6:03pm July 16, 2013

➸ Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians

youneedacat:

clatterbane:

The following is the adapted text of an interview that first appeared in Modern Success magazine.So many things have been written about, and discussed by, Professor Chomsky, it was a challenge to think of anything new to ask him: like the grandparent you can’t think of what to get for Christmas because they already have everything.

So I chose to be a bit selfish and ask him what I’ve always wanted to ask him. As an out-spoken, actual, live-and-breathing anarchist, I wanted to know how he could align himself with such a controversial and marginal position.

Michael S. Wilson: You are, among many other things, a self-described anarchist — an anarcho-syndicalist, specifically. Most people think of anarchists as disenfranchised punks throwing rocks at store windows, or masked men tossing ball-shaped bombs at fat industrialists. Is this an accurate view? What is anarchy to you?

Noam Chomsky: Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a particular variety of anarchism which was concerned primarily, though not solely, but primarily with control over work, over the work place, over production. It took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, [that] they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and … democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society. And then, you know, ideas are worked out about how exactly that should manifest itself, but I think that is the core of anarcho-syndicalist thinking. I mean it’s not at all the general image that you described — people running around the streets, you know, breaking store windows — but [anarcho-syndicalism] is a conception of a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none.

Maybe the best nutshell description I’ve seen. Very much including the “shows up in different forms in different circumstances" bit, which some Western anarchists would do well to bear in mind. :-|

That’s also a pretty good description of how some of us were raised.

Yeah I never expected an ideology type name like that to reflect anything I’m familiar with, but it’s definitely familiar.

Not too surprisingly, for me the problem comes when (usually White, middle to upper-middle class) people can’t help but drag a bunch of widgetry into their cool, newly-found anarchism. People who are so used to the idea of dominance hierarchies, open conflict, and neat ideologies that I honestly think they often can’t even spot when they’re just keeping that shit rolling, because fish in water. The spoiled manarchists I just keep wanting to slap are just one face of that. It does make me wonder sometimes if there’s much hope that people who were raised with such different and incompatible worldviews can actually learn to do better.

Yeah, I’m sounding a little harsh, but I’ve had too many experiences with this awful minority in basically any kind of “radical" politics. They are, indeed, a minority. But, they are exactly the ones who will try to take over any kind of group and run the decent people off. And the dislike is definitely mutual. :-| I mostly just stay away from any kind of even vaguely organized groups now.

And I’m reminded of last year, when Steve/shiva (who I haven’t seen online in a while) actually asked me to submit a paper for an Anarchism and Disability panel at a conference here in the UK. Which was flattering in a way, and I was sorry that I just didn’t have the spoons for either writing papers or travelling to the conference. But, though he personally does not fit the description above, I also had a keen suspicion that I wouldn’t have anything like the spoons to deal with some of the other people who tend to be attracted to conferences like that.

Including the nasty suspicion that, much like back home, the reaction would be very different were I perceived as a cool, exotic (Othered with a prettier surface) indigenous anarchist than it would be as some damned loudmouthed fat hillbilly woman who doesn’t know her place. While, of course, those are not even mutually exclusive categories. That’s an unfortunately good summary of some of the same old problems leaking through, yeah. :(

ETA: And I totally forgot to add some of the problems mentioned in one good zine, Fuck You I’m Dyslexic, (cached version since zinelibrary.info seems to be down) with not being able to parrot the “right" (Eurocentric) writers in the expected ways, etc. Not just because of neurodivergence, but because I’m coming at at a lot of things from some different angles. And, yeah, unfortunately experience has led me to expect this kind of problem with an event specifically devoted to disability and $POLITICS.