Re: Proyect vs Chomsky

["Bryan A. Alexander" <bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sigh.  Once again a flung bash at the anarchsists.
        And a weird harmony between Louis and MIM, both reproaching
anarchism for its real results.
        I'll point to Spain for now - you all know when.  The anarchists
as a popular movement abolished state power, trashed elites, improved
life, successfully lived in anarchist-modeled society, and defended
themselves for years despite comparative originary weakness.  Then again,
having the Stalinists help destroy them might have played a role?
        NB, folks: this is an old, old debate that never fails to create
fire and smoke.  It can swell up to eat a list.  Not that we shouldn't
talk about it! -but that we should keep other issues alive.



Bryan Alexander
Department of English
University of Michigan
**********************

On Wed, 11 Oct 1995, Louis N Proyect wrote:

> Hi, everybody I've picked a fight with Noam Chomsky.
>
> I just got sick and tired of his Lenin-bashing. I posted a comment on an
> exchange that took place in Z magazine between Chomsky and Michael
> Albert to the PEN-L list. (Albert is the editor of Z.) The fight
> will probably be conducted on Chomsky's home turf, the Z magazine bulletin
> board.
>
> Now, don't worry, I know what you are all thinking. I promise to go easy on
> him. I do have a lot of respect for the critiques he's made of US foreign
> policy and that will cause me to be gentler than usual.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Albert: That's gone. Let's go back to this broad question of
> intellectuals. What about left intellectuals? If an intellectual is
> somebody who spends time trying to understand society, what's a left
> intellectual? Are there any?
>
> Noam Chomsky: One of the very few predictions in the social sciences
> that I know of that ever came true was one of Bakunin's over a century
> ago in which he predicted that intellectuals would fall into two
> categories in industrial societies. Some would work for capitalists and
> others would be left intellectuals who would try to rise to power on the
> backs of mass popular movements, If they could gain power they
> would then beat the people into submission.
>
> Michael Albert: Leninism?
>
> Noam Chomsky: Yes, what he was predicting was Leninism. If the
> intellectuals find they can't or, if it is too dangerous or costly, they'll be
> the servants of what we would nowadays call state capitalism. He
> didn't use the term. Either of the two intellectuals, he said, will be
> "beating the people with the people's stick." That is, they will still be
> presenting themselves as representatives of the people, so they'll hold
> the people's stick, but they'll be beating the people with it. It follows
> from his analysis that it would be extremely easy to shift from one
> position to the other. It's extremely easy, that is, to undergo what
> nowadays is called the "God-that-failed" syndrome. You start off as
> basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy.
> You see later that power doesn't lie that way, and you very quickly
> become an ideologist of the right and devote your life to exposing the
> sins of your former comrades who haven't seen the light and haven't
> shifted to where power really is. We're seeing it right now in the
> Soviet Union. The same guys who were Communist thugs two years
> back, are now running banks and enthusiastic free marketeers and
> praising Americans.
>
> Louis Proyect:
>
> Listening to these two is like listening to Ted Koppel interviewing
> Henry Kissinger.
>
> Does Chomsky know what he's talking about when he throws around
> terms like "state capitalism" and "Leninism"? He should stick to
> linguistics and criticism of US foreign policy until he gets a solid
> grounding in political economy and Soviet history.
>
> It's interesting that the political currents and individuals that identified
> with Lenin, except for the sect-cults, have gone through a profound re-
> evaluation. Joe Slovo's speech on Stalinism is a case in point.
> Anarchists, new leftists and social democrats have never gone through
> that process. You get the same type of self-congratulatory smugness in
> Z Magazine that you get in CPUSA publications, or In These Times.
> Chomsky can sit on his lofty perch and make judgments about Lenin
> and Trotsky, but what is the record of anarchism in the twentieth
> century?
>
> I can't wait to free up the time to subject this tendency to the critique it
> truly deserves.
>
>
>
>
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>


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