Author: chrucky

Some of Noam Chomsky’s views on “Marxism”

The following is taken from Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (2002).

Footnotes were written by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, the editors.

The following excerpt appears on pp. 227-8 of Chapter Seven: Intellectuals and Social Change

. . .

Marxist “Theory” and Intellectual Fakery

WOMAN: Noam, apart from the idea of the “vanguard,” I’m interested why you’re so critical of the whole broader category of Marxist analysis in general-like people in the universities and so on who refer to themselves as “Marxists.” I’ve noticed you’re never very happy with it.

CHOMSKY: Well, I guess one thing that’s unattractive to me about “Marxism” is the very idea that there is such a thing. It’s a rather striking fact that you don’t find things like “Marxism” in the sciences — like, there isn’t any part of physics which is “Einsteinianism,” let’s say, or “Planckianism” or something like that. It doesn’t make any sense –because people aren’t gods: they just discover things, and they make mistakes, and their graduate students tell them why they’re wrong, and then they go on and do things better the next time. But there are no gods around. I mean, scientists do use the terms “Newtonianism” and “Darwinism,” but nobody thinks of those as doctrines that you’ve got to somehow be loyal to, and figure out what the Master thought, and what he would have said in this new circumstance and so on. That sort of thing is just completely alien to rational existence, it only shows up in irrational domains.

So Marxism, Freudianism: anyone of these things I think is an irrational cult. They’re theology, so they’re whatever you think of theology; I don’t think much of it. In fact, in my view that’s exactly the right analogy: notions like Marxism and Freudianism belong to the history of organized religion. So part of my problem is just its existence: it seems to me that even to discuss something like “Marxism” is already making a mistake. Like, we don’t discuss “Planckism.” Why not? Because it would be crazy. Planck [German physicist] had some things to say, and some of them are right, and those were absorbed into later science, and some of them are wrong, and they were improved on. It’s not that Planck wasn’t a great man-all kinds of great discoveries, very smart, mistakes, this and that. That’s really the way we ought to look at it, I think. As soon as you set up the idea of “Marxism” or “Freudianism” or something, you’ve already abandoned rationality.

It seems to me the question a rational person ought to ask is, what is there in Marx’s work that’s worth saving and modifying, and what is there that ought to be abandoned? Okay, then you look and you find things. I think Marx did some very interesting descriptive work on nineteenth century history. He was a very good journalist. When he describes the British in India, or the Paris Commune [70-day French workers’ revolution in 1871], or the parts of Capital that talk about industrial London, a lot of that is kind of interesting — I think later scholarship has improved it and changed it, but it’s quite interesting.5

He had an abstract model of capitalism which — I’m not sure how valuable it is, to tell you the truth. It was an abstract model, and like any abstract model, it’s not really intended to be descriptively accurate in detail, it’s intended to sort of pull out some crucial features and study those. And you have to ask in the case of an abstract model, how much of the complex reality does it really capture? That’s questionable in this case — first of all, it’s questionable how much of nineteenth-century capitalism it captured, and I think it’s even more questionable how much of late-twentieth-century capitalism it captures.

There are supposed to be laws [i.e. of history and economics]. I can’t understand them, that’s all I can say; it doesn’t seem to me that there are any laws that follow from it. Not that I know of any better laws, I just don’t think we know about “laws” in history.

There’s nothing about socialism in Marx, he wasn’t a socialist philosopher — there are about five sentences in Marx’s whole work that refer to socialism.6 He was a theorist of capitalism. I think he introduced some interesting concepts at least, which every sensible person ought to have mastered and employ, notions like class, and relations of production …

NOTES

5. For Marx’s works that are mentioned in the text, see Karl Marx, “The Civil War in France” (1871)(on the Paris Commune); “On Imperialism in India” (1853)(on the British in India); Capital, Vol. I (1867)(on industrial London).

6. On the lack of discussion of socialism in Marx’s work, see for example, Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, New York: Free Press, 1960, pp. 355-392 (“Two Roads from Marx”). An excerpt (pp. 368-369):

The paucity is extraordinary. In an address to the General Council of the International Workingman’s Association, published as The Civil War in France, Marx said, at one point in passing, that communism would be a system under which “united cooperative societies are to regulate the national production under a common plan,” but nothing more. . . . In only one other place did Marx elaborate any remarks about the future society — the testy letter which came to be known as The Critique of the Gotha Programme. In 1875 the rival Lasallean and Eisenacher (Liebknecht, Bebel, Bernstein) factions met in Gotha to form the German Socialist Workers Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands). As a political party, the socialists were confronted, for the first time, with the task of stating a political program on transition to socialism. Taking its cue from the [1871 Paris] Commune, the Gotha program emphasized two demands: the organization of producers’ co-operatives with state aid and equality.

Marx’s criticism was savage. The demand for producers’ co-operatives, he said, smacked of the Catholic socialism of Buchez (the president of the Constitutional Assembly of 1848), while the demand for the “equitable distribution of the proceeds of labour” was simply a bourgeois right, since in any other society than pure communism the granting of equal shares to individuals with unequal needs would simply lead to renewed inequality. A transitional society, Marx said, could not be completely communal. In the co-operative society, based on collective ownership, “the producers do not interchange their products.” There would still be need for a state machinery, since certain social needs would have to be met. The central directing agency would make deductions from the social product: for administrative costs, schools, health services, and the like. Only under communism would the State, as a government over persons, be replaced by an “administration of things. . . .” [D]espite his theoretical criticisms of the transitional program, there is little in the Critique of a concrete nature regarding the mechanics of socialist economics either in the transitional or the pure communist society.

Why is the world enamored by the Leader principle (except Switzerland)?

A single person in any capacity of making decisions is subject to advancing his own self-interest, subject to bribery, and subject to threats. Let us call this “corruption.”

I advance the following claim.

If it is possible for a leader to be corrupted, he will be corrupted.

This is just a rephrasing of the old adage that power tends to corrupt.

The ancient world of the Greeks and Romans knew this, and called a single leader a “dictator.” To offset this evil, Sparta had two kings, while the Roman Republic had two consuls — with veto powers over each other.

So why is it that everywhere in the world, we democratically give power to dictators?

Identifying default intellectuals

Richard Wolff keeps repeating that in trying to assess the merits of some claim, it is wise to listen to the proponents and the opponents of the claim. His interest is in the evaluation of capitalism. However, he does not tell us who he thinks is the best proponent of capitalism, but he does tell us that a formidable opponent of capitalism was Karl Marx.

Well, I am not ready to become a Marx scholar — there is too much to read. I want some trustworthy intellectual to tell me in a succinct formulation what I should learn from Marx. Who should I listen to?

And the above reasoning applies to all claims. The problem is this. It is living people who are writing and speaking on popular media and making an impact. And this is what creates something like “current popular opinions.” Couple this with a belief that the new is better than the old — a sort of belief in the inevitability of progress — and the “old” is placed in the dustbin of the antiquated.

It is true that the natural sciences and technologies advance, but this does not seem to be true of the moral and social studies where there is ongoing controversy.

To deal with this problem, I have sought to find intellectuals who have an aura of wisdom and authority. In the past — until the scientific revolution — Plato and Aristotle played such a role. They acted as a “benchmark” for evaluating claims. A few years ago I advocated treating the views of the British philosopher C. D. Broad for this role of a “benchmark,” giving the name “default philosopher” to such a role.

This is not to deprive other philosophers of a high status, but the fact remains that someone who lives later and can critically evaluate the scholarship of the past — has an advantage, provided he has done so well.

For topics not dealth with by C. D. Broad, I would extend the status of a default philosopher to Bertrand Russell.

As to present global affairs — involving war, economics, and politics — the current “default intellectual” — if I may use this phrase — is, for me: Noam Chomsky.

What is the practical implication of this view? One should read Chomsky, and when listening or reading where a claim is made about present global affairs, ask yourself: What is Noam Chomsky view on this?

I like to read axiomatized versions of books

First, what does it mean to “axiomatize” an argumentative book? It is to divide the propositions of the book into two parts, called “axioms” and “theorems.” The axioms will be statements which are asserted, but which cannot be derived deductively or inductively from other statements; the theorems will be those statements which can be derived from the axioms by deduction and induction. When philosophers treat a book in the above manner, they normally do not use the word “axiom”; instead they talk about “foundations,” “premises,” “assumptions,” “presuppositions,” and such.

The paradigm of this “axiomatic” approach as applied to argumentative books is Bertrand Russell’s book A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900) in which Russell claims that Leibniz’s metaphysics is based on five premises. Here are Russell’s words:

The principal premisses of Leibniz’s philosophy appear to me to be five. Of these some were by him definitely laid down, while others were so fundamental that he was scarcely conscious of them. I shall now enumerate these premisses, and shall endeavour to show, in subsequent chapters, how the rest of Leibniz follows from them. The premisses in question are as follows:

  1. Every proposition has a subject and a predicate.
  2. A subject may have predicates which are qualities existing at various times. (Such a subject is called a substance.)
  3. True propositions not asserting existence at particular times are necessary and analytic, but such as assert existence at particular times are contingent and synthetic. The latter depend upon final causes.
  4. The Ego is a substance.
  5. Perception yields knowledge of an external world, i.e. of existents other than myself and my states.

The fundamental objection to Leibniz’s philosophy will be found to be the inconsistency of the first premiss with the fourth and fifth; and in this inconsistency we shall find a general objection to Monadism.

What am I driving at with this? Let us take as an example John Rawl’s book A Theory of Justice (1971). It is a massive book of over 600 pages. It is very difficult to keep track of everything which is being asserted and argued for. But a reader has to have an understanding of the book before making an assessment. What is needed is some kind of skeletal structure of the book — a digest, divided into, what I am calling “axioms” and “theorems.” Such an analysis is provided by R. M. Hare in two articles, consisting of 22 pages: “Rawl’s Theory of Justice.”

Other such “axiomatizations” are provided by C. D. Broad in his Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930), especially of Sidgwick’s monumental Methods of Ethics.

What is the merit of such axiomatizations? It makes understanding and critical assessment easier.

The philosopher who was most conscious of this approach was James W. Cornman, who presented his arguments in the form of explicit premises and conclusions.

Bullshit about “Influence”

It is natural to seek explanations. And we are very successful in doing this with inanimate things, as in physics and chemistry. When it comes to living things — well, it gets fuzzy. And when it comes to explaining human activity, it gets to be perplexing. There is in humans something analogous to Aristotle’s saying that “nature abhors a vacuum.” It is to the effect that “the human psyche abhors a tabula rasa.” The result: myths. And in everyday life, there is the aversion to acknowledge ignorance; hence, the production of some claim or other — bullshit.

Why am I dwelling on this. It has to do with my very long uneasiness with claims to “influence.” In trying to understand the actions (including the linguistic acts of writing), all types of explanations are sought. And since causal explanations like those in physics or chemistry are out of place, some other explanations are sought. These are segregated into “influences” and “reasons.” “Reasons” I understand; “influences” leave me puzzled.

Reflecting on my own history. I would say that I was influences by the writings of Wilfrid Sellars and C. D. Broad — among others. How so? Simply in the fact that I read them and critically reflected on what they claimed or argued for. Did I agree with them? In some things, yes; in other things, no.

Alfred North Whitehead, in his book Science and the Western World, talked about presuppositions of the age. And Eric Dodds, in his Greeks and the Irrational, talked about an “inherited conglomerate.” Stephen Pepper talked about “World Hypotheses” as based on models and analogies. And when Descartes said “Cogito ergo sum,” he could have been a bit more reflective in recognizing that what he wrote was in a language. Call this linguistically presupposed set of implicit beliefs, a Weltanschauung. Given this understanding, I would acknowledge that I, and everyone else, is influenced by a Weltanschuung, which has a temporal and a geographical location.

Why am I dwelling on this? I am interested in politics and economics, and I have read a few books which I have tried to juxtapose with each other. Incidentally, I keep discovering old books which seem to be excellent, but which I have never heard of either in my experience with higher education, not in current articles or books . . . But then reflecting on the fact that most books in a library are picking up dust . . .

Anyway, I read Oppenheimer’s The State, and he makes constant reference to Ratzel’s “History of Mankind” and Gumplowicz’s “Der Rassenkamp.” I have also recently read some Max Weber and some Karl Marx. And most recently I have returned to Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper is concerned with what he calls “totalitarianism,” which is exemplified by Hitler and Nazi Germany. The Closed Society, he identifies with Tribalism, which in modern times expresses itself, for Popper, as Nationalism. Such a society has a Leader, who has a plan of Holistic or Utopian Engineering. Such totalitarian societies are closed to criticism through censorship.

Popper does a Herculean labor of examining the views of practically the whole history of philosophy, and his criticisms are to the point, insightful, and convincing for the most part. He is critically examing the political views of philosophers and some economists. If one were to justify or rationalize totalitarian practices — then yes, this is the sort of study to do. But such a study as Popper’s is relevant only to scholars who study and criticize the apologists of totalitarianism.

But understanding and explaining totalitarianism is a different matter. But really, how, for example, are the views of political and economic writers relevant to what Hitler did. If Hitler created a totalitarian State, the question should be how and why. Let us compare the mind of Hitler and that of Trump in some respects — like reading. Hitler, I assume was a sincere chauvinistic Nationalist, in the sense that he believed that Germans were superior to others and that Germans should be settled in the regions of Ukraine, by wiping out the indigenous populations. (Remind you of the American treatment of Native Americans? Or the colonial practices of England in Africa and India? Of the Belgian treatment of the Congo?) I suppose Rudyard Kipling’s phrase “white man’s burden” is a rationalization and an encouragement for Americans to take over the Philippines in 1898.

From one perspective, what Hitler did was a form of colonization which all of Europe had been practicing in remote regions of the world; in particular, Hitler followed the American plan of manifest destiny by expanding the German homeland. Other European countries justified themselves by the “white man’s burden” in respect to savages. Well, Hitler extended the coverage of “savages” to include Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs. And where others killed the indigenous people in makeshift ways, he did it efficiently. It is said that he modeled himself after the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the herding of American natives into reservations (concentration camps).

I don’t see how Popper’s book explains what Hitler did, as it would not explain anything which Trump does. Hitler took the practice of colonialism in a direction adjacent to Germany; while Trump will continue American imperialism, not because of any theory, but because he has the power, and he will use it for his own benefit, as he sees fit. As far as I know, neither Hitler nor Trump are intellectuals of any depth — so the literary tradition of the scholar has no relevance for them.

What is the relevant question? How does a person like Hitler or Trump get such power? And the answer is straightforward. There is the almost universal political practice in the world to give power to a single individual — a monarch, a president, a prime minister, a chancellor; and on a smaller scale to a governor or mayor. And once this power is given, there may or may not be ways to control this power. While it is hoped that these autocrats are benevolent; for the most part, they are not. Only Switzerland has wisely refused to give executive power to a single individual; giving it instead to a council of seven. The modern model of giving power to a council, comes from the French Revolution, but, as we know, it degenerated to the dictatorship of Napoleon. So power structures of any kind are precarious.

Venezuela: Another Overthrow!

Stephen Kinzer, wrote the book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006), which documents the history of US interventions in foreign governments. What is going in the relation between the US and Venezuela is exactly an attempt to overthrow the President of Venezuela.

Below is a video of an interview of Stephen Kinzer by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.

Here are some other interviews with Kinzer.

Is a Foreign Military Intervention in Venezuela Imminent?

I was looking for a reasonable analysis of what is going on in Venezuela, on the one hand, and what President Trump intends to do about it. Unlike most main media, the following piece at venezuelanalysis.com seems very reasonable: “Is a Foreign Military Intervention in Venezuela Imminent?“

Let me say the following. The United States has never intervened in any country for “humanitarian” reasons. All the US interventions that I can think of, have had the character of destructive aggressions which have killed more people than “saved.” And let us not lose sight of the economic advantage to US corporations in any intervention.

Is there a fear of the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly?

See also the Wikipedia article United States – Venezuela Relations



How to assess the merits of some current popular person’s views? Compare what he says to what Noam Chomsky says!

In determining the worth of some claim, one can either rely on one’s own critical powers, and/or try to use as a “benchmark” the views of some highly respected intellectual. Do a comparison of views.

Well, there is someone out there on the internet who is using the views of Noam Chomsky as the benchmark to compare the views of currently fashionable people — what can I call them? — celebrities?. This critical assessor is someone who calls himself — using Quine’s famous term — Dr. Gavagai.

Here are some of his videos — juxtaposing the views of Jordan Peterson with those of Noam Chomsky.

Here is a juxtaposition of Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek. I must confess that I have a systematic hard time understanding Zizek. Anyway, his only objection to Chomsky seems to be the claim — correct or not — that in the case of the Khmer Rouge, he underestimated the extent of their genocide.

Is Capitalism an economic or a political system?

If you look up the definition of capitalism in Wikipedia, it reads: “Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.” The Merriam-Webster definition on the internet is: “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

The problem with these definitions is that they assume the concept of “ownership.” And ownership is a concept which has to be defined in a social context by a formula such as:

for two persons x and y, if x is the owner of item z, then y has to get permission from x to use z.

Well, who makes such a rule? If there are only two people involved, then the rule is founded on either an explicit or implicit (tacit) agreement. If there is an external government, such as the State, then it is the State which establishes such a rule by a law.

If the rule is established by a free agreement than we may call it an economic matter, if however it is established by the State, then it is a political matter.

The “private ownership” which is pertinent to capitalism, concerns the ownership of land. Since land is a given of nature — like air or water — it can be used either by mutual agreement or subject to the laws of the State.

Now, I cannot make the use of land without either the permission of a private owner or the State. For example, I cannot camp in State or Federal forests without getting “permission” — normally, by paying a fee. And, of course, if I want to hunt or fish, I have to pay some other fees.

Since capitalism is a function of ownership, and ownership is determined by the State, capitalism is also a political system. The following “Google definition?” is more accurate: “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” But it is not accurate enough because there is such a thing as “state capitalism” which characterized the USSR.