The power of the Tea Party doesn’t come from their numbers -- it's their financial backers, Chomsky argues.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/jeanbaptisteparis
December 23, 2013
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This interview originally appeared on the Voice of Russia, and is reprinted here with their permission.
Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky of MIT believes that Israel has shown
no indication in Syrian conflict that it wants the Syrian rebels to
win, nor incidentally does the U.S., and that they are pretty happy just
seeing Syrians kill each other. In regards to Iran’s nuclear program,
the West, the U.S., and its allies (in particular Israel) describe Iran
as the gravest threat to world peace, but the Arab world does not regard
Iran as a threat, instead the U.S. and Israel are regarded as the
threat. The main problem in the nuclear proliferation is to implement
the treaty by the world powers, in the Middle East the problem could be
solved only by establishing a nuclear weapon free zone in the region,
Dr. Chomsky told the Voice of Russia in an exclusive interview on the
eve of the important round of negotiations on Iran and Syria in Geneva,
Switzerland.
Sean Nevins: We are sitting here with Professor Emeritus Noam
Chomsky at MIT. He is famous the world over for his working linguistics
but more so his political beliefs. He is a self-described anarchist,
more specifically an "anarcho-syndicalist." Dr. Chomsky, thanks for
having us.
Noam Chomsky: Pleased to be with you.
* * *
Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism
SN: I kind of want to start up by asking you to briefly describe what is anarchism and more specifically anarcho-syndicalism?
NC: Well, I think the best characterization that I
know is given by one of the leading thinkers and activists in the modern
anarcho-syndicalist world, Rudolf Rocker, who described anarchism in
general as not a specific set of beliefs that provides particular
answers to all the questions that can arise, but rather what he called
'a general tendency in the history of humanity' which aims to inquire
into the nature of social, economic, political structures to detect
structures of hierarchy and domination and to challenge them to
demonstrate their legitimacy. They are not self-justified and if they
cannot defend their legitimacy on some plausible grounds then to
dismantle them and reconstruct then from below. And to do this in the
context of the existing society, developing alternative institutions
that are more free and more just in the hope of moving on to a world of
free associations of workers’ communities controlling their own
institutions, their own fate in association with one another of various
kinds of federal arrangements and so on. That is the basic thrust of
anarchism. Altogether it is myview and of anarcho-syndicalism in
particular which is designed for complex industrial societies.
SN: So, you are talking about workers controlling their own work and controlling the enterprises that work in expanding out to the community?
NC: It's one of crucial aspect of it. In fact,
anarcho-syndicalism kind of shades off into left anti-Bolshevik Marxism.
People like Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick, Karl Korsch and others have
sympathetic relationships and ideas and the great anarchist achievement
like the 1936 Spanish Revolution before it was crushed, did have the
strong and sympathetic support of left Marxists who felt a community of
interests and commitments.
SN: I'm kind of wondering how workers are controlling their own work. How is this organized? And how does it arise?
NC: Well, it's all over the place. First of all it
is a constant development takes place all over. There were efforts in
Eastern Europe, for example, in self-management in Yugoslavia. Right now
in the U.S., in the old decaying Rust Belt, where industries are
collapsing, they’re being replaced, to a certain extent, by worker owned
and partially worker-managed enterprises. There is one huge institution
that’s undergone great conglomerate in Spain which is worker owned and
the manager is selected by workers but not actually worker-managed which
is a collection of heavy industries, banks, hospitals, community living
and so on.
MUCH more -
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/noam-chomsky-tea-party-mostly-white-petty-bourgeois
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