Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

PREFACE
I was a teenager when I first learned that <strong>Chomsky</strong> was an anarchist. The discovery
had a powerful effect. This was around 1980 and, while "anarchy" was
proclaimed loudly from the stages of some punk rock shows I attended. I felt
isolated in my belief that there was something profound, and profoundly serious,
about the doctrine I had adopted-something beyond easy exhortations
to "smash the state," without any suggestion of how, or what to replace it with.
I'd read the dassics-Proudhon. Bakunin, Kropotkin-but they were hard to
find, 110( to mention dead. <strong>Chomsky</strong> was not only alive, he was a widely-read,
well-respected intellectual, who weme his first pro-anarchist essay at (he age of
ten, hung our at anarchist newsstands and bookshops on 4th Avenue in
Manhanan as a teenager (not fa r from my punk stomping grounds), and still
maintained his anti-authoritarian beliefs as an adult. Despite the connadiction
my peers might have seen in appealing to the aurhority of such a public figure,
I felt validated, and much less alone.
Part of the reason we at AK Press are publishing this book is to inspire that
same sense of excitement and discovery. It's much harder to pull off today, of
course, at least within the anarchist movement itself Anarchism is more widespread
and visible-validation and community within it much easier to find.
<strong>Chomsky</strong>'s version ofliberrarian socialism is somewhat better known. Bm perhaps
that very familiarity is dangerous. We think we know what anarchism is.
We think we know who <strong>Chomsky</strong> is. And, in that knowing, we miss a lot of
nuance and complexity. The essays and interviews collected in this book, written
between 1969 and 2004, will hopefully hold surprises and raise productive
questions for even the mOSt self-assured anarchist.
We're also publishing this book fo r the many people our there who don't
know what anarchism is, or whose knowledge of it is mostly limited to sensationalist
newspaper headlines. For them, we see <strong>Chomsky</strong> as a bridge to a new
set of ideas about the means and ends of social change, to a I 50-year tradition
of revolutionary thought and practice that has sought social and economic justice
without the mediation of bosses, politicians or bureaucrats. Outside the
anarchist movement, many are completely unaware of the libertarian socialist
roots of <strong>Chomsky</strong>'s work, how they relate not only to his social criticism, bm
also to his linguistic theory. For them, the surprises in this book will be greater.
What, after all, could such a reasonable and intelligent man have to do with
people the nightly news tells us are the very antithesis of Reason?
Quite a bit, as this book will make abundantly dear. <strong>Chomsky</strong>'s wellknown
critiques-of the media, of US foreign policy, of exploitation and
oppression in all their forms---don't come out of nowhere. They're based on
his fundamental beliefs about what it means to be human: who we are, what
we're capable of becoming, how we might organize our lives, and how our
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