Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
every variety, has looked forward to the dismantling of state power. Personally,
I share that vision, though it runs directly counter to my goals. Hence the tension
to which I referred.
My short-term goals are to defend and even strengthen elements of state
authority which, though illegitimate in fundamental ways, are critically necessary
right now to impede the dedicated efforts to "roll back" the progress that
has been achieved in extending democracy and human rights. State authority
is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it
conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because it offers
(weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. Governments have a fatal
flaw: unlike the ptivate tytannies, the institutions of state power and authority
offer to the despised public an opportunity to play some role, however limited,
in managing their own affairs. That defect is intolerable to the masters,
who now feel, with some justification, that changes in the imernarional economic
and political order offer the prospects of creating a kind of "utopia for
the masters," with dismal prospects for most of the rest. It should be unnecessary
to spell out here what I mean. The effens are all too obvious even in the
rich societies, from the corridors of power to the streets, countryside, and prisons.
For reasons that merit attention but that lie beyond the scope of these
remarks, the rollback campaign is currently spearheaded by dominant sectors
of societies in which the values under attack have been realized in some of their
most advanced fo rms, the English-speaking world; no small irony, but no con- 193
tradiction either.
It is worth bearing in mind that fulfillment of the utopian dream has been
celebrated as an imminem prospect from early in the 19th cemury (I'll return
briefly to that period). By the 1880s, the revolutionary socialist artist William
Morris could write:
I know it is at present the received opinion that the competitive
or "Devil take the hindmost" system is the last system of economy
which the world will see; that it is perfection, and therefore
finality has been reached in it; and it is doubtless a bold thing to
fly in the face of this opinion, which I am told is held even by
the mOSt learned men.
If history is really at an end, as confidently proclaimed, then "civilization
will die," but all of history says it is nor so, he added. The hope that "perfection"
was in sight flourished again in the 1920s. With rhe strong suppOrt of
liberal opinion generally, and of course the business world, Woodrow Wilson's
Red Scare had successfully undermined unions and independent thought,
helping to establish an era of business dominance that was expected to be permanent.
With the collapse of unions, working people had no power and little
hope at the peak of the automobile boom. The crushing of unions and workers'
rights, often by violence, shocked even rhe right-wing British press. An
Australian visitor, astounded by the weakness of American unions, observed in