Chomsky's Politics

by Milan Rai

For over twenty-five years Noam Chomsky’s prolific political intervention has enlightened and inspired radicals while enraging their opponents in the halls of power. Beginning with a concise biography of his subject, Milan Rai presents a sympathetic yet probing analysis of Chomsky’s critique of United States’ media and foreign policy and his vision of a libertarian socialist future. 

Drawing on the entire range of Chomsky’s prodigious output, including little-known interviews and articles, Rai examines Chomsky’s assault on journalistic self-censorship and business control of the mass media. He shows how Chomsky challenges the US’s view of itself as a defender of democracy and equal rights by uncovering the hidden motivations of its foreign policy makers. Rai draws out features of Chomsky’s outlook which are sometimes obscured by a rapid coverage of a wide range of issues. In particular he emphasizes the importance of Chomsky’s cultural critique in his ordering of political priorities.

Accessible and comprehensive, Chomsky’s Politics  serves as an excellent introduction for those confronting Chomsky’s critique for the first time. For those already familiar with his work it corrects some widespread misunderstandings, provides new insights and chronicles the extraordinary contribution of a writer described by the New York Times as “one of the most important intellectuals alive.”

Genres: Politics

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Milan Rai's 'Chomsky's Politics' is an excellent introduction to Noam Chomsky, the political thinker and activist. Above all, it is readable (which Chomsky is often not) and it has the benefit of being written by someone who had worked closely with the Chomsky in the peace movement.

Rai is good both at placing Chomsky in his personal and American historical contexts and in elucidating Chomsky as consciously both an intellectual and a critic of intellectuals. Part of his skill lies in giving us a sense of the human being behind the activism and the theory.

The book is well structured. It seems to fall into two halves naturally - Chomsky's analysis of what I usually call late liberal capitalism and how he came to it and, then, his conclusions about activism and what to do about the situation we find ourselves.

In the first half (analysis), I found myself in analytical agreement with Chomsky on almost every point, especially in regard to the 'propaganda model' of society. This remains for me the central insight of the man, all the more so as I have been within the belly of that particular beast.

The second half I have problems with - not as a book (it remains lucid and unacademic) but as a form of elitist anarchism over-depending on pure reason and on the transformation of the intellect in a species built on a self-serving yet co-operative dialectic between emotion and calculation.

The final chapter compounds this sense of a detached rational ego of undoubted 'rightness' with its privileging of the intellectual as both cause of the current problem of amoral or immoral state public policy and somehow (if pessimistically) its solution.

That hoary old Gramscian quotation about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will (an aphorism I have always despised) comes up at this late stage. In my eyes, the transformation of society is not a matter of intellect or will but of values and adaptation to human complexity.

Chomskian radicalism (the book was written in the mid-1990s) has played its role in transforming society but largely (this was not Chomsky's intention) as support for a blind and arrogant moralising activist class that has ended up simply wanting its place in the elite sun.

A world where Green politians act as boosters for NATO and defence spending, 'liberals' support a Democrat American Presidence challenging China for world hegemony and activists do not hide their contempt for the values of the conservative masses is perhaps not what he had in mind.

Pessimism of the intellect led to an abandonment of any model for radical redistributive wealth or withdrawal from imperial values expansion. Optimism of the will has simply led to activist narcissism provoking a populist backlash and seething resentment in the masses.

This is tragic because Chomsky's analysis stands. His moral force remains undoubted (he is ethically greater than many of his anarcho-Left followers) but his analysis of the system does not change it. It only creates the opportunity for a new branch of humanity to manipulate it.

Chomsky himself was a tireless worker attempting to change public attitudes against the tide of rubbish delivered to that mass by the media. He should be honoured for that but he was always up against what he recognised himself as a self-serving 'intellectual class'.

What has happened since, of course, is the rise of social media (giving a voice to the masses), of the billionaire disrupter (the Crassus' or Pompeys of our time) and of populist political organisation - all three throw up in the air the idea of rational revolution by town meeting.

What we are seeing now is a different type of struggle as the 'ruling order' splits into competing components, all struggling for power and a piece of the cake while the villainous state-intellectual structures he identified make increasingly brutal attempts to control the means of information.

The current stage is a mad world of proto-war fever with its implication for eventual state-driven emergency powers. We see two nuclear powers playing silly games shooting down each other' UFOs and driving mass hysteria in the street. 'Bourgeois panic' threatens to immolate the rest of us.

Pure reason along classic cosmopolitan Jewish intellectual lines is no longer sufficient. There is no slow path to utopia through rational fact production. The genie is out of the bottle. The rational is and will be over-whelmed because the intellectual class has captured reason for its own purposes.

The probable solution lies in a tougher form of political organisation and dissent based on a single-minded resistance to all forms of anti-imperialism and in favour of a sensible and patient socio-economic redistribution that leaves culture to develop organically in favour of toleration.

Such forms once existed in labour and communist parties but got shattered either by the takeover of the first by middle class 'intellectuals' or the discrediting of the second by its bureaucratic criminality. But similar organisations are still needed as permanent challenges to the given system.

America is in a particularly dire state because its initial Socialist Party was crushed by the ruthless war mounted on it by American middle class progressives sensing a threat to the property that allowed their beneficence. Now socialism is a barely tolerated out-rider to an Imperial Presidency.

Unfortunately for Leftists, a combination of ideological purity and descent into cultural politics has now conceded ground almost wholly to populism as the voice of justifiable resentments. The Left-liberal activist class has now become the conservative and reactionary class in Western society.

There are two signs that things may be changing. First, the risk of impending global war has brought left-wing radicals who are still within the 'real Left' and libertarians and centre-right war critics increasingly into alignment at the expense of the ideological purist.

Second, there are signs of revolt in the Academy, especially amongst the rising generation of historians who are still embedded in fact as Chomsky was, against critical theory and the politics of culture. These are both small signs but they are signs.

Nevertheless, for all the criticisms to be made of Chomsky as 'activist', Chomsky the thinker should continue to be an important source of ideas and influence for the Left resistance to the 'Left' and to the 'System'.

The roots of effective change against the odds still lie in small towns and working class communities. These are generally tolerant and liberal in the best sense if respected. A Chomskian engagement to transform populism into anti-imperialism and redistribution is not impossible.

Similarly a fair and sensible strategy of redistribution and equitable and sustainable economic growth is precisely what the 'masses' want. The idea of the mass is, in any case, inclusive with the actuality of ethnicity, gender, orientation, belief and lifestyle buried within it as personal freedom.

So, optimism of the intellect, qualified optimism of the will ...

[Victorlohk]

only read half of it

[José Monico · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great primer on an overview of Chomsky's ideological trek. It serves its purpose as a secondary source for most of his philosophies on politics and the human condition. Chomsky's overall person is portrayed as static in nature, but progressive throughout: as in, Noam's views early on in his life were set in stone and his shift to other political structures has been due to the natural tendency that anarchism adopts. It's a given, but there won't be much regarding the other side of Chomsky, and that is his academic linguistic theories. But what makes Chomsky so fascinating is his persuasive and vivid political structures on cultural influence, power and contemporary hegemony and solidarity; backed by dense and concise normative examples. Now, you won't find that density in this short read, but it's something that one should be prepared for if you decide to undertake his primary work.

My overall take from this expansive view is an incredibly refreshing and brutal denunciation of the pessimistic philosophical block. Democratic-capitalism is the current dominant economical structure and so Chomsky claims via Milan that the current human natural tendency for greed, gluttony and rampant materialism is the nurturing of specific conditional points in our innate structure that bring out these properties; and not a conservative static structure that imposes itself on all cultural and normative affairs. With the former theory set in place, then it follows that the destruction or reformation of a Democratic-capitalism on contemporary society - where this current economic affair fosters superficial works and quick unstructured planning - is the only way to reduce those un-favored conditional tendencies so that we may progress to other more virtuous mind-sets: integrity, patience, austerity and good will.

For Chomsky, anarchism is the perfect remedy for a paradigm shift. It's a political structure that has no end-point, and only hopes to continue to progress human affairs to an ideal state with every new and conquered social issue-- as we overcome novel and distraught contemporary plights, others will arise and so it is our duty to shift into a new ideal state with these new menaces naturally popping up.

With this philosophy, there is genuine progress; and a genuine ladder to climb. It is endless in rungs, yes, but the alternative is a state of destruction, instability , a state of decay. Or worse, a state of unmoving pessimism.

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with the masses and believe this is less than the best.
Viewpoints stemming from the US losing control, to empowering private power were exaggerated. Economic weapon can be more efficient, agreed. The section regarding social class as less supportive of government policy isn't as strong as it could be. Off the cuff. Not as enjoyable as Chomsky's work on language.