25 Responses to Noam Chomsky on right wing Tea Party protests, ” People with real grievances”
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@KrugmanTheKing “As a result, guns became widely available. Factional fighting escalated into mini–civil wars across China . . . The regime began sliding into something close to anarchy . . . Mao quickly realized that his “storm troopers” notion would not work everywhere. So, while he continued to build up a force of them 1 million strong in Shanghai, where he had particularly strict control, elsewhere he had to rescind his decree to “arm the Left.”
It’s a double-edged sword.
@KrugmanTheKing Oops, I should clear up a simplistic statement.
“But this order to distribute arms to civilians opened up a can of worms . . . As a result, guns became widely available. Factional fighting escalated into mini–civil wars across China, involving practically all urban areas. The regime began sliding into something close to anarchy for the first time since taking power nearly two decades before.”
@KrugmanTheKing However, the strongest argument in favor of it, is that Hitler disarmed the population, and so did Mao. With the passage of the NDAA, which many people are talking about — Naomi Wolf even used the Nazis as a point of reference in her essay about it — so this scares the daylights out of the right.
Either way, if US government is a creature of capitalism, it’s increase in size will not check itself.
@KrugmanTheKing Wage slavery aside, production needs to happen, and until machines take over, humans will need to produce.
Republicans are actually anti-capitalistic to some extent, since some believe that protectionism is good, because of their patriotic spirit. Even they believe in government regulation, despite the rhetoric; one example is Mitt Romney.
Regarding the 2nd amendment, it again has to do with fear, and I could find case studies where it works.
@KrugmanTheKing In this sense, a child is not only neglected by the parents, but arguably by the public school system, which is faltering. Even Private education, at least the school which I went to, was subpar compared to those abroad, based on the foreigners I know.
Another interesting thing is that children can be molded through a reward system like that of behavioral psychology. But they’re not considered wage slaves because parents grant them more freedom.
@KrugmanTheKing Well, what I’ve read from Marx about the family is that the family inevitably disappears once Marxist communism has emerged; but when someone claims that the child is a slave to the parent (or the wife & child to the husband/father), he’s criticizing the bourgeois family, organized to deal with capitalistic society. However, notice that children wake up at 7 to 3; and because some parents work till late, the child stays at school even beyond 3.
@amamerc
Many liberals reject the second amendment because it’s inefficient in achieve its purpose, it’s not on the basis of freedom versus control and, as I might suspect, it is certainly not this kind of utilitarian concerns which struck people in the late 18th century.
I’d tend to say it’s historical, probably thinking about a civil militia or something like that. I don’t know exactly what were the debates, so I can’t speak.
@amamerc
The distinction Tocqueville makes is very similar to that Chomsky makes in saying that more liberal professions aren’t the same, even if you have an employer: it’s that you can control at least a part of what you do and make choices will working that you cannot be thought of as a slave. A professor can choose the way he designs his courses to a great degree, a journalist can get involved in this or that new… they have a degree of control over their production.
@amamerc
This form of industrial aristocracy is insidious, subtle and mild, but far more extended in reach than any other before.
The analogy they make with slavery could be articulated in saying that you rent yourself and bear little to no control over your existence 9 to 5, 5 times a weak and it’s certainly not because you have the right to choose your master that you are free.
I heard Chomsky mention that even the Republicans used to support this view under Lincoln.
@amamerc
Wage labor is renting yourself for a purpose you do not necessarily bear control over. If we take what were thought of as being liberal professions (lawyer, professor, scientists), they had a great deal of control over their professional lives: they were not merchandise themselves, even when they had employers.
However, as time goes by, it appears people are ever more subdued to their employers and, as Tocqueville noted, there is a major distinction between this tyranny and others.
@amamerc
The thing very few people know is that, in the first place, socialism was also concerned with an ever growing and centralized state. And those concerns about the government comes from the monarchic systems of Europe: read carefully how the US defined the rights of each institution and you’ll realize all they are doing is trying to avoid to leave too much power in the hands of too few people. Too much power in the hands of too few people is what threatens freedom the most.
@KrugmanTheKing Whether liberals do, as in in the mainstream sense, I think maybe, because many liberals reject the 2nd amendment, while I’m guessing liberals back then would’ve supported the 2nd amendment? This is just one example. But I’d have to read into it.
@KrugmanTheKing Do you mean how labor = slavery? I do know that in the 18th century the United States was very undeveloped, which means people would’ve faced tremendous hardship. Okay . . . but if you mean ideologically . . . do the classical liberals believe more strongly in liberty than liberals today? I think libertarians far more strongly believe in liberty than they did, if only because people today know more than they did b/c of more human history & experience.
@KrugmanTheKing I can’t say anything about Tocqueville, because I haven’t read him. If he means that menial labor is degrading, I guess it could be, but Alexander Solzhenitsyn said something during his Harvard speech (or another Ivy League U.) — that he rejects the Soviet system, but also the American, since he thinks we’re too lackadaisical, spoiled, frivolous, basically. So I don’t know. But working at McDonald’s all your life probably would degrade your potential.
@KrugmanTheKing For example, I’ve little idea what people really think about private property, since the mainline definition of Marxist communism is abolition of PP. When all is said and done, the right fears Marxism, mainly because they fear government, though it goes deeper than that.
Right-libertarianism — individualism, free market capitalism, limited gov. — is grounded in the Old Right, who, if I understand correctly, are far more radicalized than classical liberals.
@KrugmanTheKing My careless writing led me to seemingly red-bait those who are left-leaning, which was not my intention. All thinking is gradual, so it’s only expected that people misunderstand things, meaning that those people with whom I’ve spoken may change their minds later on. Maybe Chomsky prefers Engles, and so do I, based on what I’ve read by Engles. Maoists are opposed to “revisionism,” but obviously, revisionism is good, since if Maoism were perfect, it would’ve shined
@amamerc
Do you think it’s possible that there is such a substantial distortion in meaning that advocating freedom the way people do in the 21st century would have meant advocating slavery in the 18th and 19th century?
@amamerc
“When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work.”
“[...]so that it may be said of him that in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded.”
What do you think? To me, it sounds more like he’s judging wage labor as being against freedom, unlike what US Libertarians think.
@amamerc
I mean, I thought I was correcting to you, but all I was doing is explaining the framework I learnt with the same haste and conviction I reproach to everyone.
And what got my attention was how Tocqueville worded it himself (and he’s prominent figure of liberal thought): “[...] we shall now see by what side-road manufacturers may possibly, in their turn, bring men back to aristocracy.”
What he argued was for free associations to be instituted: a strong civic society, in other words.
@amamerc
And I now have some concerns about classical liberalism being compared to libertarianism, even if I did it myself often. I saw a section of Tocqueville’s work and hearing of Chomsky about the Republicans under Lincoln, as well as of the actual argument of Adam Smith, it appears disputable and I thought it wasn’t.
There is this concern for how equality as a legal right might become the basis for authoritarianism, but not in the way the right depicts it.
@amamerc
The word must have a meaning and I’d grant someone he’s right in calling himself Marxist (in the ideological sense) if he has a materialist explanation and that his justification revolves around saying people would be freer as communists. If you give up this detail, you basically give up Marx altogether since his entire analysis is about men and their relation to work and how it affects their existence in different systems. The rationale for change must be this if you are Marxist.
@amamerc
I’d certainly get to say Chomsky is pretty near being a Marxist, Hobsbawm (the famous historian) is self-defined and clearly a Marxist. However, a guy who just call himself Marxist because he disagrees with capitalism isn’t really a Marxist: you must agree that to even hold the comparison between your position and that of Marx, you must share at least a few details, even if it’s possible to disagree in some regards.
@KrugmanTheKing To reiterate one last point: Mao’s China is one example. Marxists at university hate capitalism to the point where they yell at you if you try to defend capitalism — in my experience. They don’t care if capitalism is necessary it seems; or they want it to fail, because they think it has gone on for long enough, even though they’re not economists, they’re not geniuses: some want capitalism to become more and more hampered, while others want it abolished now.
@amamerc Oops it’s not explicitly libertarianism: when you don’t make it crystal clear and unambiguous that your philosophy rejects violence, then you can expect violence.
Also, although capitalism is a necessary stage toward socialism, according to Marx, why is it that many countries try to eviscerate capitalism (e.g. China), instead of allowing capitalism to continue unassailed?
Probably because of desperation/thirst for power/misreading of Marx/etc.
@KrugmanTheKing 6) According to this — archive.org/stream/LongLiveLeninism/LLL#page/n5/mode/2up — Marxism-Leninism advocates violence.
Marxism-Leninism goes a step further from what I’ve read, saying violence is necessary.
7) Why did I say Marxism is militant? Well, not necessarily but it’s explicitly libertarianism; that is: non-aggression principle at its heart.
Since millions of people owns guns, one can only imagine what would happen during revolutionary class struggle.