Interesting that when Chomsky is asked what *he* thinks should happen, he talks about what the majority of the population wants. Very modest guy who doesn't want to impose his belief on others, he has a true belief in democracy.
He knows very well that correct policy and moral behavior are not discerned by popular acceptance but he doesn't want to answer the question truthfully. That is because he is a socialist statist and not an anarchist. I used to like him before I understood politics fully. He is a mealy-mouthed gatekeeper. A gatekeeper for the left. To contain them in obedience to the state.
+Raul Simeon Socialism has nothing to do with government. Any basic socialism demand only one thin, that means of production controlled by people who work on it. Government has nothing to do with it. Even original 19 century socialists was looking on government only as mean to get power to transform society. Now, when socialists come to power be mean revolution in USSR, they did only thin they can, move means of production into hand of government. (remember, USSR at time had 5% literacy, 95% agrarian society). As result USSR become state capitalism as economic system and oligarchy feudalism as political system.
+Raul Simeon Later that become the only model for any future socialists coming to power by revolution or by elections. But no USSR no any other countries never pass state capitalism. It is simply wrong model us state not equal WORKERS. Contemporary socialists thinking does not include government at all. Contemporary socialists look for combination of workers cooperatives with individually owned enterprises as a economic model and with combination of free market and planed economy as a way of distribution. In contemporary socialists thinking even capitalist enterprises have it place so long as every one start equal (simplest method of achieving that is 100% inheritance tax on property over some amount). There really no space for discussion, but if you really was to understand socialism try to research this topics.
+Raul Simeon First off literally everyone does that and can't be bothered to be so careful in their use of words so as to say literally nothing because their afraid they might not be speaking for more then one person but themselves. However your point has a solid amount of credibility and across the board people should be more careful when drawing universal statements from particulars, but and a big but Chomsky sites numerous current statistics and historical scenarios to justify his assertions, not many other people can do that, and think about modern democracy in general and how it asserts that the representatives speak for the people, do they speak for all of them? FUCK NO, in fact the desire for consensus chokes Democracy out, both in the political sphere and the economic ( people want to be told what to do and not think so they accept a capitalist boss and manager because they think their incapable of managing anything collectively) ( also because their told they need to listen by big brother) In short, your right but your right in a vacuum, in order to meet your rigorous and totalizing logic of democracy every human would have to be perfect, so like ease up on the guy k??
Liberty in a nutshell - Private property values. Non initiation of force. I bet non of you have read or understood the ravings of this guy in "Das Kapital" diss book. Its kinda like the bible: "It is true and it is somewhere in the book". Too bad he didn`t make a POSITIVE "das social" book, kinda lacks the arguments I guess...
Hall Johnes communism in a nut-shell, abolish private property through the initiation of force (if necessary). The right to own property does not rid us of the tyranny of property, just as religious freedom does not rid us of the tyranny of religion. However, the tyranny of the proletariat will lead one day to the emancipation of all mankind from the primitive fictions of feudalism.
"communism in a nut-shell, abolish private property through the initiation of force (if necessary). " Well, how can you then say when it is necessary and when not, there is no way you can rationally operate in such crazy environment. The right to own property does not rid us of the tyranny of property, This is just word magic, I don`t think you know what those words even mean. "just as religious freedom does not rid us of the tyranny of religion" In fact, it DOES, there is no STATE ENFORCED religion (like communism) - everyone is free to practice / not practice one, and if he does wrong - there is the judicial system for him. "However, the tyranny of the proletariat will lead one day to the emancipation of all mankind from the primitive fictions of feudalism." I don`t see tyranny leading to any form of peaceful and sustainable future. Moreover, there would never be a tyranny "by the proletariat", but by those ending up controlling the proletariat - once they get the power, the hell begins, AGAIN. The Collective quickly will shut down any "true communist believers" dissidents, because of the nature of mutually frightened, mutually reporting people in a big group. And yeah, couple that with the moral virtue "initiating force is GOOD" and there will be no way to say what is right or wrong. In a nutshell - you guys always talk about initiation of force, achieving utopia by guns, rather then basic knowledge about economics, so we must fight you like insane Al Queda terrorists.
Hall Johnes You make my argument for me. The freedom of religion negates the tyranny of religion - i.e. Al Qaeda. Liberal Americans supporting the savages of Saudi Arabia to undermine secular communism in Afghanistan. There is no freedom from religion without communism. You and I were lucky enough to live in the Socialist and post Socialist eras. Now the tyranny of property is reverting back to its pre-socialist ways. The crazies are returning - and Liberals are useless to deal with them. In fact the Liberals are crazy themselves protecting the freedom of the crazies. Between them they will drag the world into hell. Only communism can deal with fascists, imperialists, warmongers and ultra religious reactionaries. You don't know what real capital looks like - but soon you'll see. You are exposing me to chance. So Fuck you, I don't want to worry about Al Qaeda poisoning me with Anthrax, I don't wanna worry about a migrant giving me Ebola, I don't want to worry about Putin being another Hitler. Don't wanna worry about endless economic recessions. Fuck your tyranny of freedom - give me sane, sensible GDR. Give me the quiet certainty of Czechoslovakia. Give me the proletarian solidity of Brezhnev. Only the socialism can save the world.
I’ve always had a problem with markets just based on the fact that it’s complete bollocks that the ‘best service or product’ rarely actually performs the best in the market. Advertising and corporate propaganda essentially ensures the consumers are ignorant of the actual quality of the product
I'm thinking about it, and it's just an ugly world, not sure why anyone would want to participate in a society where everything is privately owned. I mean, it's a world based on competition, that's just an awful kind of society. I want to work with people in peace and harmony -- people ought to control their own workplaces, not work under some hierarchical platform.
Chomsky is not opposed to technology, as long as it is controlled democratically and used to liberate people. He advocates a system very similar to participatory economics.
Has anyone ever seen the movie "Multiplicity" staring Micheal Keaton? I have a conspiracy theory. There's more than one Noam Chomsky. One Chomsky dedicated to linguistics, one Chomsky for philosophy, one for political affairs and one more to answer everyone's e-mails. They all present themselves as one person. There's no other explanation.
mr1001nights I find the egalitarian potential and spontaneous order of freed markets more promising. Parecon sounds useful for things like governing the commons, but I'd rather this just supplement the freed market
Actually markets are " forced down" to everyone's throats...and we can see it in our economic caste system. Because as a student in economics poverty is a economic class, so it is vital to make comparisons within our society.
Read Alexander Hamilton. His plan for industrial growth - which was applied and succeeded in industializing the U.S. - was a sharp rejection of Adam Smith and Jeffersonian market principles. Jefferson wanted the US to import industrial goods from the UK. Hamilton wanted to protect and subsidize infant national industries. Almost all rich nation-states industrialized in that way.
I think these ideas are really derived from classic liberalism. And I am not talking about "free market" Capitalism. I always refer to what was identified with liberty and equality (in this light Capitalism seems to be the opposite of liberalism). Totalitarianism seems to occur whenever you have an exact idea on how a society should be, even if it was supposed to be liberty and equality, and this has in effect always defeated its own goal. I think most people would prefer liberty and equality.
it's pretty ironic to hear Noam Chomsky talk about markets being "shoved down peoples throat" when markets are simply the voluntary exchange of goods and services. The opposite of a market is shoving something down someones throat. The state is shoved down peoples throat the world over, if you don't want to pay your taxes some one will lead you - at gunpoint - to a nice jail cell. God forbid people have to provide something of value to someone they want something of value from.
+TheProgressiveParent Well he made the joke about how a market system might be a good idea, implying that it actually hasn't existed yet, but is nonetheless given that name to hide the truth. Perhaps a little too nuanced.
*Here's one: Uber. Look it up.* You mean a company that profits entirely by exploiting its work force by bypassing local labour laws and regulations? Yes, you could probably profit greatly in this world if you ignored the law, which is why corporations do most of their dirty work overseas. They basically cheated and local municipalities have unbelievably chosen to kowtow to them even though Uber doesn't pay taxes and doesn't respect the law. Adam Smith would have considered Uber a despicable entity. Meanwhile if you like telecommunications, and these days who doesn't, you definitely owe a lot to the state who basically invented the entire thing. Without that you have no Uber.
Read Bob Murphy. PDA means private defence agency. It's a concept closely linked with libertarian state theory. The whole idea of a PDA is to answer the question "If you eliminate the violent entity the state how will the economy handle defence?" and the answer is that defence would be an externality absorbed by those most able to pay. It wouldn't mean corporations using private armies to break the law. That is a condition similar to what we have NOW under statism.
when asked about market society and capitalism he says its only existed where its been "rammed down their throats". So it sounds to me like his definition of market society and/or capitalism is pretty removed from market anarchists/an-cap theorists, who would define a market society as one based on respect for private property rights, contracts, and voluntary association and trade. In other words he's pretty much spent his life arguing with a straw-man. I agree the society we live in today is corporatist to its core. It's borderline fascism. But these are anything but "free" markets, as the term capitalism was once intended to represent.
Didn't mean to report your comment there, I hit the wrong button. I agree it's human nature to act in one's self interest. screwing people over will always happen. an-caps ar saying the state facilitates this rather than protects against it. truly voluntary regulatory bodies at least make for competition in regulation(necessarily more justice and less arbitrary than a monopoly), and the freedom to choose outside those borders if you like. the belief that "totally free markets" will also be totally unregulated is not actually being pushed theoretically, nor does it correspond to real life markets.
+Patrick Szar Yes, I'm not really sure why they blame the states for this. They seem to be painting with a much larger brush. I would consider it the private corporations at fault and not the government. A "state" encompasses both of these areas. An economic system works when it meeds the NEEDS of all of the people. And a country cannot have a free market unless it has private property and other competing businesses so you are FREE to choose whom to buy from. Anarchists blame the state but eradicating imaginary lines that divide country to country doesn't really seem to help the problems they talk about. Lines are usually drawn to separate people of different culture/heritage and when those lines are drawn badly (Israel/Palestine) things get violent. Your thoughts?
+ConcludedFever9 Thoughts about what you said... Corporations exist as a mechanism of the State. It's a legal shield against prosecuting the individuals responsible for the actions of the business. Borders are arbitrary. If private property was truly protected borders would only exist in terms of "owned" property. All of it only exists because people believe in these terms, and believe groups can exist without breaking them down to the individuals include, which I find absurd. Justice being a human phenomenon can only exist in the minds of individuals. If that makes sense.
I guess it is absurd, but the same goes for paper money. It only has value because a huge majority of people think it does. People "trade" goods and services for paper money. But there is aways some reason in madness. If most people agree that money has value and agree to respect private property, then those things continue to exist.
Chomsky did not say that collections of private power do not exist; he said that there are no free markets. Very different. He is also absolutely aware of the outrageous health care costs in the U.S. and enormous role the government plays in the health care system--i.e., its shouldering a significant amount of the costs (one of causes of the U.S. continually running deficits is the inefficient health care system). It is still perfectly reasonable to call our system a "private system."
I didn't say they were anarchistic, although in some ways they were compared to other societies around at the time. Nor did I say they were ideal. I said they were non-corporatist market societies that disproved the claim that there have never been any non-corporatist market societies.
Just to quickly point out something important: Economics is a soft science. A social science. It isn't a hard science like physics. To write that "human action" is "not something which can be altered" forgets important sciences like psychology and anthropology. Human action can and has been changed on individual and societal levels. The question of whether a particular change is desirable is another matter.
In other words, when it comes to necessities markets will continue to exist but not for long. Under Anglo-Libertarianism the market will continue to function for necessities even though the means of production have developed to the point where the market can be disgarded. And those necessities are only available for those who can afford them. Under capitalism markets will eventually lead to monopoly like under the Gilded Age and post-Soviet Russia.
thats my point. noam flippantly credits the state for computers. not that it didn't play a role in advancement, but advancement would've occured eventually without DARPA and such
It is true that the New Deal didn't have a significant impact on unemployment, however it did increase the purchasing power of families. There were other benefits of the New Deal (the courthouse in my city was built during the New Deal projects. It still works great, and has the best architecture in the city!). However, what else was WWII but a monster-sized New Deal? Soldiers are government employees. The ammo, planes, tanks, etc. were all bought by the gvnmt.
Fair point, that was an overly simplistic way to put it. What I meant to say was Stalinism effectively created a new ruling class in the form of the party which was still quite hierarchical, and did not give people democratic control over their government/resources and thus did not achieve the goals of socialism. In trotskyist terminology it created a degenerated workers' state.
(Part 2 of 2) Chomsky has acknowledged this, and that's why he doesn't advocate mindless radical dismantling of the government. That's what seperates him from most right-wing libertarians. Chomsky more or less just advocates moving in a general direction in line with basic principles.
The US did not solely develop based on protected markets, high tariffs, state intervention in industry, etc, it also developed because of innovation, sheer luck, timing, resources, location, etc, there are many principles leading to entrepreneurial success. Perhaps US stayed dominant in the league of developing nations because it started resorting to counter-market principles, but, also possibly because it had very few external conflicts to tie it up.
(Part 1 of 2) I think that's a perfectly fair point. True free markets have never existed, as far as I gather, because there has just never been an environment with a market system with perfect competition and a complete lack of government intervention. Likewise, there's never been a proper libertian socialist or Marxist society. On very small levels there have been some modest attempts at the latter, but that's it.
corporatism and capitalism are not the same. And I ain't saying corporations can't exist without the state. What I'm saying is CORPORATISM can't exist without the state because it refers to a system in which government gives out special privileges to business pals or when they regulate an industry, with good intentions, such that it impedes competition and ends up backfiring by leading to more concentration of power and sometimes even monopoly.
Alright. I have been describing myself as an anarchist for 10 years. Radical depends on what you define as radical, of course, but I would not call the demands for individual liberty and equality radical. If this becomes compromised, I'd say it is radical. Thus both socialism and liberalism, and even anarchism, has come to mean something radical or even totalitarian. I think George Orwell was right when he saw totalitarianism develop everywhere - even amongst the anarcho-syndicalists.
Regardless, I think tactics is at the core of this argument--Marxism vs. anarchism, positive vs. negative liberty--are we better off fighting over the state, or smashing it? And "smashing" the state doesn't necessarily have to mean complete revolution or nothing--you can challenge state powers, laws, etc. in a more "reformist" way. Should we focus our efforts on limiting state protection for the wealthy? Or establishing social programs for the poor? The libertarian in me says "get rid of state
profit isn't bad if you're a consumer at all. Profit is a business's way of telling that it's doing a good job, as long as there isn't intervention in the market that conceals costs (like taxes and subsidies). As for interest rates, it doesn't matter necessarily what we like. We all would like more money...but simply printing it would cause inflation. As for public vs. private, I'd be for private banks, but I don't believe in the government giving money to them or ANY company for that matter
Yes. Intervention in agriculture politically is a lobbying mess, but more fundamentally all it can do from the economic perspectve is raise food prices and lower productive output. I don't know what oil companies running rampant means. Private property has an inbuilt conservationism. Under statism oil interests led too war. This point on labour and capital is ridiculous. Yes I'm in favour of as much capital as possible. That raises the value of labour and living conditions.
@MiloDC I googled "California Family Code 297.5" and as it turns out it doesn't give homosexual couples in civil partnerships the same rights as heterosexual couples. Although I don't really understand why homosexuals want their relationships to be validated by the government anyway.
Perhaps the most interesting point is the part about how other branches of industry often are the ones that get any talk in, when it comes to changing policy, like chomsky claims about manufacturing. or how the Nuclear lobby is the one who might get a word in when it comes to green energy. am i wrong? i surely might be.
@mortalisk "Those beliefs might be wrong, but if that is to be the judge then no one would recognize any one as anarchist." This is really the height of relativism.
@ostralopithicus He notes that the only countries with actual free markets are third-world disasters, and that the richest countries employ Keynesian intervention. The state, presumably. Surely there are tweaks to be made to the political system if we are to properly intervene to stop ecological destruction, union busting, consumer abuse and other threats to agents weaker than the corporation itself, but at least the state can be guided by the people themselves.
The book Medieval Iceland describes how "Dependent on these landowners [chieftains & farmers] were cotters, landless free laborers, and slaves." "seats in the law-making body were quite literally for sale" but powerless "unless he could convince some free-farmers [i.e.rich demanding landowners] to follow him." In this unequal society with "no public property" the "criminal" poor could either "pay his fine or submit to slavery" or "become outlawed" or "sell their right to justice"(Mieses Inst.)
What I'm unfamiliar with is the socialist spirit. I'm not a coward. I don't mask my fear around envy, collectivism, intolerance and malicious ignorance. I'm fine with economic diversity and happy when people are free to move capital around to service peoples needs and values.
I wrote an article called "George Orwell and Technocracy " on technocracy(dot)ca on ideology, politricks, science, semantics, Newspeak, totalitarianism and the goal "freedom and liberty".
@SlaktadOchStolt Actually Professor Chomsky describes himself as a Libertarian Socialist and believes in Single Payer Health Insurance. He's not an anarchist.
It was an Anarcho Syndicalist society with a functioning market. You can have a market in a communist society. It doesn't turn it into a market society.
This is a recurring point that everyone seems to misunderstand. Human beings act and have their own values. But action and value themselves are ontologies. We don't create or control those things any more than we can imagine new colours. Elements of the universe open to study. Economics is the study of action. Not motivation (psychology). Not ethics. The science of human action has discovered that rational allocation of resources under socialism is impossible. Because prices are subjective.
@DonVoghano The kibbutz in Israel went into decline, just as the one I lived at for three years had over it's 30 year history. This is the process of the community slowing losing it's faith as it's denizens wake up to the fact that they've merely created a prison for themselves and their children. Then they flee. I'm aware Chomsky 'visited' kibbutzim, but point in fact he did not move there, and has frequently stated that America is the most free nation to live in.
@mortalisk I think voluntarist is a perfectly reasonable label for this kind of politics. After all, it is a conception of voluntarism which was used to sneak free markets and private property into anarchism in the first place.
It is correct that monopolies are maintained through state intervention but what you Anglo-Libertarians don't understand is that the winning social class (in this case the capitalist class) will use its power to CREATE a state in its own interests. Look at the guilded age. Their capitalist became corrupt as it took more control over the state until its rule became increasingly legalized. The gov. got involved in subsidizing food production because in the free market the landowners produced...
@FiremanHurley Yes, but it's more pragmatic to seek market interventionism against the infinite danger of corporate tyranny because we can get welfare measures, democratization, market intervention, heavy punishments for economic crimes, and things of that nature through legislative hoops to make it political reality much easier than we could get measures to, say, outlaw corporate charters or abolish markets. Baby steps aren't desirable, but they're practical.
This is a fair description of what I call the "american version" of economics. The salient point of it is calculus. When you set up your equations you somehow "forget" to include politics (a main ingredient of chinese economics) and/or history (wars, occupations colonial or otherwise) which is a main ingredient in the economy of other nations.
@ostralopithicus Fascism is a surprisingly fluid system. It entails anything from mere corporate subsidies to racial extermination and central planning of the economy, depending on whom you ask, and the truth is, even Mussolini's definition of Fascism was very, very fluid. It has many, many facets to it. What we have in the US today resembles the Italian economic system in the later stages of Fascist Italy, though, certainly.
One day I hope there will be a beautiful communion between market and left anarchists. I'm a market anarchist, but I see the difference between us lying in our premises. If we could only give each other one big hug, maybe those differences will one day disappear. After all, there is room for overlap. Market anarchism and left anarchism are not exclusive after all, so long as the lefties can agree on a proper definition of "force," that doesn't include wage-labor.
1st of all, profit aint bad. secondly, banks don't have limitless credit to lend, so forcing down interest rates just means they just run out of credit faster. The other way is if the Fed increases the money supply, thus increasing bank reserves and allowing banks to lower their interest rates(if it's unexpected....if it's expected, then interest rates go up).
I've lived in one of these 'self-managed' workplaces, a kibbutz-style commune in southern missouri. They're a disaster. alcoholism is rampant and they support only the basest of human desires. If that's what Chomsky thinks is going to replace money and free trade, he needs to come down out of his ivory tower at MIT and live on one of these communes to see what a life of zero ambition is like.
first of all, not having someone punishing you or having authority over you doesnt mean you have zero ambitions. thats just pure nonsense. second, it depends a lot on the environment and the whole picture.
individual who sees capitalism as extremely coercive, monopolistic, exploitative, etc. I think this is essentially what Chomsky is arguing--"the rich use the state, so we must too, for now anyway." But how is this ultimately any more effective than ending state protection of the elite? It seems like, if your ultimate goal is a stateless society, that bringing the elite down to our level of state protection, rather than trying to win the battle over the state and increase the working peoples'
As for the American west "While the profit motive dominated the movement westward, the Federal government played a vital role in securing land and maintaining law and order, which allowed the expansion to proceed. Despite the Jeffersonian aversion and mistrust of federal power, it bore more heavily in the West than any other region, and made possible the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny...[Also], conquering and managing the West...[involved] Indian resistance, sectionalism, and racism " (wiki)
Not at all. What I'm saying is that the market is intrisically free and supportive of all demand, whether that be on the black market or otherwise, despite state intervention. I understand that a truly free market would be one devoid of tariffs, taxes and other obstacles, but what I'm saying is that the sectors of the market that are made illegal exist in spite of their having been made illegal, and thus are still free in spite of attempted government intervention.
Jefferson, though quite revolutionary for his time, I would only consider to be a classic liberal. He was indeed influenced by enlightenment ideals, and actually opposed to wage labor. Jefferson thought that only the agrarian farmer embodied the independence citizens needed to maintain a republic and, as such, opposed industrialization of the United States. However, libertarianism as we know it did not exist during his time.
@nocturnezero "Competition is Sin" - John D. Rockefeller "Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism, as it is the perfect merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini. What we have around the globe today is fascism, just as Mussolini described. This began long ago with the mercantilists (of which Lincoln was one) They began using government to make themselves and their friends rich. Lincoln assisted the railroads and cemented central government authority.
So the question then becomes not so much "how do we end Capitalism" but how do we steer the Hybrid system so that it benefits the many instead of the few. In the short term that could easily include private, state and cooperative businesses, with reforms that would encourage coops and worker-run business and penalize private accumulation of wealth (through progressive taxation and other tools to redistribute income and keep the economy fluid).
As a mental exercise try to apply the tools of your particular economics "science" to cases as diverse as the economic reality of Nicaragua, China, Germany, and US military/defence block. Very quickly you'll find out that your "tools" are sometimes redundant and other times deficient to describe the reality that you encounter.
"Homage to Catalonia" is a saga about Orwell being an useful idiot. If you want to know about the anarchist mass terror and dictatorship during the Spanish Civil War, and short on time, read the essay "The Anarcho-Statists of Spain" by my good friend Bryan Caplan.
what can the next step be? how can we take a new and longer step? We can make more stuff then we need, we need to make less to get the market to work. How can we evolve from this? Almost all production is automatic today. Humans cant get a job, but we can make shit that we cant buy when we dont have money...
@ostralopithicus I don't think the fact that the state often ends up as a tool for private wealth is reason enough to dismantle it, though, not right away. The private wealth is still there, with all the power that wealth and business ownership entail, and I see corporate tyranny as a more pressing danger, in its current incarnation, than state tyranny. Rather than dismantling the state, we should reform the state to allow the people to reduce private influence and power.
I always wondered what Chomsky thought of market Anarchism which is not capitalistic, ie mutualism. Theoretically he is fine with it, but not arguing for it.
libertarian socialist communities that had developed in Spain were viciously crushed by fascist, communist, and even neoliberal powers of the West before they could barely ever even stand a chance. The problem with libertarian socialism is a question of pragmatism; they're extremely threatening to the powers that be and highly vulnerable due to lack of a unified defense controlled by a state authority.
The division of labour (capitalism) is how we accumulate capital. That was Mises' utilitarian endorsement of the market. Syndicalism would produce nothing but poverty.
In an article left market anarchist Sheldon Richman wrote: "These laissez-faire left-libertarians are not to be confused with other varieties of left-wing libertarians, such as Noam Chomsky or Hillel Steiner, who each in his own way objects to individualistic appropriation of unowned natural resources and the economic inequality that freed markets can produce." - theamericanconservative[dot]com/blog/libertarian-left/ Does anyone know of any resources that explain why Chomsky objects to this?
Markets are just a natural product of scarcity, so even under socialism we will have markets, until the goods produced transcend the need to distributed through markets. But this transcendence can only occur once society is controlled by the working class because capitalism acts as a barrier to productivity. For example, the US burns tons of food a year in order to keep up prices. Under socialism food would not be burnt and would be cheap and plentiful.
Chomsky usually talks about elite vs the people: an oppressor/oppressed model in which any effort at balancing the distribution of power is constructive. I guess this usual dualism could look Marxist but it's just a natural template when observing history. However Chomsky's conclusion is utilitarian/reformist, not strictly revolutionary like Marx'. He's also way less deterministic than Marx.
I know Rome wasn't built in a day but its been a quarter of a century since Gorbachev brought in his first market reforms. And the Russian working class have stayed morbidly poor throughout. The same goes for working people in the rest of Eastern Europe. Relative to each countries' state of development - the working class have suffered since the end of communism - as you'd expect.
Yes. Poverty is horrible and we should develop capital to alleviate it as quickly as possible, and I certainly don't believe anyone should be poor. But from a position of economic science minimum wage laws are just price fixing. ALL they can do is cause unemployment. Period. We think of them like a safety net but they're actually a fishing net. Price fixing is always destructive but price fixing wages is cruel.
.. some miracle to occur it would disapear in short order because the capitalists would create their own state and institutions and become state-capitalists. Every economically dominant class created its own administrative system opposed to all challengers. Socialism means technology has advanced to the point that all necessities can be supplied and working people can finally SMASH the state and DEMOCRATICALLY controll their own work places and economies.
Usually when worker-owned businesses come to exist usally the boss wants to retire so he lets his people to run the business. There a lot of those in Argentina but that was due to a mini depression in 2001 due the capitalist left Argentina in number to Uruguay (switzerland of South America) so instead of become the USA & having rust belt they just created worker owned businesses.
When I first heard him say that markets don't exist I turned off. This is the first time I'm properly listening and he's SUCH an authoritarian. He's clearly not an anarchist. He doesn't know the first thing about economics.
@Jebusankel At first I had the same, but he definitely has ideas to replace them. I don't know how much you know of libertarian socialism so I'll start with the basics. Worker's self-management, Participatory Economics, Inclusive democracy, market abolitionism, abolition of money. Fairly simple really.
Look. In an an-archist world, without any form of state to intervene, business will work in a pure environment where success=efficiency, and the consumers and workers have the power.
@ostralopithicus Corporations are state-sanctioned entities. They can't even exist without a powerful governing body. I agree with that, but I don't see any reason that private oppression - tyranny by companies,maybe not corporations - in a less guided market. What about private security contractors protecting the interest of the wealthy, or undisclosed consumer harms that the company has no obligation to inform the consumer of, or worker safety violations that the worker is uninformed of?
The universe is composed of physics, biology and human action. Science is the study of all of it. Value is a human element of the universe. We have our own values but we don't create value itself any more than we imagine new colours. Value is not IN labour, it is subjective. There's no such thing as class economics. Race, sex, and background of the scientist doesn't discredit economic science. Praxeology is the method of studying economy and catalactics. We don't need states to enforce freedom.
I have read a great deal...and I've read essentailly all of Chomskys books about politics and gov. I appreciate your comment b/c Im genuinely interested in understanding these issues. I've read the original Adam Smith. I think that Chomskys got Adam smith dead wrong. Chomsky says "free markets" dont really exist except in the most backward places. and that the corporate structure is not a free market. He's wrong. Anarcho syndacalists still have to obey laws of supply and demand
therefore that simply undermining the state is not sufficient--that you cannot speak of ending the state until we are also on the verge of a socialist revolution, or apparently have brought about a pseudo-socialist system via government decree. That's an interesting tactical question to ponder, and I'm not sure whether I agree with him or not, but the prospect of state socialism worries me in some ways. Then again, so does ending the state in a capitalist society.
the US system developed through severe violations of market principles such as tariffs and protectionism: more's the pity. Had it not it may well have been far more prosperous and less fascistic - not to use the f word to lightly -- than it was today. Yes people use violence to achieve their aims. what a shame. we should stop them from doing so.
They go hand in hand...? The fascism was necessary to get people to dump all of our tax dollars into the pentagon and "defense" and imperial adventures. Also the fascism helps create a good "business climate" where the public settles into their role as tools of labor and consumption while corporations run the government and create new gadgets like the iPhone, Internet and computers so they can be given to private corporate power for free and then sold back to the public for huge sums of money while same said businesses keep the politicians elected...
You are not paying attention. I am not interested in hearing you reiterate the pro-business propaganda that is fed to you in order to keep you a serf to corporate interests. The point is that capitalism is reasoned from selfishness, frugality notwithstanding. In regards to your assertions about the merits of being wealthy. Rational self interest is not a full or adequate description of human behavior, and so the conclusions that you are asserting rest on a faulty premise and so false logic.
This is just... It's like talking to a cult member. Epistemologically, social science is something radically different than science, science deals with the same things, the same continuum, we just divide it into different academic fields; so for instance, as soon as something becomes too big for a physicist they give it to a chemist. We have used techniques from the sciences and applied them to examining society, but these methods have not yielded any laws yet, with quantitative methods we've
When Chomsky said that free market capitalism cannot satisfy our needs he was completely wrong. America had the best healthcare in the World when it had a open system which was free of government regulation. It is government regulation, licensing and restrictions which has caused the great increase in cost, thus putting it out of reach of the poor. I am more weary of government oppression than corporate oppression because government oppression is backed by force with guns and prisons.
Actually, libertarianism has historically been associated with leftist political ideals...it is essentially the radically democratic branch of the worker's movement. In that sense, anarchism represents libertarian socialism - a radically democratic (both politically and economically) anti-capitalist (though not necessarily anti-market) political philosophy.
I have more than a point. This is very basic catallactics. I do apply it universally. I don't believe in any form of price fixing. I don't believe in the state. I'm an anarcho-capitalist.
@noahnz I use the term a bit freely, but it can still stand, can't it? Instead of a counter-argument, imagine using a misrepresentation or oversimplification as your baseline, won't that still count as strawman? If you feel that my English is inadequate or the term not suitable for that use I apologize: English is not my mother tongue, and I don't live in an anglophone country.
I honestly cannot see how you don't think he is not. A few decades as an MIT professor drawing 6 figure salary, a few best selling books. Hmmm how terrible is capitalism! Anyway it's listed on celebritynetworth.
Catalonia and many Native American and African tribes, the Kibbutz etc existed on those ideas, and they worked. The problem is fascist, authoritarian powers have smashed them because we have not evolved enough yet to turn the tide. I suggest changing and not continuing this miserable path of murderous states.
@eboyd32 Chomsky side-steps the idea of markets. Real markets have never existed but that's no reason not to work towards them. Markets really do help efficiently distribute resources. You can't throw out the whole field of economics. Maybe the prevailing paradigms, but not the whole field.
Interesting that when Chomsky is asked what *he* thinks should happen, he talks about what the majority of the population wants. Very modest guy who doesn't want to impose his belief on others, he has a true belief in democracy.
He knows very well that correct policy and moral behavior are not discerned by popular acceptance but he doesn't want to answer the question truthfully. That is because he is a socialist statist and not an anarchist. I used to like him before I understood politics fully. He is a mealy-mouthed gatekeeper. A gatekeeper for the left. To contain them in obedience to the state.
Don't know where you get that from, he's always encouraging people to question and fight state power.
+Raul Simeon Socialism has nothing to do with government. Any basic socialism demand only one thin, that means of production controlled by people who work on it. Government has nothing to do with it. Even original 19 century socialists was looking on government only as mean to get power to transform society. Now, when socialists come to power be mean revolution in USSR, they did only thin they can, move means of production into hand of government. (remember, USSR at time had 5% literacy, 95% agrarian society). As result USSR become state capitalism as economic system and oligarchy feudalism as political system.
+Raul Simeon Later that become the only model for any future socialists coming to power by revolution or by elections. But no USSR no any other countries never pass state capitalism. It is simply wrong model us state not equal WORKERS. Contemporary socialists thinking does not include government at all. Contemporary socialists look for combination of workers cooperatives with individually owned enterprises as a economic model and with combination of free market and planed economy as a way of distribution. In contemporary socialists thinking even capitalist enterprises have it place so long as every one start equal (simplest method of achieving that is 100% inheritance tax on property over some amount). There really no space for discussion, but if you really was to understand socialism try to research this topics.
+Raul Simeon First off literally everyone does that and can't be bothered to be so careful in their use of words so as to say literally nothing because their afraid they might not be speaking for more then one person but themselves. However your point has a solid amount of credibility and across the board people should be more careful when drawing universal statements from particulars, but and a big but Chomsky sites numerous current statistics and historical scenarios to justify his assertions, not many other people can do that, and think about modern democracy in general and how it asserts that the representatives speak for the people, do they speak for all of them? FUCK NO, in fact the desire for consensus chokes Democracy out, both in the political sphere and the economic ( people want to be told what to do and not think so they accept a capitalist boss and manager because they think their incapable of managing anything collectively) ( also because their told they need to listen by big brother)
In short, your right but your right in a vacuum, in order to meet your rigorous and totalizing logic of democracy every human would have to be perfect, so like ease up on the guy k??
"What the Americans call Liberty is just exposure to chance"
Karl Marx
That is right, Liberians have this vague Idea of "liberty" that makes them sound like wacko Republicans.
Liberty in a nutshell - Private property values. Non initiation of force.
I bet non of you have read or understood the ravings of this guy in "Das Kapital" diss book. Its kinda like the bible: "It is true and it is somewhere in the book".
Too bad he didn`t make a POSITIVE "das social" book, kinda lacks the arguments I guess...
Hall Johnes communism in a nut-shell, abolish private property through the initiation of force (if necessary). The right to own property does not rid us of the tyranny of property, just as religious freedom does not rid us of the tyranny of religion. However, the tyranny of the proletariat will lead one day to the emancipation of all mankind from the primitive fictions of feudalism.
"communism in a nut-shell, abolish private property through the initiation of force (if necessary). "
Well, how can you then say when it is necessary and when not, there is no way you can rationally operate in such crazy environment.
The right to own property does not rid us of the tyranny of property,
This is just word magic, I don`t think you know what those words even mean.
"just as religious freedom does not rid us of the tyranny of religion"
In fact, it DOES, there is no STATE ENFORCED religion (like communism) - everyone is free to practice / not practice one, and if he does wrong - there is the judicial system for him.
"However, the tyranny of the proletariat will lead one day to the emancipation of all mankind from the primitive fictions of feudalism."
I don`t see tyranny leading to any form of peaceful and sustainable future. Moreover, there would never be a tyranny "by the proletariat", but by those ending up controlling the proletariat - once they get the power, the hell begins, AGAIN.
The Collective quickly will shut down any "true communist believers" dissidents, because of the nature of mutually frightened, mutually reporting people in a big group. And yeah, couple that with the moral virtue "initiating force is GOOD" and there will be no way to say what is right or wrong.
In a nutshell - you guys always talk about initiation of force, achieving utopia by guns, rather then basic knowledge about economics, so we must fight you like insane Al Queda terrorists.
Hall Johnes You make my argument for me. The freedom of religion negates the tyranny of religion - i.e. Al Qaeda.
Liberal Americans supporting the savages of Saudi Arabia to undermine secular communism in Afghanistan. There is no freedom from religion without communism. You and I were lucky enough to live in the Socialist and post Socialist eras.
Now the tyranny of property is reverting back to its pre-socialist ways. The crazies are returning - and Liberals are useless to deal with them. In fact the Liberals are crazy themselves protecting the freedom of the crazies. Between them they will drag the world into hell.
Only communism can deal with fascists, imperialists, warmongers and ultra religious reactionaries. You don't know what real capital looks like - but soon you'll see.
You are exposing me to chance. So Fuck you, I don't want to worry about Al Qaeda poisoning me with Anthrax, I don't wanna worry about a migrant giving me Ebola, I don't want to worry about Putin being another Hitler. Don't wanna worry about endless economic recessions. Fuck your tyranny of freedom - give me sane, sensible GDR. Give me the quiet certainty of Czechoslovakia. Give me the proletarian solidity of Brezhnev. Only the socialism can save the world.
I’ve always had a problem with markets just based on the fact that it’s complete bollocks that the ‘best service or product’ rarely actually performs the best in the market. Advertising and corporate propaganda essentially ensures the consumers are ignorant of the actual quality of the product
I'm thinking about it, and it's just an ugly world, not sure why anyone would want to participate in a society where everything is privately owned.
I mean, it's a world based on competition, that's just an awful kind of society.
I want to work with people in peace and harmony -- people ought to control their own workplaces, not work under some hierarchical platform.
Emi, you are a truly evolved human being. Your statement is beautiful and gave me hope that I am not alone.
Chomsky is one of the few great thinkers still alive today who makes perfect logical sense.
To socialists, yeah.
Chomsky is not opposed to technology, as long as it is controlled democratically and used to liberate people. He advocates a system very similar to participatory economics.
He's a bad guy. Don't listen to him.
Has anyone ever seen the movie "Multiplicity" staring Micheal Keaton? I have a conspiracy theory. There's more than one Noam Chomsky. One Chomsky dedicated to linguistics, one Chomsky for philosophy, one for political affairs and one more to answer everyone's e-mails. They all present themselves as one person. There's no other explanation.
anythgofnthg Is that a good movie?
@@heyhey89674 yes
Any and all institutions of power can become tyrannical and definitely should never gone unchecked.
Is syndicalism not a market society? It's free associations of workers and individuals working, producing and trading?
Wilde And Free No, to look at the specifics of why, look up PARECON and why it is incompatible with a market framework.
mr1001nights I find the egalitarian potential and spontaneous order of freed markets more promising. Parecon sounds useful for things like governing the commons, but I'd rather this just supplement the freed market
you gotta deal with externalities en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics#Critique_of_markets
@@mr1001nights but you are fundamentally wrong syndicalism is a market based ideology.
Sugar Shane What do you mean
Is funny how we pick on the U.S but not countries that are better than the U.S. like Norway Denmark etc
Actually markets are " forced down" to everyone's throats...and we can see it in our economic caste system. Because as a student in economics poverty is a economic class, so it is vital to make comparisons within our society.
Keep on studying...
Read Alexander Hamilton. His plan for industrial growth - which was applied and succeeded in industializing the U.S. - was a sharp rejection of Adam Smith and Jeffersonian market principles. Jefferson wanted the US to import industrial goods from the UK. Hamilton wanted to protect and subsidize infant national industries. Almost all rich nation-states industrialized in that way.
hong kong?
I think these ideas are really derived from classic liberalism. And I am not talking about "free market" Capitalism. I always refer to what was identified with liberty and equality (in this light Capitalism seems to be the opposite of liberalism). Totalitarianism seems to occur whenever you have an exact idea on how a society should be, even if it was supposed to be liberty and equality, and this has in effect always defeated its own goal.
I think most people would prefer liberty and equality.
it's pretty ironic to hear Noam Chomsky talk about markets being "shoved down peoples throat" when markets are simply the voluntary exchange of goods and services. The opposite of a market is shoving something down someones throat. The state is shoved down peoples throat the world over, if you don't want to pay your taxes some one will lead you - at gunpoint - to a nice jail cell. God forbid people have to provide something of value to someone they want something of value from.
+TheProgressiveParent Well he made the joke about how a market system might be a good idea, implying that it actually hasn't existed yet, but is nonetheless given that name to hide the truth. Perhaps a little too nuanced.
"Any economic success has been in spite of government, not because of it."
you are right
***** You have no examples, though.
***** Economic success of the US, not an individual company. Nice rewording and strawman attempt though.
*Here's one: Uber. Look it up.*
You mean a company that profits entirely by exploiting its work force by bypassing local labour laws and regulations? Yes, you could probably profit greatly in this world if you ignored the law, which is why corporations do most of their dirty work overseas. They basically cheated and local municipalities have unbelievably chosen to kowtow to them even though Uber doesn't pay taxes and doesn't respect the law. Adam Smith would have considered Uber a despicable entity.
Meanwhile if you like telecommunications, and these days who doesn't, you definitely owe a lot to the state who basically invented the entire thing. Without that you have no Uber.
Read Bob Murphy. PDA means private defence agency. It's a concept closely linked with libertarian state theory. The whole idea of a PDA is to answer the question "If you eliminate the violent entity the state how will the economy handle defence?" and the answer is that defence would be an externality absorbed by those most able to pay. It wouldn't mean corporations using private armies to break the law. That is a condition similar to what we have NOW under statism.
when asked about market society and capitalism he says its only existed where its been "rammed down their throats". So it sounds to me like his definition of market society and/or capitalism is pretty removed from market anarchists/an-cap theorists, who would define a market society as one based on respect for private property rights, contracts, and voluntary association and trade. In other words he's pretty much spent his life arguing with a straw-man.
I agree the society we live in today is corporatist to its core. It's borderline fascism. But these are anything but "free" markets, as the term capitalism was once intended to represent.
Didn't mean to report your comment there, I hit the wrong button.
I agree it's human nature to act in one's self interest. screwing people over will always happen. an-caps ar saying the state facilitates this rather than protects against it. truly voluntary regulatory bodies at least make for competition in regulation(necessarily more justice and less arbitrary than a monopoly), and the freedom to choose outside those borders if you like.
the belief that "totally free markets" will also be totally unregulated is not actually being pushed theoretically, nor does it correspond to real life markets.
+Patrick Szar Yes, I'm not really sure why they blame the states for this. They seem to be painting with a much larger brush. I would consider it the private corporations at fault and not the government. A "state" encompasses both of these areas. An economic system works when it meeds the NEEDS of all of the people. And a country cannot have a free market unless it has private property and other competing businesses so you are FREE to choose whom to buy from.
Anarchists blame the state but eradicating imaginary lines that divide country to country doesn't really seem to help the problems they talk about. Lines are usually drawn to separate people of different culture/heritage and when those lines are drawn badly (Israel/Palestine) things get violent.
Your thoughts?
+ConcludedFever9 Thoughts about what you said...
Corporations exist as a mechanism of the State. It's a legal shield against prosecuting the individuals responsible for the actions of the business. Borders are arbitrary. If private property was truly protected borders would only exist in terms of "owned" property. All of it only exists because people believe in these terms, and believe groups can exist without breaking them down to the individuals include, which I find absurd. Justice being a human phenomenon can only exist in the minds of individuals. If that makes sense.
I guess it is absurd, but the same goes for paper money. It only has value because a huge majority of people think it does. People "trade" goods and services for paper money. But there is aways some reason in madness. If most people agree that money has value and agree to respect private property, then those things continue to exist.
I would like you to elaborate you statement on justice being a human phenomenon that can only exist in the minds of individuals
Chomsky did not say that collections of private power do not exist; he said that there are no free markets. Very different. He is also absolutely aware of the outrageous health care costs in the U.S. and enormous role the government plays in the health care system--i.e., its shouldering a significant amount of the costs (one of causes of the U.S. continually running deficits is the inefficient health care system). It is still perfectly reasonable to call our system a "private system."
I didn't say they were anarchistic, although in some ways they were compared to other societies around at the time. Nor did I say they were ideal.
I said they were non-corporatist market societies that disproved the claim that there have never been any non-corporatist market societies.
Just to quickly point out something important: Economics is a soft science. A social science. It isn't a hard science like physics. To write that "human action" is "not something which can be altered" forgets important sciences like psychology and anthropology. Human action can and has been changed on individual and societal levels. The question of whether a particular change is desirable is another matter.
The radical protectionism that he speaks of is exactly what China is doing in large part with the currency. Pretty smart stuff.
In other words, when it comes to necessities markets will continue to exist but not for long. Under Anglo-Libertarianism the market will continue to function for necessities even though the means of production have developed to the point where the market can be disgarded. And those necessities are only available for those who can afford them. Under capitalism markets will eventually lead to monopoly like under the Gilded Age and post-Soviet Russia.
thats my point. noam flippantly credits the state for computers. not that it didn't play a role in advancement, but advancement would've occured eventually without DARPA and such
It is true that the New Deal didn't have a significant impact on unemployment, however it did increase the purchasing power of families. There were other benefits of the New Deal (the courthouse in my city was built during the New Deal projects. It still works great, and has the best architecture in the city!). However, what else was WWII but a monster-sized New Deal? Soldiers are government employees. The ammo, planes, tanks, etc. were all bought by the gvnmt.
Fair point, that was an overly simplistic way to put it. What I meant to say was Stalinism effectively created a new ruling class in the form of the party which was still quite hierarchical, and did not give people democratic control over their government/resources and thus did not achieve the goals of socialism. In trotskyist terminology it created a degenerated workers' state.
yes, that's what i said. but that is not to say that it could only be done by the state, which noam implies
(Part 2 of 2) Chomsky has acknowledged this, and that's why he doesn't advocate mindless radical dismantling of the government. That's what seperates him from most right-wing libertarians. Chomsky more or less just advocates moving in a general direction in line with basic principles.
The US did not solely develop based on protected markets, high tariffs, state intervention in industry, etc, it also developed because of innovation, sheer luck, timing, resources, location, etc, there are many principles leading to entrepreneurial success. Perhaps US stayed dominant in the league of developing nations because it started resorting to counter-market principles, but, also possibly because it had very few external conflicts to tie it up.
It was also the beneficiary of internal conflicts of colonial domination and hundreds of years of capital built up on free slave labor.
sure, he just pointed out these particular factors as it was the topic. slavery etc also played a role. many factors.
(Part 1 of 2) I think that's a perfectly fair point. True free markets have never existed, as far as I gather, because there has just never been an environment with a market system with perfect competition and a complete lack of government intervention. Likewise, there's never been a proper libertian socialist or Marxist society. On very small levels there have been some modest attempts at the latter, but that's it.
To be fair though, unemployment was still incredibly high, even after the New Deal. There were other benefits that made the ND worth it, however.
corporatism and capitalism are not the same. And I ain't saying corporations can't exist without the state. What I'm saying is CORPORATISM can't exist without the state because it refers to a system in which government gives out special privileges to business pals or when they regulate an industry, with good intentions, such that it impedes competition and ends up backfiring by leading to more concentration of power and sometimes even monopoly.
Alright. I have been describing myself as an anarchist for 10 years. Radical depends on what you define as radical, of course, but I would not call the demands for individual liberty and equality radical. If this becomes compromised, I'd say it is radical. Thus both socialism and liberalism, and even anarchism, has come to mean something radical or even totalitarian. I think George Orwell was right when he saw totalitarianism develop everywhere - even amongst the anarcho-syndicalists.
Regardless, I think tactics is at the core of this argument--Marxism vs. anarchism, positive vs. negative liberty--are we better off fighting over the state, or smashing it? And "smashing" the state doesn't necessarily have to mean complete revolution or nothing--you can challenge state powers, laws, etc. in a more "reformist" way. Should we focus our efforts on limiting state protection for the wealthy? Or establishing social programs for the poor? The libertarian in me says "get rid of state
profit isn't bad if you're a consumer at all. Profit is a business's way of telling that it's doing a good job, as long as there isn't intervention in the market that conceals costs (like taxes and subsidies).
As for interest rates, it doesn't matter necessarily what we like. We all would like more money...but simply printing it would cause inflation.
As for public vs. private, I'd be for private banks, but I don't believe in the government giving money to them or ANY company for that matter
Yes. Intervention in agriculture politically is a lobbying mess, but more fundamentally all it can do from the economic perspectve is raise food prices and lower productive output.
I don't know what oil companies running rampant means. Private property has an inbuilt conservationism. Under statism oil interests led too war.
This point on labour and capital is ridiculous. Yes I'm in favour of as much capital as possible. That raises the value of labour and living conditions.
@MiloDC I googled "California Family Code 297.5" and as it turns out it doesn't give homosexual couples in civil partnerships the same rights as heterosexual couples. Although I don't really understand why homosexuals want their relationships to be validated by the government anyway.
Perhaps the most interesting point is the part about how other branches of industry often are the ones that get any talk in, when it comes to changing policy, like chomsky claims about manufacturing. or how the Nuclear lobby is the one who might get a word in when it comes to green energy. am i wrong? i surely might be.
@mortalisk "Those beliefs might be wrong, but if that is to be the judge then no one would recognize any one as anarchist."
This is really the height of relativism.
@ostralopithicus He notes that the only countries with actual free markets are third-world disasters, and that the richest countries employ Keynesian intervention.
The state, presumably. Surely there are tweaks to be made to the political system if we are to properly intervene to stop ecological destruction, union busting, consumer abuse and other threats to agents weaker than the corporation itself, but at least the state can be guided by the people themselves.
The book Medieval Iceland describes how "Dependent on these landowners [chieftains & farmers] were cotters, landless free laborers, and slaves." "seats in the law-making body were quite literally for sale" but powerless "unless he could convince some free-farmers [i.e.rich demanding landowners] to follow him." In this unequal society with "no public property" the "criminal" poor could either "pay his fine or submit to slavery" or "become outlawed" or "sell their right to justice"(Mieses Inst.)
FDR was anything but a free-marketer. He was a proud corporatist.
What I'm unfamiliar with is the socialist spirit. I'm not a coward. I don't mask my fear around envy, collectivism, intolerance and malicious ignorance. I'm fine with economic diversity and happy when people are free to move capital around to service peoples needs and values.
I wrote an article called "George Orwell and Technocracy " on technocracy(dot)ca on ideology, politricks, science, semantics, Newspeak, totalitarianism and the goal "freedom and liberty".
@SlaktadOchStolt
Actually Professor Chomsky describes himself as a Libertarian Socialist and believes in Single Payer Health Insurance. He's not an anarchist.
It was an Anarcho Syndicalist society with a functioning market.
You can have a market in a communist society. It doesn't turn it into a market society.
This is a recurring point that everyone seems to misunderstand. Human beings act and have their own values. But action and value themselves are ontologies. We don't create or control those things any more than we can imagine new colours. Elements of the universe open to study. Economics is the study of action. Not motivation (psychology). Not ethics. The science of human action has discovered that rational allocation of resources under socialism is impossible. Because prices are subjective.
@DonVoghano The kibbutz in Israel went into decline, just as the one I lived at for three years had over it's 30 year history. This is the process of the community slowing losing it's faith as it's denizens wake up to the fact that they've merely created a prison for themselves and their children. Then they flee. I'm aware Chomsky 'visited' kibbutzim, but point in fact he did not move there, and has frequently stated that America is the most free nation to live in.
They definitely aren't counted as unemployed. Soldiers get paid salaries, as meager as they may be.
It is private because it is owned privately and because costs are privatized.
Chomsky was quite a looker in his day - in Clark Kent nerdy fashion that is.
@mortalisk I think voluntarist is a perfectly reasonable label for this kind of politics. After all, it is a conception of voluntarism which was used to sneak free markets and private property into anarchism in the first place.
It is correct that monopolies are maintained through state intervention but what you Anglo-Libertarians don't understand is that the winning social class (in this case the capitalist class) will use its power to CREATE a state in its own interests. Look at the guilded age. Their capitalist became corrupt as it took more control over the state until its rule became increasingly legalized. The gov. got involved in subsidizing food production because in the free market the landowners produced...
To say that the methods we use in economics can tell you anything relevant about 'human action' is simply not serious.
@FiremanHurley Yes, but it's more pragmatic to seek market interventionism against the infinite danger of corporate tyranny because we can get welfare measures, democratization, market intervention, heavy punishments for economic crimes, and things of that nature through legislative hoops to make it political reality much easier than we could get measures to, say, outlaw corporate charters or abolish markets. Baby steps aren't desirable, but they're practical.
This is a fair description of what I call the "american version" of economics. The salient point of it is calculus. When you set up your equations you somehow "forget" to include politics (a main ingredient of chinese economics) and/or history (wars, occupations colonial or otherwise) which is a main ingredient in the economy of other nations.
@ostralopithicus Fascism is a surprisingly fluid system. It entails anything from mere corporate subsidies to racial extermination and central planning of the economy, depending on whom you ask, and the truth is, even Mussolini's definition of Fascism was very, very fluid. It has many, many facets to it. What we have in the US today resembles the Italian economic system in the later stages of Fascist Italy, though, certainly.
One day I hope there will be a beautiful communion between market and left anarchists. I'm a market anarchist, but I see the difference between us lying in our premises. If we could only give each other one big hug, maybe those differences will one day disappear. After all, there is room for overlap. Market anarchism and left anarchism are not exclusive after all, so long as the lefties can agree on a proper definition of "force," that doesn't include wage-labor.
1st of all, profit aint bad. secondly, banks don't have limitless credit to lend, so forcing down interest rates just means they just run out of credit faster. The other way is if the Fed increases the money supply, thus increasing bank reserves and allowing banks to lower their interest rates(if it's unexpected....if it's expected, then interest rates go up).
I've lived in one of these 'self-managed' workplaces, a kibbutz-style commune in southern missouri. They're a disaster. alcoholism is rampant and they support only the basest of human desires. If that's what Chomsky thinks is going to replace money and free trade, he needs to come down out of his ivory tower at MIT and live on one of these communes to see what a life of zero ambition is like.
first of all, not having someone punishing you or having authority over you doesnt mean you have zero ambitions. thats just pure nonsense.
second, it depends a lot on the environment and the whole picture.
individual who sees capitalism as extremely coercive, monopolistic, exploitative, etc. I think this is essentially what Chomsky is arguing--"the rich use the state, so we must too, for now anyway." But how is this ultimately any more effective than ending state protection of the elite? It seems like, if your ultimate goal is a stateless society, that bringing the elite down to our level of state protection, rather than trying to win the battle over the state and increase the working peoples'
As for the American west "While the profit motive dominated the movement westward, the Federal government played a vital role in securing land and maintaining law and order, which allowed the expansion to proceed. Despite the Jeffersonian aversion and mistrust of federal power, it bore more heavily in the West than any other region, and made possible the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny...[Also], conquering and managing the West...[involved] Indian resistance, sectionalism, and racism " (wiki)
Not at all. What I'm saying is that the market is intrisically free and supportive of all demand, whether that be on the black market or otherwise, despite state intervention. I understand that a truly free market would be one devoid of tariffs, taxes and other obstacles, but what I'm saying is that the sectors of the market that are made illegal exist in spite of their having been made illegal, and thus are still free in spite of attempted government intervention.
Jefferson, though quite revolutionary for his time, I would only consider to be a classic liberal. He was indeed influenced by enlightenment ideals, and actually opposed to wage labor. Jefferson thought that only the agrarian farmer embodied the independence citizens needed to maintain a republic and, as such, opposed industrialization of the United States. However, libertarianism as we know it did not exist during his time.
@nocturnezero
"Competition is Sin" - John D. Rockefeller
"Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism, as it is the perfect merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini.
What we have around the globe today is fascism, just as Mussolini described. This began long ago with the mercantilists (of which Lincoln was one) They began using government to make themselves and their friends rich. Lincoln assisted the railroads and cemented central government authority.
So the question then becomes not so much "how do we end Capitalism" but how do we steer the Hybrid system so that it benefits the many instead of the few.
In the short term that could easily include private, state and cooperative businesses, with reforms that would encourage coops and worker-run business and penalize private accumulation of wealth (through progressive taxation and other tools to redistribute income and keep the economy fluid).
As a mental exercise try to apply the tools of your particular economics "science" to cases as diverse as the economic reality of Nicaragua,
China, Germany, and US military/defence block. Very quickly you'll find out that your "tools" are sometimes redundant and other times deficient to describe the reality that you encounter.
"Homage to Catalonia" is a saga about Orwell being an useful idiot. If you want to know about the anarchist mass terror and dictatorship during the Spanish Civil War, and short on time, read the essay "The Anarcho-Statists of Spain" by my good friend Bryan Caplan.
what can the next step be?
how can we take a new and longer step?
We can make more stuff then we need, we need to make less to get the market to work.
How can we evolve from this?
Almost all production is automatic today.
Humans cant get a job, but we can make shit that we cant buy when we dont have money...
@ostralopithicus I don't think the fact that the state often ends up as a tool for private wealth is reason enough to dismantle it, though, not right away. The private wealth is still there, with all the power that wealth and business ownership entail, and I see corporate tyranny as a more pressing danger, in its current incarnation, than state tyranny. Rather than dismantling the state, we should reform the state to allow the people to reduce private influence and power.
I always wondered what Chomsky thought of market Anarchism which is not capitalistic, ie mutualism. Theoretically he is fine with it, but not arguing for it.
libertarian socialist communities that had developed in Spain were viciously crushed by fascist, communist, and even neoliberal powers of the West before they could barely ever even stand a chance. The problem with libertarian socialism is a question of pragmatism; they're extremely threatening to the powers that be and highly vulnerable due to lack of a unified defense controlled by a state authority.
The division of labour (capitalism) is how we accumulate capital. That was Mises' utilitarian endorsement of the market. Syndicalism would produce nothing but poverty.
In an article left market anarchist Sheldon Richman wrote:
"These laissez-faire left-libertarians are not to be confused with other varieties of left-wing libertarians, such as Noam Chomsky or Hillel Steiner, who each in his own way objects to individualistic appropriation of unowned natural resources and the economic inequality that freed markets can produce." - theamericanconservative[dot]com/blog/libertarian-left/
Does anyone know of any resources that explain why Chomsky objects to this?
Markets are just a natural product of scarcity, so even under socialism we will have markets, until the goods produced transcend the need to distributed through markets. But this transcendence can only occur once society is controlled by the working class because capitalism acts as a barrier to productivity. For example, the US burns tons of food a year in order to keep up prices. Under socialism food would not be burnt and would be cheap and plentiful.
How do you know? Plenty of private firms developed computers parallel to the DOD.
Chomsky usually talks about elite vs the people: an oppressor/oppressed model in which any effort at balancing the distribution of power is constructive. I guess this usual dualism could look Marxist but it's just a natural template when observing history. However Chomsky's conclusion is utilitarian/reformist, not strictly revolutionary like Marx'. He's also way less deterministic than Marx.
I know Rome wasn't built in a day but its been a quarter of a century since Gorbachev brought in his first market reforms. And the Russian working class have stayed morbidly poor throughout. The same goes for working people in the rest of Eastern Europe. Relative to each countries' state of development - the working class have suffered since the end of communism - as you'd expect.
Yes. Poverty is horrible and we should develop capital to alleviate it as quickly as possible, and I certainly don't believe anyone should be poor. But from a position of economic science minimum wage laws are just price fixing. ALL they can do is cause unemployment. Period. We think of them like a safety net but they're actually a fishing net. Price fixing is always destructive but price fixing wages is cruel.
.. some miracle to occur it would disapear in short order because the capitalists would create their own state and institutions and become state-capitalists. Every economically dominant class created its own administrative system opposed to all challengers. Socialism means technology has advanced to the point that all necessities can be supplied and working people can finally SMASH the state and DEMOCRATICALLY controll their own work places and economies.
Usually when worker-owned businesses come to exist usally the boss wants to retire so he lets his people to run the business. There a lot of those in Argentina but that was due to a mini depression in 2001 due the capitalist left Argentina in number to Uruguay (switzerland of South America) so instead of become the USA & having rust belt they just created worker owned businesses.
When I first heard him say that markets don't exist I turned off. This is the first time I'm properly listening and he's SUCH an authoritarian. He's clearly not an anarchist. He doesn't know the first thing about economics.
@Jebusankel
At first I had the same, but he definitely has ideas to replace them. I don't know how much you know of libertarian socialism so I'll start with the basics. Worker's self-management, Participatory Economics, Inclusive democracy, market abolitionism, abolition of money. Fairly simple really.
@SlaktadOchStolt
He believes in Single Payer Health Insurance which would be run by the State, so he believes in a State at least in that sense.
Look.
In an an-archist world, without any form of state to intervene, business will work in a pure environment where success=efficiency, and the consumers and workers have the power.
@ostralopithicus Corporations are state-sanctioned entities. They can't even exist without a powerful governing body. I agree with that, but I don't see any reason that private oppression - tyranny by companies,maybe not corporations - in a less guided market. What about private security contractors protecting the interest of the wealthy, or undisclosed consumer harms that the company has no obligation to inform the consumer of, or worker safety violations that the worker is uninformed of?
The universe is composed of physics, biology and human action. Science is the study of all of it. Value is a human element of the universe. We have our own values but we don't create value itself any more than we imagine new colours. Value is not IN labour, it is subjective. There's no such thing as class economics. Race, sex, and background of the scientist doesn't discredit economic science. Praxeology is the method of studying economy and catalactics. We don't need states to enforce freedom.
I have read a great deal...and I've read essentailly all of Chomskys books about politics and gov. I appreciate your comment b/c Im genuinely interested in understanding these issues. I've read the original Adam Smith. I think that Chomskys got Adam smith dead wrong. Chomsky says "free markets" dont really exist except in the most backward places. and that the corporate structure is not a free market. He's wrong. Anarcho syndacalists still have to obey laws of supply and demand
therefore that simply undermining the state is not sufficient--that you cannot speak of ending the state until we are also on the verge of a socialist revolution, or apparently have brought about a pseudo-socialist system via government decree. That's an interesting tactical question to ponder, and I'm not sure whether I agree with him or not, but the prospect of state socialism worries me in some ways. Then again, so does ending the state in a capitalist society.
the US system developed through severe violations of market principles such as tariffs and protectionism: more's the pity. Had it not it may well have been far more prosperous and less fascistic - not to use the f word to lightly -- than it was today.
Yes people use violence to achieve their aims. what a shame. we should stop them from doing so.
They go hand in hand...? The fascism was necessary to get people to dump all of our tax dollars into the pentagon and "defense" and imperial adventures. Also the fascism helps create a good "business climate" where the public settles into their role as tools of labor and consumption while corporations run the government and create new gadgets like the iPhone, Internet and computers so they can be given to private corporate power for free and then sold back to the public for huge sums of money while same said businesses keep the politicians elected...
You are not paying attention. I am not interested in hearing you reiterate the pro-business propaganda that is fed to you in order to keep you a serf to corporate interests.
The point is that capitalism is reasoned from selfishness, frugality notwithstanding.
In regards to your assertions about the merits of being wealthy. Rational self interest is not a full or adequate description of human behavior, and so the conclusions that you are asserting rest on a faulty premise and so false logic.
This is just... It's like talking to a cult member. Epistemologically, social science is something radically different than science, science deals with the same things, the same continuum, we just divide it into different academic fields; so for instance, as soon as something becomes too big for a physicist they give it to a chemist. We have used techniques from the sciences and applied them to examining society, but these methods have not yielded any laws yet, with quantitative methods we've
When Chomsky said that free market capitalism cannot satisfy our needs he was completely wrong. America had the best healthcare in the World when it had a open system which was free of government regulation. It is government regulation, licensing and restrictions which has caused the great increase in cost, thus putting it out of reach of the poor. I am more weary of government oppression than corporate oppression because government oppression is backed by force with guns and prisons.
Actually, libertarianism has historically been associated with leftist political ideals...it is essentially the radically democratic branch of the worker's movement. In that sense, anarchism represents libertarian socialism - a radically democratic (both politically and economically) anti-capitalist (though not necessarily anti-market) political philosophy.
I have more than a point. This is very basic catallactics. I do apply it universally. I don't believe in any form of price fixing. I don't believe in the state. I'm an anarcho-capitalist.
I am sorry. I tried to say that profits are privatized, not costs.
@VanDoodah This video does not advocate a society without markets. Pay closer attention, please.
@noahnz I use the term a bit freely, but it can still stand, can't it? Instead of a counter-argument, imagine using a misrepresentation or oversimplification as your baseline, won't that still count as strawman?
If you feel that my English is inadequate or the term not suitable for that use I apologize: English is not my mother tongue, and I don't live in an anglophone country.
I honestly cannot see how you don't think he is not. A few decades as an MIT professor drawing 6 figure salary, a few best selling books. Hmmm how terrible is capitalism! Anyway it's listed on celebritynetworth.
Catalonia and many Native American and African tribes, the Kibbutz etc existed on those ideas, and they worked. The problem is fascist, authoritarian powers have smashed them because we have not evolved enough yet to turn the tide. I suggest changing and not continuing this miserable path of murderous states.
@eboyd32 Chomsky side-steps the idea of markets. Real markets have never existed but that's no reason not to work towards them. Markets really do help efficiently distribute resources. You can't throw out the whole field of economics. Maybe the prevailing paradigms, but not the whole field.