On 5/18/07, Sheldon Richman <sheldon@...> wrote:

> It's been a while, but I've spent time talking to Chomsky, a very kind
> and patient man. I got to know him when I was senior editor at Inquiry
> magazine, which published him frequently.
>
> "The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving
> subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic
> seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but
> nowhere else."
>
> This shows that Chomsky has not fully digested market anarchism. (I
> avoid "anarcho-capitalism" for obvious reasons.) He is locked into a
> package deal that we here have broken apart. There are no potentates
> in market anarchism. I would like to know if Chomsky has studied
> Benjamin Tucker.
>
> "I should add, however, that I find myself in substantial agreement
> with people who consider themselves anarcho-capitalists on a whole
> range of issues; and for some years, was able to write only in their
> journals. And I also admire their commitment to rationality -- which
> is rare...."
>
> That's the Chomsky I've known.

I exchanged a few emails with him once, and his patience seemed to be
wearing thin rather quickly.

In my initial message, I started by mentioning how helpful his work
had been to me, in drawing attention to vast amounts of material on
the workings of the U.S. economy and U.S. foreign policy.

But, I went on, it seemed to me that there was a fundamental
contradiction in his approach. He often made a great deal of the
dependence of the corporate economy on subsidies and protection, and
argued at times that most corporations would be bankrupt within months
if such government intervention were withdrawn. At other times,
however, he argued that corporations were dangerous concentrations of
"private power" that would continue to grow unless the state were used
to actively dismantle them.

If I had been framing the contradiction in terms of the discussion on
this thread, I would have mentioned that he constantly stressed the
dependence of corporations on the state and their inability to survive
in a free market, and this seems to contradict his claim that
dismantling the state while leaving the corporations in place would
result in corporate feudalism.

At any rate, he claimed not to see the contradiction, and seemingly
ran out of patience rather fast as I tried to explain it.

--
Kevin Carson
Mutualist.Org: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://www.mutualist.org
Mutualist Blog http://mutualist.blogspot.com