Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, often considered the most significant contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics of the 20th century. He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, which challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of mind and language dominant in the 1950s. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has also impacted the philosophy of language and mind (see Harman, Fodor). He is also credited with the establishment of the so-called Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. Chomsky is also widely known for his political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist, a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism.

Political views

Related article: Criticisms of Noam Chomsky.

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Chomsky is one of the best known figures of radical American politics. He defines himself as being in the tradition of anarchism, a political philosophy he summarizes as challenging all forms of hierarchy and attempting to eliminate them if they are unjustified. He especially identifies with the labor-oriented anarcho-syndicalist current of anarchism. Unlike many anarchists, Chomsky does not totally object to electoral politics; his stance on U.S. elections is that citizens should vote for their local Democrat where this will keep the Republicans out, and support more radical candidates such as the Greens in areas where there is no risk of letting the Republicans win (he even went so far as to officially endorse Green candidate Paul Lachelier). He has described himself as a "fellow traveller" to the anarchist tradition as opposed to a pure anarchist to explain why he is sometimes willing to engage with the state.

Related Topics:
Radical - American politics - Anarchism - Anarcho-syndicalist - Anarchist - Paul Lachelier

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Chomsky has also stated that he considers himself to be a conservative (Chomsky's Politics, pp. 188) of the Classical liberal variety. He has further defined himself as a Zionist; although, he notes that his definition of Zionism is considered by most to be anti-Zionism these days, the result of what he perceives to have been a shift (since the 1940s) in the meaning of Zionism (Chomsky Reader).

Related Topics:
Conservative - Classical liberal - Zionist - Anti-Zionism - 1940s

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Overall, Chomsky is not fond of traditional political titles and categories and prefers to let his views speak for themselves. His main modes of actions include writing magazine articles and books and making speaking engagements. Chomsky is also a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies.

Related Topics:
Magazine - Book - Institute for Policy Studies

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Chomsky on terrorism

In response to U.S. declarations of a War on Terrorism in 1981 and 2001, Chomsky has argued that the major sources of international terrorism are the world's major powers, led by the United States. He uses a definition of terrorism from a U.S. Army manual, which describes it as, "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." Thus he posits that terrorism is an objective description of certain actions, whether the agents are state or non-state. In relation to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan he stated:

Related Topics:
War on Terrorism - Definition of terrorism - U.S. invasion of Afghanistan

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: "Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism." (9-11, p. 76)

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On the efficiency of terrorism:

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: "One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail. It works. Violence usually works. That's world history. Secondly, it's a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn't count as terror. Now that's close to universal. I can't think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way. So take the Nazis. They weren't carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror."

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As regards support for or condemnation of terrorism, Chomsky opines that terrorism (and violence/authority in general) are generally bad and can only be justified in those cases where it is clear that greater terrorism (or violence, or abuse of authority) is thus avoided. In a debate on the legitimacy of political violence in 1967, Chomsky argued that the "terror" of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front was not justified, but that terror could in theory be justified under certain circumstances:

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: "I don't accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this--and I think we should--we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified. But, as I said before, I don't think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved." http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm

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Chomsky believes that acts he considers terrorism carried out by the U.S. government do not pass this test, and condemnation of U.S. policy is one of the main thrusts of his writings.

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Criticism of United States government

Chomsky has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the United States government, and criticism of the foreign policy of the United States has formed the basis of much of Chomsky's political writing. Chomsky gives two reasons for this. First, he believes that his work can have more impact when directed at his own government, and second, the United States is the world's sole remaining superpower and so, Chomsky believes, it acts in the same offensive ways as all superpowers. However, Chomsky will sometimes criticize other governments such as that of the Soviet Union in passing.

Related Topics:
United States - Foreign policy - Soviet Union

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One of the key things superpowers do, Chomsky argues, is try to organize the world around themselves using military and economic means. Thus, he proposes that the U.S. government involved itself in the Vietnam War and the larger Indochina conflict because the socialist aspirations of North Vietnam, the Pathet Lao, and the Khmer Rouge ran contrary to U.S. economic interests. He has also criticized U.S. policy with regards to Central and South American countries and military support of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Related Topics:
Vietnam War - Indochina conflict - Socialist - North Vietnam - Pathet Lao - Khmer Rouge - Central - South America - Israel - Saudi Arabia - Turkey

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Chomsky has repeatedly emphasized his theory that much of the United States' foreign policy is based on the "threat of a good example" (which he says is another name for the domino theory). The "threat of a good example" is that a country could successfully develop outside the U.S. sphere of influence, thus presenting a model for other countries, including countries in which the United States has strong economic interests. This, Chomsky says, has prompted the United States to repeatedly intervene to quell "independent development, regardless of ideology" in regions of the world where it has no inherent economic or safety interests. In one of his most well-known works, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky uses this particular theory as an explanation for the United States' interventions in Guatemala, Laos, Nicaragua, and Grenada.

Related Topics:
Domino theory - Guatemala - Laos - Nicaragua - Grenada

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Chomsky believes the U.S. government's Cold War policies were not entirely shaped by anti-Soviet paranoia, but rather toward preserving the United States' ideological and economic dominance in the world. As he wrote in Uncle Sam: "What the U.S. wants is 'stability,' meaning security for the upper classes and large foreign enterprises."

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While he is almost uniformly critical of the United States government's foreign policy, Chomsky expresses his admiration for the freedom of expression enjoyed by U.S. citizens in a number of interviews and books. According to Chomsky, other Western democracies such as France and Canada are less liberal in their defense of controversial speech than the US. However, he does not credit the American government for these freedoms but rather mass movements in the United States that fought for them. He is also sharply critical of any government suppression of free speech.

Related Topics:
France - Canada

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Views on globalization

Chomsky made early efforts to critically analyze globalization. He summarized the process with the phrase "old wine, new bottles," maintaining that the motive of the élites is the same as always: they seek to isolate the general population from important decision-making processes, the difference being that the centers of power are now transnational corporations and supranational banks. Chomsky argues that transnational corporate power is "developing its own governing institutions" reflective of their global reach. http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9302-uva.html

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According to Chomsky, a primary ploy has been the co-optation of the global economic institutions established after World War II. The key Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and World Bank, have increasingly adhered to the "Washington Consensus", which requires developing countries to adhere to limits on spending and make structural adjustments that often involve cutbacks in social and welfare programs. IMF aid and loans are normally contingent upon such reforms. Chomsky claims that the construction of global institutions and agreements such as the World Trade Organization, GATT, NAFTA, and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment constitute new ways of securing élite privileges while undermining democracy. http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/9303-nation-nafta.html

Related Topics:
World War II - Bretton Woods - Washington Consensus - World Trade Organization - GATT - NAFTA

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Chomsky believes that these austerity and neoliberal measures ensure that poorer countries merely fulfill a service role by providing cheap labour, raw materials, and investment opportunities for the first world. Additionally, this means that corporations can threaten to relocate to poorer countries, and Chomsky sees this as a powerful weapon to keep workers in richer countries in line.

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Chomsky takes issue with the terms used in discourse on globalization, beginning with the term "globalization" itself, which he maintains refers to a corporate-sponsored economic integration rather than being a general term for things becoming international. He dislikes the term anti-globalization being used to describe what he regards as a movement for globalization of social and environmental justice. Chomsky understands what is popularly called "Free trade" as a "mixture of liberalization and protection designed by the principal architects of policy in the service of their interests, which happen to be whatever they are in any particular period." http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9302-uva.html

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In his writings Chomsky has drawn attention to globalization resistance movements. He described Zapatista defiance of NAFTA in his essay "The Zapatista Uprising." He also criticized the Multinational Agreement on Investment, and reported on the activist efforts that led to its defeat. Chomsky's voice was an important part of a growing chorus of critics who provided the theoretical backbone for the disparate groups who united for the demonstrations against The World Trade Organization in Seattle in November of 1999. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/july00barsamian.htm

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Views on socialism

Chomsky is deeply opposed to what he calls the "corporate state capitalism" practiced by the United States and its allies. He supports many of Mikhail Bakunin's anarchist (or libertarian socialist) ideas, requiring economic freedom in addition to the "control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions." He refers to this as "real socialism," and describes Soviet-style socialism as similar in terms of "totalitarian controls" to U.S.-style capitalism, saying that each is a system based in types and levels of control, rather than in organization or efficiency. In defense of this thesis, Chomsky sometimes points out that Frederick Winslow Taylor's philosophy of scientific management was the organizational basis for the Soviet Union's massive industrialization movement as well as the American corporate model.

Related Topics:
Mikhail Bakunin - Anarchist - Libertarian socialist - Frederick Winslow Taylor - Scientific management

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Chomsky has illuminated Bakunin's comments on the totalitarian state as predictions for the brutal Soviet police state that would come. He echoes Bakunin's statement that "...If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself," which expands upon the idea that the tyrannical Soviet state was simply a natural growth from the Bolshevik ideology of state control. He has also termed Soviet communism as "fake socialism," and said that contrary to what many in America claim, the collapse of the Soviet Union should be regarded as "a small victory for socialism," not capitalism.

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In his 1973 book For Reasons of State, Chomsky argues that instead of a capitalist system in which people are "wage slaves" or an authoritarian system in which decisions are made by a centralized committee, a society could function with no paid labor. He argues that a nation's populace should be free to pursue jobs of their choosing. People will be free to do as they like, and the work they voluntarily choose will be both "rewarding in itself" and "socially useful". Society would be run under a system of peaceful anarchism, with no state or government institutions. Work that was fundamentally distasteful to all, if any existed, would be distributed equally among everyone.

Related Topics:
1973 - Wage slaves - Anarchism

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Though highly critical of the Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s, Chomsky was more positive in his assessment of Communist movements in Asia, praising what he considered to be grassroots aspects of both Chinese and Vietnamese communism, such as in his 1968 essay, "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship,", where he claimed there were "certain similar features" with the Spanish anarchist movement of the 1930s (which he greatly admires), while at the same time cautioning that "the scale of the Chinese Revolution is so great and reports in depth are so fragmentary that it would no doubt be foolhardy to attempt a general evaluation." In December 1967, while participating in a forum in New York, he said that in China "one finds many things that are really quite admirable", and that "China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting and positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step." http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm Similarly, he said of Vietnam: "Although there appears to be a high degree of democratic participation at the village and regional levels, still major planning is highly centralized in the hands of the state authorities." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10869

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - 1960s - 1970s - Asia - 1968 - Spanish anarchist movement

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In later years, however, Chomsky expressed stronger criticisms of the Chinese Communist state. In a 2000 essay, "Millennial Visions and Selective Vision," http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2000-01/10chomsky.htm Chomsky referred to China's "totalitarian regime" and described the starvation of 25–40 million people during the 1958–1961 famines caused by the Great Leap Forward as a "terrible atrocity." He has drawn an analogy between the Chinese famine and deaths resulting from malnutrition in India, claiming that "democratic capitalism" is directly responsible for the latter. http://www.fullcontext.com/archives/000100.html

Related Topics:
1958 - 1961 - Great Leap Forward - India - Democratic capitalism

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Note: This section requires more coverage of Chomsky's earliest and most widely influential work, that on the Vietnam War including his classic American Power and the New Mandarins. The present material is heavily weighted to post-1980 writings.-->

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Mass media analysis

Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), which he accuses of maintaining constraints on dialogue so as to promote the interests of corporations and the government.

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Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book ' explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with several detailed case studies in support of it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." (Media Control)

Related Topics:
Edward S. Herman - Propaganda model

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The model attempts to explain such a systemic bias in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must pass through which combine to systematically distort news coverage.

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• The first filter, ownership, notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations.
• The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers), the model would expect them to publish news which would reflect the desires and values of those businesses.
• In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information.
• Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups which go after the media for supposed bias and so on when they go out of line.
• Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was "anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.)

The model therefore attempts to describe how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an "élite" consensus, frame public debate within "élite" perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.

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Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples" — pairs of events that were objectively similar except in relation to certain interests. For example, they attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, but when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story. They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to "élite" interests.

Related Topics:
Tet Offensive - Vietnam War

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Critics of Chomsky and Herman's mass media analysis, including author and historian Victor Davis Hanson of the conservative Hoover Institution severely disagree with Chomsky and Herman's theories. They see the idea of "Manufacturing Consent" as nothing more than a recycling of the Marxist idea of "false consciousness", (as in Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man), where the masses have been so manipulated that they have neither the perspective or intellect to see beyond the propaganda and require superior intellects like Chomsky's to point out to them the real truth. Arch Puddington of the Hoover Institution also claims he sees virtually no empirical evidence in media coverage, specifically regarding the mass media's treatment of Cambodia and East Timor, to back the claims made in Manufacturing Consent.

Related Topics:
Victor Davis Hanson - Hoover Institution - Herbert Marcuse - One-Dimensional Man

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Stephen J. Morris, a critic of Chomsky's position on Cambodia, evaluates Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model by reviewing their analysis of media coverage during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Chomsky and Herman argue that the "flood of rage and anger directed against the Khmer Rouge" peaking in early 1977, was a concrete example of their "propaganda model" in action. They argued that the media was singling out Cambodia, an enemy of the United States, while under-reporting human rights abuses by American allies such as South Korea and Chile. A study performed by Jamie Frederic Metzl (Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975–80) analyzes major media reporting on Cambodia and concludes that media coverage on Cambodia was more intense when there were events with an international angle, but had largely disappeared by 1977. Metzl also contradicts Chomsky and Herman by claiming that of all the articles published regarding Cambodia, less than one in twenty dealt with the political violence being perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.

Related Topics:
South Korea - Chile

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Chomsky and the Middle East

Chomsky "grew up...in the Jewish-Zionist cultural tradition" (Peck, p. 11). His father was one of the foremost scholars of the Hebrew language and taught at a religious school. Chomsky has also had a long fascination with and involvement in left-wing Zionist politics. As he described:

Related Topics:
Hebrew language - Zionist

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: "I was deeply interested in...Zionist affairs and activities — or what was then called 'Zionist,' though the same ideas and concerns are now called 'anti-Zionist.' I was interested in socialist, binationalist options for Palestine, and in the kibbutzim and the whole cooperative labor system that had developed in the Jewish settlement there (the Yishuv)...The vague ideas I had at the time were to go to Palestine, perhaps to a kibbutz, to try to become involved in efforts at Arab-Jewish cooperation within a socialist framework, opposed to the deeply antidemocratic concept of a Jewish state (a position that was considered well within the mainstream of Zionism)." (Peck, p. 7)

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He is highly critical of the policies of Israel towards the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. His book The Fateful Triangle is considered one of the premier texts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among those who oppose Israel's policies in regard to the Palestinians as well as American support for the state of Israel. He has also accused Israel of "guiding state terrorism" for selling weapons to apartheid South Africa and Latin American countries that he characterizes as U.S. puppet states, e.g. Guatemala in the 1980s, as well as U.S.-backed paramilitaries (or, according to Chomsky, terrorists) such as the Nicaraguan Contras. (What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chapter 2.4) Chomsky characterizes Israel as a "mercenary state", "an Israeli Sparta", and a militarized dependency within a U.S. system of hegemony. He has also fiercely criticized sectors of the American Jewish community for their role in obtaining U.S. support, stating that "they should more properly be called 'supporters of the moral degeneration and ultimate destruction of Israel'" (Fateful Triangle, p.4). He says of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):

Related Topics:
Palestinian - Selling weapons - Apartheid - South Africa - Guatemala - 1980s - Terrorist - Contras - Hegemony - Anti-Defamation League

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: "The leading official monitor of anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, interprets anti-Semitism as unwillingness to conform to its requirements with regard to support for Israeli authorities.... The logic is straightforward: Anti-Semitism is opposition to the interests of Israel (as the ADL sees them).

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: "The ADL has virtually abandoned its earlier role as a civil rights organization, becoming 'one of the main pillars' of Israeli propaganda in the U.S., as the Israeli press casually describes it, engaged in surveillance, blacklisting, compilation of FBI-style files circulated to adherents for the purpose of defamation, angry public responses to criticism of Israeli actions, and so on. These efforts, buttressed by insinuations of anti-Semitism or direct accusations, are intended to deflect or undermine opposition to Israeli policies, including Israel's refusal, with U.S. support, to move towards a general political settlement." http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-c10-s20.html

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See also:

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Criticism of intellectual communities

Chomsky has at times been outspokenly critical of scholars and other public intellectuals; while his views sometimes place him at odds with others on particular points, he has also attacked intellectual communities for what he sees as systemic problems. His criticisms have been focused on both American and French intellectual communities.

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Intellectuals in America

Chomsky's extensive criticisms of a new type of post-WW2 intellectual he saw arising in the United States were the focus of his book American Power and the New Mandarins. There he described what he saw as the betrayal of the duties of an intellectual to challenge received opinion. The "new Mandarins", who he saw as responsible in part for the Vietnam War, had turned the United States into an imperial power; he wrote that their ideology demonstrated

Related Topics:
Mandarins - Imperial

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:the mentality of the colonial civil servant, persuaded of the benevolence of the mother country and the correctness of its vision of world order, and convinced that he understands the true interests of the backward peoples whose welfare he is to administer.

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Intellectuals in France

Noam Chomsky has also been critical of public intellectuals who write and speak in what he views as overly cryptic and pretentious rhetoric in the social sciences. In particular, Chomsky feels that this phenomenon is extraordinarily prevalent in the French intellectual community.

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Chomsky has expressed contempt for such trends in a number of talks in which he has said: "They have to be subordinated so you have to make things look mysterious and complicated. That's the test of the intellectual. It's also good for them: then you're an important person, talking big words which nobody can understand. Sometimes it gets kind of comical, say in post-modern discourse. Especially around Paris, it has become a comic strip, I mean it's all gibberish ... they try to decode it and see what is the actual meaning behind it, things that you could explain to an eight-year old child. There's nothing there." (Chomsky on Anarchism, pg. 216).

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Chomsky views this phenomenon as a means to intimidate less educated citizens and to keep them out of the public arena. Chomsky views the American people's rejection of such a culture as a healthy phenomenon, unlike in France where the intellectual community is apparently revered: "in France if you're part of the intellectual elite and you cough, there's a front-page story in Le Monde. That's one of the reasons why French intellectual culture is so farcical — it's like Hollywood." (Understanding Power, pg. 96).

Related Topics:
Le Monde - Hollywood

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He has also expressed the point of view that the French intellectual and philosopher Jacques Derrida is not a thinker of any substance: "Try asking somebody to explain to you the latest essay of Derrida or somebody in terms that you can understand. They can't do it." (Chomsky on Anarchism, pg. 217); "...when I read, you know, Derrida, or Lacan, or Althusser, or any of these — I just don't understand it. It's like words passing in front of my eyes: I can't follow the arguments, I don't see the arguments," (Understanding Power, pg. 231). However, Chomsky has expressed an appreciation for French intellectual Michel Foucault, whom he debated on Dutch television in 1971.

Related Topics:
Jacques Derrida - Michel Foucault

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