Tag Archives: Chomsky

He rarely criticises it, but this is surprisingly blunt:“Each time labor has been attacked—and as I said, in the 1920s the labor movement was practically destroyed—popular efforts were able to reconstitute it. That can happen again. It’s not going to be easy. There are institutional barriers, ideological barriers, cultural barriers. One big problem is that the white working class has been pretty much abandoned by the political system. The Democrats don’t even try to organize them anymore....

I tire of people trying to paint Chomsky as the father of the regressive left.Yes, some elements of this thinking have influenced it and flowed into it (e.g., an often unbalanced and one-sided critique of US foreign policy). And, yes, you can make serious and sometimes very serious criticisms of Chomsky too.But I also tire of regressive leftists trying to invoke Chomsky as if he is one of their own. This is blatantly untrue.If you look seriously at Chomsky’s thought and beliefs, there is a...

Note well: Chomsky is a radical man of the left and he (1) condemns hate speech laws, (2) the idea that the government should determine what is history, and (3) laws against Holocaust denial. Why? Because is a radical defender of free speech, the most precious foundation of a free society.But the regressive left these days would no doubt subject him to the most vicious abuse for this sort of defence of freedom of speech, because the regressive left often opposes free speech. Could there be...

In 6 seconds.[embedded content]Keep up the good work, Noam.

Chomsky savages another outrageous idea of the Postmodernist left: “ … the entire idea of ‘white male science’ reminds me, I’m afraid, of ‘Jewish physics.’ Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can’t tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the...

I don’t always agree with Chomsky, but what he says here about Marxism is spot on. The interesting and insightful individual concepts in Marx’s Capital – say, the idea of the monetary production economy, endogenous money,* the rudiments of aggregate demand theory, etc. – should be taken up in contemporary economy theory and developed. The other absurd, dogmatic and untenable aspects of Marxism – the labour theory of value, falling rate of profit idea, etc. – should be utterly rejected. Marx...