speech of those who would murder
everyone like me, not the speech of those they murder.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
t3m70kRo74Imlln6hiJfnEyb3JlVHiYdsCFP8ja
46fD2sT15BqMRXSnkWehHDY7oMx7xrscpbsMRhc3z
Josh Dougherty
Yeah, sure it is.
James A. Donald
"osh Dougherty"
> I think you're perhaps thinking of the "Faurisson Affair"
> thing. That's the other dead horse that gets beaten here
> every few weeks.
In the Faurisson affair Chomsky did not defend freedom of
speech. He defended a fascist. He untruthfully described
Faurisson as "a relatively apolitical liberal", and he
contributed his essay to the french fascists, increasing the
sales of Faurisson's book, and thus the funding of those
fascists.
>
> Right now they're talking about the Genocide-denying, Pol
> Pot-loving Chomsky, not the Nazi-sympathizing,
> Holocaust-denying, self-hating Jew Chomsky. You have to keep
> these two campaigns straight.
No real difference. In the one case, Chomsky denies the
Cambodian genocide, in the other he defends those who deny the
Nazi genocide of the Jews. Unless you are Jew or a Cambodian,
it is hardly worth while to distinguish between the two.
Either way, Chomsky seem fairly supportive of those who intend
genocide.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
/h+VD3WVPGpXYfEv79Fz8ma1RcT/SZfsA0tpAHAt
48vgUT0EAEjGCkgJA2/DJvCdipcw69Tof4t0KYhLS
Josh Dougherty
news:vp65nvolto8puuj1o...@4ax.com...
> --
> "osh Dougherty"
> > I think you're perhaps thinking of the "Faurisson Affair"
> > thing. That's the other dead horse that gets beaten here
> > every few weeks.
>
> In the Faurisson affair Chomsky did not defend freedom of
> speech. He defended a fascist. He untruthfully described
> Faurisson as "a relatively apolitical liberal", and he
> contributed his essay to the french fascists, increasing the
> sales of Faurisson's book, and thus the funding of those
> fascists.
> >
> > Right now they're talking about the Genocide-denying, Pol
> > Pot-loving Chomsky, not the Nazi-sympathizing,
> > Holocaust-denying, self-hating Jew Chomsky. You have to keep
> > these two campaigns straight.
>
> No real difference. In the one case, Chomsky denies the
> Cambodian genocide, in the other he defends those who deny the
> Nazi genocide of the Jews. Unless you are Jew or a Cambodian,
> it is hardly worth while to distinguish between the two.
> Either way, Chomsky seem fairly supportive of those who intend
> genocide.
Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed on this newsgroup
who openly and directly advocates and supports premeditated political
murders, it's just a little difficult for me to take seriously your comments
against Chomsky on this issue.
Josh
zztop8970
Ah, the ever popular tu coque logical fallacy.
big_in_japan
Provide some references as you may have misinterpreted or construed facts.
>
>
>
zztop8970
"big_in_japan" <jwkim2954R...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b2Ecb.4973451$mA4.7...@news.easynews.com...
The references to Chomsky's denial of the KR attrocities have already been
provided to you, in thi sthread, and are in fact listed in this very post.
Now, kindly answer the question you were asked, dodger: In what way ,
James A. Donald
> this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and supports
> premeditated political murders,
Liar
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
zurNeFx//9U+ObzIFrR0xhR3LU8LD2Okv2oSPNNa
4yHVxLZGFC7pLTVDftcvMtpUPP/L3M7AH6o1e9xNx
Josh Dougherty
> --
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:<uhxcb.1379
> > Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed on
> > this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and supports
> > premeditated political murders,
>
> Liar
Ah yes, the standard Donald reply to unpleasant truths. Well, here's just
one example of the unpleasant truth, I'm sure others could provide more:
James A. Donald: "Observe that Armas failed to execute Arbenz, a mistake
from which Pinochet learnt." - 5.24.02
Notice here what James is referring to as the "failure". Armas, along with
the CIA, had succeeded in overthrowing the elected constitutional government
of Guatemala and had President Arbenz in custody. Armas wound up exiling
him to Mexico I believe, however James feels that it's a "mistake" and a
"failing" that Armas chose exile for his prisoner, rather than choosing to
line his political prisoner up against a wall and blow his brains out in
cold blood. Or perhaps the premeditated murder of Arbenz should have been a
bit more creative. Perhaps James would like even more if Armas did exile
him, but then later sent a goon squad to find him in Mexico and drive a pick
axe into his scull. I suspect that just may be more James' style. In any
case, we see at the end of the quote, more of the routine praise for James'
favorite brutal totalitarian dictator Pinochet, who rightly "learnt" from
the Armas "mistake" and correctly chose premeditated murder of his political
opponent, which James quite clearly "openly and directly advocates and
supports".
So, it seems that you are the "Liar" James. (as if we didn't already know
this).
...and not only on this issue, but you continue your lying in a statement in
another post on this very thread as well.
You make your standard deceptive personal attack on Chomsky wrapped in an
appeal to pity for yourself when you claim:
"Chomsky only defends the speech of those who would murder everyone like me,
not the speech of those they murder."
Any great scholar of Chomsky's work, such as yourself, must know this is a
blatant lie. For just a few examples that expose the pathetic lie in your
claim, we know that Chomsky has just recently signed a petition in support
of the free speech rights of 75 anti-Castro activists in Cuba. We also know
that Chomsky has many times signed petitions in support of the free speech
rights of dissidents in the former Soviet Union. I guess it's possible that
your paranoia and delusions of grandeur are just so acute that you believe
that not only are all the "socialists" and "commies" out to get you, but
that even anti-Castro and anti-Soviet dissidents are also secretly just
waiting to gain power in order to "murder everyone like you". Either that,
or you're a flagrant liar...yet again. So which is it?
Josh
GM_Flash
Well, then I'm glad we agree.
On the other hand, if you believe this newsgroup shouldn't be reserved
only for Chomsky's fawning groupies and sycophants, then perhaps you
have a substantive reason why Bruce Sharp's rebuttal to Hitchens on
Chomsky shouldn't be discussed here.
If you find the issue of Chomsky's Khmer Rouge apologia boring
somehow, then I'd like to note that I only mentioned it in passing in
my initial post, citing it as an example (along with the Viet Cong) of
violent revolutionary movements he's sympathized with. Others would
include the FMLN and FSLN. It was another poster who raised the matter
as a point of debate.
If you or anyone else would like to change the subject, perhaps we can
discuss some of the points I intitially raised; e.g., Chomsky's
approving of Lenin's State and Revolution - which calls for the
dictatorship of the proletariat, the suppression of civil liberties
and the need to "crush" opponents - and how this gels with the
official libertarian political philosophy Chomsky espouses. We could
also look at Chomsky's calls to increase the power of the US federal
government, and how this plainly statist position gels with his
utopian "vision" of an anarchist society that most people would agree
will never exist (what I mean to say here is that Chomsky advocates a
political stance that is inherently statist, while squaring it with
his supposed anarchist beliefs with the confident assertion that
*someday* this state power will wither away- presumably after the
libertarian socialist revolution. This seems a bit naive, if not
disingenuous: we have to live with powerful states as they are,
whereas the prospect of any movement for an anarchist society
achieving success in our lifetimes, if ever, seems slim). I agree that
this would be more interesting than another "did Chomsky write
apologia for the Khmer Rouge?" discussion, as debating what is
established fact gets old rather quickly.
Josh Dougherty
We don't agree. Obviously.
> On the other hand, if you believe this newsgroup shouldn't be reserved
> only for Chomsky's fawning groupies and sycophants,
??? Doesn't follow. But I'll indulge you anyway. I don't believe that this
newsgroup should be "reserved" for posts from persons who are fanatical
detractors of Chomsky, and which I think make up the majority of posts on
this forum. I also don't believe this newsgroup should be "reserved" for
any particular tendency or viewpoint, neither the -- absent in my view --
contributions of "fawning groupies and sycophants", nor the majority
contributions of people who post here for apparently no other reason than to
spend an unusually extensive amount of their lives throwing mud at someone
who they would seem to feel is worthless.
> then perhaps you have a substantive reason why Bruce Sharp's rebuttal to
Hitchens on
> Chomsky shouldn't be discussed here.
??? Doesn't follow again. I've never said that anything shouldn't be
discussed here. I said that it was fairly predictable that as soon as
someone wandered into this forum with a few questions on Chomsky's views
(questions that had nothing to do with the Khmer Rouge) that the standard
wolf-pack of anti-Chomsky posters would immediately begin posting their
Khmer Rouge form letters, which has of course been the case.
I find it odd, though far from unexpected, that the whole KR issue is
immediately the topic in this thread, and therefore that Hitchens' piece is
being discussed, and even further still that Sharp's piece on Hitchens'
piece is now the topic. It seems to confirm that when someone seriously
wants to hear what Chomsky has to say on a topic or two, that the response
of this forum will be to lead him away from reading what Chomsky has to say
on that topic and forming an opinion for himself, but to instead lead him to
read what hostile Chomsky detractors have to say about some completely
different topic.
> If you find the issue of Chomsky's Khmer Rouge apologia boring
> somehow, then I'd like to note that I only mentioned it in passing in
> my initial post, citing it as an example (along with the Viet Cong) of
> violent revolutionary movements he's sympathized with. Others would
> include the FMLN and FSLN. It was another poster who raised the matter
> as a point of debate.
Yes, it was another poster. Did I claim that you raised the matter? I
responded to someone else on the topic, not you, nor did I mention you. So
what is your point?
> If you or anyone else would like to change the subject, perhaps we can
> discuss some of the points I intitially raised; e.g., Chomsky's
> approving of Lenin's State and Revolution - which calls for the
> dictatorship of the proletariat, the suppression of civil liberties
> and the need to "crush" opponents - and how this gels with the
> official libertarian political philosophy Chomsky espouses.
I'm not really interested in that subject either. Least of all for the
simple fact that your quote doesn't even show anything resembling what you
claim. It says that Chomsky asserted that Lenin appeared to have different
positions from one period to another. Chomsky doesn't claim in your quote
to "approve" of any of the positions you've decided to write here, nor any
of the different stages of Lenin's thought that Chomsky refers to. It seems
to appear that he thinks the earlier Lenin writings better than the later.
Even if that's exactly the case, that hardly means that he generally
"approves" of either, let alone those particular things you've chosen to
cherry-pick from those texts. So, your claims here are irrelevant and a
straw man, yet another spurious conclusion that does not follow, as it was
when you originally posted them.
Most of all, I'm not interested in engaging in "discussion" of these topics
with you because I've already provided the inquisitive poster with
references to Chomsky's own thoughts on those topics for which he asked for
Chomsky's thoughts. He can read them and decide what he thinks about it.
If you don't like me also poking fun at the laughable predictability of you
and your comrades off topic smear jobs, which seem to be designed to plant
the "right" conclusions in the poster's head before he has a chance to read
what Chomsky actually says and form his own opinion, well, that's just too
bad I guess.
Josh
James A. Donald
"Josh Dougherty"
> > > Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed
> > > on this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and
> > > supports premeditated political murders,
James A. Donald:
> > Liar
"Josh Dougherty"
> Ah yes, the standard Donald reply to unpleasant truths. Well,
> here's just one example of the unpleasant truth, I'm sure
> others could provide more:
>
> James A. Donald: "Observe that Armas failed to execute
> Arbenz, a mistake from which Pinochet learnt." - 5.24.02
>
> Notice here what James is referring to as the "failure".
> Armas, along with the CIA, had succeeded in overthrowing the
> elected constitutional government of Guatemala and had
> President Arbenz in custody. Armas wound up exiling him to
> Mexico I believe, however James feels that it's a "mistake"
> and a "failing" that Armas chose exile for his prisoner,
> rather than choosing to line his political prisoner up
> against a wall and blow his brains out in cold blood.
Armas was murdered, and Guatemala plunged into ruinous civil
war. It is probable that killing Arbenz would have avoided
this. Killing Arbenz would no more have been "political murder"
than killing Saddam will be. When we get Saddam, what should
we do with him?
Arbenz was a tyrant. He and those like him do not play by the
rules, When a tyrant arrests the opposition, and murders
hundreds of political protestors, killing him is not murder,
and merely exiling him was extravagantly dangerous, and proved
to be suicidally stupid.
If a tyrant leaves power more or less voluntarily, he should be
allowed to enjoy his retirement, but if he has to be forcibly
removed from power, you need to kill him. He deserves it, and
is too dangerous alive. Killing defeated tyrants is not
political murder.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Gg2wieP5S2Ogy0DHKVwuaw1K/reZzy5EgZp21Wut
4XkaHjQB5cA7CD1WT+JCh4529vF2Jz/jLEDhemfMh
Josh Dougherty
Sorry James, or should I say Mr. Pot. Your fanciful (and eery) revisionist
distortions and false equivalencies do not change the fact that you openly
and directly support the principle that when you have your defenseless
political opponents under your absolute control, that the correct policy --
according to you -- is to "purge" them -- to brutally murder them in cold
blood for the supposed future "greater good", as you subjectively define it
in accord with your warped and demented reactionary politics.
"A" does equal "A" after all. And woe be unto all of us "liars" who don't
"play by the rules".
Josh
GM_Flash
[snip]
> I don't believe that this
> newsgroup should be "reserved" for posts from persons who are fanatical
> detractors of Chomsky, and which I think make up the majority of posts on
> this forum.
Is that so? Even a cursory glance would reveal most of the posts on
this forum aren't about Chomsky at all. I am curious though: who do
you think the fanatical detractors of Chomsky are? Off the top of my
head, among regular contributors this month I can only think a handful
who are even consistently critical of Chomsky: James Donald, Nathan
Folkert, myself, Paulsrb, zztop etc. Of these, I would consider only
James to have anything approaching fanaticism in his attitude towards
Chomsky. On the other hand, I see no shortage at all of Chomsky
defenders.
I also don't believe this newsgroup should be "reserved" for
> any particular tendency or viewpoint, neither the -- absent in my view --
> contributions of "fawning groupies and sycophants", nor the majority
> contributions of people who post here for apparently no other reason than to
> spend an unusually extensive amount of their lives throwing mud at someone
> who they would seem to feel is worthless.
I certainly don't believe Chomsky is worthless. He is worth reading,
as long as one does it very critically and checks his sources with
others.
> > then perhaps you have a substantive reason why Bruce Sharp's rebuttal to
> Hitchens on
> > Chomsky shouldn't be discussed here.
>
> ??? Doesn't follow again. I've never said that anything shouldn't be
> discussed here.
I see: so were you not expressing exasperation about it being
discussed here when you complained about "Khmer Rouge form letters"?
I said that it was fairly predictable that as soon as
> someone wandered into this forum with a few questions on Chomsky's views
> (questions that had nothing to do with the Khmer Rouge) that the standard
> wolf-pack of anti-Chomsky posters would immediately begin posting their
> Khmer Rouge form letters, which has of course been the case.
That hasn't been the case at all. If you care to review the thread,
you will see that in the three original responses to big_in_japan's
query, not a single person posted a "Khmer Rouge form letter." In
fact, the sole mention of the Khmer Rouge at all was a single passing
statement in my long post about Chomsky's ideology, where I said, "He
has sympathized strongly with violent revolutionary movements like the
Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge in the past".
In what way does this qualify as a Khmer Rouge letter, form or
otherwise? Is it a Viet Cong -and- Khmer Rouge form letter? Should
contributors simply not mention Chomsky's Khmer Rouge acrobatics even
in passing, lest they be accused of form-letter writing?
>
> I find it odd, though far from unexpected, that the whole KR issue is
> immediately the topic in this thread,
The only topic that was "immediately" the issue was Chomsky's
ideology. In case I didn't make it clear above, my own post was not
intended to spark any discussion about the KR at all; I simply cited
the KR along with the VC as an example of the many decidely
non-libertarian and violent revolutionary groups Chomsky has
sympathized with, in a post otherwise devoted to discussing Leninism
and anarchism.
> and therefore that Hitchens' piece is
> being discussed, and even further still that Sharp's piece on Hitchens'
> piece is now the topic.
Jeff Smithpeters chose to dispute that Chomsky was simpathetic to the
KR, and therefore zztop, James and myself replied to the contrary. No
one had anything to say before then. And yet you claim that somehow
this was "immediately" the issue.
> It seems to confirm that when someone seriously
> wants to hear what Chomsky has to say on a topic or two, that the response
> of this forum will be to lead him away from reading what Chomsky has to say
> on that topic and forming an opinion for himself, but to instead lead him to
> read what hostile Chomsky detractors have to say about some completely
> different topic.
Do you really think so? My first post in this thread is not at all
devoted to "lead[ing] him away from reading what Chomsky has to say".
It in facts quotes directly what Chomsky says, and is meant to answer
big_in_japan's questions about him, to wit:
"What is his view of the ideal government?"
"What does he propose we can do about problems we have now?"
"Would he condone overthrowing the government by force?"
and comments further regarding his accurate statement that "[s]omeone
mentioned to me that he was anarchist, but that doesn't seem right."
> > If you find the issue of Chomsky's Khmer Rouge apologia boring
> > somehow, then I'd like to note that I only mentioned it in passing in
> > my initial post, citing it as an example (along with the Viet Cong) of
> > violent revolutionary movements he's sympathized with. Others would
> > include the FMLN and FSLN. It was another poster who raised the matter
> > as a point of debate.
>
> Yes, it was another poster. Did I claim that you raised the matter? I
> responded to someone else on the topic, not you, nor did I mention you. So
> what is your point?
My point is that you claim people are suddenly posting "Khmer Rouge
form letters" in response to a query about Chomsky's ideology, when no
one did anything of the sort.
>
> > If you or anyone else would like to change the subject, perhaps we can
> > discuss some of the points I intitially raised; e.g., Chomsky's
> > approving of Lenin's State and Revolution - which calls for the
> > dictatorship of the proletariat, the suppression of civil liberties
> > and the need to "crush" opponents - and how this gels with the
> > official libertarian political philosophy Chomsky espouses.
>
> I'm not really interested in that subject either. Least of all for the
> simple fact that your quote doesn't even show anything resembling what you
> claim. It says that Chomsky asserted that Lenin appeared to have different
> positions from one period to another. Chomsky doesn't claim in your quote
> to "approve" of any of the positions you've decided to write here, nor any
> of the different stages of Lenin's thought that Chomsky refers to. It seems
> to appear that he thinks the earlier Lenin writings better than the later.
> Even if that's exactly the case, that hardly means that he generally
> "approves" of either, let alone those particular things you've chosen to
> cherry-pick from those texts. So, your claims here are irrelevant and a
> straw man, yet another spurious conclusion that does not follow, as it was
> when you originally posted them.
I disagree: Chomsky has stated elsewhere that State and Revolution is
"basically fine", and that he favors one of what he calls the "two
competing tendencies" in Leninism. He rejects the tendency of "the
leadership role of the vanguard party of committed intellectuals which
controls and determines the course of the movement. That is an aspect
of the Leninist tradition which laid the groundwork for Stalin"
("Linguistics and Politics", New Left Review, 1969, no. 57).
He approves of the Leninist tendency "which sees the revolutionary
movement as based on voluntary mass associations... we should not
forget there is also the Lenin of the April Theses and State and
Revolution" (ibid.)
If Chomsky thinks a tract like State and Revolution is "basically
fine", then I see no reason to believe he doesn't accept the basic
arguments it puts forth about the dictatorship of the proletariat and
the need to restrict civil liberties and "crush" opposition. In fact,
I would argue that Chomsky's problem with Bolshevism is not the
violent seizure of power, the totalitarian suppression of enemies or
the Red Terror so much as it is the fact that his favored anarchists
lost.
>
> Most of all, I'm not interested in engaging in "discussion" of these topics
> with you because I've already provided the inquisitive poster with
> references to Chomsky's own thoughts on those topics for which he asked for
> Chomsky's thoughts. He can read them and decide what he thinks about it.
> If you don't like me also poking fun at the laughable predictability of you
> and your comrades off topic smear jobs, which seem to be designed to plant
> the "right" conclusions in the poster's head before he has a chance to read
> what Chomsky actually says and form his own opinion, well, that's just too
> bad I guess.
>
If you're not interested in discussion then why are you even bothering
to reply? Do you just like to hear yourself speak?
Paulsrb
> Armas, along with the CIA, had succeeded in overthrowing the elected
> constitutional government of Guatemala
Jacobo Arbenz was neither freely elected nor constitutionally
legitimate. He gained power by killing his major opponent, Francisco
Arana, crushing his supporters with an armed workers' militia, and
holding elections without a secret ballot. Once in government he
pursued an unconstitutional land reform policy, purging the Supreme
Court, and he allowed the unions and key government positions to fall
under the control of the Guatemalan Communist Party.
I doubt that you would refer to the Bush Administration as an "elected
constitutional government" if Bush had assassinated Gore and then
crushed his supporters with the National Guard before calling
elections with no secret ballot, or if he had subsequently pursued
blatantly illegal policies while purging the Supreme Court and
allowing the government and the unions to fall into the hands of the
Ku Klux Klan.
[snip]
> For just a few examples that expose the pathetic lie in your claim, we know
> that Chomsky has just recently signed a petition in support of the free
> speech rights of 75 anti-Castro activists in Cuba. We also know that Chomsky
> has many times signed petitions in support of the free speech rights of
> dissidents in the former Soviet Union.
We also know that Chomsky refused to sign petitions defending human
rights in communist Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of dissidents
and POWs were being starved to death in concentration camps, and where
hundreds of thousands more were being drowned as a result of mass
expulsions. By the logic of your reply, it follows that Chomsky was a
supporter of this genocidal dictatorship, and this is confirmed in his
writings, where he congratulates the mass murderers for their "miracle
of reconciliation and restraint."
Guilherme
>
> "Chomsky only defends the speech of those who would murder everyone like me,
> not the speech of those they murder."
>
> Any great scholar of Chomsky's work, such as yourself, must know this is a
> blatant lie.
not only that, but i don't think people posting on usenet would be
at the top of anyone's list for who to put against the wall.
-gr
Josh Dougherty
news:3973a488.03092...@posting.google.com...
> [snip]
> > Armas, along with the CIA, had succeeded in overthrowing the elected
> > constitutional government of Guatemala
>
> Jacobo Arbenz was neither freely elected nor constitutionally
> legitimate. He gained power by killing his major opponent, Francisco
> Arana,
Speculation Paul. You might perhaps like to believe this, and it is one
possible explanation, but it is not proven. There have been accusations to
that effect, just as there have been accusations that Kennedy was killed by
Cubans or by the CIA, or by Lee Harvey Oswald.
For some elaborate context on Arana and the election -- from Richard H.
Immerman's book "CIA in Guatemala":
"Yet the State Department reported in 1948 that a successful plot against
Arevalo's government had become a "growing possibility". [They] based their
judgement on the reports that it periodically received. Over time, these
reports indicated that, while initially divided, the conservatives in
Guatemala seemed to have found someone they could all back -- Arevalo's
cheif of armed forces, Franciso Javier Arana. He would be more acceptable
to the Guatemalan people than Ponce because of his role in the 1944
revolution, when he had been considered the counterrevolutionaries' enemy.
Potentially he could also lead the military to desert Arevalo. Always one
of the more conservative members of the government's inner circle, Arana by
1947 had become increasingly critical of administration policies. His
personal ambitions added to his growing alienation -- he wanted to be
Guatemala's next president, but he knew that the more liberal Arbenz stood
in his way. Bitter rivalry developed between the two of them, a situation
exacerbated by Arbenz's appointment as minister of defense. Time and again
they clashed over proposed projects, with Arbenz nominally winning out
because of Arevalo's support. Arana began to fear for his position, and, as
rumors circulated that he might emerge as the leader of an attempt to
overthrow the government, he began to fear for his personal safety. He
believed, perhaps accurately, that if Arevalo and Arbenz decided such rumors
were true after so many previously attempted coups, they would take forceful
action against him.
This volatile political situation could not continue, and, as the 1950
national election approached, tensions within the administration became
almost unbearable. The campaign promised to be more explosive than that of
1944. Never before had a Guatemalan president abided by a one-term
limitation, and many feared that conditions were too unstable to permit a
peaceful succession. To add to the concern, unlike the previous contest
when Arevalo was the odds-on favorite, there now were two strong candidates,
each of whom commanded loyalty within the critically important army. When
it became apparent, however, that Arbenz's liberal support was too much for
Arana, a coalition of conservatives and reactionaries indiscreetly urged the
army chief to mount a revolt before the election could take place. Prompted
by enough observers who believed that this was precisely his intention, the
United States embassy reported, "It is difficult not to attach significance
to rumors that [Arana] is seeking the right opportunity and a reasonable
excuse for a military coup d'etat." The National Assembly attached a great
deal of significance to the rumors. Its members voted overwhelmingly to
impeach Arana for treason and then ordered his arrest."
------
In the above passages, we see two very relevant things. It had began to
become apparent that Arana would not be able to beat Arbenz at the ballot
box, and many, including the US embassy, seemed to believe this as well as
believing that Arana was planning a military overthrow to seize power by
force and prevent an election. The Guatemalan National Assembly seemed to
"overwhelmingly" believe this as well, and impeached him.
-----
continuing:
"Arana refused to accept his indictment. Still with enough powerful allies
in the military to prevent his imprisonment, he traveled around Guatemala
City, charging that he was the victim of Communist intrigue and that Arbenz
was the real traitor. Then, on July 18, 1949, he went to nearby Lake
Amatitlan, announcing that he had information that the Carribean League hid
their cache of arms there and that Arbenz planned to use them once he gained
power. However, no one was to find out if Arana's claims were true. As his
limousine approached the Chalet Morlon, purportedly the arms' hiding palce,
a car blocking the road forced it to stop. Immediately some twenty men
jumped out from under a bridge, riddling the limousine with submaching gun
fire. Arana died instantly.
The role of the revolutionary government in Arana's assasination remains
undetermined. A "reliable" informer told the United States embassy that
Arana's killer was a subdirector of the police who died in the ensuing
gunfire. The CIA assumed Arbenz's complicity when planning his 1954
overthrow, and, before it had been in power a week, the Castillo Armas
government charged the former president with murder. The main evidence used
against Arbenz was the testimony of Arana's chaeuffer, Lieutenant Chico
Palacios. Palacios claimed that among the assasins were Anibal Gramajo,
Arbenz's wife Maria's chauffeur, and Lieutenant Alfonso Martinez Estevez,
who occupied several influencial positions in Arbenz's administration. But
Palacios could not directly connect Arbenz with the plot, nor could he
explain (although he was not asked) how he alone managed to survive the
barrage of bullets. This question presents the possibility that Guatemalan
counterrevolutionaries, realizing that Arana stood no chance of winning,
actually arranged his assasination in an attempt to incite a rebellion."...
------
> crushing his supporters with an armed workers' militia,
... "The Arana assasination did give Arbenz's opponents another opportunity
to try to take power before the election. This was the most violent of the
attempted coups. The fighting raged over two days, with rebel forces using
heavy artillery. Government casualties reached an estimated 150 dead and
300 wounded. ... Arevalo's forces prevailed, but only after receiving the
assistance of students and workers who organized themselves into a popular
militia. With their defeat Guatemala's conservatives all but gave up hope
of overthrowing the government before the election."
This rebellion with the aim of seizing control of the government by force
and preventing an election, is apparently who you're referring to as "his
supporters", and the "students and workers who organized themselves into a
popular milita" in order to help defend the government from being taken over
by violent coup d'etat are what you're referring to as the "armed workers'
militia". Leaving out the context of the "crushing" seems a bit
disingenous. Or perhaps you're suggesting somehow that this armed
rebellion, that apparently killed over 150 people in it's attempt to take
over the government by force, should not have been "crushed" in the manner
that it was -- by government forces and the citizenry defending the elected
government against a coup d'etat? It seems to me that Arevalo and his
supporters successfully defended the elected civilian government from a
violent coup, as any elected constitutional government would, which seems
appropriate and just.
------
continuing from Immerman:
"They made one last attempt but it was significant only because two United
States pilots were arrested for alleged participation and because the leader
was Carlos Castillo Armas.
With Arana's elmination, Arbenz's election as Guatemala's next president
was virtually assured. The campaign, nonetheless, was extensive and heated.
Two candidates emerged as Arbenz's chief opponents. The upper middle class,
most of whom were professionaals who supported some change from the
prerevolutionary order but thought that Arevalo had gone too far too
quickly, championed Jorge Garcia Granados. Garcia Granados came from one of
Guatemala's oldest and "best" families. At first he actively worked for the
revolution, helping to draw up the 1945 constitution and serving as
Arevalo's first ambassador to the United States. He hoped that by being
elected president he could prevent the revolutionary program from moving
more to the left.
The hard-line opponents of the revolution selected a former ubiquista,
General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, as their standard-bearer. During his long
military career, Ydigoras had earned a reputation for dishonesty and
cruelty. According to noted scholar of Latin America Samuel Guy Inman, an
old friend of Roosevelt's Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles and one of
the architects of the Good Neighbor Policy, Ydigoras, on at least one
occasion, ordered the rape of Indian women and the capture and imprisonment
of their children. His principal assignment during Ubico's government had
been to administer the vagrancy laws and generally to oversee the Maya
majority. He was brutally efficient. He imprisoned those Indians whom he
suspected of shirking their state service and instructed his agents to shoot
any Maya found crossing the border to Mexico in order to earn extra money by
selling handicrafts. Ydigoras knew that he was unacceptable to the poor, or
even to the moderate middle class, so he appealed exclusively to Guatemala's
conservative and reactionary elements. His platform called for saving the
country from the Communists, which he proposed to do by reinstituting an
authoritarian government.
Arbenz received his support from practically the entire remaining
population. This included those still active in parties that had comprised
Arevalo's coalition, organized labor, and the whole agricultural community
with the exception of the great landholders. Arbenz campaigned throughout
Guatemala as the candidate of national unity, repeatedly emphasizing how far
the revolution had come and how far it still had to go. He discussed the
need to improve transportation, to study regional problems, and to introduce
scientific and technological innovations. Most important, he talked of the
need to expand the reforms and programs which had begun under Arevalo. When
the election was held in November 1950, Arbenz received more than 60 percent
of the votes cast. Ydigoras came in a distant runner-up, followed by Garcia
Granados. For the first time in the 130-year history of the Guatemalan
republic, executive power had passed peacefully and on schedule from one man
to another.
(pages 58-61 - footnotes omitted)
> holding elections without a secret ballot.
The passages above don't seem to mention this lack of "secret ballot", nor
have any of the other sources I've read on the topic. In fact, doing a
search for Arbenz and "secret ballot", the only relevant page that comes up
is an amazon.com review by one Paulsrb who asserts that the election was
held without a secret ballot. Also odd is that when I do the same search, I
see numerous references to how General Armas "eliminated the secret ballot"
upon seizing power by force, which would seem an odd -- and impossible? --
thing to do if there already was no secret ballot.
> Once in government he pursued an unconstitutional land reform policy,
Whether or not the land reform policies were "unconstitutional" is a matter
of political debate, and it had been upheld by the Supreme Court in other
instances, like when the United Fruit Co. lost its case over its unused
lands. Arbenz attempting to initiate the land reform policy, with
compensation, and which was passed overwhelmingly by the National Assembly
is hardly something that would make me question my statement that his was
the "elected constitutional government", certainly far more than Arana and
"his supporters" who sought to wage a coup and prevent elections, or General
Armas who took power by force, purged the government (and much of civil
society) to his liking and rammed through a constitution of his own liking.
> purging the Supreme Court,
This one would seem to be an abuse of power, and would perhaps be the only
charge of yours that has merit. But I'd like to see a bit more context.
After all, the Supreme Court can abuse its powers just as the President can.
> and he allowed the unions and key government positions to fall under the
control of the Guatemalan Communist Party.
"no Communist held any cabinet post, and the Guatemalan Communist Party
(Partido Guatemalteco de los Trabajadores,
PGT ) never held more than 5 of 58 seats in Congress"
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/ins/guatemala_demochumrts_97.html
"Additionally, the newly legal Communist Party won some 4 of the 50 seats in
the National Legislature."
http://www.runet.edu/~mpbaker/553People_and_Terms.htm
Somehow this doesn't seem all that much like allowing the government to
"fall under the control of" the Communists. What it looks like is that
members of the Guatemalan Communist Party were allowed to freely appeal to
the electorate for votes and run in free elections, and in some cases win
them, without being rounded up and murdered, ...the latter option apparently
being the preferred policy of your style of "elected constitutional
government".
> I doubt that you would refer to the Bush Administration as an "elected
> constitutional government" if Bush had assassinated Gore and then
> crushed his supporters with the National Guard before calling
> elections with no secret ballot, or if he had subsequently pursued
> blatantly illegal policies while purging the Supreme Court and
> allowing the government and the unions to fall into the hands of the
> Ku Klux Klan.
If all these things were accurate, I would very much question it, but it
isn't accurate. It's astoundingly poor "ideological scholarship"....if this
is supposed to be a comparison to Guatemala.
> > For just a few examples that expose the pathetic lie in your claim, we
know
> > that Chomsky has just recently signed a petition in support of the free
> > speech rights of 75 anti-Castro activists in Cuba. We also know that
Chomsky
> > has many times signed petitions in support of the free speech rights of
> > dissidents in the former Soviet Union.
>
> We also know that Chomsky refused to sign petitions defending human
> rights in communist Vietnam,
So what? Here's a little lesson in basic logic. If I sign a petition
saying X, then I have just stated that I support X. If I don't sign a
petition that comes along saying Y, that doesn't mean I support the opposite
of Y. It also doesn't necessarily mean that I don't support Y generally.
But this is all off topic, which was the clear proof that James' statement
was a lie...unless he does believe that anti-Castro and anti-Soviet
dissidents are longing to kill him and "everyone like him".
Josh
big_in_japan
I mean direct references to articles, books, etc.
>
>
>
zztop8970
And I mean the same thing. How about you starting to actually read? You were
given direct references to two articles that provide you with all you need.
James A. Donald
Josh Dougherty
> Sorry James, or should I say Mr. Pot. Your fanciful (and
> eery) revisionist distortions and false equivalencies do not
> change the fact that you openly and directly support the
> principle that when you have your defenseless political
> opponents under your absolute control, that the correct
> policy -- according to you -- is to "purge" them -- to
> brutally murder them in cold blood for the supposed future
> "greater good",
Killing defeated tyrants is rather different from killing those
one suspects might become tyrants.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
eir/zw9B7fsTpwhajkeWXIr+QD38H36xVm3XVcgy
4DwCn1vguesJ8tUll0ZLzmipkJBrnBaCQHhrSYaBt
Guilherme
> Josh Dougherty
> > Sorry James, or should I say Mr. Pot. Your fanciful (and
> > eery) revisionist distortions and false equivalencies do not
> > change the fact that you openly and directly support the
> > principle that when you have your defenseless political
> > opponents under your absolute control, that the correct
> > policy -- according to you -- is to "purge" them -- to
> > brutally murder them in cold blood for the supposed future
> > "greater good",
>
> Killing defeated tyrants is rather different from killing those
> one suspects might become tyrants.
ya. the defeated are just that -- defeated.
-gr
big_in_japan
What I mean is, give me references from what chomsky wrote himself. No
secondary information.
>
>
>
Russil Wvong
> 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
James A. Donald
James A. Donald:
> > Killing defeated tyrants is rather different from killing
> > those one suspects might become tyrants.
Guilherme
> ya. the defeated are just that -- defeated.
They deserve it, and executing them discourages others, thus
considerably improving the winner's prospects of dying a
natural death.
If a tyrant steps down or retires at the last minute, then
safe, comfortable, and dignified retirement is, unfortunately,
usually part of the deal. If, however, he hangs on until his
door is kicked down, then he should be hung from the nearest
lampost, or thrown out a high window.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
cuuKdbTljm+VkQgGXgLd3YzKn6JgEt8WnL5CKhWs
4pNnPZaZI1x9ZSP+Pn97AlMBjEDamt458dS0oJIz7
Guilherme
> --
> James A. Donald:
> > > Killing defeated tyrants is rather different from killing
> > > those one suspects might become tyrants.
>
> Guilherme
> > ya. the defeated are just that -- defeated.
>
> They deserve it, and executing them discourages others, thus
> considerably improving the winner's prospects of dying a
> natural death.
>
> If a tyrant steps down or retires at the last minute, then
> safe, comfortable, and dignified retirement is, unfortunately,
> usually part of the deal. If, however, he hangs on until his
> door is kicked down, then he should be hung from the nearest
> lampost, or thrown out a high window.
what if he open's the door right before its kicked down? will
there be a falange there to tell us what the proper thing to do with the
defeated are? including what they deserve? and what deterrent it
promotes?
-gr
Paulsrb
> > > constitutional government of Guatemala
> >
> > Jacobo Arbenz was neither freely elected nor constitutionally
> > legitimate. He gained power by killing his major opponent, Francisco
> > Arana,
>
> Speculation Paul. You might perhaps like to believe this, and it is one
> possible explanation, but it is not proven. There have been accusations to
> that effect, just as there have been accusations that Kennedy was killed by
> Cubans or by the CIA, or by Lee Harvey Oswald.
>
> For some elaborate context on Arana and the election -- from Richard H.
> Immerman's book "CIA in Guatemala":
Immerman's book is neither the most accurate nor the most up-to-date
source on the Arevalo-Arbenz period in Guatemala; see my further
comments below.
[snip]
> In the above passages, we see two very relevant things. It had began to
> become apparent that Arana would not be able to beat Arbenz at the ballot
> box, and many, including the US embassy, seemed to believe this as well as
> believing that Arana was planning a military overthrow to seize power by
> force and prevent an election. The Guatemalan National Assembly seemed to
> "overwhelmingly" believe this as well, and impeached him.
This is a somewhat misleading version of events. Although it is true
that he had been impeached at the government's behest on the basis of
government-instigated rumours, Arana expressly refused to seize power
by force. Instead he presented Arevalo with an ultimatum to replace
the cabinet so that he could stand for election without official
interference - which would have been decisive - and thus become a
constitutional president. He then travelled to the scene of an alleged
weapons cache hoping to find evidence for his accusations against
Arbenz.
---
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the
United States, 1944-1954, pp62-3:-
Had he launched a straightforward coup, Arana would have succeeded.
But overconfidence and the lingering remnants of his "inner conflict"
led him along a more tortuous path. He still longed to be the properly
elected president. Instead of toppling Arevalo, he delivered an
ultimatum: Arevalo must dismiss his cabinet and replace his ministers
with those of Arana's choice. Arbenz and his followers would be
retired from the army. If Arevalo complied, he would be allowed to
complete his presidential term. If he refused, he would be deposed...
In vain had Arana's advisers pleaded with him, before he went to the
presidential palace, to forego complicated games and simply seize
power. In vain did they argue, after he returned from the palace, that
he could not rely on Arevalo's promises. In vain did they stress "that
in a coup d'etat there's no time for talk - you act or you fail."
---
Thus Arana was not "planning a military overthrow to seize power by
force and prevent an election," as you put it. Further, none of this
has any relevance to my claim, which was that Arbenz had Arana killed.
[snip]
> The role of the revolutionary government in Arana's assasination remains
> undetermined. A "reliable" informer told the United States embassy that
> Arana's killer was a subdirector of the police who died in the ensuing
> gunfire. The CIA assumed Arbenz's complicity when planning his 1954
> overthrow, and, before it had been in power a week, the Castillo Armas
> government charged the former president with murder. The main evidence used
> against Arbenz was the testimony of Arana's chaeuffer, Lieutenant Chico
> Palacios. Palacios claimed that among the assasins were Anibal Gramajo,
> Arbenz's wife Maria's chauffeur, and Lieutenant Alfonso Martinez Estevez,
> who occupied several influencial positions in Arbenz's administration. But
> Palacios could not directly connect Arbenz with the plot, nor could he
> explain (although he was not asked) how he alone managed to survive the
> barrage of bullets. This question presents the possibility that Guatemalan
> counterrevolutionaries, realizing that Arana stood no chance of winning,
> actually arranged his assassination in an attempt to incite a rebellion."...
Immerman is lending credence to the government's official cover-up of
the killing, a pathetic lie which was widely ridiculed at the time.
Arbenz himself admitted that he was at the scene.
---
Gleijeses, p59:-
Ignoring the published accounts of Arbenz and other government
officials, some authors imply that the assassins were from the upper
class [citing Immerman, inter alia]... This reasoning defies logic.
Arana was the elite's only hope to seize power.
---
Gleijeses, p70:-
Few Guatemalans agreed [with the government's explanation]; few were
so naive as to believe that Arana had been killed by his conservative
friends. This contradicted both common sense and widely known facts.
It was no secret, for instance, that Alfonso Martinez had been wounded
at the Puente de la Gloria and that Martinez was close to Arbenz, not
to the conservative opposition.
---
> > crushing his supporters with an armed workers' militia,
[snip]
> This rebellion with the aim of seizing control of the government by force
> and preventing an election, is apparently who you're referring to as "his
> supporters", and the "students and workers who organized themselves into a
> popular milita" in order to help defend the government from being taken over
> by violent coup d'etat are what you're referring to as the "armed workers'
> militia". Leaving out the context of the "crushing" seems a bit
> disingenous. Or perhaps you're suggesting somehow that this armed
> rebellion, that apparently killed over 150 people in it's attempt to take
> over the government by force, should not have been "crushed" in the manner
> that it was -- by government forces and the citizenry defending the elected
> government against a coup d'etat? It seems to me that Arevalo and his
> supporters successfully defended the elected civilian government from a
> violent coup, as any elected constitutional government would, which seems
> appropriate and just.
Immerman's account is just wrong here: (1) the uprising was a
spontaneous and leaderless reaction to the killing of Arana, not a
planned coup attempt; (2) the death toll was 150 in total, not 150 on
the government side; (3) the civilian volunteers were mainly from the
labour unions, hence my point that they were an armed workers'
militia; (4) after the fighting was over, the government lied to
conceal the fact that Arbenz had killed Arana.
In summary: Arana had rejected the idea of a violent coup, instead
presenting Arevalo with an ultimatum to replace his cabinet so that
Arana could stand for election without official interference and
become president by constitutional means; Arevalo had sent Arbenz to
arrest him and Arbenz instead had him killed as he was searching for
evidence against the government; Arana's supporters spontaneously
rebelled on hearing the news, whereupon they were crushed, leaving the
field clear for Arbenz.
[snip]
> > holding elections without a secret ballot.
>
> The passages above don't seem to mention this lack of "secret ballot", nor
> have any of the other sources I've read on the topic. In fact, doing a
> search for Arbenz and "secret ballot", the only relevant page that comes up
> is an amazon.com review by one Paulsrb who asserts that the election was
> held without a secret ballot.
And I provided the source, which you have failed to check:-
---
Gleijeses, p84:-
[Arbenz] would have won even had the elections been completely free,
but in the Guatemala of 1950 elections could not be genuinely free.
The 1945 constitution gave illiterate males only a public vote and
disenfranchised illiterate women. It is naive to imagine that many
Indians would have dared vote against the authorities' candidate - be
it Ubico, Arana, Arbenz or Ydigoras. Centuries of oppression had
taught them the proper behavior.
---
Note that Gleijeses is an apologist for Arbenz; hence the title of his
book.
> Also odd is that when I do the same search, I
> see numerous references to how General Armas "eliminated the secret ballot"
> upon seizing power by force, which would seem an odd -- and impossible? --
> thing to do if there already was no secret ballot.
Armas was a dictator, so of course there was no secret ballot under
his rule. But he was assassinated in 1957 and there were free
elections in 1958 and 1966.
> > Once in government he pursued an unconstitutional land reform policy,
>
> Whether or not the land reform policies were "unconstitutional" is a matter
> of political debate, and it had been upheld by the Supreme Court in other
> instances, like when the United Fruit Co. lost its case over its unused
> lands.
The land reform was suspended by the Supreme Court because the statute
excluded judicial review and because lands were being seized
illegally: Gleijeses, pp154-5. Arbenz then had the Supreme Court
purged. That is conclusive proof of unconstitutionality.
[snip]
> > purging the Supreme Court,
>
> This one would seem to be an abuse of power, and would perhaps be the only
> charge of yours that has merit. But I'd like to see a bit more context.
> After all, the Supreme Court can abuse its powers just as the President can.
The only reason for thinking that the Guatemalan Supreme Court abused
its powers is that its rulings displeased the government. By that
standard, one might as well abolish the judiciary altogether.
> > and he allowed the unions and key government positions to fall under the
> > control of the Guatemalan Communist Party.
>
> "no Communist held any cabinet post, and the Guatemalan Communist Party
> (Partido Guatemalteco de los Trabajadores,
> PGT ) never held more than 5 of 58 seats in Congress"
> http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/ins/guatemala_demochumrts_97.html
>
> "Additionally, the newly legal Communist Party won some 4 of the 50 seats in
> the National Legislature."
> http://www.runet.edu/~mpbaker/553People_and_Terms.htm
>
> Somehow this doesn't seem all that much like allowing the government to
> "fall under the control of" the Communists.
---
Gleijeses, pp182:-
But Guatemala had a presidential system, and Arbenz was a strong
president. With his backing, the communists gained influence far
beyond their numbers. The PGT [Guatemalan Communist Party] leaders -
Fortuny foremost - were Arbenz's closest advisers and constituted his
kitchen cabinet, which discussed all major decisions. This was true of
the agrarian reform as well as of the purchase of weapons from
Czechoslovakia... By contrast, the official cabinet and the
revolutionary leaders learned that weapons from [Eastern] Europe had
reached Guatemala's shores only after the State Department loudly
denounced their arrival...
---
Gleijeses, p189:-
Without Arbenz, the PGT would have been utterly isolated. Most
revolutionary leaders felt little sympathy for the party. Left to
their own devices, they would have spurned cooperation with the PGT
and have barely tolerated its legalization. Instead, Arbenz's control
of the government's purse and patronage, and his forceful personality,
stirred politicians and bureaucrats to court the party that basked in
the president's favor.
Arbenz was influential in the October 1951 merger of the two main
labor confederations of the Arevalo period - the FSG and the CTG -
into the communist-led CGTG. In the spring of 1954, he helped the
communists take control of the railway union (SAMF), the only
important urban labor union that still opposed them.
Even more critical was the president's impact on the peasant-based
CNCG, created in May 1950 by a group of noncommunist and anticommunist
labor leaders. Throughout the Arbenz years, these leaders resented the
PGT's and the CGTG's efforts to gain influence in the countryside. But
the CNCG was always penniless, and it needed the government's
financial assistance. Thus, its leaders spouted pro-Soviet rhetoric
and even joined, after much hesitation, the Soviet-dominated World
Federation of Trade Unions. Above all, they sought a modus vivendi
with the PGT and the CGTG.
---
> What it looks like is that members of the Guatemalan Communist Party were
> allowed to freely appeal to the electorate for votes and run in free
> elections, and in some cases win them, without being rounded up and
> murdered, ...the latter option apparently being the preferred policy of your
> style of "elected constitutional government".
I hope that you will either substantiate this shocking claim or
withdraw it.
[snip]
> > We also know that Chomsky refused to sign petitions defending human
> > rights in communist Vietnam,
>
> So what? Here's a little lesson in basic logic. If I sign a petition
> saying X, then I have just stated that I support X. If I don't sign a
> petition that comes along saying Y, that doesn't mean I support the opposite
> of Y. It also doesn't necessarily mean that I don't support Y generally.
It does if you refuse to sign a petition supporting Y and then proceed
to state the opposite of Y, which is precisely what Chomsky did with
respect to communist Vietnam, as I noted in that part of my post which
you deleted.
James A. Donald
James A. Donald:
> > If a tyrant steps down or retires at the last minute, then
> > safe, comfortable, and dignified retirement is,
> > unfortunately, usually part of the deal. If, however, he
> > hangs on until his door is kicked down, then he should be
> > hung from the nearest lampost, or thrown out a high window.
Guilherme
> what if he open's the door right before its kicked down?
I said "deal", as for example when Bush gave Saddam 24 hours to
get out of town. When the 24 hours was up, it was too late to
leave town, though doubtless had Saddam's troops provided the
effective resistance that the BBC and NBC told us they were
providing, Bush would have provided another, more generous,
deadline.
> including what they deserve?
Death to tyrants.
> and what deterrent it promotes?
Deters tyranny.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
6DGfclvDBBaa72iPt4dHZ4xKCdIorQVGiSehYHbz
4yE/oV3Xf/SHmhfdlxloNT1VrIek90qSA5zBsg/i5
Guilherme
> > > If a tyrant steps down or retires at the last minute, then
> > > safe, comfortable, and dignified retirement is,
> > > unfortunately, usually part of the deal. If, however, he
> > > hangs on until his door is kicked down, then he should be
> > > hung from the nearest lampost, or thrown out a high window.
>
> Guilherme
> > what if he open's the door right before its kicked down?
>
> I said "deal", as for example when Bush gave Saddam 24 hours to
> get out of town. When the 24 hours was up, it was too late to
> leave town, though doubtless had Saddam's troops provided the
> effective resistance that the BBC and NBC told us they were
> providing, Bush would have provided another, more generous,
> deadline.
>
> > including what they deserve?
>
> Death to tyrants.
but only the ones that open the door.
>
> > and what deterrent it promotes?
>
> Deters tyranny.
death? i don't know how much deterrence it really creates at that
margin. I doubt any one would think any different from the killing or
not killing of a saddam or a medici.
-gr
Josh Dougherty
> > > > Armas, along with the CIA, had succeeded in overthrowing the elected
> > > > constitutional government of Guatemala
> > >
> > > Jacobo Arbenz was neither freely elected nor constitutionally
> > > legitimate. He gained power by killing his major opponent, Francisco
> > > Arana,
> >
> > Speculation Paul. You might perhaps like to believe this, and it is one
> > possible explanation, but it is not proven. There have been accusations
to
> > that effect, just as there have been accusations that Kennedy was killed
by
> > Cubans or by the CIA, or by Lee Harvey Oswald.
> >
> > For some elaborate context on Arana and the election -- from Richard H.
> > Immerman's book "CIA in Guatemala":
>
> Immerman's book is neither the most accurate nor the most up-to-date
> source on the Arevalo-Arbenz period in Guatemala; see my further
> comments below.
The former claim is just that, a claim. The latter is certainly true. It
is not the most recent to come out, but this does not in itself detract from
any of the things I quoted. So your opening is merely you asserting that
your chosen source is better than mine.
> [snip]
> > In the above passages, we see two very relevant things. It had began to
> > become apparent that Arana would not be able to beat Arbenz at the
ballot
> > box, and many, including the US embassy, seemed to believe this as well
as
> > believing that Arana was planning a military overthrow to seize power by
> > force and prevent an election. The Guatemalan National Assembly seemed
to
> > "overwhelmingly" believe this as well, and impeached him.
>
> This is a somewhat misleading version of events. Although it is true
> that he had been impeached at the government's behest on the basis of
> government-instigated rumours,
Ah, "government-instigated rumors" which the National Assembly, and the US
embassy, seemed to have no trouble believing. Was there no evidence
presented at this impeachment? I would think this is a crucial question for
you to answer, since you seem to absolve the flagrantly unconstitutional
actions and threats from Arana that follow it, on the basis that this was
somehow a persecutorial ruling not backed by evidence. Yet, you leap over
this question rather cavalierly, accepting an ideologically convenient but
unsupported conclusion.
> Arana expressly refused to seize power
> by force.
No, he expressly accepted it. That was the force behind his ultimatum.
Without expressly accepting seizure of power by force, his threats against
the sitting president would have been empty. Perhaps you think they were.
...more below.
> Instead he presented Arevalo with an ultimatum to replace
> the cabinet so that he could stand for election without official
> interference - which would have been decisive - and thus become a
> constitutional president. He then travelled to the scene of an alleged
> weapons cache hoping to find evidence for his accusations against
> Arbenz.
> ---
>
> Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the
> United States, 1944-1954, pp62-3:-
>
> Had he launched a straightforward coup, Arana would have succeeded.
> But overconfidence and the lingering remnants of his "inner conflict"
> led him along a more tortuous path. He still longed to be the properly
> elected president. Instead of toppling Arevalo, he delivered an
> ultimatum: Arevalo must dismiss his cabinet and replace his ministers
> with those of Arana's choice. Arbenz and his followers would be
> retired from the army. If Arevalo complied, he would be allowed to
> complete his presidential term. If he refused, he would be deposed...
IOW...Arana expressly demanded that he seize power, under threat of force,
namely coup d'etat. The unelected and impeached Arana demanded that the
elected President dismiss his cabinet, and that Arana be handed Presidential
powers to appoint the cabinet of his chosing. He also demanded, under
threat of force, that his most prominent electoral rival and all his
supporters be purged from the government. If Arevalo refused to turn over
Presidential powers to the unelected Arana, and allow him to purge the
assembly that convicted him and stack the entire government with his
supporters, and purge his main electoral opponent along with all of his
supporters, then Arevalo would be toppled by force. In short Arana said,
hand me the Presidency and cotrol of the government, or I'll take it by
force. And this seems to you like someone who "expressly refused to seize
power by force"??
> In vain had Arana's advisers pleaded with him, before he went to the
> presidential palace, to forego complicated games and simply seize
> power. In vain did they argue, after he returned from the palace, that
> he could not rely on Arevalo's promises. In vain did they stress "that
> in a coup d'etat there's no time for talk - you act or you fail."
"Arevalo's promises"? The promise I see above is an ultimatum that Arevalo
either hand the impeached Arana presidential powers, or Arana would seize
the government by force.
In any case, this is a minor tactical difference. "His supporters" thought
that coup d'etat should be policy #1 (their best hope), and we shouldn't
bother with ultimatums backed by threat of coup d'etat. Just do it. Arana
otoh said no, I'm going to issue the ultimatum backed by threat of coup
d'etat. If the sitting President refuses the demands to hand the government
over to me, then we'll take it by force.
> ---
>
> Thus Arana was not "planning a military overthrow to seize power by
> force and prevent an election," as you put it.
He certainly was, unless his threats to Arevalo were empty. As were "his
supporters" quite evidently. He was also found guilty of doing so
overwhelmingly by the National Assembly. Yet it just must be true that he
was a great democrat.
As both your and my citations show, "his supporters" placed coup d'etat as
their number one course of action. Arana merely deviated slightly, by
thinking that the first order of business be that he threaten the sitting
president with coup d'etat and demand he comply with various
unconstitutional "ultimatums" that would hand Presidential powers over to
Arana and purge all of his opponents. But, in lieu of Arevalo complying
with Arana's threats, then coup d'etat was the way to go.
You're merely choosing to take one account (or a portion of one account)
over another. In the Immerman book, as I cited, it said:
"When it became apparent, however, that Arbenz's liberal support was too
much for Arana, a coalition of conservatives and reactionaries indiscreetly
urged the
army chief to mount a revolt before the election could take place." and
that the US embassy believed: "It is difficult not to attach significance
to rumors that [Arana] is seeking the right opportunity and a reasonable
excuse for a military coup d'etat."
If "his supporters" did believe that "Arbenz's liberal support was too much
for Arana", and indeed were demanding an immediate coup all along (as your
references and mine seem to indicate), the reasoning does not really "defy
logic" at all. "His supporters" seemed to believe that immediate coup
d'etat was their best hope, so, if Arana's election wasn't even their best
hope, how could it be their "only hope"? That is what would seem to "defy
logic".
> Gleijeses, p70:-
>
> Few Guatemalans agreed [with the government's explanation]; few were
> so naive as to believe that Arana had been killed by his conservative
> friends. This contradicted both common sense and widely known facts.
> It was no secret, for instance, that Alfonso Martinez had been wounded
> at the Puente de la Gloria and that Martinez was close to Arbenz, not
> to the conservative opposition.
First, if this is true, then where is the proof of Arbenz' complicity, and
where is this supposed "addmission" from Arbenz that you refer to?
Furthermore, what Gleijeses describes as "no secret" is quite possibly the
same questionable Palacios testimony that Immerman refers to above. Even if
the testimony about Martinez is accurate, Immerman would seem to still be
correct that "Palacios could not directly connect Arbenz with the plot, nor
could he explain (although he was not asked) how he alone managed to survive
the barrage of bullets." Neither your source nor mine claim, as you do,
that "Arbenz had him killed".
And also, it may very well be "naive" to believe that his own side did him
in, since there isn't sufficient evidence for it -- just as there isn't to
believe the "Arbenz had him killed" line. However, it seems that Gleijeses
may again be a little bit off by claiming that it "defies common sense".
If the lost hope Arana (who'd been impeached and had committed still further
crimes by threatening the sitting president with coup d'etat) wouldn't win
by election, and if his death could spark a "spontaneous and leaderless"
coup that would have the best chance of overthrowing the government by
force, then it hardly would seem to "defy common sense" for the conservative
opposition to see this, and sacrifice their supposed "best hope" for what
they actually felt to be their best hope.
Furthermore, it might seem to defy common sense for Arbenz to create a
martyr out of someone, when at this point it seemed apparent to all that
"Arbenz' liberal support was too much for Arana", and who was also on the
run from arrest, and inspire that "spontaneous and leaderless" coup that
"his supporters" had felt all along was their best hope at seizing control
of the government.
As for the "well known facts" or "fact", this question is addressed above,
and can not be solved merely by claiming that Gleijeses asserts X while
Immerman asserts Y, and Paul likes the idea of X, so X is right. The
question of Arbenz' complicity can't be solved with this either, not least
of all because neither source is willing to confirm your claim in the first
place. Perhaps these sources hold to higher intellectual standards which
don't allow them to bandy about controversial "facts" which might be
ideologically convenient, but for which there is no concrete evidence.
Really? According to you Paul?
> (1) the uprising was a spontaneous and leaderless reaction to the killing
of Arana, not a
> planned coup attempt;
Says who? Why would "his supporters" who had, according to all accounts,
been pushing for (and certainly planning) a coup all along as policy #1,
suddenly be "spontaneous and leaderless" in their execution of their desired
policy? It seems quite likely that it was a reaction to the killing of
Arana, as well as an organized coup attempt that had been in the planning
for a long time, that had just been presented with the golden opportunity.
> (2) the death toll was 150 in total, not 150 on
> the government side; (3) the civilian volunteers were mainly from the
> labour unions, hence my point that they were an armed workers'
> militia;
sources please. And really, don't just say that Gleijeses claims X while
Immerman claims Y. ...and Paul likes X better, so "Immerman's account is
just wrong".
> (4) after the fighting was over, the government lied to conceal the fact
that Arbenz had killed Arana.
Again, you are asserting a disputed conclusion as fact. Neither of our
sources claims that your "fact" is a fact.
> In summary: Arana had rejected the idea of a violent coup,
No, he did not. He clearly accepted it. He offered an option to President
Arevalo: overturn Arana's overwhelmingly supported impeachment by the
National Assembly, hand him Presidential powers to choose the cabinet and
pack it with his supporters, and purge his electoral opponent and all of his
supporters. In lieu of that compliance, he supported the idea of violent
coup, and he supported the idea of violent coup to force that compliance in
the first place. Without Arana's acceptance of the idea of a violent coup,
his threats would have been empty.
> instead presenting Arevalo with an ultimatum to replace his cabinet
That "ultimatum" was backed by the threat of violent coup. And why should
Arevalo accept his impeached subordinate's "ultimatum" (backed with threat
of violent coup) to replace his cabinet, let alone let Arana choose the new
cabinet? The fact is that Arevalo should have immediately rejected this
"ultimatum". And quite clearly this whole scenario, even by your own
account, shows Arana to be most guilty of using unconstitutional and
anti-democratic means, backed all the way by threat of violence and coup
d'etat.
> so that Arana could stand for election without official interference and
> become president by constitutional means;
Constitutional means? "Official interference"? You characterize being
convicted of crimes as "official interference" in his desires? Geez.
So, let's go back to your US comparison again, with Bush and Gore
campaigning. If Bush had been overwhelmingly found guilty of treason by the
congress, you would find it "constitutional" for him to demand (at the
threat of overthrowing the US government by force) that Clinton overturn his
impeachment, dissolve his cabinet and hand the power to pick the new cabinet
over to Bush. And, to also purge Bush's electoral rival Gore from his seat
as Vice President, as well as all of Gore's supporters from their properly
elected seats in the government. ...So that Bush could "stand for election
without official interference and become president by constitutional means"?
And you construct all of these descriptions and assert all of this with a
straight face?
> Arevalo had sent Arbenz to arrest him
source please.
> and Arbenz instead had him killed
source please. Even your lone source that you chose to believe (except for
all the "Arbenz' apologetics") does not confirm involvement, except to claim
that someone known to be close to Arbenz was wounded at the scene.
> as he was searching for evidence against the government; Arana's
supporters spontaneously
> rebelled on hearing the news,
according to whom was it "spontaneous"? It would seem odd that as soon as
"his supporters" had the opportunity to enact the policy they'd been
desiring and planning all along, that it would suddenly become
"spontaneous".
> whereupon they were crushed, leaving the field clear for Arbenz.
It seems to me that by this point, the field was already clear, at least as
far as Arana is concerned. Arana was a fugitive, likely discredited in the
eyes of much of the populace as well as his more practical supporters, and
both our sources seem to feel that Arbenz had the greater support.
In any case, you seem to find the fact reprehensible that an attempted coup
d'etat, using "heavy artillery" was "crushed" by the elected government and
the citizenry, as would seem appropriate. Apparently Arevalo's policy
should have been to tell the police and the "students and workers who
organized themselves into a popular militia", to stand down and allow the
coup d'etat to succeed....because it would be improper to "crush" their
efforts at seizing the government by force.
I must say, your account of this whole scenario is rather interesting.
Obviously the product of a person with strong dedication to
"constitutionality" and democratic principles.
> [snip]
> > > holding elections without a secret ballot.
> >
> > The passages above don't seem to mention this lack of "secret ballot",
nor
> > have any of the other sources I've read on the topic. In fact, doing a
> > search for Arbenz and "secret ballot", the only relevant page that comes
up
> > is an amazon.com review by one Paulsrb who asserts that the election was
> > held without a secret ballot.
>
> And I provided the source, which you have failed to check:-
>
> ---
>
> Gleijeses, p84:-
>
> [Arbenz] would have won even had the elections been completely free,
> but in the Guatemala of 1950 elections could not be genuinely free.
> The 1945 constitution gave illiterate males only a public vote and
> disenfranchised illiterate women. It is naive to imagine that many
> Indians would have dared vote against the authorities' candidate - be
> it Ubico, Arana, Arbenz or Ydigoras. Centuries of oppression had
> taught them the proper behavior.
>
> ---
>
> Note that Gleijeses is an apologist for Arbenz; hence the title of his
> book.
I see, so we can believe the statements about the public vote for illiterate
males, but we can't believe the first sentence, because that's "Arbenz'
apologetics". IOW...we can believe those statements from Gleijesis that
confirm whatever your prejudices are on the topic, but we must throw out the
rest as "Arbenz' apologetics".
In any case, the above doesn't really change the fact that he was the duly
elected president according to the constitution. Many constitutions had
similar restrictions based on illiteracy and for women, which certainly
could have been improved, but this would also mean that all of the
presidents of the United States prior to women's suffrage weren't the
property elected constitutional presidents. And do you really believe that
illiterate males or illiterate females would have chosen Arana over Arbenz?
What do you think Gleijeses or Immerman would believe about that? We
already can see what Gleijeses believes, but that's just "Arbenz'
apologetics".
And furthermore, if Gleijeses' account is accurate (even though it isn't
anywhere it disagrees with your thesis), it's false to claim "there was no
secret ballot". Apparently every voter other than illiterate males used a
secret ballot. Of course, it's even possible that illiterate males did also
use a secret ballot in the actual election, even if this right isn't granted
in the Constitution.
Gleijeses seems to be saying little more in the above paragraph than, yes
Arbenz won the election handily and fairly, and would have under any
circumstance, but we should note that the Constitution of 1945 was still not
fully up to our modern standards of full suffrage and free elections due to
this and that.
This account hardly supports your assertions, unless of course we
arbitrarily dismiss the "Arbenz' apologetics" of your source, and assume the
opposite, in order to preserve the right conclusion.
> > Also odd is that when I do the same search, I
> > see numerous references to how General Armas "eliminated the secret
ballot"
> > upon seizing power by force, which would seem an odd -- and
impossible? --
> > thing to do if there already was no secret ballot.
>
> Armas was a dictator, so of course there was no secret ballot under
> his rule.
Well, actually. It says he "eliminated the secret ballot", which he did.
This is because your claim that in Arbenz' election there was "no secret
ballot" is false. There was, except it was not extended to illiterate
males.
> But he was assassinated in 1957 and there were free
> elections in 1958 and 1966.
Oh come now.
> > > Once in government he pursued an unconstitutional land reform policy,
> >
> > Whether or not the land reform policies were "unconstitutional" is a
matter
> > of political debate, and it had been upheld by the Supreme Court in
other
> > instances, like when the United Fruit Co. lost its case over its unused
> > lands.
>
> The land reform was suspended by the Supreme Court because the statute
> excluded judicial review and because lands were being seized
> illegally: Gleijeses, pp154-5. Arbenz then had the Supreme Court
> purged. That is conclusive proof of unconstitutionality.
Possibly, but I'd like to see more context. But if you want "conclusive
proof of unconstitutionality" you need look no further than the description
of Arana's "ultimatum" and the tactics and stated desires of "his
supporters" that you sypathize with, all far more dripping with
"unconstitutionality" than anything with Arbenz here.
> [snip]
> > > purging the Supreme Court,
> >
> > This one would seem to be an abuse of power, and would perhaps be the
only
> > charge of yours that has merit. But I'd like to see a bit more context.
> > After all, the Supreme Court can abuse its powers just as the President
can.
>
> The only reason for thinking that the Guatemalan Supreme Court abused
> its powers is that its rulings displeased the government. By that
> standard, one might as well abolish the judiciary altogether.
No, another reason for thinking that might be for the exact same reason you
think it's the case about the National Assembly ruling on Arana. The
Supreme Court may have been corrupt, and/or politicized in its ruling here.
IOW..that the policy was "unconstitutional" only because it displeased the
political leanings of the members of the Supreme Court, or that of persons
paying the members of the Court to overrule it. You seem to find no problem
believing this of the elected National Assembly who found the evidence
against Arana compelling and overwhelmingly impeached him -- a ruling he
refused to accept, upon which time he demanded for the purging of the
assembly that "displeased" him, resorted to blatant unconstitutional
power-grabbing and threats of violence and coup d'etat. But you excuse all
this as the principled actions of a great democrat, by implying that the
National Assembly had abused its powers, acting corruptly "at the
government's behest on the basis of government-instigated rumours", rumors
which the US embassy just happened to also believe. If this can be true of
the National Assembly (not that you've even remotely shown this true), why
not the Court? As such, I'd like to see the other side of the story here,
not just the version you've chosen to present.
You assume the National Assembly ruling to be born of corruption,
partisanship or gullibility (apparently based on no evidence other than
"government-inspired rumor"). Yet you believe the ruling of the Supreme
Court to be free of corruption and partisanship, and based on principled
dedication to constitutionality. Why?
Furthermore, you are blind to the fact that Arana demanded (under threat of
force) for the purging of the "court" that "displeased" him, exactly what
you decry Arbenz for (while finding it fine for Arana), and which is really
the only charge against Arbenz which might stand up. But it's uncontested
with Arana, and he went way beyond this. Yet you're blind to all of this,
painting him a great democrat only seeking to be freely elected without
"interference".
Ok, so?
> Even more critical was the president's impact on the peasant-based
> CNCG, created in May 1950 by a group of noncommunist and anticommunist
> labor leaders. Throughout the Arbenz years, these leaders resented the
> PGT's and the CGTG's efforts to gain influence in the countryside. But
> the CNCG was always penniless, and it needed the government's
> financial assistance. Thus, its leaders spouted pro-Soviet rhetoric
> and even joined, after much hesitation, the Soviet-dominated World
> Federation of Trade Unions. Above all, they sought a modus vivendi
> with the PGT and the CGTG.
Ok, so?
What about any of these passages should make me rethink my statement about
Arbenz' administration being the freely elected constitutional government?
Are any of these things you describe above unconstitutional?
> > What it looks like is that members of the Guatemalan Communist Party
were
> > allowed to freely appeal to the electorate for votes and run in free
> > elections, and in some cases win them, without being rounded up and
> > murdered, ...the latter option apparently being the preferred policy of
your
> > style of "elected constitutional government".
>
> I hope that you will either substantiate this shocking claim or
> withdraw it.
Since you seem to support Arana's attempt at overthrowing the government by
force with fanciful one-sided narrative, and since you seem to think that
Armas successful coup d'etat right and just, and since you refer to Ydigoras
Fuentes as a freely elected constitutional government....then...since the
latter two did follow the latter policy, and the former most likely would
have if he could have been successful. It does seem rather apparent, as I
suggested. But, what do you think Arbenz should have done with those 4 or 5
GCP members who were elected to seats in the National Assembly. Do you
think he should have allowed them to run? If not, what should be done with
them and their supporters? Do you even think such a horrible party should
be legally alloud to run? If not, then what do you do with all of the
disenfranchised supporters who will likely be rather angry at their imposed
disenfranchisement? Do you concede to their demands for suffrage and legal
participation in electoral politics, block their demands and use repression
and imprisonment, or round them up and kill them? We know which options
Armas, Feuntes and Arana seemed to like. How about you?
Josh
Josh Dougherty
news:Pine.GSO.4.58.03...@unagi.cis.upenn.edu...
I suspect you may just be having some fun with James, but the most
interesting aspect of his policy is in who gets to define "tyrants".
Apparently those who are victorious and have their adversaries "defeated"
get to decide. So, if the victors believe that the bougeiosie are the
"tyrants", well, James' principles have just provided the necessary
justification for Pol Pot's Cambodia. And none of it was murdering
political opponents, or even murder at all. Isn't that neat!
Josh
Guilherme
> Apparently those who are victorious and have their adversaries "defeated"
> get to decide. So, if the victors believe that the bougeiosie are the
> "tyrants", well, James' principles have just provided the necessary
> justification for Pol Pot's Cambodia. And none of it was murdering
> political opponents, or even murder at all. Isn't that neat!
i think in the past i've agreed with a similar formulation of
james'. that the experience of US involvement in latin america teaches us
that its the brutal regimes that win. that if only allende had been more
like a pinochet or a castro, we wouldn't have had a pinochet. this lesson
is taught by US and soviet client states. and it seemed a ridiculous
lesson for a libertarian to be promoting.
-gr
James A. Donald
James A. Donald wrote:
> > > Death to tyrants.
Josh Dougherty:
> the most
> interesting aspect of his policy is in who gets to define
> "tyrants".
>
> Apparently those who are victorious and have their
> adversaries "defeated" get to decide. So, if the victors
> believe that the bougeiosie are the "tyrants" [....]
Your interpretation presupposes that there is no such thing as
tyranny, it is merely a matter of preference.
Of course there is such a thing as tyranny, and everyone knows
it except those who fantasize themselves as tyrants.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
QyuJdsfxiTmH4mMdy6uh7t7l59TJVEY2KSEF+B1R
452ciZDhub8PxjFlJ7JU2U4bwSxCZvBTSaB66C5DU
James A. Donald
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 11:59:57 -0400, Guilherme
> I think in the past i've agreed with a similar formulation of
> america teaches us that its the brutal regimes that win.
> that if only allende had been more like a pinochet or a
> castro,
That is the complete reverse of what i claimed. What I claimed
is that regimes you depict as brutal were not brutal, and the
regimes you depicted as humane were brutal -- and were
destroyed for their brutality.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
ztadZyYnC8AuueO/nuwT4tIqjEjNJr0C76n5071r
4MkjKBVO0K4zKv56nQF2OUZw/uQREYxBbiQYt10Oq
Guilherme
> On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 11:59:57 -0400, Guilherme
> > I think in the past i've agreed with a similar formulation of
> > james'. that the experience of US involvement in latin
> > america teaches us that its the brutal regimes that win.
> > that if only allende had been more like a pinochet or a
> > castro,
>
> That is the complete reverse of what i claimed. What I claimed
> is that regimes you depict as brutal were not brutal, and the
> regimes you depicted as humane were brutal -- and were
> destroyed for their brutality.
sorry. it wasn't that you claimed it. it was that you recognized
it for only certain regimes. you wouldn't use it to explain why castro is
still around -- unless one is to say he destroyed the brutal batista
regime. nor does it explain the success that was had in defeating the
sandinistas and the FMLN in el salvador -- basically the side with the
most human rights violations won. its the logic of, what if allende had
killed a few thousand in the weeks before the coup, rather than allowing
pinochet to do so in the weeks after? well, then, as american and soviet
intervention in latin america have show, much to the cheerleading of both
sides, the more brutal group would win.
-gr
James A. Donald
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 12:59:11 -0400, Guilherme
> sorry. it wasn't that you claimed it. it was that
> you recognized
> it for only certain regimes. you wouldn't use it to explain
> why castro is still around -- unless one is to say he
> destroyed the brutal batista regime. nor does it explain the
> success that was had in defeating the sandinistas and the
> FMLN in el salvador -- basically the side with the most human
> rights violations won.
Don't be silly. The Sandinistas were fighting for
totalitarianism, and the Contras fighting for freedom. The
Sandinistas eventually silenced all voices but one. The
Contras themselves spoke with a hundred voices, having no
central comman, and may diverse political tendencies.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
TNdjHwjjpBNMw4Rq4Fc9H30bgMA/N4Zi4ZA1vTeT
40kiOEVaWlXr88kPKIQP8YpPE2vUkMy1UhsZbjGga
Guilherme
> > sorry. it wasn't that you claimed it. it was that
> > you recognized
> > it for only certain regimes. you wouldn't use it to explain
> > why castro is still around -- unless one is to say he
> > destroyed the brutal batista regime. nor does it explain the
> > success that was had in defeating the sandinistas and the
> > FMLN in el salvador -- basically the side with the most human
> > rights violations won.
>
> Don't be silly. The Sandinistas were fighting for
> totalitarianism, and the Contras fighting for freedom. The
> Sandinistas eventually silenced all voices but one. The
> Contras themselves spoke with a hundred voices, having no
> central comman, and may diverse political tendencies.
the sandinistas had several voices -- some which put land
occupiers in jail, some which spent money on cattle herds for landowners.
doubtless the contras had several voices as well. regardless, the point
still stands, that if the sandinistas had followed the tactics of el
salvador, or castro, they would have won.
-gr
Josh Dougherty
> --
> James A. Donald wrote:
> > > > Death to tyrants.
>
> Josh Dougherty:
> > the most
> > interesting aspect of his policy is in who gets to define
> > "tyrants".
> >
> > Apparently those who are victorious and have their
> > adversaries "defeated" get to decide. So, if the victors
> > believe that the bougeiosie are the "tyrants" [....]
>
> Your interpretation presupposes that there is no such thing as
> tyranny, it is merely a matter of preference.
No it doesn't. It presupposes that different people (or victors) will have
very different ideas of what it is. For instance, I doubt most historians
or others familiar with Jacobo Arbenz would pick the word "tyrant" for him,
and find it an odd ideological label to choose, probably held only by a
fringe of reactionaries. You disagree with most people. But since you've
answered the question: it's you and "people like you" who get to decide, not
others with different politics than you, then my question is answered.
You - and those that agree with you - will decide who is and is not a
"tyrant" and murder accordingly. ...because there "is such a thing as
tyranny"...and you know what it is. Others might think they know...but
they're just wanna-be tyrants, and probably should be killed also.
Josh
Russil Wvong
> What I mean is, give me references from what chomsky wrote himself. No
> secondary information.
The June 1977 article "Distortions at Fourth Hand", in which Chomsky and
Herman suggested that claims of Khmer Rouge atrocities were exaggerated,
and that the Khmer Rouge were actually playing a constructive role in
rebuilding Cambodia, is available online:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/7706-distortions.html
If you're unfamiliar with the actual record of the Khmer Rouge, Craig
Etcheson's "'The Number' -- Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity in
Cambodia" is a good starting point.
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
alt.politics.international FAQ: www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/apifaq.html
big_in_japan
> big_in_japan wrote:
>
>>What I mean is, give me references from what chomsky wrote himself. No
>>secondary information.
>
>
> The June 1977 article "Distortions at Fourth Hand", in which Chomsky and
> Herman suggested that claims of Khmer Rouge atrocities were exaggerated,
> and that the Khmer Rouge were actually playing a constructive role in
> rebuilding Cambodia, is available online:
> http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/7706-distortions.html
>
> If you're unfamiliar with the actual record of the Khmer Rouge, Craig
> Etcheson's "'The Number' -- Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity in
> Cambodia" is a good starting point.
> http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm
It all seems like a big misunderstanding. Besides, I don't deify the
man, so personal attacks don't mean much to me. And I have heard about
all this before in manufacturing consent, and thought it was clarified
pretty well there. His criticisms of the state are what matters in the end.
James A. Donald
James A. Donald:
> > > > > Death to tyrants.
Josh Dougherty:
> > > the most
> > > interesting aspect of his policy is in who gets to define
> > > "tyrants".
> > >
> > > Apparently those who are victorious and have their
> > > adversaries "defeated" get to decide. So, if the victors
> > > believe that the bougeiosie are the "tyrants" [....]
James A. Donald:
> > Your interpretation presupposes that there is no such thing
> > as tyranny, it is merely a matter of preference.
Josh Dougherty:
> No it doesn't. It presupposes that different people (or
> victors) will have very different ideas of what it is.
Your idea is wrong, and bizarre, though widely shared by the
fans of terror and slavery.
You think that someone commits tyranny by buying and selling.
Most people know better.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
T732UWCwr3I4jOQ1mElVeoLWzl1rvFRuRNCL6wN3
4bkQbT9fxgWVGvPAD4uooFFtQCdVfbbaaK9jjc2c2
Russil Wvong
> It all seems like a big misunderstanding.
I'd agree with that. Chomsky misunderstood the nature of the Chinese,
Vietnamese, and Cambodian Communist movements; for some reason he
thought they resembled the Spanish anarchists.
> Besides, I don't deify the
> man, so personal attacks don't mean much to me. And I have heard about
> all this before in manufacturing consent, and thought it was clarified
> pretty well there. His criticisms of the state are what matters in the end.
Sure. It's just ironic to see an anarchist defending totalitarian states
at great length. It's natural to wonder, "What was he thinking?!"
Anyway, I'd recommend starting with George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia"
(1938) if you'd like to learn more about the Spanish anarchists and
Chomsky's hopes for an anarchist revolution.
The essential point is that all this time I had been isolated--for
at the front one was almost completely isolated from the outside
world: even of what was happening in Barcelona one had only a dim
conception--among people who could roughly but not too inaccurately
be described as revolutionaries. This was the result of the
militia-system, which on the Aragon front was not radically altered
till about June 1937. The workers' militias, based on the trade
unions and each composed of people of approximately the same
political opinions, had the effect of canalizing into one place
all the most revolutionary sentiment in the country. I had dropped
more or less by chance into the only community of any size in
Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in
capitalism were more normal than their opposites.
Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly
though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same
level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect
equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a
sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a
foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental
atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of
civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss,
etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of
society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in
the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the
peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.
Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a
temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played
over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to
have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one
cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in
contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a
community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where
the word "comrade" stood for comradeship and not, as in most
countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality.
I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism
has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a
huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy
"proving" that Socialism means no more than a planned
state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately
there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this.
The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them
willing to risk their skins for it, the "mystique" of Socialism,
is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism
means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was
here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me.
For the Spanish militias, while they lasted, were a sort of microcosm
of a classless society. In that community where no one was on the
make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege
and no boot-licking, one got, perhaps, a crude forecast of what
the opening stages of Socialism might be like. And, after all,
instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. The effect
was to make my desire to see Socialism established much *more*
actual than it had been before. Partly, perhaps, this was due to
the good luck of being among Spaniards, who, with their innate
decency and their ever-present Anarchist tinge, would make even
the opening stages of Socialism tolerable if they had the chance.
You can find the complete text here:
whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/HomageToCatalonia
Also see Orwell's essay "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943):
whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/lookingback.html
Roy Blankenship
> --
> "Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:<uhxcb.1379
> > Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed on
> > this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and supports
> > premeditated political murders,
>
> Liar
You mean there are others?
dogbert
>--
>"Josh Dougherty" <jdoc1...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>news:<uhxcb.1379
>> Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed on
>> this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and supports
>> premeditated political murders,
>
>Liar
>
<4799mvo3oknb95ug6...@4ax.com>
"To stop terrorism, the US has to kill more people. Of course,
as the good guys, the US should try to kill only bad guys, but
killing canadians or frenchmen would probably work almost as
well. A Stalin style round up and liquidation of everyone in
the US with an arab sounding name would probably work wonders. "
James A. Donald
Josh Dougherty:
> > > Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed
> > > on this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and
> > > supports premeditated political murders,
> >Liar
On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 04:00:41 GMT, dogbert <dog...@dogbert.edu>
wrote:
> <4799mvo3oknb95ug6...@4ax.com>
>
> "To stop terrorism, the US has to kill more people. Of
> course, as the good guys, the US should try to kill only bad
> guys, but killing canadians or frenchmen would probably work
> almost as well. A Stalin style round up and liquidation of
> everyone in the US with an arab sounding name would probably
> work wonders. "
I was not advocating killing canadians etc, or imitating
Stalin. I was responding to the absurd argument that killing
our enemies might enrage them, that fighting back provokes
terrorism, when our enemies have demonstrated time and time
again that they mistake restraint and decency for weakness and
fear.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
2Fa1pXNZMFFpHpIfsjb3fq52+JybGXM2fKFuchG7
4eN9+A1DHJsIDHPyQ7h3/vpXgEXO4GpWnlGdbi2GR
Guilherme
> Josh Dougherty:
> > > > Since you, James, are the only person I've ever witnessed
> > > > on this newsgroup who openly and directly advocates and
> > > > supports premeditated political murders,
> > >Liar
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 04:00:41 GMT, dogbert <dog...@dogbert.edu>
> wrote:
> > <4799mvo3oknb95ug6...@4ax.com>
> >
> > "To stop terrorism, the US has to kill more people. Of
> > course, as the good guys, the US should try to kill only bad
> > guys, but killing canadians or frenchmen would probably work
> > almost as well. A Stalin style round up and liquidation of
> > everyone in the US with an arab sounding name would probably
> > work wonders. "
>
> I was not advocating killing canadians etc, or imitating
> Stalin. I was responding to the absurd argument that killing
> our enemies might enrage them, that fighting back provokes
> terrorism, when our enemies have demonstrated time and time
> again that they mistake restraint and decency for weakness and
> fear.
nice. i wonder how bill bennet would react give the same
reasonable apologetics from a noam chomsky.
-gr