Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
The pattern is uniform. U.S. occupying forces in Panama were quickly
ordered to arrest most political activists and union leaders, because they are
"bad guys of some SOrt," the U.S. Embassy told reporters.3 The "good guys" to
be restored to power are the bankers who were happily laundering drug money
in the early 1980s. Then Noriega was also a "good guy," running drugs, killing
and torturing and stealing elections-and, crucially, following American
orders. He had not yet shown the dangerous streak of independence that transferred
him to the category of demon. Apart from tactics, nothing changes over
the years, including the inability of educated opinion to perceive that 2 and 2
is 4.
Central America represents the historical norm, not Eastern Europe.
Hume's observation requires this correction. Recognizing that, it remains true,
and important, that government is founded on opinion, which brings willing
submission.
In the contemporary period, Hume's concepcion has been revived and elaborated,
bur with a crucial innovation: the theory is that control of thought is
more imponant for governments that are free and popular than for despotic
and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its
domestic enemy by force, bm as the stare loses this weapon, other devices are
required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs,
which are none of their business.
The point is, in fact, far more general. The public must be reduced to passivity
in the political realm, bm for submissiveness to become a reliable trait,
it must be entrenched in the realm of belief as well. The public are to be
observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products. Eduardo
Galeano writes that "the majority must resign itself to the consumption of fantasy.
Illusions of wealth are sold to the poor, illusions of freedom to the
oppressed. dreams of victory to the defeated and of power to the weak. " 4 That
is the essential point.
I will come back to these cemral themes of modern political and imellectual
culture. But let us first have a look at some of the "natural beliefs" that
guide our conduct and our thought. One such belief is that a crucial element
of essential human nature is what Bakunin called "an instinct for freedom."
Hume's paradox arises only if we make this assumption. It is the failure to act
upon this instinct that Hume found so surprising. The same failure inspired
Rousseau's classic lament that people are born free bur are everywhere in
chains, seduced by the illusions of the civil society that is created by the rich
to guarantee their plunder. There have been efforts to ground the instinct for
freedom in a substantive theory of human nature. They are not without interest,
but they surely come nowhere near establishing the case. Like other tenets
of common sense, this belief remains a regulative principle that we adopt, or
reject, on faith. Which choice we make can have large-scale effects for ourselves
and others.
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