DON'T MOURN, ORGANISE
So much of what has been expressed generally – by distinguished columnists & pundits interviewed on television, by people in workplaces & drinkers in bars – in the months leading up to the Iraq war has come from the same place. Whether expressed in deathless prose, or with Churchillian eloquence, or street-level sarcasm, or inarticulate anger, it arises from a sort of weary, jaded disgust at the maneuverings of politicians. As we totter precariously into the 21st century whatever faith remained at the end of the 20th in the notion of the honest, unimpeachable politician seems to have withered away. As in e.e. cummings’ famous pronouncement, the general perception now seems to be that ‘a politician is an ass upon which everything has sat but a man’. And it seems that, as the old folk wisdom has it, no matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
When I was 16 years old we had a mock election at my school. I stood as the radical left candidate. Lost in the glamour of a recently-read novel about the Spanish Civil War, I invented a Marxist party called the New Left Front & I plastered the walls with dramatic posters containing linocuts of raised fists, red on a black background. The masses were exhorted to rise up & I advised my fellow students – middle class boys & girls at a rural progressive boarding school – that they had nothing to lose but their chains. I had the field to myself: my only rivals were a local farmer’s son standing for the Conservatives & a policy of closing down all public footpaths across his dad’s land, & as the Liberal Party candidate a 10-year old stamp collector .
That is until my mate Alan Broughton decided to stand as an anarchist protest candidate. His strategy was simple: he went around the hustings with a handful of leaflets from the Federation of London Anarchists & tried to dissuade anyone from voting at all. The deal was that if you were won over you simply lodged an anti-vote on the voting slip &, in the event of a majority, presumably all government would be dissolved by the will of the people. In the end I won the election by a healthy margin – more by virtue of my opponents’ ineptitude than by any politicking skills on my part. Alan got only a handful of protest votes, most of them from the spotty rebels who smoked in the bushes by day & tried to climb through the girls’ dormitory windows by night. And from me. I was totally convinced. Via an authentic Damascene conversion I was overwhelmed by the absolute honesty of it all. The inevitable personal corruption of the individual politician; the cruelty, illogic & inefficiency of capitalism; the automatic consequence of militarism & war as a final process of international relations; the tyranny & gigantism of the nation state; the institutionalization of all social bodies; the principle of the centralisation of all authority…
And during the many years since then I have returned again & again to the writings of Peter Kroptokin, Alexander Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy, Paul Goodman, Lewis Mumford, A.S. Neill, Noam Chomsky. When I have voted in elections, argued for specific national policies, accepted the hierarchical structures of the educational system within which I have taught, I have felt a deep unease, a sense of ducking a responsibility rather than of fulfilling one. Having been educated in progressive schools from the age of 8 & subsequently having taught in them for the greater part of my teaching career, I have been part of self-regulating communities for most of my life. I have witnessed again & again the common sense & compassion that informs decision-making processes & social action within such communities where fear & imposed authority are absent. I have participated in informal school meetings & formal School Councils within which young people of all ages have given the lie to the darkness & chaos of Lord of the Flies.
And so, in the face of all ostensible evidence of humanity’s fundamental shortcomings, from local selfishness & mendacity to rapacious greed & exploitation on a global scale, I return constantly to the firm understanding that reconciliation, generosity, self-sacrifice, love are also called human nature. When all around, locally & globally, nothing is more clear than that our systems, sacred & profane, are failing us utterly, we have to seek out alternatives. Enough of the naïve idealism that insists that only the might of state & church can sustain & nurture us. It’s time to get hard-headed & practical…
Noam Chomsky on
Anarchism
(Interview by Tom Lane, published in Z-notes)
Answers from Chomsky to eight questions on anarchism
General comment on all the questions
No one owns the term "anarchism." It is used for a wide range of different currents of thought and action, varying widely. There are many self-styled anarchists who insist, often with great passion, that theirs is the only right way, and that others do not merit the term (and maybe are criminals of one or another sort). A look at the contemporary anarchist literature, particularly in the West and in intellectual circles (they may not like the term), will quickly show that a large part of it is denunciation of others for their deviations, rather as in the Marxist-Leninist sectarian literature. The ratio of such material to constructive work is depressingly high.
Personally, I have no confidence in my own views about the "right way," and am unimpressed with the confident pronouncements of others, including good friends. I feel that far too little is understood to be able to say very much with any confidence. We can try to formulate our long-term visions, our goals, our ideals; and we can (and should) dedicate ourselves to working on issues of human significance. But the gap between the two is often considerable, and I rarely see any way to bridge it except at a very vague and general level. These qualities of mine (perhaps defects, perhaps not) will show up in the (very brief) responses I will make to your questions.
Critics complain that anarchism is "formless, utopian." You counter that each stage of history has its own forms of authority and oppression which must be challenged, therefore no fixed doctrine can apply. In your opinion, what specific realization of anarchism is appropriate in this epoch?
I tend to agree that anarchism is formless and utopian, though hardly more so than the inane doctrines of neo-liberalism, Marxism-Leninism, and other ideologies that have appealed to the powerful and their intellectual servants over the years, for reasons that are all too easy to explain. The reason for the general formlessness and intellectual vacuity (often disguised in big words, but that is again in the self-interest of intellectuals) is that we do not understand very much about complex systems, such as human societies; and have only intuitions of limited validity as to the ways they should be reshaped and constructed.
Anarchism, in my view, is an expression of the idea that the burden of proof is always on those who argue that authority and domination are necessary. They have to demonstrate, with powerful argument, that that conclusion is correct. If they cannot, then the institutions they defend should be considered illegitimate. How one should react to illegitimate authority depends on circumstances and conditions: there are no formulas.
In the present period, the issues arise across the board, as they commonly do: from personal relations in the family and elsewhere, to the international political/economic order. And anarchist ideas -- challenging authority and insisting that it justify itself -- are appropriate at all levels.
What sort of conception of human nature is anarchism predicated on? Would people have less incentive to work in an egalitarian society? Would an absence of government allow the strong to dominate the weak? Would democratic decision-making result in excessive conflict, indecision and "mob rule"?
As I understand the term "anarchism," it is based on the hope (in our state of ignorance, we cannot go beyond that) that core elements of human nature include sentiments of solidarity, mutual support, sympathy, concern for others, and so on.
Would people work less in an egalitarian society? Yes, insofar as they are driven to work by the need for survival; or by material reward, a kind of pathology, I believe, like the kind of pathology that leads some to take pleasure from torturing others. Those who find reasonable the classical liberal doctrine that the impulse to engage in creative work is at the core of human nature -- something we see constantly, I think, from children to the elderly, when circumstances allow -- will be very suspicious of these doctrines, which are highly serviceable to power and authority, but seem to have no other merits.
Would an absence of government allow the strong to dominate the weak? We don't know. If so, then forms of social organization would have to be constructed -- there are many possibilities -- to overcome this crime.
What would be the consequences of democratic decision-making? The answers are unknown. We would have to learn by trial. Let's try it and find out.
Many "anarcho-capitalists" claim that anarchism means the freedom to do what you want with your property and engage in free contract with others. Is capitalism in any way compatible with anarchism as you see it?
Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.
I should add, however, that I find myself in substantial agreement with people who consider themselves anarcho-capitalists on a whole range of issues; and for some years, was able to write only in their journals. And I also admire their commitment to rationality -- which is rare -- though I do not think they see the consequences of the doctrines they espouse, or their profound moral failings.
How do anarchist principles apply to education? Are grades, requirements and exams good things? What sort of environment is most conducive to free thought and intellectual development?
My feeling, based in part on personal experience in this case, is that a decent education should seek to provide a thread along which a person will travel in his or her own way; good teaching is more a matter of providing water for a plant, to enable it to grow under its own powers, than of filling a vessel with water (highly unoriginal thoughts I should add, paraphrased from writings of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism). These are general principles, which I think are generally valid. How they apply in particular circumstances has to be evaluated case by case, with due humility, and recognition of how little we really understand.
What are the prospects for realizing anarchism in our society? What steps should we take?
Prospects for freedom and justice are limitless. The steps we should take depend on what we are trying to achieve. There are, and can be, no general answers. The questions are wrongly put. I am reminded of a nice slogan of the rural workers' movement in Brazil (from which I have just returned): they say that they must expand the floor of the cage, until the point when they can break the bars. At times, that even requires defense of the cage against even worse predators outside: defense of illegitimate state power against predatory private tyranny in the United States today, for example, a point that should be obvious to any person committed to justice and freedom -- anyone, for example, who thinks that children should have food to eat -- but that seems difficult for many people who regard themselves as libertarians and anarchists to comprehend. That is one of the self-destructive and irrational impulses of decent people who consider themselves to be on the left, in my opinion, separating them in practice from the lives and legitimate aspirations of suffering people.
So it seems to me. I'm happy to discuss the point, and listen to counter-argument, but only in a context that allows us to go beyond shouting of slogans -- which, I'm afraid, excludes a good deal of what passes for debate on the left, more's the pity.
12:09:47 AM 
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