“Each time labor has been attacked—and as I said, in the 1920s the labor movement was practically destroyed—popular efforts were able to reconstitute it. That can happen again. It’s not going to be easy. There are institutional barriers, ideological barriers, cultural barriers. One big problem is that the white working class has been pretty much abandoned by the political system. The Democrats don’t even try to organize them anymore. The Republicans claim to do it; they get most of the vote, but they do it on non-economic issues, on non-labor issues. They often try to mobilize them on the grounds of issues steeped in racism and sexism and so on, and here the liberal policies of the 1960s had a harmful effect because of some of the ways in which they were carried out. ....It’s a pity Chomsky never calls out modern identity politics and the regressive left, since, as I have pointed out here, in his heyday he was absolutely brutal on French Poststructuralism and Postmodernism and all their rotten ideas from which the modern regressive left has emerged.
The same has been true of women’s rights. But when you have a working class that’s under real pressure, you know, people are going to say that rights are being undermined, that jobs are being undermined. Maybe the one thing that the white working man can hang onto is that he runs his home? Now that that’s being taken away and nothing is being offered, he’s not part of the program of advancing women’s rights. That’s fine for college professors, but it has a different effect in working-class areas. It doesn’t have to be that way. It depends on how it’s done, and it was done in a way that simply undermined natural solidarity. There are a lot of factors that play into it, but by this point it’s going to be pretty hard to organize the working class on the grounds that should really concern them: common solidarity, common welfare.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/01/noam_chomsky_america_hates_its_poor_partner/
He knows the history of the movement too:
Seems to me that the generation that produced Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky was indeed more focused on the Blue-Collar experience. The problem the younger generation is having is that most of the Blue Collar jobs were and still are largely held by Evil Penis Bearers. Oops, I meant "Men."
ReplyDeleteHe's an odd duck for sure. Often so insightful, and then suddenly off on an obsession.
ReplyDeleteHis observations here are shrewd, as are yours on him.
Look at this. It's tendentiousness but look past the slant to the actions of the legislators.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/the_arrogance_of_oneparty_government_in_california.html
Rent seeking in government can be defeated or at least kept in check by scrutiny of government and activism, just like corporate rent seeking can be kept in check.
DeleteYou could write Chomsky to ask.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but he cant talk about everything all the time. Meanwhile i think it's important as you do to highlight that he is very very much against identity politics. It goes through eberything he's written. He's a leftist but a REALIST leftist. Something awfully rare unfortunately, most of the left is totally insane nowadays.
ReplyDeleteTo give an example: "In fact, the entire idea of “white male science” reminds me, I’m afraid, of “Jewish physics.” Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can’t tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctrine that their thinking and understanding differ from “white male science” because of their “culture or gender and race.” I suspect that “surprise” would not be quite the proper word for their reaction." (https://chomsky.info/1995____02/)
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