Government in the Future

Open Media

by Noam Chomsky

In this classic talk delivered at the Poetry Center, New York, on February 16, 1970, Noam Chomsky articulates a clear, uncompromising vision of social change. Chomsky contrasts the classical liberal, libertarian socialist, state socialist, and state capitalist world views and then defends a libertarian socialist vision as "the proper and natural extension . . . of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."
In his stirring conclusion Chomsky argues, "We have today the technical and material resources to meet man’s animal needs.We have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of our material wealth and power.
Conceivably, the classical liberal ideals as expressed and developed in their libertarian socialist form are achievable. But if so, only by a popular revolutionary movement, rooted in wide strata of the population and committed to the elimination of repressive and authoritarian institutions, state and private. To create such a movement is a challenge we face and must meet if there is to be an escape from contemporary barbarism."

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Political Science, Sociology, Essays

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elegant yet simple - Chomsky rips off the mask of political power and forces us to see the face that has often been hidden. That face is often hard to look at in the 'mirror' of collective responsibility; we often avoid looking at that which distorts the images we want to project. But it is only by looking in this mirror that we can see what the future holds for all of us.

[Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I start to restore my faith in humanity when I read Chomsky's shit. Someone else who thinks that we could do better than this.

[Dezky Oka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Idk man, this short book is bracing, uncomfortable, yet absolutely addictive.

It will validate our skepticism towards politics while also pushing us to see how different forms of governance (in this case, libertarian socialism or anarchism) could shake things up for the better.

Chomsky forces us to confront the possibility that “freedom” might be less about patriotic slogans and more about actively shaping the world around you.

Worth a read.

[Chapters by Zazo · Rating 4 out of 5]

audiobook

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Government in the Future is actually the transcription of a speech Noam Chomsky gave. In it he contrasts four ideal forms of government: classical liberalism, libertarian socialism, state capitalism, and state socialism. Classical liberalism is the view that government should be severely limited in terms of what its domain is. Libertarian socialism is the view that government should be construed democratically and organized largely along workers' councils with different tiers, the tier above immediately beholden to the tier directly below. State capitalism would have it that public political power is extremely limited but private economic power is allowed to amass freely, even in situations when its excess will undermine its own power or bring ruin to people's lives. State socialism would have it that the revolutionaries who support complete egalitarianism seize political power and freely wield it in whatever way they can to bring about the destruction of inequality. Chomsky observes that both state capitalism and state socialism assume that there must be some ruling class who tells everyone else, directly or tacitly, what to do, or dictates the course of other people's lives against their will. Chomsky believes that, given that classical liberals historically wanted to limit state power and had no idea what power would accrue privately, the lineal descendant of classical liberalism is libertarian socialism, the position Chomsky favors. Although it is difficult not to be sympathetic with this position, since there are more and various proposals for ideal government, other candidates seem just as plausible. Minimally, however, there do some to be certain conditions for government such that without them there would be no way to call it just. But that's not the topic of this book.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1970, Chomsky gave a lecture in New York that summarised his basic political philosophy, This pamphlet is that lecture and it stands as a basic manifesto for libertarian socialism (or anarcho-socialism if you prefer the term).

His analysis of imperial capitalism not only stands the test of time but applies as much to the current bout of destructive mania (the ridiculous economic war on Russia) as it does to the high point of American capitalism during the First Cold War. We are now well into the Second Cold War.

It could be said, stealing Marx's clothes, that the First Cold War was tragedy while the Second Cold War looks set to be farce as the West starts cutting its own throat by triggering an inflationary spiral and possible stagnation just to hold on to a distant province ... but there we have it.

However, while persuasive as an analysis of a broken system that persists even as its behaviours predict its own eventual collapse (Chomsky is equally critical of Sovietism and would be of its bastard post-Soviet Russian nationalist offspring), his solution does not convince.

Authoritarian and managerial late liberal capitalism and its own bastard offspring - stakeholder capitalism - may be morally, culturally and increasingly administratively and organisationally bankrupt but libertarian socialism is a moral ideal and not a course of action.

It is not inconsistent to accept the analysis without accepting the solution. Perhaps there is no solution. We have to face the fact that this is what we are as a species - individual aspirations locked up in processes and a system that none of us can control, not even the beneficiaries.

One ends up with a pessimistically conservative assessment of our species, a cold and reasoned observation that it is incapable of re-organising itself without creating more problems than it solves. The human world is far too complex even for very intelligent thinkers to manage.

It was not an accident that the Soviet Revolution found itself having to resort to terror and bureaucracy to survive and then build an economic base at the expense of a generation. It had enemies but it also attracted sociopaths, time-servers and the naive like moths to a flame.

The essence of our condition is that we are not and can never be in control of our condition because we are the perpetual struggle of millions, billions on a global scale, of mutually unknowable minds acting and then reacting to the actions of others. There will always be disruption.

This gives us systems that move as uncontrollable processes within pre-set structures that judder into collapse and chaos or into tyranny, brutality and sclerosis while most of us duck and dive with no more ambition than to survive. The winners are few, the losers many, most are survivors.

Strategically, if you are serious about creating something Left in the world, Lenin probably got it about as right as anyone will ever get it and we know how that turned out. Today, what we get instead is a sort of pseudo-Leftism, largely rhetorical, which changes little except 'culture'.

Probably the only way forward is to recognise that structures of order cannot suddenly be transformed into anything new very quickly because they are there for a reason and that there is probably no alternative but the slow business of persuasion to allow Leftists to control the State.

But which Leftists? I don't mind Chomsky having a go - he is a good sort - but I look at the naive idealists, urban intellectuals and excitable activists who pass for the Left and I would be reluctant to have them in charge of anything more complex than latrine duties.

The real problems lie elsewhere - not in the people who are justifiably nervous of intellectuals and idealists but in the anti-democratic structures of the vehicles necessary to control the state (political parties) and in the lack of any genuinely libertarian socialist political parties.

Beyond that, we have the inability of intellectuals and activists to abandon their narcissistic attempts to manipulate populations into right thought, right speech and right behaviour and understand the real desires and needs of the voters (the gap which populists are now filling).

My own pessimism is not driven by some arrogant and negative view of the 'masses' (quite the contrary, they are the lodestone of action) or belief in the power of the system (after all our leaders are provenly consistently inept) but in the utter stupidity of contemporary Leftists.

Anyway, be all that as it may, the pamphlet is worth reading. It comes from a highly intelligent and decent human being who sees the world as it really is even if he struggles to come up with a solution that could get even half way towards changing it.

[Palden G · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very short book, based on a legendary talk Noam Chomsky gave in February 1970 in NYC. Quite contrary to many anarchist thinkers, Chomsky tries to explain that there is little to no difference between Marxism and Anarchism. Chomsky argues, perhaps only the early Marx, that Marx, Engels, Proudhon and Bakunin all maintained the fundamental position on authority, i.e. the state is essentially an anti-human institution whose existence and activities are “ultimately incompatible with the full harmonious development of human potential in its richest diversity.” (p. 10) With possible influences from Humboldt, they also held that man’s central attribute is his freedom -to inquire and to create, and freedom is an indispensable condition for true human action as it springs from man’s free choice and inner being, as opposed to “mechanical exactness” of a well-trained parrot in the industrial capitalist system.

Chomsky (though not very clear) seems to posit that the early Marx and the anarchism of Proudhon and Bakunin had little philosophical difference (despite the fact that Marx attacked Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty in the book, ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’, and also Bakunin subsequently criticized Marxism on various grounds), but later the antagonism between the two traditions grew, largely, due to the question of the state. Interestingly, Chomsky thinks this difference is mainly “tactical,” not philosophical (p. 31). I think for Marxists this may be a matter of procedural strategy to establish a “transitional state” under the leadership of the proletariat, but for anarchists, who detest any form of hierarchy and authority, “the dictatorship of the proletariat” is unacceptable. As Bakunin rightly warned of the “red bureaucracy,” Marx’s workers’ states ended up in totalitarianism. Chomsky calls what became of Marx’s socialism in these dictatorial regimes as “state socialism,” “Bolshevism” or Maoism for that matter, as some kind of incompatible manifestations of the classical Marxism into the 20th century. Chomsky doesn’t address, for instance, much on the “later Marx” and his theory of history -the dialectical materialism, and the notion of human nature as opposed to that of anarchism or libertarian socialism of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. It seems these are the areas where the two traditions of libertarian socialism differ, substantially, on philosophical grounds.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting that Chomsky sees the ultimate aspirations of classical liberalism as manifested in libertarian socialist ideas. It seem to me that there is more conflict between classical liberalism and any flavor of socialism than he acknowledges in this booklet.

Mr Choms also seems to have a strange perspective on labor. He seems to believe that industrial labor still exists in this country. I agree that democratizing the economic realm is an important part of building a world without coercion, but I don't know if workers councils and federations really make sense in a modern context. What production still exists in the US? Most of the noise in the American labor movement is coming from service workers unions like SEIU and Unite Here.

I understand this was produced in 1999, but I'm left asking what about the ecological crisis? Do we want to develop a democratic industrial society when we know that industrial society is what is killing the planet? A democratically-controlled factory farm still exploits animals and the pollutes. A Marx-style change in the ownership of the means of production does not address the fact that our economic system is predicated on the false assumption that the Earth has unlimited resources.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah, my favorite ultra-liberal MIT professor. While I admire his academic work in the linguistics field I find him lacking when he ventures into the political realm. Would that he would apply the same scientific rigor towards this governmental analysis, but sadly not. He picks and chooses examples that support his point, dismisses without substantiation counter points and his syllogisms once begun are conjoined with weak emotional links such as: “I feel,” and “I think.” His lack of citation of The Wealth of Nations is dumbfounding especially since he quotes many peers from the same period.

He views corporations as bodies of consolidated power from which voters have been disenfranchised. This seems strange for a few reasons, but most importantly: Anyone can buy shares and vote on the election of corporations’ board of directors with far greater regularity than most governments; companies compete with each other in the marketplace rising and falling from positions of eminence as a direct result to how well they satisfy their customers, contrary to the perpetuity of government notwithstanding its efficaciousness.

While this is a quick read, and interesting due to its author, the reader would be much more suited by spending their time reading other, better, sources.

[Calvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite philosophical/political work of all. No work matches its novelty, breadth or depth of thought. This magnificent and provoking speech has changed my life.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does it get better than Chomsky? Can anyone with his opinions back them up as he does with citations from the very powers he speaks against! If you are interested in politics this is a must read, A concise explanation of classic liberalism and libertarian socialism with a section on counterarguments that was very interesting. A shorter definition of state socialism and state capitalism and their shortcomings. If you have read Marx before and agreed in principle but feel as though he does not fit with the way that capitalism has evolved, If you feel as though his ideas are a bit dated but still hold some truth then you will find this book very interesting. If you disagree with this then this book is still very interesting, a much better description of politics than you will get from the typical Chomsky follower, a burnt out community college student sporting a Che T-shirt with half baked explanations of theories he/she only half understands, but enough about me. This is a must read for anyone interested in politics.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise breakdown of Classic Liberalism, Libertarian Socialism (Anarchism) and State Capitalism/Socialism. A great introduction for any interested in Anarchist thought on government. A Quick read; I'm a slow reader and I finished it on a three hour flight.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of all the Noam Chomsky books I own, I chose to have this one signed by Noam himself. That should tell you how amazing this book is.

[Shanil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy is a GENIUS!
A great summary of political positions - theory / flaws and potential.
I think I've read this about 3 times

[Riyadh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Convoluted, rambling, paranoid mess of ideas. Suffers from:
- Declarative, emotive writing and appeals to authority to convey points instead of reasoning
- Lack of fundamental intellectual basis for making his assertions. Evolution, networks, information, physics - could be starting from these objectively true premises instead of invoking jargon and politico-speak verbiage to ram home non-points
- The ivory tower academics paranoia of private enterprise pulling the puppet string of the world. No appreciation of the reality of entrepreneurial energy as the force that’s pulled the world out of the cave, or for the realities of human nature (incentives matter, status will be sought, information processing is imperfect, immutable in some ways, and not equally distributed)
- No considerations of the mechanisms by which an alternative vision of society can materialize. If he did consider it I think he should bump up against the game theoretic limitations of the (blurry, inconsistent) vision of society he promotes
- Intellectual dishonesty. Only promotes his position, without any recognition of the obvious arguments against liberal socialism, or the obvious arguments for capitalism
- Stylistic laziness. No thought for the reader/listener in structuring the piece to be consumed, or choose words that would make it digestible. To paraphrase Coleridge, the worst words in the worst order...

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

He says, "Man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does, and the laborer who tends the garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits. And since truly human action is that which flows from inner impulse, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists, that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and invented skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character and exult and refine their pleasures, and so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often tend to be degraded. Freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does no t spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result o f instruction and guidance, does no t enter into his very being bu t remains alien to his true nature. He does no t perform it with truly human energies, bu t merely with mechanical exactness. And if a man acts in a mechanical way, reacting to external demands or instruction, rather than in ways determined by his own interests and energies and power, we may admire what he does, bu t we despise what he is." For Humboldt then man "is born to inquire and create, and when a man or a child chooses to inquire or create out o f his own free choice then he becomes in his own terms an artist rather than a tool o f production or a well trained parrot."



Consider the following characterization of revolutionary socialism:
"The revolutionary socialist denies that state ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. We have seen why the state cannot democratically control industry. Industry can only be
democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly from their own ranks industrial administrative committees. Socialism will fundamentally be an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character. Thus those carrying on the social activity and industries o f society will be directly represented in the local and central councils o f social administration. In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community. When the central industrial administrative committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee o f socialism. The transition from one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political state throughout history has meant the government o f men by ruling classes; the republic o f socialism will be the government o f industry administered on behalf o f the whole community. The former meant the economic and political subjection o f the many, the latter will mean the economic freedom of all. It will be, therefore, a true democracy."


There is one final element that has to be added to this picture, namely the ongoing militarization o f American society. How does this enter in? To see, one has to look back at WWII and to recall that prior to WWII, of course, we were deep in the depression. WWII taught an important economic lesson, it taught the lesson that government induced production in a carefully controlled economy - centrally controlled - could overcome the effects o f a depression. I think this is what Charles E. Wilson had in mind at the end of 1944
when he proposed that we have a permanent war economy in the postwar world. O f course, the trouble is that in a capitalist economy there are only a number of ways in which government intervention can take place. It can't be competitive with the private empires for example, which is to say that it can't be any useful production. In fact, it has to be the production of luxury goods, goods n o t capital, no t useful commodities, which would be competitive. And unfortunately there is only one category o f luxury goods that can be produced endlessly with rapid obsolescence, quickly wasting, and no limit on how many o f them you can use. We all know what that is"


Quick and easy guide to Chomsky's libertarian socialist theories. A nice easy summary. On Anarchism is more in depth but this is what it's advertised to be. It would make sense to read this prior to a lot of his other works to understand the theoretical underpinnings of the systems he analyzes in detail.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chomsky defines "truly human" activity as spontaneous creative action arising from inner impulse, the achievement of values which spring up solely and immediately from the inner life of the soul -- free and organic exploration amid diversity. The modern capitalist world system on the other hand is a debased cult of "possessive individualism" emphasizing private ownership of material objects as the most significant realm of choice while simultaneously opposing the development of the cultural and moral resources necessary for the humane and rational use of our wealth. The result of this ideological competition is a barbaric, militarized empire of alienated paranoia and psychotic consumerism whose predatory institutions are actually repressive of our essential strengths and are even designed to annihilate our capacity for free inquiry and higher development. Arguments for limiting government's intervention in the free market which draw from this spiritual wilderness without a clear sense of free creativity guided by inner wisdom as the ultimate priority are therefore fundamentally opposed to the ultimate meaning and value of freedom.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this several years ago. It had a huge impact on how I viewed Corporatism and capitalism and the social responsibility we have to democratic rule of both. Which of course, seems like a pipe dream given the current political atmosphere in North America. I hope that its not to late. Noam Chomsky's closing remarks are as important to day as they were when he gave his speech in 1970:

We have today the technical and material resources to meet man’s animal needs. We have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of our material wealth and power. Conceivably, the classical liberal ideals, as expressed and developed in their libertarian socialist form, are achievable. But if so, only by a popular revolutionary movement, rooted in wide strata of the population, and committed to the elimination of repressive and authoritarian institutions, state and private. To create such a movement is the challenge we face and must meet if there is to be an escape from contemporary barbarism.

[Dylan Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Chomsky's earliest talks on politics, and one of his easiest to read. Short, well organized, and yet an amazing introduction to Chomsky's pragmatic view of government. You will not find sweeping ideological grandstanding, drama, or even a serious sense of urgency; just a calm, reasoned exploration of the practical implications of different kinds of government--ultimately leading towards a vision of a gradual transition towards a socialized society that empowers the individual both politically and within their work environment.

Brilliant, true and remarkably practical, and yet you won't hear conversations like this almost anywhere else. I strongly recommend this one sitting read to anyone who cares about political theory.

[Giuseppe Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Hayeks book “Road to Serfdom” I wanted to dive into the details of what Hayek warns could become of a society based on the principles of the free market if the state doesn’t have some type of control or regulations. What happens is corporations sort of eat up the state and rule from the shadows.

Very short and sweet. Much like his other stuff it’s given me a lot to look into in realms of thought I’ve never really been familiar with.

I am starting to see that Hayeks warning (despite being a beast in defense of the free market) has come to fruition in many ways.

I’m beginning to see that despite the amazing genius and industry that capitalism brings to the world, it still harbors many flaws that can and will be exploited by evil men.

[Nativeabuse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I keep coming back to Chomsky and he keeps on making me hate him. I agree with everything he says about foreign policy, but when he ventures into any other topic he just sounds like a buffoon. Here is is trying to discuss what governance is going to be like in the future, and for 80 pages he basically says, yup socialism.

So, there you have it, that is the whole book, and while I agree with him completely, this is just an idiotically written book. Why does he feel the need to pump out so many of these books that are just interviews of him saying the same things over and over again! Why does he do this?

[Gabriel P. Alfonsi T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro de Noam Chomsky. Una descripción breve de los poderes políticos y económicos que manejan el mundo, y las alternativas posibles para lograr un verdadero cambio. Muy recomendable su lectura.

[Kaspars Koo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to read as this is quite an old talk.

[Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish Dave Rubin would listen to this so he’d stop calling himself a classical liberal.

[Mauricio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here, Noam Chomsky correctly assesses various issues with the modern bourgeois era of society. He also presents a vision of the future that is most agreeable.

Everything else is very poor. He discusses four political ways to view the role of government: classical liberalism, libertarian socialism, state capitalism, and state socialism. From the jump, he lets us know he prefers libertarian socialism and sees it as the natural outgrowth of classical liberalism and, when discussing them, lumps state capitalism and state socialism together rather haphazardly.

The section on classical liberalism is peak idealism and divorces the supposed ideals of liberalism in the 18th century with the material conditions which birthed it and whose existence it itself helped to create. In particular, while he talks about liberalism’s crowning of individual liberty and freedoms, he skips over where virtually every major liberal philosopher and theoretician prizes the right to private property as one of, if not the most paramount, right a person can have. The way this was used by the bourgeoisie to betray the working masses in its war against the nobility during the French Revolution is conveniently left out while Chomsky waxes poetic about it.

The section on libertarian socialism is essentially just saying “all these ideas were good but couldn’t be implemented properly, but now they can!” with no explanation as to how, aside from “people now want to be free”. Contrast this with the Marxist historical materialism, which saw how the growth of capitalism in the 19th century led to the growth of both the proletariat which became the revolutionary class and the productive forces which would allow for the providing of everyone’s needs, as Chomsky says we can, and must, do, and you see how poor his analysis is. Speaking of Marxism, it’s in this section that Chomsky’s opportunism and working backwards from conclusions is most highlighted. To provide support for his position, he cites not only theoreticians in the anarchist tradition such as Proudhon and Bakunin, but also early Marx (while completely ignoring later Marx and Engles [curious!]), and even both left communists and revisionists within the Marxist tradition, with no regard as to how all their analyses contradict each other’s outside of the one excerpt that he himself agrees with.

The final section is disappointing, even by the standards of the rest of the speech. He lumps state capitalism and state socialism together without taking the time to develop either perspective other than “they’re both authoritarian and contrary to human nature”. Most of this section is devoted to geopolitical talk about American and Soviet imperialism (which for the time would’ve been correct, but the fact that Chomsky couldn’t tell the difference in foreign and domestic policy between Stalin’s USSR and that of the revisionists who succeeded him, as well as generic 1984-type characterizations, brings this down a notch). Here, his continue usage of terms like “state capitalism” and “corporate capitalism” also serves to mystify the nature of capitalism, as though there exist radically different types of capitalism demarcated by whether or not it derives from the state or corporations, whether he realizes it or not.

He ends the speech with a revolutionary exhortation, but it just falls flat. Don’t read this if you don’t have to.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK so this isn't a book; it's a talk. It's also freely available on the internet, so don't pay for it.

This is Chomsky's argument for libertarian socialism (a.k.a. anarchism) over state socialism and state capitalism.

According to Chomsky, one of the main assertions of classical liberalism is that humans thrive with MINIMAL intervention from the state. This idea briefly confused me, because it's contradictory to our modern sense of "liberalism." I also had to clarify for myself that "socialism" doesn't always mean "state socialism."

Anyway, this is a pretty good summation of the libertarian socialist position: “The libertarian socialist goes on to insist that the state power must be eliminated in favor of the democratic organization of the industrial society with direct popular control over all institutions by those who participate in as well as those who are directly affected by the workings of these institutions. So one might imagine a system of workers' councils, consumer councils, commune assemblies, regional federations, and so on, with the kind of representation that is direct and revocable."

Chomsky's talk spurred me to figure out the difference between libertarian communism, with its workers' councils, and anarcho-syndicalism. And to look up the Paris Commune, and what a "soulful corporation" is, among other things.

The question I'm left with is whether a libertarian society can also be a socialist society and vice versa--not just in theory but in practice. For me, no one has satisfactorily answered this question.

[Seth Gibson]

A Jew (by birth) of radical politics and atheism who is heavily cited throughout academia? Yeah, why not read a small work of his just to say you can. As a once Conservative I wanted to side with a Liberal-who-is-not-a-Liberal who seemingly supported my inclination toward small government and small business. Those political compass tests? I kept coming up libertarian-left in closer proximity to the likes of Chomsky and Gandhi than the authoritarian-right of all the U.S. Presidents--including the Saul Alinsky inspired socialist Barack Obama who was the Anti-Christ and sure to rush in the End of Days by destroying our patriotic Tea Party defended country. I am still interested in linguistics as Chomsky is notable within the field, but I no longer have interest in his worldview or his politics.

[Minäpäminä · Rating 2 out of 5]

Takakansi sai odottamaan jonkinlaista luentoa politiikan teoriasta, mutta ennemminkin tämä oli poliittinen puhe - hyvässä ja pahassa. Hyvin pinnallista ja ylätasoista. En oikein ymmärrä tekstin kohdeyleisöä tai tarkoitusta. Chomsky selvästi odottaa lukijoilta aiempaa politiikan tuntemusta, mutta hän ei kuitenkaan sano mitään kovin uutta tai mielenkiintoista. Jännittävintä oli nähdä Chomskyn apologia vallankumoukselliselle väkivallalle (s. 41). Jostain syystä oletin hänen olevan pasifisti.

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jos haluaa selkeästi ilmaistuna lukea pesäerosta klassisen liberalismin, libertaarisen sosialismin, valtiososialismin ja valtiokapitalismin välillä, kannattaa kääntyä wikipedian puoleen. Tässä useat lainaukset eri ajattelijoilta yhdistyvät Chomskyn omiin mielipiteisiin ja manifestimaiseen esittämistapaan. Lopussa 7 sivua viitteiden lähdetietoja.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting discussion of Classical Liberalism and Libertarian Socialism. I found the second half, dealing with State Socialism and State Capitalism, less compelling — but still with some valid points.