Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

INTERVIEW WITH ZIGA VODOVNIK
onize the public, they will be harming their own cause. If rhey can find actions
that will get people to understand why it makes sense to challenge systems of
formal democracy without substance, rhen they picked the right taeric. But
you cannot check or look in a textbook to find the answers. It depends on careful
evaluation of the situation thar exists, the state of public understanding, the
likely consequences of what we do, and so on.
The United States has a very long history oj Utopism-oJ diffirent attempts
towards alternative social orders. Transcendentalism was also famous
because its Brook Farm and Fruitlands experiments. French thinker
Proudhon once wrote that: "Freedom is the mother, not the daughter oj
order. "Where do you see lift after or beyond the (nation) state?
My feeling is thar any imeraction among human beings that is more than
personal-meaning that takes institutional fo rms of one kind or another-in
community, or workplace, family. larger society, whatever ir may be, should be
under direct control of its participants. So that would mean workers' councils
in industry, popular democracy in communities, imeraction berween them,
free associations in larger groups, lip to organization of international society.
You can spell out the details in many different ways, and I don't really see a lor
a point in it. And here I disagree with some of my friends; I think spelling out
238 in extensive detail the fo rm of future society goes beyond our understanding.
There surely will have to be plenty of experimentation-we don't know
enough about human beings and societies, their needs and limitations. There
is just too much we don't know, $0 lots of alternatives should be tried.
On many occasions activists, intellectuals, students, have asked you about
your specific vision oj anarchist society and about your very detailed plan to
get there. Once, you answered that "we can not ftgure out what problems are
going to arise unless you experiment with them. " Do you also have a fteling
that many left intellectuals are loosing too much energy with their theoretical
disputes about the proper means and ends to even start 'experimenting"
in practice.
Many people find this extremely importanr and find that they cannot act
as, let's say, organizers in their community unless they have a detailed vision of
the future that they are going to try to achieve. OK, that's the way they perceive
the world and themselves. I would not presume to tell them it's wrong.
Maybe it is right for them, bur it is not right for me. A lot of flowers have a
right to bloom. People do things in different ways.
With the process oj economic globalization getting stronger day after day,
many on the left are caught in a dilemma-either one can work to reinforce