Noam Chomsky

“Imperial Ambitions”

By Richard E. Noble

Noam Chomsky is/was a professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT in Boston Massachusetts. He feels that the present Bush administration should be prosecuted in a Nuremberg Trials type setting where he is convinced that they would then be convicted and promptly executed.
So that should give you some idea where he is coming from. Mr. Chomsky is Jewish but I doubt if the administration over there in Israel is doing a lot of bragging about that fact.
In a debate that I listened to recently Alan Dersherwitz accused Mr. Chomsky of being an alien from space where he resided on the planet Chomsky.
Alan Dersherwitz on the other hand was very popular a few years back as a commentator. But recently he has disappeared. I imagine it has something to do with his rabid defense of anything done by the state of Israel and his notions about torture. Alan feels that torture is a good tool in the hands of nice people like those in control of the free world.
Mr. Chomsky disagrees not only with Alan Dersherwitz but with the United States, Israel and most of what is termed the free world. Most recently Hugo Chavez of Venezuela held up a copy of Mr. Chomsky book “Hegemony or Survival” and it went to number one on the best seller list around the world. So whether he is being read here in the U.S. or not he is being read around the world. If you have ever asked yourself what are these people thinking or why in the world is everybody so hateful of the U.S., Mr. Chomsky’s writings are a good place to start in seeking an answer.
Mr. Chomsky reminds me of Karl Marx - and I say that positively. Karl Marx was a very intelligent man. Karl Marx was no Joseph Stalin. In fact Marx was not a supporter of the Russian Revolution. I like what Karl Marx’s mother said about her little boy. She supposedly said that she wished that he had spent less time criticizing Capital and more time trying to earn some. Ah yes that’s Mama for ya! Sounds just like my mama.
In any case, if you have ever read any of the articles that Karl Marx wrote and sold to newspapers in his day you will probably be very impressed. Karl did his homework. He knew what was happening economically anywhere in the world. If any powerful nation made a move on any lesser country he could tell you why and how much money was involved. From an historical point of view, he is very interesting. His personal life is also sensitively tragic.
Mr. Chomsky is of the same ilk and he has come to his conclusions based on the same premises that were associated with Mr. Marx, I would say.
Karl Marx if you will remember was not a fan of Capitalism or the Industrial revolution. He didn’t believe that Supply and Demand or profits should be the bottom line for a society. He was also not too heavy on the concept now known as Social Darwinism. Though he was a big fan of Darwin; he even wrote a letter asking Charles Darwin to write a dedication to his book “Das Capital”. Darwin declined the honor - he was in enough hot water already.
Chomsky like Howard Zinn writes in defense or explanation of the “victim”. Karl defends the victims of the Industrial Revolution and the new capitalism; Noam defends the victims of Imperialism and the old, now established, capitalism. Howard, the historian defends all the victims of everything. Karl, Howard and Noam are all really champions of the underdog and not supporters of the privileged. They each have a lot to say on a great number and variety of subjects. I feel their books must be read, whether we like it or not.
Karl actually felt that he had discovered the evolution of human civilization. And there are some today who may still think that he may have been correct. Mr. Chomsky may be one of them. He says that his views have grown out of the “anarcho syndicalist tradition”.
Anarchism and syndicalism have never been all that popular here in the states. In fact it wasn’t all that long ago that if you admitted that you were an anarcho-syndicalist here in the United States you would find yourself in a federal penitentiary or on a boat back to wherever country that you came from - or maybe even one that you would like to go to if they would have you.
Mr. Chomsky explains his anarcho syndicalism as “worker control of industries and popular control of communities”. And the book ends with this statement: “Do corporations have to be controlled by management and owners and dedicated to the welfare of shareholders instead of being controlled by the people who work in them and dedicated to the community and the workers? It’s not a law of nature.”
I have often thought about that. I wonder how it would be if the workers hired the bosses instead of vice versa? Wanted CFO reasonable pay, good benefits - MUST WORK WELL WITH OTHERS! And then, “Ah Sorry Mr. Ford (Mr. Carnegie) but we are going to have to let you go - you’re just not what we had in mind.” I wonder? It sounds rather impossible but that is exactly what they said about democracy. Who ever thought the people would “choose” their leaders - not King George III or Marie Antoinette and Louis IV. Ah yes, very interesting.
I have also wondered what the world would be like if children were able to choose their parents rather than the helter-skelter method put upon us today. I have the strong feeling that there would be a lot of parent-less couples out there. And when those childless couples asked each other, What is wrong with us? It certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with all that sperm and egg business. That would be refreshing.
Well now that I’m wondering about things. What if God gave us all a look at what our lives were going to be like down here on earth and a glance at the world that we would be forced to live in before we were born? And then gave us the choice of being born or not being born?
I have a strong feeling that over-population would not be one of our biggest concerns.