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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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 Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:59 pm Post subject: George's remark on Chomsky |
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I was listening to Saturday's (06/02) show, and in the second half George read out two angry texts of people who were correctly pointing out that Noam Chomsky refers to himself as an Anarchist, and implying that George had said something to the contrary earlier in the program. I seem to have missed that though, and George just moved on without a reaction to the texts -- anybody of you guys catch it? what did he say? can someone point out the point in faceless's recording?
btw, OneBigTorrent.org is officially online now to serve all your socialist file-sharing needs.. |
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harry perkins
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:10 am Post subject: |
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| He had called some of the people who call themselves anarchists were thugs, someone texted in pulling him up for "calling anarchists thugs" and listed luminaries he called anarchists. I think some of them weren't, when he came to Chomsky he said he didn't think he was an anarchist, I think he just didn't realise thats how Chomsky self defines. I remeber the whole series of events well, it ended with a caller anouncing that socialism would still be relevant if it hadn't been hijacked by parasites like Marx and Lenin. |
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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:30 am Post subject: |
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thanks for that. how far into the program was that, can you tell? i would be interested to hear it in his own words..
i heard the thing about the texter calling Marx and Lenin parasites on socialism, which is of course not a good way to make a point for the libertarian socialist side here.
still kindof a sad thing for anarchism if you can have an old socialist like George not knowing about one of its foremost proponents today.. |
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Mandy
Joined: 07 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:41 am Post subject: |
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| Any anarchists on this forum ? Happy to debate it. |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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i thought chomsky was a libertarian socialist who sympathises with anarcho-syndicalism?
the problem with the word anarchist is its been so twisted over time
| Quote: | | The word "anarchy" is from the Greek, prefix an (or a), meaning "not," "the want of," "the absence of," or "the lack of", plus archos, meaning "a ruler," "director", "chief," "person in charge," or "authority." Or, as Peter Kropotkin put it, Anarchy comes from the Greek words meaning "contrary to authority." |
i was reading a chomsky book recently and he talks about anarchism, he doesn't see any difference really between anarchism and libertarianism, but like the word anarchism, libertarianism has been twisted.
i'll just type in a bit from the book
| Quote: | | "chaos" is a meaning of the word, but its not a meaning that has any relevance to social thought. anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant "chaos" - in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organised society, just one thats organised democratically from below |
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| Quote: | | theres no difference really [ between anarchist and libertarian ]. i think there the same thing. but you see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the united states. the united states in off the spectrum of the main tradition in that respect; whats called "libertarianism" here is unbridled capitalism. now, thats always been opposed in the european libertarian tradition, where ever anarchist has been a socialist - because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority |
i still don't really fully understand all these ideologys and the historys though ... i think i'm going to spend the rest of my life reading |
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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:34 pm Post subject: |
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| luke wrote: | | i thought chomsky was a libertarian socialist who sympathises with anarcho-syndicalism? |
"libertarian socialism" and "anarchism" have been used as synonymous terms over long periods (the second half of the 19th century up until after the Spanish Revolution was crushed by the fascists). It's overlooked in many superficial treatments of the Spanish Civil war (as in history textbooks), that the anarchist trade union CNT had about 2 million members, and that when the Civil war broke out, they implemented their ideas of socialism without a state across large parts of Catalonia and Aragon. Back then, it was a fact that every anarchist considered him/herself as a socialist (but not necessarily the reverse). It was all about creating an organized society based on equal rights and built on consensus from the grass-roots - without hierarchies and domination, and without a centralist state run by a party elite (as advocated by Marxists/Lenininsts). It's this kind of Anarchism that Chomsky subscribes to.
Unfortunately, that tradition of anarchism as left-socialism was pretty much lost after the thirties. It was suppressed of course in Spain and also northern Italy after the war, and It didn't have any place within the Soviet Union, and the other states based on Marxist/Leninist type ideologies (anarchist movements in the Ukraine and elsewhere had been crushed by the communists already by the 20ies, for example).
Over the last couple of decades, there have been self-described "anarchists", whose ideologies are largely incompatible with any kind of socialism (like the anarcho-primitivst tendencies represented by people like John Zerzan, or "anarcho-capitalism"). Also the Punks and squat people of the 80ies and 90ies. That contributed to the discredit that the term is now in, i think. In the mainstream media today, of course, the term "anarchists" is pretty much exclusively used to refer to people in black gear who hurl stones at demonstrations (like the "black block" at the G8 protests at germany). These people may be waving the anarcho-syndicalist flag, but to a large part they're not into any serious kind of socialist organizing. at best they want to be left alone in their squats, at worst they're just taking on the police for the fun of it.
i do think though that anarchism as a left-socialist ideology has seen a revival over the last years, especially in latin america, where socialism (as in Bolivia and Venezuela, to some extent Brazil and Ecuador) to a large extent relies on mass popular movements instead of party elites. they just don't call it "anarchism" there. |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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thanks martin, interesting - i've been meaning to get that chomsky book you mentioned, but i already have a mountain of books to get through
what i'd like is a book that probably doesn't exist, but covers all these ideologys, the people and thinking behind them, all these people i always hear about but don't really know much about, trotsky, marx, lenin etc, the history and development of those into the current day.
anyone know of anything? 
probably i'll have to get it through a number of books |
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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 7:52 pm Post subject: |
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| what you're looking for would be something like a general introduction to socialism. funny, never came across anything like that. i imagine that a good comprehensive introduction might be hard to find (especially one that doesn't neglect the libertarian socialist strand, which was also quite significant during the 1st international). |
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popinjay
Joined: 02 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:11 am Post subject: |
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| Libertarian socialism sounds like an oxymoron to me. |
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DavidGig
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
Location: Kansas, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 5:17 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Libertarian socialism sounds like an oxymoron to me. |
I'm no expert, but I thought Martin did a rather nice job of showing how they fit together.
Do you mean you can't imagine socialism without the big state apparatus, or you can't imagine libertarianism without the capitalism? |
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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:42 am Post subject: |
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| Popinjay wrote: | | Libertarian socialism sounds like an oxymoron to me. |
yeah, that's another thing. "libertarianism" in the US has taken on a different meaning, referring to the extreme pro-market, pro-private-property-extending-everywhere, pro-gun crowd. not so much in europe, i think (where hardly anyone even knows the term). |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:52 am Post subject: |
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| Libertarian Socialist means to me an individual with a conscience (loaded terms). In simple terms that means to me 'Do what you like, just don't be a bastard about it' |
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nekokate
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Location: West Yorkshire, UK
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| Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:54 am Post subject: |
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| faceless wrote: | | Libertarian Socialist means to me an individual with a conscience (loaded terms). In simple terms that means to me 'Do what you like, just don't be a bastard about it' |
In that case, I'm one of those! |
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Martin
Joined: 10 May 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:22 am Post subject: |
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By accident I came across a quote by Chomsky on this:
| Noam Chomsky wrote: | | The United States is sort of out of the world on this topic. Britain is to a limited extent, but the United States is like on Mars. So here, the term "libertarian" means the opposite of what it always meant in history. Libertarian throughout modern European history meant socialist anarchist. It meant the anti-state element of the Workers Movement and the Socialist Movement. It sort of broke into two branches, roughly, one statist, one anti-statist. The statist branch led to Bolshevism and Lenin and Trotsky, and so on. The anti-statist branch, which included Marxists, Left Marxists -- Rosa Luxemburg and others -- kind of merged, more or less, into an amalgam with a big strain of anarchism into what was called "libertarian socialism." So libertarian in Europe always meant socialist. Here it means ultra-conservative -- Ayn Rand or Cato Institute or something like that. But that's a special U.S. usage. |
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