Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
such arrocities as the willingness "to 'expropriate,' by means of robbery, the
individual property of individual bourgeois."28 Our side, in contrast, adheres
to the "tradition of belief in equality" when we implement land reform. For
example, the New York Times, December 26, 1967, reports a recent conference
of expens studying the "Taiwan sllccess in land reform," one of the real success
stories of American intervention. "The Government reimbursed the former
landlords in part (30 per cent) with shares of four large public enterprises
taken over from the Japanese. The remainder was paid in bonds .... Many
speakers at the conference singled om the repayment as the shrewdest feature
of the Taiwan program. It not only treated the landlords fairly, they said, but
it also redirecred the landlords' energies and capital towards industry," thus
advancing the "wholesale restructuring of society" in the only healthy and
humane direcrion.
In a side remark, Pool states that "in lay public debates now going on one
often hears comments to the effect that Viemamese communism, because it is
anti-Chinese, would be like Yugoslav communism." It would, of course, be
ridiculous to argue such a causal connection, and, in fact, I have never heard
it proposed in "lay public debate" or anywhere else. Rather, what has been
maintained by such laymen as Hans Morgenthau, General James Gavin, and
others is that Vietnamese Communism is likely to be Titoist, in the sense that
it will strive for independence from Chinese domination. Thus they reject the
28 claim that by attacking Vietnamese Communism we are somehow "containing
Chinese Communism"-a claim implied, for example, in the statement of the
"Citizens Commiuee for Peace with Freedom in Viemam," in which Ithiel
Pool, Milton Sacks, and others, speaking for "the understanding, independent
and responsible men and women who have consistendy opposed rewarding
international aggressors from Adolf Hitler to Mao Tse-tung," warn that if we
"abandon Vietnam," then "Peking and Hanoi, flushed with Sllccess, [will] continue
their expansionist policy through many other 'wars of liberation. '" By
misstating the reference to Titoist tendencies, Pool avoids the difficulty of
explaining how an anti-Chinese North Vietnam is serving as the agent of
Hitlerian aggression from Peking; by referring ro "lay public debate," he hopes,
I presume, to disguise the failure of argument by a claim to expertise.
Returning again [Q the Asian Survey Vietnam symposium, the most significant
contribution is surely Edward Mitchell's discussion of his RAND
Corporation study on "the significance ofland tenure in the Vietnamese insurgency."
In a study of twenty-six provinces, Mitchell has discovered a significant
correlation between "inequality of land tenure" and "extent of Government
[read: American] control." In brief. "greater inequality implies greater control."
"Provinces seem to be more secure when the percentage of owner-operated
land is low (tenancy is high); inequality in the distribution of farms by size is
great; large. formerly French-owned estates are present; and no land redistribution
has taken place." To explain this phenomenon, Mitchell (Urns to histo-