Chomsky's Politics
By Milan Rai
Verso, 1995. 225 pp., $95 (hb), $34.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Alex Bainbridge
Noam Chomsky is one of the most popular figures to whom a broad range of radicals look for contemporary political analysis. Large audiences at his public meetings (in a schedule booked out often years in advance) and a growing readership for his books are testimony to this. Milan Rai has done the radical public a service by compiling into one volume a comprehensive yet manageable snapshot of Chomsky's politics.
As a young radical, Chomsky began his career as a (reluctant) linguistics student, but went on to become the "defining figure" in that field and also to build a reputation as a penetrating social analyst and critic. Though some people have tried to draw links between his "revolutionary" contributions to linguistics and his revolutionary politics, the connection appears tenuous. Aside from an interesting, but brief, survey of Chomsky's life in the introduction, it is Chomsky's politics that Rai focuses on.
One of Chomsky's most useful contributions for activists is his analysis of what he calls the "propaganda model" — a system whereby consent for the rule of a powerful elite is generated ("manufactured") among an essentially disempowered population. In particular, Chomsky focuses much of his fire on the media, the purpose of which, in Rai's summary, "is to cultivate public stupidity and conformity, in order to protect the powerful from interference by the lower orders".
Despite the fact that this analysis completely contradicts the mainstream view of the media, Chomsky argues that there are several reasons why it should be considered. Not the least of these is that it is popular — numerous surveys show that people are cynical about the views presented in the media. However, what makes Chomsky's analysis so convincing and so useful is that he meticulously details and documents his arguments to support his conclusions. According to Chomsky, "There are thousands of pages of documentation supporting the conclusions of the propaganda model. By the standards of the social sciences, it is very well confirmed and its predictions are often considerably surpassed."
After summarising and explaining the propaganda model, Rai moves on to piece together the "patterns of intervention" that Chomsky has uncovered from the systematically distorted news we are fed. Chomsky's conclusions are that our news and education systems are designed to defend the power and privilege of an elite.
In defence of this conclusion also, Chomsky (and his associates) have collected numerous case studies with corroborating evidence. In particular, Chomsky has focused on the foreign policies of the United States, demonstrating the contrast between what is usually the stated aim (defence of human rights and democracy) and the usual practice (the often vicious crushing of human rights and democracy in order to maximise corporate profit).
Chomsky describes himself as socialist, but distances himself from Marxism. Indeed, he makes lucid criticisms in many instances of the bureaucratically dominated Stalinist states (as the USSR was and China is) and the practice of political parties that support Stalinism.
Although Chomsky differentiates between Leninism and Stalinism at one level, he does consciously reject both Leninism and Trotskyism (the main criticism of Stalinism in the Marxist tradition) as strategies for change, and he has been criticised by the left for this. Moreover, Chomsky's criticism (by Rai's account) seems to be based almost entirely on identification as Marxist or Leninist of policies and practices associated with Stalinism.
At the same time, while the anarchist movement claims Chomsky as one of its own, he also disagrees with some of the more utopian or dogmatic characteristics of many practising anarchists. (This is recognised by George Woodcock — a famous postwar anarchist — claiming that Chomsky is merely "a sympathetic outsider" "abandoning [the] essential extremities" of anarchism.)
Chomsky describes himself as a "derivative fellow traveller" of anarchism and favours an anarchist tendency which "merges, or at least interrelates very closely with a variety of left-wing Marxism". So while his (anarchist) practice is in many ways in sympathy with genuine Marxism, his rejection of Leninism remains a weakness in his work.
Chomsky's strength is the power and depth of his intellectual analysis of contemporary capitalism. This focus means that he puts less emphasis than would be desirable on developing strategy and tactics to overturn the existing power structure and in particular on how to involve the great mass of workers and other oppressed layers in social change.
Nevertheless, he doesn't ignore these things. While he puts a lot of emphasis on the "responsibility of intellectuals", he also recognises the material pressure on academics to serve the establishment. In response to the criticism that he has betrayed the intellectual tradition, Chomsky replies: "The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself". Analysing the effects of the propaganda model, Chomsky concludes that the suggestion that the educated classes are the most brainwashed is "pretty close to tautological".
Chomsky's works should have a respected place in every radical's library. Rai's book is very readable and interesting and a valuable summary of Chomsky's voluminous works.