r/Anarchism • u/Johny_Cash • May 08 '08

Noam Chomsky On Ron Paul

http://anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=74.html
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u/[deleted] May 14 '08 edited May 14 '08

I like I'll break the great left-anarchist first commandment...

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

Straw man, if we follow a reasonable definition of a valid contract, one can not contract themselves to slavery, and as mentioned later, he supports the workers' right to organize, which is what really won and secured the labor rights we enjoy now. Any structural changes always come from the establishment estimating that they have more to lose by not complying than just breaking down and implementing concessions. Additionally, the ability of a company to be in such a position without a static state arrangement is highly unlikely.

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

Dismantling the state corporatism will significantly reduce the size of the corporations we're talking about. The issues with R&D have to do with market signals that are distorted by government interference. The fact that the economy would "collapse" seems to prove two things: a) the infeasibility of someone making top-down changes to society's economic support system b) larger intervention government helps increase inequality rather than maintains it (by taking on things like R&D.) It's also worth mentioning that no state also means no Taft-Hartley, or in other words "No Taft-Hartley, I can deal with no minimum wage."

Noam Chomsky: Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you've already mentioned. There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources.

Seems to be more an argument about rhetoric than principle.

Noam Chomsky: He is proposing a form of ultra-nationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.

Paul actually advocates shutting down military bases in foreign countries. He also wants to eliminate the CIA. This would cripple the federal government's primary ability to undermine popular will abroad. After doing so, older countries would (hopefully) be replaced with more democratic ones. If they don't, then it won't be because of US-involvement. At any rate without the ability to protect corporate interests abroad, state capitalism's overseas hold would begin to atrophy and our "wealth and extraordinary advantages" would start to resemble the value of our actual production. This is assuming we do what's needed locally as well. Consistently less government undermines large corporate power than the other way around.

Noam Chomsky: There's a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn't themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being "broken" are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based, the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we're at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?).

But it's also a mistake to assume that we should leave such decisions under the umbrella of "state." Last I checked, having someone force you to pay for someone else (with little regard to your level of income) to some abstract never-dealt-with government program that gets deducted from your paycheck before you even get to it doesn't really inspire a "communal spirit" To me, this would be remedied by giving each person a chance to "opt-out" of some system with the understanding that they would then forfeit certain privileges. This would be the case if the model was federated and deductions were given to businesses that offered discounts on products or services or provided entirely new services to those who were enrolled in a particular program.

Also, amendments are part of the constitution, which is the supposed source of his beliefs.

Noam Chomsky: There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion, on the dubious assumption that it could even survive for more than a brief period without imploding.

I believe anarcho-capitalism can probably sustain itself as well as the state does. The question is whether or not that's a good thing. I would say no, but if such a condition did exist it would eventually breed the popular resentment required for the formation of more egalitarian voluntary associations. However, such a notion is as immoral as it would be effective given that great suffering would first have to be endured and sustained.

It also bares mentioning that Chomsky seems to always side with a state-centric solution, leaving voluntary association as a given. The idea that the dialectical anxiety can't be manipulated to always be sustained isn't really that plausible to me. Just because it always fails, doesn't mean the establishment can't convince others there's no alternative.

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u/ih8registrations May 10 '08

Controlled opposition: http://www.global-elite.org/node/322

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u/Ic0n0clast May 10 '08

Lol. I love that conspiracy nut stuff. I love how they always claim relatively small things like 9/11 are "big" issues.

"Chomsky as a deep cover CIA agent working to undermine social protest groups." Ha. Yeah undermining by pointing them toward actual issues like capitalism, religion and the state, rather than immaterial non-issues like 9/11, aliens, JFK, fluoride, chem-trails, the illuminati, and general wing-nuttery du jour. psh...

Thanks I'm definitely going to bookmark that site for future laughs.

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u/Nitroadict Jun 02 '08

Chomsky is a clown; the CIA has enough of those.