Chomsky versus Feminism

He rarely criticises it, but this is surprisingly blunt:

“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. ....

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/

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.

He knows the history of the movement too:

Chomsky versus the Regressive Left

I tire of people trying to paint Chomsky as the father of the regressive left.

Yes, some elements of this thinking have influenced it and flowed into it (e.g., an often unbalanced and one-sided critique of US foreign policy). And, yes, you can make serious and sometimes very serious criticisms of Chomsky too.

But I also tire of regressive leftists trying to invoke Chomsky as if he is one of their own. This is blatantly untrue.

If you look seriously at Chomsky’s thought and beliefs, there is a vast amount there that is vehemently opposed to the regressive, Postmodernist left.

Let us run through a list:

(1) Chomsky is strongly in favour of free speech and he once went so far as to defend the right of a French holocaust denier to free speech.

Furthermore, Chomsky praises America’s free speech and its constitutional protection of free speech, and even goes so far as to say that America’s protection of free speech is the “best in the world” (and that is his words as quoted in Mitchell and Schoeffel 2002: 268). Do regressive leftists agree with Chomsky here and defend people’s right to free speech, even racists and holocaust deniers?

(2) Chomsky rejects French Poststructuralism and Postmodernism, and all its related ideas, and he has called leading Postmodernist thinkers “charlatans.” Chomsky has also been scathing in his assessment of Michel Foucault and cult of Foucault.

(3) Chomsky thinks that Freudianism and Marxism are irrational cults like organised religion, and has been brutal in his criticism of them (Mitchell and Schoeffel 2002: 227).

(4) Chomsky wrote a scathing attack on leftists who talk about “white male science,” saying that the concept sounds as stupid as the Nazi idea of “Jewish physics.”

(5) Chomsky is a defender of the best values of the Enlightenment from hostile anti-rationalist leftists. Chomsky is also committed to the defence of the real existence of objective truth, as part of his defence of the Enlightenment.

(6) Chomsky also rejects the extreme social constructivism and “blank slate” view of human beings that characterise some parts of the modern left, and he thinks that human beings have a real human nature caused by biology and evolution.

In particular, point (6) by implication constitutes a brutal rejection of the extreme social constructivism of Postmodernism and Third Wave Feminism: e.g., it seems likely that, if Chomsky were honest, he presumably thinks that sex differences and even some gender differences (note the word “some”) are real and rooted in biology and Darwinian evolution. This doesn’t deny important environmental influences, of course, but it requires that genes and biology are important, and entails the rejection of extreme social constructivism.

I wonder how long it will be before Chomsky is slandered as a racist, sexist, homophobic, white male oppressor and member of the patriarchy?

Time to add his name to the long list below!



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mitchell, Peter R. and John Schoeffel (eds.). 2002. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. Scribe Publications, New York.

Chomsky on Freedom of Speech

Note well: Chomsky is a radical man of the left and he (1) condemns hate speech laws, (2) the idea that the government should determine what is history, and (3) laws against Holocaust denial. Why? Because is a radical defender of free speech, the most precious foundation of a free society.

But the regressive left these days would no doubt subject him to the most vicious abuse for this sort of defence of freedom of speech, because the regressive left often opposes free speech. Could there be any greater betrayal of a truly free society?

Chomsky defends the Enlightenment from Postmodernist Irrationalists

In 6 seconds.



Keep up the good work, Noam.

Chomsky on Dead White Male Science

Chomsky savages another outrageous idea of the Postmodernist left:

“ … 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.” (Chomsky 1995).

Good on you, Noam.

There is a reason why – even if I sometimes strongly disagree with you – you have my respect.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. “Rationality/Science,” Z Papers Special Issue
http://chomsky.info/1995____02/

Chomsky on Marxism

I don’t always agree with Chomsky, but what he says here about Marxism is spot on. The interesting and insightful individual concepts in Marx’s Capital – say, the idea of the monetary production economy, endogenous money,* the rudiments of aggregate demand theory, etc. – should be taken up in contemporary economy theory and developed. The other absurd, dogmatic and untenable aspects of Marxism – the labour theory of value, falling rate of profit idea, etc. – should be utterly rejected. Marx should be read as part of the history of economic theory, and his whole theory was essentially a failed theory of 19th-century capitalism, nothing else.



Note
* I hasten to add that endogenous money theory was known well before Marx and he did not originate the theory.

Chomsky on Žižek and Lacan

Note Chomsky’s view of Jacques Lacan: “a total charlatan.”

This assessment came from Chomsky’s personal experience of Lacan, as he recounts here in a discussion of the three big Poststructuralists:

“So take Derrida, one of the grand old men. I thought I ought to at least be able to understand his Grammatology, so tried to read it. I could make out some of it, for example, the critical analysis of classical texts that I knew very well and had written about years before. I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain, as noted. Again, sorry to make unsupported comments, but I was asked, and therefore am answering.

Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I’ve met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible – he speaking French, me English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan, …);”
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

Why was Lacan a charlatan? I suspect the reason was that most of his “work” was based on the pseudo-science of Freudian psychology.

Finally, Slavoj Žižek is probably the worst buffoon and windbag on the Left today. Žižek draws on (what else?!) the pseudo-science of Lacanian psychoanalysis as well as Marxism and German idealism.

It is an utter mystery to me why people think he is some kind of profound intellectual. Of course, I can hazard a guess: the reason is that many people on the Left have had their reasoning faculties poisoned by Postmodernist nonsense.

Apparently, the great man Žižek has criticisms of Postmodernism, and you can attempt to read a summary of his “critique” here. If you can make any sense of these incoherent ramblings, you are doing better than I am.

Chomsky’s Rationalism

Noam Chomsky has been influential both in modern linguistics, cognitive science and philosophy, but it is curious that he has been a critic of empiricism and an advocate of a type of “Rationalism” (that is, in the technical philosophical sense) (Schwartz 2012: 180).

Two important aspects of this Rationalism were (1) the view that human beings are not blank slates as in radical (and mistaken) empiricism, and (2) the observation that human language learning in children appears to be an innate biological trait, with universal syntactic structures (Schwartz 2012: 180–181).

The latter view was brought out in Chomsky’s now famous 1959 review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, where Chomsky attacked Skinner’s behaviourism and effectively discredited that theory (Schwartz 2012: 181). (A related point is that Quine’s linguistic behaviourism as a basis for rejecting analyticity was also undermined.)

It is obvious that a human biologically endowed language faculty seems to bear some similarity to Platonic ideals or Kantian categories and synthetic a priori knowledge. Nevertheless, that conclusion would be a mistake.

Arguably, the innate language faculty of humans, far from vindicating Kant’s synthetic a priori, is the result of Darwinian evolution, and has, in evolutionary terms, been acquired a posteriori – a biological structure shaped by reality and adaptive selection.

But a highly useful and successful trait or propensity to interpret the world in a particular way, given to us by evolution, does not lead to a priori knowledge in the traditional epistemological sense, a point which even Chomsky hints at in his discussion of the human capacity for doing science:

“Some have argued that [sc. the human science-forming capacity] … is not blind luck but rather a product of Darwinian evolution. The outstanding American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who presented an account of science construction in terms similar to those just outlined, argued in this vein. His point was that through ordinary processes of natural selection our mental capacities evolved so as to be able to deal with the problems that arise in the world of experience. But this argument is not compelling. It is possible to imagine that chimpanzees have an innate fear of snakes because those who lacked this genetically determined property did not survive to reproduce, but one hardly argue that humans have the capacity to discover quantum theory for similar reasons. The experience that shaped the course of evolution offers no hint of the problems to be faced in the sciences, and ability to solve these problems could hardly have been a factor in evolution.

We cannot appeal to this deus ex machina to explain the convergence of our ideas and the truth about the world. Rather, it is largely a lucky accident that there is such a (partial) convergence, so it seems.

The human science-forming capacity, like other biological systems, has its scope and limits, as a matter of necessity. We can be confident that some problems will lie beyond the limits, however the science-forming capacity is supplemented by appropriate background information.” (Chomsky 1988: 158).

I think Chomsky goes too far here in asserting that our innate capacities – for instance, our propensity for inductive reasoning – give “no hint of the problems to be faced in the sciences.” On the contrary, human inductive reasoning (if it stems partly from an innate propensity) seems to have much to do with the ability to do science, though it is a fallible process.

Nevertheless, our linguistic abilities and propensity for creating language conforming to syntactic and grammatical rules have the properties of an abstract deductive system (Schwartz 2012: 182), but this does not give necessary a priori knowledge in the traditional sense:

“It is important to note that Chomsky’s language learners do not know particular propositions describing a universal grammar. They have a set of innate capacities or dispositions which enable and determine their language development. Chomsky gives us a theory of innate learning capacities or structures rather than a theory of innate knowledge. His view does not support the Innate Knowledge thesis as rationalists have traditionally understood it. As one commentator puts it, ‘Chomsky’s principles ... are innate neither in the sense that we are explicitly aware of them, nor in the sense that we have a disposition to recognize their truth as obvious under appropriate circumstances. And hence it is by no means clear that Chomsky is correct in seeing his theory as following the traditional rationalist account of the acquisition of knowledge.’”
“Rationalism vs. Empiricism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004 (rev. 2013)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Some of these issues are brought out in this interview with (a young!) Chomsky by Bryan Magee.




Links
“Rationalism vs. Empiricism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004 (rev. 2013)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Nathalie Gontier, “Evolutionary Epistemology,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006
http://www.iep.utm.edu/evo-epis/

“Evolutionary Epistemology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001 (rev. 2012)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-evolutionary/


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass and London.

Cottingham, John. 1988. The Rationalists. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.

Horwich, Paul. 1992. “Chomsky versus Quine on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 92: 95–108.

Schwartz, Stephen P. 2012. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK.

A Gem from Chomsky on the Stupidity of Neoclassical Economics

The gem comes from 1.41 to the end of the video, thought one has to watch the whole video to appreciate his remark on the stupidity of the efficient markets hypothesis and the housing bubble. After he makes his final comment, the deadpan silence that follows is the funniest thing I have seen all week.

Chomsky on the Meaning of Socialism

Noam Chomsky is America’s leading advocate of libertarian socialism, though his political and economic thought draws on diverse traditions and the thinking of intellectuals such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, Mikhail Bakunin, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, and Rudolf Rocker. Chomsky’s conception of “socialism” is anarcho-syndicalism, a system where production and production institutions would be worker-owned, democratically self-managed enterprises. Other notable syndicalists were Rudolf Rocker and the young Bertrand Russell. Syndicalism has been a major non-Marxist socialist tradition. Chomsky gives his views on the meaning of socialism in the video below.




I would argue, however, that either (1) radical progressive liberalism or (2) social democracy of the Scandinavian type has just as legitimate a claim to the name “democratic socialism.” Of course, one of the severe failings of progressive liberalism and social democracy is the inability to free themselves from neoclassical economics and the power of the private capitalist institutions. When Chomsky quotes John Dewey and complains that “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business,” he is no doubt right. The excesses of modern multinational corporations and big business are an outrage on many levels.

But, while worker-run enterprises might very well provide a superior form of business organisation, it seems to me that in some respects they would still face much the same problems as private capitalists: if the decision-making done in a worker-managed enterprise/cooperative is done by its workers, and there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of such cooperatives making de-centralized decision-making on production (even if this involves a democratic process involving many people in each individual enterprise), then you would have decisions on investment and production made in a decentralised manner that is essentially private. If the economy uses money and has some types of financial assets as a store of value, you have exactly the same problems that exist now. The people involved would still be making decisions under subjective expectations and fundamental uncertainty, and investment would, most probably, be subject to fluctuation. Say’s law would not hold in a syndicalist economy. In such an economy, there would still be failures of aggregate demand, and some democratically-accountable institution would be required to intervene at the macro-level to overcome such macro-problems. That institution would, I contend, end up being a de facto government, and would probably also accrue other responsibilities such as implementing democratic decisions on foreign policy, defence, monetary policy, science policy, education standards, and so on. I suspect that a syndicalist society would evolve into a state-based system not that much different from the most radical forms of progressive liberalism or social democracy.

Classical Liberalism and its Offspring

There is an interesting post here on Classical liberalism:

“Yglesias on Classical Liberals,” June 5, 2011.

Another point is that Classical liberalism has many different intellectual offspring:

(1) progressive liberalism, already emerging at the end of the 19th century;

(2) pro-market libertarianism, which emerged from the Classical liberal wing of the Austrian school after 1945 in the work of Mises and Rothbard;

(3) possibly even modern libertarian socialism, as Chomsky claims.

Chomsky’s views on the alleged relation of Classical liberalism to his tradition of libertarian socialism are given in the video below.

Chomsky on Postmodernism and Poststructuralism

The left – particularly the academic left – really went down a wrong path when Postmodernism and Poststructuralism started poisoning its intellectual life.

If you have worked and studied in English speaking universities over the past 30 years in the humanities, I suspect you will have encountered the mind-numbing drivel that characterizes much of Postmodernist writing. One of its worst excesses was an attack on the natural sciences, exposed in all its ignorance by Alan Sokal and the now famous Sokal affair, and in more detail by Sokal and Bricmont in Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science (London, 1998).

I will never forget the time I once wasted trying to understand Derrida, and my conclusion that Derrida’s writings are some of the worst rubbish I have ever read.

Frankly, I don’t think it is difficult to find support for this view. Noam Chomsky, probably the most well known libertarian socialist today, gives his view of Postmodernism:

“Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I’ve met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible—he speaking French, me English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan, though his earlier work, pre-cult, was sensible and I've discussed it in print); Kristeva (who I met only briefly during the period when she was a fervent Maoist); and others. Many of them I haven’t met, because I am very remote from these circles, by choice, preferring quite different and far broader ones—the kinds where I give talks, have interviews, take part in activities, write dozens of long letters every week, etc. I’ve dipped into what they write out of curiosity, but not very far, for reasons already mentioned: what I find is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on extraordinary misreading of texts that I know well (sometimes, that I have written), argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a good deal of plain gibberish”
Noam Chomsky on Post-Modernism.

As on so many other things, Chomsky is dead right on this subject (and his description of Lacan as “an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan” is priceless!). Nor is he alone, as there is an equally stinging attack on Postmodernism from the philosopher John Searle, which is worth reading.

The major historical issue for the left was, and still should be, economics. I certainly don’t deny the importance of social, cultural and other moral issues, but economics is the burning issue of our time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dawkins, R. “Postmodernism Disrobed,” RichardDawkins.net, 1 April 2007
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed

Gross, P. R. and N. Levitt, 1994. Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Postrel, S. R. and E. Feser, “Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle,” Reason.com (9 February 2000)
http://www.reason.com/news/show/27599.html

Sokal, A. and J. Bricmont. 1998. Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science, Profile, London.