Noam Chomsky is the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an
intellectual superstar. A philosopher of language and political
campaigner of towering academic reputation, who as good as invented
modern linguistics, he is entertained by presidents, addresses the UN
general assembly and commands a mass international audience. When he
spoke in London last week, thousands of young people battled for tickets
to attend his lectures, followed live on the internet across the globe,
as the 80-year-old American linguist fielded questions from as far away
as besieged Gaza.

But the bulk of the mainstream western media doesn't seem to have
noticed. His books sell in their hundreds of thousands, he is mobbed by
students as a celebrity, but he is rarely reported or interviewed in the
US outside radical journals and websites. The explanation, of course,
isn't hard to find. Chomsky is America's most prominent critic of the US
imperial role in the world, which he has used his erudition and standing
to expose and excoriate since Vietnam.

I'll admit I know nothing about Chomsky's ideas, but Hugo Chávez seems
to adore him, suggesting he is a crackpot.  Chomsky is often portrayed
as a libertarian intellectual, but his biggest fans seem to be on the
radical left.

Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
I'll admit I know nothing about Chomsky's ideas, but Hugo Chávez seems
to adore him, suggesting he is a crackpot.  Chomsky is often portrayed
as a libertarian intellectual, but his biggest fans seem to be on the
radical left.

Chomsky's biggest problem is he is a Jew that thinks Palestinians might be
members of the human race. You just can't do that as our fearless Congress'
condemnation of the Goldstone report shows. That's made him a target for
Horowitz, Dershowitz, Cohn, and others.

He also is critical of empire building, empowering every tinpot dictator in
the world under the guise of supporting democracy, censorship, war in
general, and unchecked capitalism. He sees libertarian socialism as the
logical extension of classical liberalism.

In many areas, he and Pat Buchanan might get along very well together.

In fact, it is this seeming defense of corporatism that drove me away
from the libertarians in recent year, and I have cast my votes for
Ralph Nader, Greens, and other leftists who spoke out against
corporatism.

"Libertarian Socialism" seems to differ from Socialism in that it
opposes the power of government AND the power of corporations and all
other large institutions that control people's lives.  Unfortunately,
the idea resembles theoretical communism and anarchism which rely on
"grassroots" people's movements to challenge the institutions of
power, which I do not believe is possible.

Dänk 1010011010 wrote:

In fact, it is this seeming defense of corporatism that drove me away
from the libertarians in recent year, and I have cast my votes for
Ralph Nader, Greens, and other leftists who spoke out against
corporatism.

'Corporatism' is another one of those words that has too many meanings. In
one form it goes back to the Catholic social doctrine expressed in the
Rerum Novarum encyclical in 1890 and which grew into movements like
Distributism. As G.K. Chesterton said "The problem with capitalism is that
there are not enough capitalists." Some of the other offshoots were less
savory, like Fascism.

The current meaning, instead of using 'corpus', body, as an analogy for
society just means business corporations. It's a handy label for the
supporters of the free market and unchecked capitalism: "That's not
capitalism, that's corporatism!"

Capital L libertarians have a idealistic and optimistic view of an Utopia
where capitalism remains a gentle little house pet and doesn't morph into a
gorilla that runs things like it damn well pleases.

"Libertarian Socialism" seems to differ from Socialism in that it
opposes the power of government AND the power of corporations and all
other large institutions that control people's lives. Â Unfortunately,
the idea resembles theoretical communism and anarchism which rely on
"grassroots" people's movements to challenge the institutions of
power, which I do not believe is possible.

Left libertarian thought often is a polite way to say 'anarchism.' It. too.
is idealistic and doesn't account for humans being all too human, much like
the right wing flavor.

You can sum up libertarian history in the War of the Murrays, Rothbard and
Bookchin.