Radical Priorities

by Noam Chomsky, C.P. Otero (Preface)

How is it that one man can be so maligned by the Right and yet remain so misunderstood by the Left? This new and expanded edition of Radical Pri-orities puts the spotlight on Chomsky’s libertarian social and political philosophy in an engaging, easy-to-navigate manner. Keenly edited by Carlos-Peregrin Otero, this comprehensive collection of essays and in-terviews remains the ultimate guide to the politics of the author of 9–11, America’s bible for post-September 11th stress disorder. Discover for yourself the mind and motivations of the man the New York Times has labeled "the foremost gadfly of our national conscience." Noam Chomsky , author, professor, dissident, remains an essential voice for our times.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

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

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The enormous waste of resources that are far from boundless and the race towards mutual annihilation on the part of the great powers provide a sufficient reason for a rational man to seek actively from some far-reaching alternative. Beyond this, it is by now widely realized that the economist’s “externalities” can no longer be consigned to footnotes. No one who gives a moment’s thought to the problems of contemporary society can fail to be aware of the social costs of consumption and production, the progressive destruction of the environment, the utter irrationality of the utilization of contemporary technology, the inability of a system based on profit or growth-maximization to deal with needs that can only be expressed collectively, and the enormous bias this system imposes towards maximization of commodities for personal use in place of the general improvement of the quality of life. All of these are factors in modern life that should lead to the growth of a vigorous left that seeks to replace contemporary barbarism by some form of libertarian socialism. … Compassion, solidarity, friendship are also human needs" (p.190).

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

On Vietnam: “The primary victims of American violence were always the people of South Vietnam.” The US “perfected” the tiger cages where “tens of thousands of men and women rotted away. Only one prisoner in four survived. Our tax dollars at work. The Christian Science Monitor ran a commentary on the “advantages of bombing trucks and bombing dams”, no doubt because Jesus would have. “The US pounded Indochina into rubble - the economies ruined.” The records show the US government looked VERY hard to show any evidence of Vietnam being controlled by either Russia or China, but found nothing. When the Vietnam War ended, a top Japanese newspaper wrote, “The War in Vietnam has been in every way a war for national emancipation.” Imagine one US paper saying that. Noam adds, “The United States simply had no legal or moral right to interfere with the internal affairs of Vietnam in the first place.” President Carter told a CBS newsman with a straight face that reparations for Vietnam (with 2 – 4 million dead) wouldn’t happen because, “The destruction was mutual. We bombed their villages and they shot down our pilots.” Bob Dole argued in 1977 against reparations to Vietnam blaming it for being repressive and inhuman at a time when Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and Iran were clearly even worse. A big problem was that many college students, such as myself at the time, we were told the two most trusted Asia scholars were John King Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer – wrong! They both parroted the false “fear of China caused the US to intervene in Vietnam” narrative. At one point then Noam says, “I can’t imagine what we could do in Vietnam today that would lead to more than a few raised eyebrows”. The US drops two million tons of bombs everywhere in WWII, but then drops three million tons only on Vietnam and US moderates refused to see that alone as “unusual” violence? No wonder US moderates today still think Obama is a God; US violence by democratic Presidents doesn’t concern them.

“Apathy is a very deep-seated feature of American culture.” Universities are “deeply involved in government repression.” At the time of writing the book, Noam knew a department near him given $750,000 to research “pacification and counter-terrorism” for the State Department. Who wouldn’t want to watch their kid go to college to study in depth the best way to pacify people? Noam believes that, “objective scholarship free from ideological restraints will lead to radical conclusions.” Imperialists back in the 1890’s couldn’t fall back on convenient theories like “Communist aggression” or “internal aggression” to explain their actions. Three quarters of a century after the US invaded and occupied the Philippines, Noam says that three-quarters of the Philippine people still lived as they did under Spanish occupation. Only a nation’s compliant elite will win when the US invades. Same story repeated everywhere.

For Noam, the FBI “regularly functions as a national political police, enforcing political conformity and obedience.” Our media’s first job is “to market the output of the consumer goods industries and to train the population for loyalty to the American economic political system.” Noam called the Shah of Iran (installed by the US), “one of the bloodiest tyrants of modern history, Amnesty International said the Shah has a “history of torture which is beyond belief” adding “no country in the world has a worse human rights records than Iran.” “President Carter lauded the Shah for his benevolence”. Iran under the Shah, became the biggest purchaser of US arms. The US tried to sell Iran useless planes to “keep the Boeing production line open.” The Carter Administration actually barred Tariq Ali from speaking in the US. Carter choose as his ambassador to Iran, the man who ran the secret war in Laos. He left that Laos job to help Marcos run his dictatorship. Apparently, human rights didn’t mean peanuts to Jimmy Carter.

About the US supported slaughter of 50,000 to 100,000 East Timorese, Congressman Burke wrote, “it is in our interests to bury the Timor issue quickly and completely.” During Congressional testimony, the Deputy Legal Advisor for the State Department conceded that the Indonesians “were armed roughly 90% with our equipment”. Ah, The Sermon on the Mounted Machine Gun. The WWII Pacific War was fought “in large measure, to prevent Japan from constructing a closed Asian bloc that would exclude the United States.” The US could not tolerate “social reform” in any way around the world that might influence others and thus “the rot will spread.” In other books, Noam calls it the “threat of a good example.” Evidence shows that as US aid and diplomatic support increases in the third world, so does human rights abuses. “The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systemic.” “Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations.” Samuel Huntington deemed the removal democratically elected Bosch in the Dominican Republic a “success” – those murdered by the resultant DR death squads might have deemed it otherwise. Samuel worried in the late 60’s about “an excess of democracy” and wanted to “compel newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism.” The Trilateral Commission explained this all in its 1975 book, “The Crisis of Democracy” Huntington and the TC worried about “previously passive or unorganized groups in the population”, i.e. blacks, Native Americans, or anyone marginalized, starting to exercise their rights.

There are two kinds of intellectuals, Technocrats and ‘value-oriented” intellectuals. The former are advanced at work by questioning nothing. The latter are despised for attempting the “unmasking and delegitimatization of established institutions.” The elite question was how to control “the more politically active citizenry” against the Vietnam War and return to the good old days when Truman and Company could wage large scale intervention with no opposition. How do restore the nobility, silence the peasants and make them apathetic again. Remember, these odious thoughts were the US liberal view, and not right wing. The technocrat job was to portray the US as “trying to do good in an ungrateful world” without laughing. After all, it was a pretty tough job to portray Russia and China as evil when the nastiest violence was going down in Indo-China was only being wrought by the US, a land of sunset towns and Jim Crow. It’s fantasyland to believe the CIA is only international: “nearly a quarter of a million first-class letters were opened and photographed in the United States by the CIA between 1953-1973”. That got the CIA a database of almost a million and a half names. The Left was the primary target because only those in the Right and Center get jobs in the CIA. Noam calls Henry Kissinger “one of the great mass murderers of modern times.” Funny how he could be responsible for the deaths of so many Laotians. Cambodians and Vietnamese yet his name is still golden with the Center and Right, because he didn’t get caught in the Watergate burglary.

In the U.S., rigorous debate is encouraged between a constrained range of topics ensuring that no unexpressed fundamental assumptions will be challenged. In the US, a narrow spectrum of thought is tolerated while fundamental assumptions remain unexpressed. “The central responsibility for Americans is to try to modify policies that we can influence” through protest contributing “to the relief of human misery”. For Noam, merely examining the documentary record (i.e. the Pentagon Papers) which anyone can do, amply shows that the US does NOT always start out with good intentions. Since WWII, the US has adhered to a bi-partisan foreign policy (or “a one-party state” for a nice Orwellian touch). The US has a long history of ignoring its own violence while denouncing in the press the violence of rebels around the world against obvious oppression. On page 165, Noam tells of Kennedy administration people who thought Guatemala and Iran in 1953 was “outstanding foreign policy” and how keeping Thailand under military rule was far better than allowing the country back to a modern form of government which Thailand actually had after WWII when US forces supported a coup against it.

Article VI of the Constitution shows our treaties (like the UN Charter) are the law of the land, and that includes acts like bombing another country. As Barrington Moore had said, In the US you can protest all you want, as long as it is ineffective. Think of Anarchism as voluntary socialism coming from a background of Bakunin and Kropotkin. “Parties represent basically class interests, and classes have been eliminated in such a society.” One anarchist tradition is represented by Kropotkin, another is anarcho-syndicalism. Noam’s favorite example of “a really large-scale anarchist revolution” would be the 1936 Spanish revolution (which was destroyed by force). Noam does not think of himself as an anarchist thinker. Funny how in 1947, the strongest country in the world launches publically, in a marketing masterstroke, a new line of paranoid military Keynesianism, by changing the War Department into the Department of Defense. Think Pink! The Pentagon, Noam feels doesn’t serve the public interest at all. The Pentagon “has never defended the United States from anyone: it has only served to conduct aggression.” Think Strategic Air Command, and you think Jimmy Stewart looking good in the air but NOT this: In 1947, 1954, and 1958, the Strategic Air Command sent nuclear weapons over different countries to threaten them with nuclear chicken into compliance with U.S. business interests. There have been 19 cases where US nuclear forces have got involved in nuclear chicken, because trying diplomacy, or even the ancient art of talking, would have been considered too jejune. Sustaining the myth of the Cold War has been “our partner in global repression”. “Europe’s own favorite sport of mutual slaughter had to be called off in 1945.” Since 1950, the Pentagon budget has been a huge subsidy to the oil and gas industry all at US taxpayer expense.

Orwell’s problem: Why do we not know what is really going on, given mountains of available evidence? Answer: the propaganda system. How did the Industrial Revolution get started? Because of cheap cotton. How did you get that? Slavery, big time. Not exactly by market principles, eh? Such exceptions don’t show up in your economic history textbooks. Did you know in the 18th Century that India was “the commercial and manufacturing capital of the world”? Did you know “it produced more iron than all of Europe”? Even in the 1820’s, the British were going to India to study steel making techniques. Vandana Shiva used to talk to me about Kerala in India as being the best location for women’s empowerment. Noam says Kerala remains one of the poorest states in India because investors don’t like its pro-women and pro-quality of life social policies. How many Americans thought of the Cuban Missile Crisis, if we can shove our missiles up against Russia’s border, why shouldn’t they have the same right? “As an American ally, Israel inherits the right of aggression and massacre”. “When we condemn official enemies… the same considerations should apply to crimes in which we have a hand.” Three post-war periods of increased militarization of the economy: 1950, 1961, 1981. To pay for the costs of “reindustrialization” each time, the public had to be “properly frightened”. Reagan’s first fake crisis was El Salvador. And comedians will forever be in Reagan’s debt for courageously invading the island of Grenada and providing them with years of standup comedy material. For reference, Long Island (1,401 sq. miles) is more than ten times the size of Grenada (135 sq. miles) and entire Grenada is three times the size of Berry College in Georgia. And the NYT reported “Medals outnumber G.I.s in Grenada Assault.”

Don’t blame me for this review being so long, blame Noam for saying so much amazing stuff.

[Ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read several of Chomsky's books and it's hard to pinpoint where this book falls in terms of his bibliography.

Radical Priorities is a collection of sorts on Chomsky's body of work (up to the 80s) and although several topics are covered, the content just doesn't seem to stick in my mind. Maybe perhaps several of Chomsky's perspective aren't new to me, or because the book edits his writing to where he just scratches the surface instead of including a more in depth analysis. Maybe that's what his full length books are for, anyhow.

Along with a very extensive introduction by C.P. Otero on how Chomsky sees things, several topics are covered in this book, such as the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, the massacre in East Timor, the lack of responsibility of journalists, popular protest, and the Carter administration (and their role as "humanitarians"). We get glimpses at Chomsky's perspective on these, which like I said, don't really stick. Except for the section on Anarchism and a somewhat more extrapolated discussion as to what an Anarchist society would look like and how responsibilities would be divided. Good stuff, although kind of hard to understand at times.

If anything, Radical Priorities serves as a very far reaching appetizer into Chomsky's pattern of thought.

2.5 stars.

[Ig-88 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Et nulla aut consequuntur omnis molestiae et. Laborum voluptate autem consequatur recusandae. Vitae architecto mollitia eum et.

[Ypres]

A great introduction to Chomsky's social and political thinking and an astounding record of Chomsky's effort to prove all the crimes that the USA goverment has comitted. Truly eye-opener.

[Sam0fc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chomsky is eerily predictive especially wrt intervention in the Middle East. The choice of essays gave a good walk through of American involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, Israel's invasion on Lebanon, as well as giving an impression of Chomsky's updates to a Kropotkin-esque syndicalist vision.

[Thomas Ray]

E840 .C484 2003 Historical Society Library expanded 3rd edition

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

The long introduction is very good insofar as it is informative and a good framework of chomsky's main ideas. the actual book, which is an anthology of chomsky's articles from the 70's and very early 80's, is a bit outdated but still an interesting read since the U.S. government's aggressive foreign policy has changed little in the past 40 years.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some essays, an interview, a couple talks and more. This collection covers decades of Chomsky thought and analysis and as always delivers solidly in the ways that matter.

[Patrick Bigoness · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been the measure of the growth of my own personal worldview. The first time I saw this book I was just out of my Sophomore year of college a friend of mine had forsaken television and had decided to go and buy a whole lot of books instead with the money. This book was one of them. At the time, I had only just decided to study Political Science as my major although I was fully aware I hadn't nearly as much of a knowledge base as others seemed to possess. This collection of Chomsky's writings and speeches did not hit me nearly as hard as it does today. In that regard, I view this book as my measuring stick.
I did not know what washington consensus (ie Neoliberalism, Reaganomics or "trickle-down") policies were, nor did I know these policies' horrendous history in the world. I lacked the vocabulary to understand much of what he had to say. But his analysis of the world going back to the Vietnam war and his refusal to simply accept the many Tropes and Truisms of both elite scholarship and media, inspired me. He did not care if the majority believed what he said and it seems he did not take it personally when he was attacked.
However, his own analysis of the difference of propaganda's application within totalitarian states and democratic states may tell why this is the case. In his view, propaganda within a totalitarian state is obvious and thus easy to point out and repudiate. However, in a democratic society, there is simply more noise and so the media tends to frame issues in a way that excludes unfavorable discussion. His most poignant example is that of the United State's role as the international hegemon since the end of WWII. We rarely do we see discussion of whether or not the United States has the right to invade other countries. We assume that it is our right. And yet, no challenge to our power, our right to invade, can be tolerated in practice. And it cannot be tolerated either domestically, where the media demeans and caracaturizes those who speak out against it, and internationally where those who resist are labeled terrorists, human rights violators (with no sense of irony) and during the cold-war, Communists. And though this book's latest selection is from the second World Social Forum in 2002, his comments have only grown more pertinent; one cannot read what he has to say and not feel that things have gotten worse, though not hopeless.
There are writers like Andrew Bacevich, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill have done much to research and support most, if not all of his analysis. Indeed, that the white, disenfranchised working class (formerly of the middle class) became completely disillusioned with the elite in Washington. It is worth noting that Noam Chomsky pointed this phenomenon out in relation to the election of 2000. That sixteen years have gone by and the population still feels largely disempowered is by design and not by accident. And it is only through independent study, skepticism of media reports and the elites as well as grassroots organization that this may change. But it is precisely these sorts of activities the American ruling class does not wish for the rest of us; and that is precisely why it is necessary for them to be carried out.

That being said, read this book if you wish to learn how our countries (dys?)functions and how we might move ahead. There are no easy answers to the problems presented in this book, but to ignore them will almost certainly lead to even more spectacular disasters than the election of Donald Trump. As of this writing, President-elect Trump, who campaign upon the pretense of "draining the swap" has filled his transition team with lobbyists and consultants from Washington DC. His campaign is remarkable from a Chomskian point of view since his campaign focused almost entirely on rhetoric. And, his presidency will likely become just another example of "power [working] for its own purposes, whatever the rhetoric employed to disguise or legitimate it." In other words, Trump's change will not likely benefit the majority of American people who remain largely ignorant of geography, history and science. It is precisely such ignorance that must be remedied. The main question then, is "how".

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series of articles that Professor Chomsky had written most of which date between the late 60s and 70s with a few that come at the end of the century and beginning of the most recent one. It represents his views pretty well and gives a good introduction to his writing style as well as his ideas. Additionally, there is a wealth of references to other texts of his if one wishes to pursue the originally sourced material or a more in depth discussion. Overall it is a good primer but nothing ground breaking.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent!

[C. · Rating 1 out of 5]

US foreign policy is hypocritical.

*ie see review for Failed States

[Michal Wigal]

Chomsky you never fail me.