news.com.au | PEOPLE should embrace the sort of anarchism typified by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Noam Chomsky says.
The American commentator, philosopher and activist was being interviewed in front of a packed theatre at the Sydney Opera House today when he was asked his thoughts on Prime Minister Julia Gillard's comments that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's motivations were "sort of anarchic".
Professor Chomsky said if anarchy meant questioning authority and demanding the truth, then everyone should be anarchic.
"In that sense I think everyone should be an anarchist," he said, in response to heavy applause from the audience.
Anarchism should not be viewed in a negative light, Prof Chomsky said.
"It's not the conception of anarchism as people running wild and breaking windows.
"In our age we have to overcome the barriers introduced by the ranks of capitalism and corporate capitalism and I think there is some sense in that, at the core of the anarchist tradition ... is to ask and raise questions about authority, hierarchy and domination.
"And if it cannot justify itself, then it should be dismantled. That's the core principle of anarchism."
His comments came after Britain's High Court in London upheld a ruling that Assange should be sent to face questioning by Swedish authorities over claims of sexual assault against two women.
Prof Chomsky is to receive the 2012 Sydney Peace Prize at a ceremony later this evening.
16 comments:
The title is misleading... it suggests that anarchism should be dismantled when Chomsky thinks capitalism should be dismantled. ;-)
fixed, thanks.
Hopefully anarchy is among the things that should be dismantled if it can't justify itself.
It is already part of the system, the question is how is it shaped, and how does new society not fall back on archaic mystical authoritarianism. All ideologues are a bore; Chomsky had a good life. Known in the world as one of the last so-called "public" intelligentsia. Never knew him to be affected by the "creative destruction" in our society. Plekhanov raised good question long ago. In the book Redeemers Enrique Krauze does a good review given that Chavez claimed to have studied the lesson writings of the great Russian thinker, whose warning were drowned till today and major sufferings based on Great Individual,s meme.
"Such governments, when truly committed to democracy, are in line with Octavio Paz's final positions: 'a reconciliation of the two great political traditions of liberalism and socialism...the theme of our time."
Given what is said here about the present future and language; I am not sold on any ism's but the theme makes good sense.
anarchy need never "justify" itself as it is nothing less than the forward thrust of evolution...,
That makes no sense to me Doc. Please elaborate? We have begun to understand Order and Chaos and its affects on human system. Yet if you make a statement, that challenges the concept of time on the mind, which is hinted to in your recursive post, then I am lost. What is a forward trust, when hierarchical is our gravity force, we can't get away from, as I know. If you mean that we must precivve ourselves and live, as Earth wanderers, adapting and shaping Life that is radically different than farming and industrial past? . Your mystical mentor's input, I may agree.
Ok - So were/are true skeptics, in science also. Some of the best small business owners are anarchist in Philly and NY. There are group biases among them also. And violent leaning grouping too more in the West imho, the serendipity to your posting is Chomsky is expressing recursive elegantly. All in the social traditions of the last 3 centuries.
Blame it or praise it, there
is no denying the wild horse in us.
Really I don't like human
nature unless all candied over with art
Virginia Woolf
If you mean that we must precivve ourselves and live, as Earth
wanderers, adapting and shaping Life that is radically different than
farming and industrial past?
Like I told John Kurman last week, we're fast approaching the species endgame - if a tiny group of very serious humans masters genetic engineering and phase IV nanotechnology - and can instantiate mind on physical substrates free of ecological constraint - we will have served our purpose magnificently - and in so doing simultaneously surmounted the Great Filter.
The Top (as hypertiger describes it)http://hypertiger.blogspot.com/2011/10/shadow-of-hammer.html - has already determined that the bulk of the food-powered, make-work human hierarchy is now unprofitable and needs to be liquidated - so I needn't even address what is to you a morally repugnant notion about "evolution's" use for species that have served their purpose.
This is all well and good, but Chomsky, in my view, is just as detached from reality as the current crop of Republicans. Chomsky - like the Ron Paul style market-uber-alles Republicans - is irrelevant and has been for some time.
The Rodney King version of anarchy espoused will, over time, just devolve back into pre-20th-century Western form - feudalism - or if you wish, the current form in the developing world, System D. Black markets may get you your results, but at only at the cost of parasitizing off the existing infrastructure paid for through traditional tax-funded institutions. In the end, you end up paying "taxes" to the mob, because this type of system is just an ill-disguised version of libertarian dipshittery, only connected by warlords, drug loards, and a fleet of cheerfully piloted Ilysuhin Il-76s avoiding rocket fire at every airstrip. Nice world - if you can afford it.
Pull those horns back in and away from my cherished oxen John.
Chomsky made his bones on an as yet incompletely acknowledged Einsteinian scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar - and I'm a lifelong, hardcore System D junkie with aspirations of Skip Sleyster greatness http://superfleakc.com/
There are three huge variables I think you need to factor into your less than sanguine prognosis for System D.
1. The quality of human capital being shed by the food-powered, make-work hierarchy into System D is very high - think professional/managerial types moving back into the "hood' in droves
2. Open source culture is now pervasive and very well established (it's not going to recede and it WILL encompass genomic and materials science activities)
3. As the corporatist republics succumb to rot and internecine conflict, their loathsome prohibitions will also go down the drain, freeing up a scope and scale of cognitive activism and cultural ferment that hasn't been witnessed in decades.
"Chomsky, in my view, is just as detached from reality as the current crop of Republicans."
In what way?
The problem is in the perception of "Life" , in the unconscious now, colored by the need to converse about it. There are repeating laws of nature and of the artificial world. For us brought up on the world, cosmos, centered, premutatations, from something that looks like I are the now the losing branch of species. It will be interesting, what we see. Why are we going back to a dominate women lead social system?, hmmmm
Briefly, as I've a class to teach in half an hour. I fail to see why you should be concerned about my treatment of Chomsky. Within the freshman's level compositional fallacy he presents (it is, and if anarchy meant pulling the wings off butterflies and burning cats, in that sense, everyone should not be anarchists! is the application of the characteristic universal? it is not! the same applies to his shitty argument, which, by the way, he tries to get away with all the fucking time, which makes me question his honesty as well), he exhorts us to question authority. Dude, that is my very nature, to seek out the weak spots, and apply the horns. The horns are not retractable.
And so when someone tells me to question authority, my first impulse is to ask "Who the fuck put you in charge?". Regardless, I no more trust Chomsky on public affairs than I do on Einstein teaching to drive a clutch (which he couldn't, and I can, drive a car that is). And besides, by invoking Chomsky, don't you argue from authority? Still another rhetorical fallacy?
Enough with Chomsky. Fuck Chomsky.
To your other stuff.
1) And 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it as well. Don't make it the final word does it. You are looking at System D in its infancy. Wait until it reaches oligarch stage, which it will, it won't look so hot then. Look to Russia. There's the future of that.
2) Open source works very well under its particular circumstances. It is not a panacea. Central planning and command and control works very well under its circumstances. Be flexible. Recognize the weaknesses of both. Apply where necessary.
3) And if happens, great. And if not, why, you've nothing to worry right? It will just be the slate wiper you so cheerfully anticipate.
He's an idealogue. A zealot. Just from the extreme other side. I trust neither.
Oh, and uh, just so we are clear, knowing the limitations of text and the hurting of feelings on these internet thingies, I'm just expressing my opinions in my usual strong and unrestrained manner. Do not mistake brevity (and no doubt my usual shooting from the hip with minimal aforethought) for lack of cordiality - or respect.
I'm just doing the ready, fire, aim thing. m'Kay?
lol, I thoroughly enjoy your bombast, direct, to the point, and never in need of parsing or translation.
As for Chomsky, having had the privilege of making his acquaintance waaaaay back in the day, I just genuinely like the man. That's not an argument from authority, it's an argument from "I just genuinely like the man". Chomsky is easily the most well known, but he's actually one of the last of several vitally important emeriti public intellectuals at MIT, whose political activism was epiphenomenal to their actual hardcore technical and theoretical production, (unlike the legions of slack-jawed betties who litter the academy nowadays)
I consider his cultural influence at MIT inestimable, and for somebody doing their work at a research institution whose primary funding source is the Pentagon, I believe he's kept it 100%
To my other stuff;
1. Oligarchs, Russian, kneegrow puh-leeze..., ain't a dayyum thing Russian about how we do it here in the USA. Invoking Russia in the context of all the Americas combined strikes me as a priori ridiculous.
2. Open source is meritocratic information anarchy - I'm not aware of any period in historical recollection outside some of the caliphates in which any such globe-spanning multicultural technical information sharing has taken place.
3. One way or another, whether through killer-ape ethology gone wild, or, transcendence of ape-ishness altogether, the useless baggage of the past two thousand years has to be clear-cut in order for cognitive new growth to fully emerge and dominate.
Post a Comment