Sunday, November 11, 2018

Noam Chomsky: Lenin Was a Libertarian

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky must have one of the strangest definitions of libertarianism on this spinning planet.



 He talks about Lenin's advocacy of workers' control of production and libertarianism as seemingly in concert with one another. From the below clip (starting at 3:41)
Lenin's work it shifted character in April 17 in April 1917. it became kind of
libertarian that's when he came out with the April theses and that's when he wrote state and Democracy [sic].  Came out it came out of year later but that's when it was written and these were a state and revolution these these were basically libertarian works.
They were very much more in the main in the mainstream of sort of left a libertarian socialism from sort of you know this range that goes from anarchism over the left Marxism. A Sandburg variety. Any talk about Soviets and the need for you know a workers organization and so on in fact came really closer to what the essence of socialism was always understood to be after all the core of socialism was understood to be workers control over production. That was the core. It's where you begin with. Then you go on to other things but the beginning is controlled by the workers overproduction.
Anyone who thinks, and it does occur beyond Chomsky, that libertarianism and socialism can be linked in something called libertarian socialism is very confused. Libertariainsim is about freedom. Socialism is about state control.
-RW 

5 comments:

  1. yeah, I heard someone tell me something like this years ago. Noam Chomsky is pretty out there. The only similarity is that both want to change the power structure. Libertarians want to take over and leave you alone, socialists want to take over so they can steal your stuff and divide it amongst their friends while everyone else gets murdered, or treated like slaves. Anyone who associates Stalin with liberty us absolutely insane. Chomsky is smart enought to read, so I think he is either trying to denegrate libertarians on purpose or he has lost his faculties.

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    1. I just saw that he said Lenin, not Stalin. But here, there is actually little difference between them. If you want to call Lenin and Stalin the same intellectially, that wouldnt really be too far off, but calling either one a Libertarian is unbelievably nuts.

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  2. It's going to be a huge bother changing Rothbard's nickname to "Mr. Socialist."

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  3. Chomsky became famous as a linguist and has referred to himself (years ago) as a "libertarian socialist". He seems to think "Orwellian" is a compliment. Lenin has been quoted as saying, about revolution, "First, confuse the vocabulary." Chomsky seems to work at that.

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