Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
This is what "we have learned in the past thirty years of intensive empirical
study of contemporary societies." Pool is merely describing facts, not proposing
policy. A corresponding version of the facts is familiar on the domestic
scene: workers threaten the public order by striking fo r their demands, the
impatience of the Negro community threatens the stability of the body politic.
One can, of course, imagine another way in which order can be preserved in
all such cases: namely, by meeting [he demands, or at the very least by removing
the barriers that have been placed, by force which may be latent and disguised,
in the way of attempts to sarisfy the "newly acquired aspirations." Bur
this might mean that the wealthy and powerful would have to sacrifice some
degree of privilege, and it is therefore excluded as a method for maintenance
of order. Such proposals are likely to meet with little sympathy from Pool's new
mandarins.
From the doubly privileged position of the American scholar, the transcendent
importance of order, stability, and nonviolence (by the oppressed) seems
entirely ohvious; to others, the matter is not so simple. If we listen, we hear
such voices as this, from an economist in India:
It is disingenuous to invoke "democracy," "due process of law,"
"non-violence," to rationalise the absence of action. For meaningful
concepts under such conditions become meaningless
since, in reality, they justifY the relentless pervasive exploitation
of the masses; at once a denial of democracy and a more sinister
form of violence perpetrated on the overwhelming majority
through contractual forms.21
Moderate American scholarship does not seem capable of comprehending
these simple truths.
It would he wrong to leave the impression that the ideology of the liberal
imelligentsia translates itself into policy as a rain of cluster bombs and napalm.
In fact, the liberal experts have been dismayed by the emphasis on military
means in Vietnam and have consistenriy argued that the key to our effons
should be social restructuring and economic assistance. Correspondingly, I
think that we can perceive more clearly the attitudes that are crystallizing
among the new mandarins by considering the technical studies of pacification,
for example, the research monograph of William Nighswonger, cited earlier
(see note 4). The author, now a professor of political science, was senior United
States civilian representative of the Agency for International Developmem in
Quang Nam Province from 1962 to 1964. fu:, he sees the situation, "the knotty
problems of pacification are intricately intertwined with the issues of political
development and they necessitate-at this time in history-intimate
American involvement." Thus Americans must ask some "basic questions of
value and obligation-questions that transcend the easy legalisms of 'selfdetermination'
and 'nonintervention.'" These easy legal isms have little relevance
to a world in which the West is challenged by "the sophisticated method-
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