Noam Chomsky on Libertarian Socialism

Ironic coming from an unrepentant Stalinist who was one of Pol Pot's fanboys. I can't believe people still listen to that pseudo-intellectual charlatan.

"Libertarian Socialism" - an oxymoron if I ever saw one...

 

Know a lot about it do you? Pope McCarthy give you a special dispensation? You characters have missed two whole generations of thinking, which is why you quack like ducks.

 

The examples you posted weren't on a country wide scale, please post one of those.

 

Who said that socialism has to be on a country wide scale?

 

While you may not agree with his political positions, to claim this about Chomsky is beyond retarded, he's a walking encyclopaedia regarding modern history/politics and his work is the most comprehensively referenced work I've ever seen in that sphere, he barely makes a comment without backing it up with citation...

Srsly Feckin clueless comment mate

 

In the half dozen or so books of Chomsky's I've read, I've never seen Pol Pot referenced as anything other than an example of tyranny in the extreme, let alone in any positive light.

Care to back that statement up with a quote ?

 

Everyone who disagrees with Fox is always hailed as ignorant by American extreme-rightists. It is quite quaint if you don't have to live there or bear their shock and awe crusades!

 

Thatcher had a lot of very good comments about the evils and social destruction of socialism.

 

I know enough about Libertarianism and Socialism to know they're contradictory ideologies, but don't take my word for it. Take the word of a pseudo-intellectual who's wildly popular amongst xenophobic Leftist Eurofags:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wriQGI5NGOM"]Noam Chomsky - Libertarian Socialism Contradicting terms - YouTube[/ame]

 

You were never privileged to read Chomsky's attempts to deny the Cambodian democide and discredit the witnesses to the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields?

You can read Chomsky's own words here...

The Chomsky Hoax
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html

 

Incredibly enough, as an educated person, I need your advice like a hole in the head: you know nothing whatever about the matter.

 

Noam Chomsky speaks for Noam Chomsky. He doesn't speak for anyone else.

 

I have a feeling, from some of your responses to later posters, that you don't really understand what he was saying there.

 

Noam Chomsky is a libertarian socialist--another term for "anarchist". He was an admirer of the anarcho-syndicalists in the Spanish Civil War, among other groups. As that video points out, the libertarian that he describes is utterly unlike the Libertarian that has a party in the United States.

Chomsky supports OWS because OWS has a goal roughly in line with his--returning power from where it is concentrated back to those who should rightly have it. He is a leftist in the same sense that the American Socialists have always been on the left--and of a far more democratic flavor than the socialist conception in the Soviet Union or China.

 

Ha-Ha!

you may indeed be correct.

If you understand what Noam Chomsky said, please explain it to me!

It will be interesting to see if we agree!

 

Meaningless. The calculation problem is something inherent in command economies, not with libertarian socialism as advocated by Chomsky. Do you even know what the term "calculation problem" means? It refers to the problem that central organizing committees have in deciding how much capital to devote to the production of various goods. That only makes sense if you have a central organizing committee, which is an idea explicitly rejected by libertarian socialists.

You're confusing economic criticism of command economies or communism with economic criticism of libertarian socialism. The economic problem most often stated with libertarian socialism is a motivation problem--which itself doesn't make sense unless you think that people ought to be compelled to do things they don't want to do, and think that people don't want sewer systems and the like.

Establishing a lack of system does not itself require a system. And even then, one might well make the argument that "states" differ from "federations of labor", since they would operate quite differently and seek very different goals.

It's leased from society, perhaps indeed by payments administered by a political federation of the people living in an area.

The problem with property isn't really the idea that the person using something controls it--the problem is that someone other than the user has a right to own it. That enables the "owner" to charge rent of the person who wishes to use something that in fact ought to belong to society as a whole.

In other words, what is the basis of property that justifies one person claiming exclusive and perpetual control of land or goods? The transient ownership of a worker controlling what he uses is not really what's up for debate here; we're talking about the durable ownership of someone who rents property to another person.

 

I'm about to sign off for the night, I'll reply tomorrow.

 

And yet he seems to oppose reducing the power of the state on the basis that it would allow "big corporations" took take over. He does this while admitting that the state is league with certain big corporations and acts to empower them. This makes no sense whatsoever and yet is a common mindset among the anti-establishment left: use the power against power. It's essentially the Boromir position: the we can use the Ring of Power against Sauron.

 

What is the central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas?

The the central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas is that he does not take "human nature" into consideration when he advocates libertarian socialism as a credible replacement for our free-enterprise economic system of work and reward.

I agree. In a perfect world, "syndicalism" advocated by Noam Chomsky would probably work very well in place of American capitalism.

However, human nature being what is where 20% of the people in any organization usually do 80% of the work, "syndicalism” will never succeed in the workplace. You have to have some way of rewarding the workers and removing and replacing the loafers.

To do this fairly, you have to conduct periodic performance appraisals and correctly rate the contributions of each worker; hence you need supervisors or "overseers".

This means, for the corporation to be productive and succeed, you need a "top-down" management structure; not a "bottom-up" management structure run by the workers that Noam Chomsky loves and advocates so very much!

 

What is the central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas?

The the central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas is that he does not take "human nature" into consideration when he advocates libertarian socialism as a credible replacement for our free-enterprise economic system of work and reward.

I agree. In a perfect world, "syndicalism" advocated by Noam Chomsky would probably work very well in place of American capitalism.

However, human nature being what is where 20% of the people in any organization usually do 80% of the work, "syndicalism” will never succeed in the workplace. You have to have some way of rewarding the workers and removing and replacing the loafers.

To do this fairly, you have to conduct periodic performance appraisals and correctly rate the contributions of each worker; hence you need supervisors.

This means, for the corporation to be productive and succeed, you need a "top-down" management structure; not a "bottom-up" management structure run by the workers that Noam Chomsky loves and advocates so very much!

 

What is the central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas?

The central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas is that he does not take "human nature" into consideration when he advocates libertarian socialism as a credible replacement for our free-enterprise economic system of work and reward.

I agree. In a perfect world, "syndicalism" advocated by Noam Chomsky would probably work very well in place of American capitalism.

However, human nature being what is where 20% of the people in any organization usually do 80% of the work, "syndicalism” will never succeed in the workplace. You have to have some way of rewarding the workers and removing and replacing the loafers.

To do this fairly, you have to conduct periodic performance appraisals and correctly rate the contributions of each worker; hence you need supervisors or "overseers".

This means, for the corporation to be productive and succeed, you need a "top-down" management structure; not a "bottom-up" management structure run by the workers that Noam Chomsky loves and advocates so very much!

 

What is the central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas?

The central flaw in Noam Chomsky ideas is that he does not take "human nature" into consideration when he advocates libertarian socialism as a credible replacement for our free-enterprise economic system of work and reward.

I agree. In a perfect world, "syndicalism" advocated by Noam Chomsky would probably work very well in place of American capitalism.

However, human nature being what is where 20% of the people in any organization usually do 80% of the work, "syndicalism” will never succeed in the workplace. You have to have some way of rewarding the workers and removing and replacing the loafers.

To do this fairly, you have to conduct periodic performance appraisals and correctly rate the contributions of each worker; hence you need supervisors or "overseers".

This means, for the corporation to be productive and succeed, you need a "top-down" management structure; not a "bottom-up" management structure run by the workers that Noam Chomsky loves and advocates so very much!

 

This "makes no sense" to you, I think, because you cannot seem to recognize that the nature of governments can change. Just because the government is a corrupt, vicious organization today does not mean it must be so tomorrow. The government is at least nominally open to reform through the ballot. Not so with corporations, who are entirely unaccountable, and who would hold all power if the government were weakened to the degree that American "Libertarians" propose.

This is the fundamental flaw with the government-hater's position. They refuse to acknowledge that the government could be something different.

Sure, yeah, that's the realist position. On the one hand you have extremely powerful unaccountable private oligarchies--corporations--and on the other hand you have one extremely powerful and at least theoretically accountable public organization--the government. If the government isn't there at least nominally restraining corporations from their worst excesses, then we effectively relinquish any say in how our society operates. The government doesn't have to be the servant of corporations... the public simply lets it be so.

Anyone who's studied the history of socialism in the US can very clearly see that the government can be a tool for returning power to the people. The fact that the government isn't right now is mainly because people stopped fighting for it. Socialism begins in both the private sector (by establishing and preferring cooperative worker-owned institutions) and the public sector (by forcing the government to adopt socialist reforms to break concentrations of power--and set itself on the course to its own dissolution).

 

You are indeed correct, AbsoluteVoluntarist.

The far-Left is a very tyrannical group; once they gain power, they limit liberty for everyone else who does not agree with them!

"Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean — power over people, power to the State."

-- Margaret Thatcher

Socialism is great if you are willing to accept a much reduced standard of living and an oppressive central government who is always telling you what to do and how to live your life to the benefit of the state!

Cuba, North Korea and the old Soviet Union and East Germany are four perfect examples!

 

You can't even demonstrate that there is a fundamental human nature, much less that it runs counter to anarchist ideas. Anarchism worked for a very long time before agriculture--obviously humans are at least mentally capable of such social organization. Certainly there might have been a justification for command economies back when 90% of the population had to be working in the fields to keep the other 10% leaning useful science. Maybe there was a justification for it back when 90% of the population had to engage in manual labor in the farms or factories just to keep society on a trajectory towards a postindustrial economy. But now? Now our outdated capitalist system is running into the edges of the challenges of postindustrial economic planning. Capitalism just flat out does not work when most people in the workforce don't actually need to be there.

But more than that, I would dispute your claim that "free enterprise" actually works. For one thing, no such state as "free enterprise" has ever existed--capitalists have always used government power to advance their own ends, except when libertarian socialists have succeeded in gaining power. Our current system simply does not work very well. Capitalism is entirely inadequate to handle the stresses of postindustrialism.

No perfect world required. Syndicalism depends on very human attitudes and perspectives. No one likes being told what to do by someone else. No one likes working for someone else's profit. Those two indignities are the essential basis of Syndicalism, and those are written very deep in the human psyche.

Syndicalism provides those methods of reward and removal. I would point out that it is your own insane "free enterprise" system that has resulted in this situation where twenty percent of the people must do the work for one hundred percent of the people--because your insane system is so terribly inefficient. It compels people who could not give a (*)(*)(*)(*) into jobs they do not care about; this creates horrible workers, who perform poorly and do only the bare minimum required.

Syndicalism is more efficient because it would be far better that matching people with work they cared about; it would make more people into productive members of society, rather than leeches. Sure, maybe it would only jump from twenty to forty percent of people actually doing meaningful work.... but that's better than your free enterprise system has managed. I mean, you're the one sitting here essentially acknowledging that the "free enterprise system" leads to a state where twenty percent of the people are basically supporting everyone else. What kind of sense does that make? How on earth is that a failure of syndicalism? Your own professed system can't even provide the motivations you ascribe to it! It fails utterly at motivating people to do work, because at a very basic level capitalism divorces work from meaning--it is inherently alienating, and that's a horrible way to motivate workers.

It's honestly kind of unbelievable that you would point to this profound failure of "free enterprise" and use that fact to try to claim that this failure means we can't try some other system. What sense does that make?

Nonsense. Do you know when your coworker isn't contributing enough to a project? Sure you do. You don't need a supervisor to sit on his ass running some numbers and making more than either you or your coworker to tell you that. Management or administration is inefficiency; the less of it an organization requires, the more efficient that organization will be. Those are workers--often formerly productive workers who 'worked' their way into a position of seniority--who don't actually do anything. Their entire function is tied up in forcing people who don't want to work to do it anyway. That's kind of stupid, and not really something I would think that capitalists would like to point out.

I mean, you all sit here harping on about how "free enterprise" provides this inherent set of incentives that resonate with the essential human nature and whatnot, but if so why the hell do you need supervisors to keep the employees working? If "free enterprise" actually delivered on its claim of incentives in keeping with the essential human nature, why are twenty percent of people responsible for eighty percent of the production, and why do you need supervisors to threaten the workers with unemployment? Shouldn't those inherent human-spirit-resonant incentives be sufficient to compel the whole of humanity (who's members apparently have the same inherent nature) without the implied threat of starvation?

It depends on your goals, I guess. Cooperatives can work very well at actually delivering products and keeping workers happy... they don't do much for wall street though.