Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

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CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM From my understanding, the core part of your overall view is informed by your concept of human nature. In the past the idea of human nature was seen, perhaps, as something regressive, even limiting. For instance, the unchanging aspect of human nature is often used as an argument for why things can't be changed fundamentally in the direction of anarchism. You take a diffirent view' Why' MORAL AGENTS WITH SOME CONCEPTION OF HUMAN NATURE The core part of anyone's point of view is some concept of human nature, however it may be remme from awareness or lack aniculation. At least, that is uue of people who consider themselves moral agents, nO( monsters. Monsters aside, whether a person who advocates reform or revolution, or stability or rerurn to earlier stages, or simply cultivating one's own garden, takes stand on the grounds that it is "good for people." But that judgement is based on some conception of human nature, which a reasonable person will try to make as clear as possible, if only so that it can be evaluated. So in this respect I'm no different from anyone else. You're right that human nature has been seen as something "regressive," but that must be the result of profound confusion. Is my granddaughter no different from a rock, a salamander, a chicken, a monkey? A person who dismisses this absurdity as absurd recognizes that there is a distinctive human nature. We 185 are left only with the question of what it is-a highly non-trivial and fascinating question, with enormous scientific interest and human significance. We know a fair amount about cenain aspects of it-not those of major human significance. Beyond that, we are left with our hopes and wishes, intuitions and specularions. There is norhing "regressive" about the facr that a human embryo is so constrained that it does not grow wings, or that its visual system cannot function in the manner of [the visual system of] an insecr, or that it lacks the homing instinct of pigeons. The same factors that constrain the organism's development also enable it to attain a rich, complex, and highly articulated suucture, similar in fundamental ways to conspecifics, with rich and remarkable capacities. An organism that lacked such determinative intrinsic strucrure, which of course radically limits the paths of development, would be some kind of amoeboid creature, to be pitied (even if it could survive somehow). The scope and limits of development are logically related. Take language, one of the few distinctive human capacities about which much is known. We have very strong reasons to believe that all possible human languages are very similar; a Manian scientist observing humans might conclude that there is just a single language, with minor variants. The reason is that the particular aspect of human nature that underlies the growth of language allows very resrricred options. Is this limiting? Of course. Is it liberating?
RNRRCHISM, MRRXISM RND HOPE FOR THE FUTURE Also of course. It is these very restrictions that make it possible for a rich and intricate system of expression of thought to develop in similar ways on the basis of very rudimentary, scattered, and varied experience. What about the matter of biologically-determined human differences? That these exist is surely true, and a cause for joy, not fear or regret. Life among clones would not be worth living, and a sane person will only rejoice that others have abilities that they do not share. That should be elementary. What is commonly believed about these matters is strange indeed, in myopin IOn. Is human nature, whatever it is, conducive to the development of anarchist forms of life or a barrier to them? We do not know enough to answer, one way or the other. These are nutters for experimentation and discovery, not empty pronouncements.
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CHOMSKY ON ANRRCHISM SELECTED AND E
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CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM PREFACE 5 INTR
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PREFACE pmential is stunted and def
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INTRODUCTION B working together in
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OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
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LRNGURGE FIND FREEDOM human spirit
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LRNGUAGE AND FREEDOM
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LRNGUAGE AND FREEDOM other facultie
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LRNGURGE FIND FREEDOM 1. 1. 4 deriv
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LRNGUAGE AND FREEDOM ty, or even in
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THREE NOTES ON ANARCHISM (1970) U8
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NOTES ON RNRRCHISM through (he taki
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NOTES ON RNRRCHISM NOTES This essay
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NOTES ON RNRRCHISM 27 For discussio
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